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| "Sugar Mountain" |
22nd October 1979
42 Point View Drive, Papatoetoe R.D.1
Dear Mum and Dad,
Many thanks for your letter of October 7th. We are now beginning to get organised at Sugar Mountain and feel more relaxed after all the hassles of building and moving. We had a house warming party this last weekend - a sort of open day for anyone who wanted to pop in - and so the home has now been properly christened. It certainly has a lovely feel to it and everyone was very impressed. Brian, our architect friend who designed it, was very happy that all our choices of wallpapers and carpets etc complemented his ideas and really enjoyed hearing all the nice things said about the house... We still have to finish wallpapering the hall, the bedrooms and a toilet, and to get some doors for the garage and there are lots of little bits and pieces needing doing (plus all the garden) but summer is now nearly here and we can take our time and enjoy the place too. The children have stayed during the last two weekends and helped with various jobs. They think it is a very 'flash' house - it couldn't be a greater contrast with the flat in Otahuhu, so much space and air. This morning we had our first 'tragedy' of country life when during breakfast two birds flew smack into one of our windows and killed themselves, one with a broken neck and one with a broken back. They were NZ birds rather like yellowhammers but I don't know their proper name. We will have to hang some silver paper from the eaves - there is so much glass it must look like fresh air right through our lounge.
Our academic year has almost finished here and final exams are in full swing. What with the house finished and the freezing works study completed it's good to have time to spend doing the things that have been put off for too long. I expect to spend much of the summer trying to get in control of the outside of the house. We are going to get a goat to help keep the grass down since the slope is too steep for mowing and that will mean building a goat house from all the bits and pieces of timber that the builders have left behind - the rest of it will eventually burn in our pot belly stove or on the open fireplace. The nights are still quite cold and with almost no curtains yet to help insulate the house we have had the fires going quite often. There's certainly something special about sitting by a log fire and looking out over the lights of Auckland city below us. Mary's sister, Anita, gave us some binoculars as a present so we can now sit up on the hill and watch what is going on over half of South Auckland - reminds me of your mother Henderson at Greenbank peering out from behind the net curtains at all the comings and goings. Only we have baby lambs (black and white) in the field next door and bobby calves down the hill instead of the trams going up and down and 'Mrs --- off to do the messages.'
Lots of love to you both,
John and Mary
1st December 1979
Dear Mum and Dad,
Thank you for your letter of November 20th and also an earlier one which crossed with my last. As you can imagine there is a collective horror throughout New Zealand at the DC10 crash in the Antarctic earlier this week. This is a small country and virtually everyone you meet knows someone who was on the trip, especially around Auckland where most of the passengers came from. A couple we knew who lived at Waiwera, where the hot pools are, were killed as were a number of Air New Zealand staff who were involved recently in the charity fund-raising effort to send a planeload of handicapped children to Disneyland (for their Year of the Child effort) - Mary did the hairdos for a gala day they ran at Ellerslie during the winter. The wife of an ex-chancellor of Auckland University was also killed. This was the 14th jaunt to the Antarctic that Air New Zealand had run in the last 2 or 3 years; know one knows yet what caused the crash but it seems likely it was a misjudgement on the part of the aircrew. There must be great pressure on a tourist flight like this to get a bit lower and a bit nearer than is really safe so that everyone can get their photographs and their money's worth. People from previous flights recount tales of flying up glaciers with mountains on both sides, down around the 1500' height when they are not supposed to be below 6000'. Anyway it is all very sad and I expect you have read about it in your newspapers.
The University term has now ended and all the examinations are marked so I am able to spend quite a bit of time now at Sugar Mountain. We have almost completed all the wallpapering now with just the upstairs toilet and the insides of a number of cupboards to do. We have also got some curtains up and finished off plastering and painting the open fireplace in the living room. The garage now has some doors although there is so much junk in it that there is no room for the car. I have cleared a bit of ground to start a vegetable patch and put in some tomato plants, some sweet peas and some rhubarb. We also have some rock melon seeds sprouting up and they will soon be ready to transplant. It's all very experimental at present to see what will survive without too much attention - there are opossums in the bush who like to come up for a feed at night - some boys from along the road are hoping to catch them with some box traps which they have put in the bush.
This afternoon we went next door to a neighbour's place to watch their sheep being sheared. We haven't got a goat yet, just plenty of long grass...
Summer is here now and we are beginning to get suntanned, lovely warm days and long still evenings. With Christmas coming up there is quite a bit of social activity going on. Next Saturday we are going on a trip to the vineyards in West Auckland organised by a German hair products company. Last Friday we had the fifteen Maori pre-apprentice hairdressers from the Tech here for their end of year lunch. They loved the place and sang us songs they had got together as part of their cultural group activities during the year. There is a lot of unemployment here at present particularly among school-leavers so it is good to know that most of them have got jobs. We have two Maori girl apprentices in the salon at Otahuhu from last year's course. Mostly they are country girls who are selected by the Maori Affairs Department to come to Auckland for pre-apprentice training. The Department runs a hostel for them in Remuera.
I hope this arrives in time to wish you all the best for Christmas. We will have the children here for Christmas lunch and then take them back to Rothesay Bay for their tea. We will be thinking of you then, with love from us both, John and Mary.
6th January 1980
We had the three children here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day until teatime. They got a big surprise, and so did we, when there was a knock on the door at 7am on Christmas morning and a very jolly Father Christmas was there going Ho Ho Ho. We thought at first it was a neighbourhood tradition but it turned out to be a distant relative of Mary's doing the rounds of all the family. Sacha stayed with us for a spell both before and after Christmas while Stuart was away staying with some friends at Snells Beach north of Auckland. The boys like to spend their time with their friends at Rothesay Bay fishing and swimming. Sacha on the other hand likes to go to the salon and get her hair done by the girls there - she is much more 'sociable' than Stuart and Lewis who would rather be out playing than sitting around talking or listening to adults. They have all had a good year at school and Sacha and Stuart go on to secondary school, Rangitoto College, this year.
Mary has been busy in the salon up until this weekend and I have managed to do quite a bit in the garden including some of the rotten jobs like digging a drain behind our water tanks and then filling it all in with scoria. We have had a very wet week since Christmas and that has been good for our water supply and also for our newly established vege garden. At the moment we have tomatoes, sweet corn, rock melons, rhubarb, some herbs and a lemon balm shrub growing. The lemon balm was given to us by a friend and it seems you can make tea from its leaves, although we haven't tried that yet. The flax and the red hot pokers are flowering (as are the hydrangeas) and the tuis come 2 or 3 times a day to suck the nectar. We have neighbours away at present so I am also feeding their chooks and cats each day. One of the chooks is broody and sitting on a peacock's egg so I hope it doesn't hatch before they get back as I wouldn't know what to do with a baby peacock. It's all very different from Otahuhu. Lots of love to you both, John and Mary xxxx
17th February 1980
Dear Mum and Dad,
First of all many thanks for the tape - it was great to hear your voices as well as all the news of your Christmas activities. Mary thought that you, mother, sounded very Scottish and that Dad sounded like Derek Nimmo! We will get a tape together in due course to return to you but, as you said, it does take a bit of time and so far we don't seem to have recorded very much. We were going to record the summer noises but the crickets and cicadas make such a racket that they come up quite deafening on the tape. I expect it was similar in Nigeria in the summer - you don't realise how much noise there is until you stop and listen.
Summer holidays are all over now and the children are back at school and Mary and I are back at work. Stuart and Sacha are settling in OK at Rangitoto College and Lewis is in his last year at Browns Bay Primary. Both Stuart and Lewis spent quite a chunk of the holiday away with friends. Sacha stayed with us for a bit interspersed with trips to Long Bay when the weather was fine. Most of my spare time has been spent working around the house on different bits of the garden. All the work we did two years ago clearing gorse and scrub was a complete waste of time since we didn't plant anything over the areas we cleared so now the gorse and scrub is twice the height! So the latest strategy is to clear a little bit then plant it out before going on to the next piece. So far I have put some bark garden around the water tanks and some retaining logs on the slopes below the house.
Our other main concern at the moment is Mary's mother who has deteriorated very rapidly, both mentally and physically, since Christmas. We had her here to stay for about a week but she wouldn't settle; her memory has just about gone and she thought we were a rest home! Mary's Dad finds her increasingly difficult to manage and, although she has had all the home services - district nurse and housekeeper - it looks as though she may have to have constant care so Mary is looking to see what is available. I remember all your patience with Granny Deeks - it's a difficult period and hard to know what is best.
Lots of love to you both,
John and Mary.
The University term has now ended and all the examinations are marked so I am able to spend quite a bit of time now at Sugar Mountain. We have almost completed all the wallpapering now with just the upstairs toilet and the insides of a number of cupboards to do. We have also got some curtains up and finished off plastering and painting the open fireplace in the living room. The garage now has some doors although there is so much junk in it that there is no room for the car. I have cleared a bit of ground to start a vegetable patch and put in some tomato plants, some sweet peas and some rhubarb. We also have some rock melon seeds sprouting up and they will soon be ready to transplant. It's all very experimental at present to see what will survive without too much attention - there are opossums in the bush who like to come up for a feed at night - some boys from along the road are hoping to catch them with some box traps which they have put in the bush.
This afternoon we went next door to a neighbour's place to watch their sheep being sheared. We haven't got a goat yet, just plenty of long grass...
Summer is here now and we are beginning to get suntanned, lovely warm days and long still evenings. With Christmas coming up there is quite a bit of social activity going on. Next Saturday we are going on a trip to the vineyards in West Auckland organised by a German hair products company. Last Friday we had the fifteen Maori pre-apprentice hairdressers from the Tech here for their end of year lunch. They loved the place and sang us songs they had got together as part of their cultural group activities during the year. There is a lot of unemployment here at present particularly among school-leavers so it is good to know that most of them have got jobs. We have two Maori girl apprentices in the salon at Otahuhu from last year's course. Mostly they are country girls who are selected by the Maori Affairs Department to come to Auckland for pre-apprentice training. The Department runs a hostel for them in Remuera.
I hope this arrives in time to wish you all the best for Christmas. We will have the children here for Christmas lunch and then take them back to Rothesay Bay for their tea. We will be thinking of you then, with love from us both, John and Mary.
We had the three children here for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day until teatime. They got a big surprise, and so did we, when there was a knock on the door at 7am on Christmas morning and a very jolly Father Christmas was there going Ho Ho Ho. We thought at first it was a neighbourhood tradition but it turned out to be a distant relative of Mary's doing the rounds of all the family. Sacha stayed with us for a spell both before and after Christmas while Stuart was away staying with some friends at Snells Beach north of Auckland. The boys like to spend their time with their friends at Rothesay Bay fishing and swimming. Sacha on the other hand likes to go to the salon and get her hair done by the girls there - she is much more 'sociable' than Stuart and Lewis who would rather be out playing than sitting around talking or listening to adults. They have all had a good year at school and Sacha and Stuart go on to secondary school, Rangitoto College, this year.
Mary has been busy in the salon up until this weekend and I have managed to do quite a bit in the garden including some of the rotten jobs like digging a drain behind our water tanks and then filling it all in with scoria. We have had a very wet week since Christmas and that has been good for our water supply and also for our newly established vege garden. At the moment we have tomatoes, sweet corn, rock melons, rhubarb, some herbs and a lemon balm shrub growing. The lemon balm was given to us by a friend and it seems you can make tea from its leaves, although we haven't tried that yet. The flax and the red hot pokers are flowering (as are the hydrangeas) and the tuis come 2 or 3 times a day to suck the nectar. We have neighbours away at present so I am also feeding their chooks and cats each day. One of the chooks is broody and sitting on a peacock's egg so I hope it doesn't hatch before they get back as I wouldn't know what to do with a baby peacock. It's all very different from Otahuhu. Lots of love to you both, John and Mary xxxx
17th February 1980
Dear Mum and Dad,
First of all many thanks for the tape - it was great to hear your voices as well as all the news of your Christmas activities. Mary thought that you, mother, sounded very Scottish and that Dad sounded like Derek Nimmo! We will get a tape together in due course to return to you but, as you said, it does take a bit of time and so far we don't seem to have recorded very much. We were going to record the summer noises but the crickets and cicadas make such a racket that they come up quite deafening on the tape. I expect it was similar in Nigeria in the summer - you don't realise how much noise there is until you stop and listen.
Summer holidays are all over now and the children are back at school and Mary and I are back at work. Stuart and Sacha are settling in OK at Rangitoto College and Lewis is in his last year at Browns Bay Primary. Both Stuart and Lewis spent quite a chunk of the holiday away with friends. Sacha stayed with us for a bit interspersed with trips to Long Bay when the weather was fine. Most of my spare time has been spent working around the house on different bits of the garden. All the work we did two years ago clearing gorse and scrub was a complete waste of time since we didn't plant anything over the areas we cleared so now the gorse and scrub is twice the height! So the latest strategy is to clear a little bit then plant it out before going on to the next piece. So far I have put some bark garden around the water tanks and some retaining logs on the slopes below the house.
Our other main concern at the moment is Mary's mother who has deteriorated very rapidly, both mentally and physically, since Christmas. We had her here to stay for about a week but she wouldn't settle; her memory has just about gone and she thought we were a rest home! Mary's Dad finds her increasingly difficult to manage and, although she has had all the home services - district nurse and housekeeper - it looks as though she may have to have constant care so Mary is looking to see what is available. I remember all your patience with Granny Deeks - it's a difficult period and hard to know what is best.
Lots of love to you both,
John and Mary.
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