My Account
In one lifetime, Wilf Wech has seen the area where he spent his childhood change from a remote farming community, accessed by poorly formed dirt roads, into a place where people now commute to work in Auckland. Wilf grew up at Pohuehue, one of 12 children born of Bohemian descendants, and has spent almost his entire life in the Warkworth area. He now lives at Snells Beach in one of the first houses in the Tamatea Drive subdivision. When he and his wife Mary moved in more than 20 years ago, their neighbours were horses, cows, pigs and lots of dogs. A lot has changed in Wilf’s 81 years. Here he shares some of his memories….
My Dad (Bob) was great with horses. He was in the mounted rifles during the war and they said he had a horse that on his command would fall on its side and Dad could shoot over the saddle. The road up the hill at Pohuehue was mostly mud and clay then, and in wet weather, Dad was always hauling cars up with his horses. He’d charge £5. My mother Christina was formerly a Bayer. I had seven brothers and four sisters. We were too wild for the convent school in Puhoi and didn’t last long at the public school either. Eventually, Dad went down to the school that was at the bottom of the (Pohuehue) Viaduct, tied a team of horses to it and dragged it up the hill. We shared a teacher with the Mahurangi West School – the teacher would spend three days a week at each school. They didn’t last long – I guess six days a week was a bit tough on them. We had one teacher who used to take fits so we decided to toss a firecracker through the boards to see what would happen. We got a fair hiding for that one, which we deserved.
We were all expected to do our share of the work around the farm and in my case that meant milking before and after school. During the holidays, I’d often be loaned out to other families who needed an extra hand. When Mr Lawrie got the measles and had to stay in a dark room during his convalescence, I helped Mrs Lawrie with the milking. The Lawrie’s owned the farm at the start of Snells Beach – Whisper Cove is part of their old property. I also helped out the Edwards of Hepburn Creek. Old Tom Edwards was the one who taught me to swim, row a boat and net flounder. There wasn’t a lot of time for play when we were kids but we did have some fun chasing the goats. We’d hitch a team to a little wagon and use them to cart all sorts of things. Their yokes were made out of bamboo initially. I remember Mum sending us over to collect manure for her garden from under a tree where Bill Innes’ bullock team used to congregate. It seemed to take all day to load the wagon but eventually we were headed for home and a car – a very rare sight in those days – came by and scared our goats over the bank. The goats were originally from Takaroa, near Puhoi, where they’d been used to help control the blackberry. They were broken in to make them into working goats and weren’t anywhere near as dangerous as the old man with his mad horses.
I left home when I was 15 and went milking but was determined to become a truck driver by the time I turned 18. At that time, Gubbs Motors was running a service to Kawau Island, as well as the buses. Tui Brooker was the skipper. They hired my uncle and me to build a jetty in Schoolhouse Bay. We used ti tree stumps that had been curing in the saltwater for piles and matai or rimu for the decking, and all the drilling was done by hand. Then, after Kawau, we worked on the old Sandspit Wharf, using old stone blocks from the abandoned shark factory across the bay to make the structure safer. The road from Sharps Road down to the wharf was just a track, not much wider than a doorway. Frank Gubb gave me the job of clearing back the trees so they wouldn’t scrap the sides of the bus. I used an axe and a slash hook, and it took me days of hard work and I can’t remember seeing a single car the whole time I worked there.
I finally started driving with Phillips Warkworth Transport. We had the contract to deliver butter from the dairy factory in Warkworth to Kings Wharf in Auckland, five days a week. On the return trip we’d bring up petrol, fertiliser, general goods and even ice cream packed in dry ice. The trucks were made up of what was around. One had a Dodge motor on a Rio chassis, and it wasn’t really surprising that we had some close calls. The mechanic used to work half the night just to keep them on the road. We’d usually be carrying eight tonnes of butter to Auckland, although sometimes we’d take apples from Morrisons Orchard or wool. We’d drive to Birkenhead, catch the ferry across and be back on the road north by 11am. Back in Warkworth, we’d make the deliveries. Everyone knew everyone and we knew where to find the key if no-one was at home when we made the drop-off.
For about seven years I went commercial fishing around Tiri and Kawau. The biggest boat I had was a 40 footer and I was using long lines to catch snapper, nets for trevally and pots for the crays. Summer was the worst time because people would pinch the pots. There were times when I went to town with a couple of sacks of crays which I’d sell for about 78 cents a pound. Tonys Fish Shop was also a good customer. I started chainsawing in the winter months when the fishing was quiet, and eventually I gave the fishing away. We were cutting down mostly native timbers including some big kauris for boat building projects. One of the largest trees was a kauri that a relative of mine, Alf Rauner, and I cut down at Ahuroa for a chap named McLoughlan, of Kaukapakapa. We had to take it out in quarters because it was so big. A photo of us working on it is in the Joe Ehlers Collection.
I lived for a while at Jamiesons Bay, on the Mahurangi West Peninsula, in a house that was pretty basic – it was made out of eight inch hard pine that had been treated with red ochre and diesel. The roof was lined on the inside with cigar tins and on the outside with melthoid. When I sold the place, I bought a house in Hill Street off the Clegg family. The kauri I planted on that section is still there. Funnily enough, the house I live in now overlooks the old Lawrie property where I’d worked as a kid.
I’ve done lots of different jobs, from driving the Gubbs bus, spreading lime and working in the telephone exchange to being the odd jobs man at the old Warkworth maternity home. I’ve never been out of a job. It was hard work sometimes and there were more than a few close calls, but that’s life.
