Periodically five generations of my family have lived on the Tinakori Hill (recently renamed Ahumairangi) in Wellington, New Zealand.

         They all have stories to tell. One of my favourite stories was told by my father.

         Let me tell you his story about a boy called Sharkey.

         “When I was 16, Nick Winter and I established a summer camp on a flat just below the Pitt Street railway tunnel. We bought an 8 x 10-ft tent, a tent fly, some billies, and a frying pan.

         We both worked in the Post Office as message boys delivering telegrams.

         We changed in my Pitt Street home after work, and when we went to work. We slept in the tent at night.

         We dammed the Kaiwharawhara stream with large boulders and made a good swimming pool.

         We lived well and supplemented our rations with trout and eels from the stream.

         Our site became an open-air club for Wadestown boys.

         One of our favorite pastimes was catching eels. We caught so many eels we would give them to a local poultry farmer in exchange for eggs. But after a while, the eggs developed a fishy flavour so we skipped eating eggs for breakfast.

         On one of our upstream rambles, we came across a queer-looking shelter. It was made from tree branches and sacks. Inside were a couple of old blankets. But there was no sign of the occupant.

         Sometime later we discovered a boy called Sharkey occupied it. We called him Sharkey at school because of his big head and mouth and skinny body and legs.

         Sharkey told us he had run away from home because his stepfather beat him and made his life unbearable. He was out of food and had no money.

         I took him home and Mum cleaned him up, fed him, and gave him clean clothes.

         “Now what are we going to do with you she said?”

         Sharkey suggests he would like a job on a farm. It was wartime and labour was scarce on farms.

         Mum looked through the local newspaper marked off several addresses of likely-looking employment agents and gave him his tram fare into the city.

         He didn’t return that night and it was two weeks before we heard what happened to him.  

We received a letter, written in pencil saying the first agent he saw gave him his train fare and sent him off to a farm in Featherston. He got a job working for an elderly couple and was happy with his work.

         Now and then we would get a note from him saying he was enjoying his new life.

         One day he invited us to visit him on the farm.

         A date was arranged and Mum and I travelled over the Rimutukas by Fell railway and there was Sharkey at the station to meet us. He had filled out looking healthy and happy.

         We met the old folk who praised ‘their boy’ – he was treated like a son.

         We heard later the farmer had died and Sharkey was managing the farm for the old lady. When she died she left him the farm.

         Sharkey, the half-starved Wadestown waif, had become a farm hand, a manager, and a land owner.”

         Good news stories seem to be rare these days.

Geoffrey Moss(mossassociates.co.nz)

“Success is ten percent inspiration and ninety percent perspiration.”

For this,  and many other anecdotes download our FREE book “Rolling On – Work Adventures in Many Lands”