“We lord our glorious mountain, its cap of glistening snow, its skirts of native beauty, and the green fields down below.” From a school song.

         The mountain certainly brought back happy memories and influenced the local climate.

         I never reached the peak. I set off several times but a change in the weather brought us scurrying back to our base.

         We walked around the mountain but that was not easy either. On our first attempt, we escaped halfway around because the many streams were flooded after a deluge of heavy rain. I knew a farmer near Warea that had a runoff with a cottage on it. I made contact with him asking if we could seek shelter for the night. When we arrived we found he had put down half a dozen mattresses for us to sleep on and filled the fridge with beer and steaks.

         My father had been transferred from Hastings to Hawera in 1940 to become the Manager of the Post Office Savings Bank, the local Customs Officer, and a Notary Public.

         His customs job was to measure the specific gravity at the local brewery for tax reasons.

         The brewery made V.C beer and G.C stout and was owned by the two Brewer brothers.

         I attended Hawera Technical High School and played in their Ist XV rugby team. We had a good coach, Mr. Mills, and a good team. We won every game we played in 1942.

         In 1968 Joyce and I attended a Post-Graduate Summer School in Colorado. My tutor had worked in New Zealand as a consultant. At the finishing of our training, we had a concert and a Fish-fry up in the mountains at a national park.

         The tutors competed with each other to put on the best-class entertainment.

         Dr. Van Dersal insisted I teach the class a Maori haka. No amount of protest was acceptable.  The only one I knew was the Hawera High School 1st xv haka. So that is what I did.

         It was war years when we moved to Hawera.  My father built a bomb shelter in our backyard and after I became a farming cadet I joined up with the Normanby Home Guard. Because of my cadet experiences in high school, I was made an NCO.

         While waiting to join the Navy I did a stint at the Patea freezing works. My job was to wash sheep skins using a dolly, a large washing machine, and a hydro, spin dryer to remove the excess water. Sometime later the hydro got out of control and killed the operator.

         One of my holiday jobs was to work at the Kapuni Lactose factory. When I arrived the foreman said, “Can you push a wheelbarrow? I said I could, so I ended up pushing barrows of concrete on two planks, three stories up. It was a dangerous job and I did lose the odd barrow of concrete and the wheelbarrow down the side from time to time.

         When in the local scouts we would explore old battle sites. These we found were very interesting and I strongly recommend visitors to the district visit the Tawhiti museum to learn about local history.

         In 1944 I left the district to join the Department of Agriculture and join the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal New Zealand Navy.

         I didn’t return to Taranaki until 1959. By that time I had been around the world, graduated from university, and had married with a family but that’s another story for another time.

Geoffrey Moss (mossassociates.co.nz)