Waitara's Life Blood: Borthwicks

THE DAILY NEWS, NEW PLYMOUTH 23 MARCH 1996

In the Features column the article by Chris Lonsdale is entitled:

Waitara’s Life Blood

(Third column and direct quoting)

Hip Fenton (77), who grew up in the town and remembers the childhood excitement of cattle mobs being herded over the bridge, through Wharf, Parris, Cracroft and High streets up to the holding paddocks in Tait Rd – “all barking dogs, bellowing cattle, dust, cracking whips and millions of flies” - grimly recalls the big strike of 1932.
His father had nine children to feed and for months had walked twice a week to New Plymouth looking in vain for work. He decided to return to the works and, like the others, had to endure the abuse of the picketers.
“Two young buggers went up to our home, about half a mile out of town. My mother was threatened because Dad and some of my brothers were working. She told them, “If you come up here again I’ll shoot you’. Three boys were in the Queen Alexander Mounted Rifles and their .303s were in the corner of the lounge and Mum was a bloody good shot.
“She told these unions lads, ‘You get down the road and don’t let me ever see you again. I’ve got three rifles here and there’s ten rounds in each’. And she never did see them again.”
The strike wounds festered for many years, pushed to the background but never out of sight by the war years.
“The company had the names of all the strikers. Most of them eventually got jobs again, but not the good jobs. And on the time sheets there used to be written “Two weeks holiday – striker”, the bare minimum, just to remind everyone that they knew who had gone out in ‘32”.

(Column 4)

Former engineering works foreman Hip Fenton says that apart from the odd punch-up at the pub, there was very little crime in the town – but it’s not just Waitara that’s changed; the whole country’s changed.
He can still smell the old works, and hear the yardsmen’s dogs, the bleating sheep, the confused calls of the cattle and desperate squeals of pigs, and chillingly human-baby cries of goats.
He remembers, too, the chimney that stood over the steaming, wheezing, clanking, works, a live thing. The chimney was topped by a whistle that controlled the lives of nearly everyone in Waitara, its mournful blast wakening households and sending them to bed, and issuing a handful of summonses in between.
Like other Borthwicks’ veterans, Hip Fenton sees generations of families marching through his seven decades in the town, queuing at the pay office of Tuesdays, with two other queues outside – one of the wives and another of shopkeepers with overdue accounts.
He sees Sam Raumati arriving at 5 am to spend two hours sharpening his prized knives that could shave dry whiskers. He sees the Baileys, Patus, Pirikahus, Tamehanas, Wharemates, Taylors, Matukus, Eriwhatas and Whites – “all of them contributing some incident which lives after them,” Hip wrote in notes prepared before being interviewed.
He sees men hauling herrings from the river by the sackful, under whirling, screeching clouds of seagulls – man, fish and bird all gathered at the blood chute.
Aubrey, Cain, Montgomery, Finnerty, Dowding, Kettle, Read, Hellier, Williams, Skelton, Nixon, Topless, Bertstein, Fuller, Bagett, Armstrong, Langman, Parker, Chadwick and Limmer.
He remembers “dead” cattle coming to life, scattering men and equipment; and Dave Carr running for his life ahead of a giant centrifuge that had sheared its dozen bolts; and electrician Graham Lutze’s instant sunburn when a switchboard blew up in his face; and Reg Whiting’s arm stripped in a belt drive.
There were the Manu, Tito and Watson families, and the railway men Easton, Donovan, Floyd and Tiaki.
And there was Rau Raumati falling through a roof, landing feet-first on the roof of a freezer, and, as he gratefully climbed a tall ladder down to floor level, declaring to his stunned workmates: “The Good Lord had me do this and I must thank Him by going to church this Sunday.”