Spectrum 705. One more creek to cross

Rights Information
Year
1990
Reference
7150
Media type
Audio
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Rights Information
Year
1990
Reference
7150
Media type
Audio
Categories
Interviews (Sound recordings)
Oral histories
Sound recordings
Duration
00:29:57
Credits
RNZ Collection
Ellmers, Judith, 1925-, Speaker/Kaikōrero
Perkins, Jack (b.1940), Host

Part one of a two-part documentary. [Part two is Spectrum 706 Eighty K's to Kairoa]

In the late 1920's and early 1930's Depression work gangs carved out the road connecting Gisborne with Opotiki. Judith Ellmers talks to Jack Perkins about the road which passed the farm in Waioeka Gorge where she grew up.

Judith’s father was a soldier who established farms in the Waioeka Gorge after the war, and her mother was a driver for the Public Works Department. She talks about the family’s Model T Ford which frequently made river crossings, and once narrowly missed a train across a bridge.
She recalls the labourers who constructed the road, their tempers, and entertaining them with their gramophone.

Her Grandmother disapproved of this, and was also concerned with her religious education. Judith and her siblings would have to take shelter while labourers blasted the roads during their construction. She speaks about the injuries some of the workers sustained, and how her family helped. She also talks about her father’s farm and his butcher business.