Pauline Blincoe brings back memories of yesteryear in
South Island New Zealand

Two books came to me just a few days before Christmas, a gift from Pauline Blincoe, whose husband Maurice descends from Francis Blincoe who sailed from England to New Zealand on the Clifford in 1841. Pauline’s first book: Public Works Camps, Poor Kid’s Paradise, tells the story of a work programme introduced by the Government to alleviate hardship during the 1930s depression — rather on the lines of the CCC programmes in USA under Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’. She has collected reminiscences from a score of contributors and includes more than 200 photos. She tells how her earliest memory is getting ‘shifted out’ of her Blenheim home at the age of four. Just another jobless family leaving for one of the hundreds of public works camps set up during the Great Depression. The family moved to a temporary settlement on the Kaikoura coast and the men set about completing the main trunk railway down the east coast of South Island to Christchurch. The cabins were of wood and were dismantled and moved to another site as work progressed.

Pauline’s own story is of the happiest memories of the experience, the location was spectacularly beautiful and the houses:

‘lovely warm stove, cups of cocoa, sitting with our feet in the oven; big old radio sitting on a bench with a car battery on the floor for power; kerosene lamps on the wall with a shell shaped reflector; stoves shined weekly with Zebo. Toilet at the back of the house down a long path.

Three little girls in a big warm double bed with a fluffy counterpane. Big gold knobs on the ends of the bedsteads … Happy weekends bird-nesting, picking berries for jam, being taught songs and dances by Maori ladies …

So the tales unfold, a remarkable local history, a delight for grandchildren and their children yet to come. The second book ‘Yesterdays of Golden Bay’, also copiously illustrated, is a collection of personal stories of pioneering days in the northernmost tip of the South Island. Many of the early industries have disappeared, but the scenic beauty of the area is developing its tourist potential.