Many Years of Hard Work

Te Ao Hou, March 1966, Page 5

Many Years of Hard Work ‘In 1929 I left Taranaki and bought a property of 360 acres at Honikiwi near Otorohanga. It almost broke our backs let alone our hearts, what with the ragwort infestation and cobalt sickness. We near starved to hold on … but we did it! Then World War II broke out and I left my wife and family to hold the home fort while I went to Auckland as a musketry instructor. When war eventually turned again to peace, I sold that farm. We bought a gorse and blackberry infested place in historic Kopua, the fount of Christianity for Ngati Maniapoto on the banks of the Waipa river. The house into which we moved was rat-infested and without power. My family declared I was mad. The land was flat and good. Our roadway in at first was across a lagoon on a rickety canoe, which went down one night with all my family in their finery returning from a dance. ‘It was a pleasure to demolish that house later, when the land was cleared, and build my family an all-electric one with every convenience. For all the gorse and blackberry,’ Bill

chuckled, ‘We won through comfortably even though that canoe was never raised again. It had served its purpose anyway. ‘When we gave up that farm a few years back we had no wish to sit and idle away the rest of our lives, so here I am in the taxi business with my son. ‘You know,’ Bill said, smiling as he looked across at his wife pouring tea, ‘My wife has helped me all the way. No man is a success in any venture without the help of a good woman and the guidance of God.’