2 philip kearns 21 & 30 viii 84 - welcome to kete...

Narrative of Mr Philip Kearns of Richmond. Mr Kearns was born in Reefton in 1906, and came to Richmond in 1921 with his family.Mr Kearns worked in Richmond and the Nelson district all his working life, as a carpenter and joiner. He built many houses and relates some of his experiences.Interview conducted by Les Slater for the Richmond Borough on 21 and 30 August 1984, and transcribed by him from his shorthand notes.

Well, first I have many recollections of Reefton and the West Coast, and these I should tell you first. There were a lot of mines in Reefton; you've heard of the Globe?

My father was Robert Lionel Kearns. He was born in Wakefield but lived as a boy in Lyell and on the Coast. He was involved in mining and had various interests in coal mines, and I think he might have had something to do with goldmining too.He had the Merrigiggs coal mine in Reefton. He had a horse, a pit pony called Billy, and he would haul the coal from the face to the slope over which it was tipped. Billy was sure-footed, because it was dark in the mine, and where the coal was tipped he had to know where he was so that he didn't slip down.

2 Philip Kearns 21 & 30 viii 84

He never did, but I built a bit of a barrier anyway to keep his hoofs on the path.

As kids we used to ride through the mines, through the galleries on Billy, with miners' lamps on our heads and not much space overhead, so we had to bend low.

My father also had a mine at Soldiers. I can't remember the name. There was a donkey engine there to drag the coal trucks. There was also there in that area a gold mine, run by a Byerworth. He had a motor bike, a Harley Davidson. Until then I'd never seen any motor bike.

At Reefton we carted coal in a four wheel horse-drawn wagon for the first electric light works in New Zealand.

Father had a muzzle-loader gun, and I remember going out and shooting c-aw-caw parrots - quite brightly coloured, and a bit like the kaka. I had the caller.and went with him - ahead of him - and the noise of


the gun made me quite deaf, for a while, in one ear on those expeditions.

I remember going to school in winter. We had Blucher's boots which we'd try to keep clean and dry with blacking, and I remember breaking the icicles off the banks and sucking them. That was at Progress Junction.

My mother died when I was 8 years, in 1914. I remember the influenza epidemic in 1918. I was

creosote or camphor perhaps, but I don't remember what it was.

Father had an interest in race horses, and had several. One was Rita Ray. When we were to move over to Nelson we each of us children rode a horse to Nelson, to Richmond. That was in 1921.

George, older than me, stayed in Westport wherehe was in the railway. He became a greengrocer in Westport. My sister Annie Isabel stayed with an

in Westport then. The buildings were fumigated with/

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aunt in Greymouth.She married a Goff and then two

other marriages. She was later in Waihi. Neil lived in Brightwater and trained for Leo Birkett. Neil died about a year and a half ago. Then there was myself, and then my sister Eva Margaret who also stayed behind in Greymouth. She became Mrs Doug Wright in Thames.

We rode over from the Coast in 1921, and when we arrived, each of us children riding one of my father's race horses, we found that our father had married again; he married Mrs Scrimgeor the widow of the licensee of the Star and Garter. She hadfive children and he had five children. So there j/were a lot of us, even though two stayed on the ( Coast and then my sister Eva went back, later, to the Coast. Mrs Scrimgeor was lovely, and I got on well with her and her children. Some of them still keep in touch with me. Her first husband had committed suicide - hanged himself.


So he became a publican, the new licensee, and he went broke I think. I think he went broke on the mining too, before we came to Richmond.

Other licensees of the Star and Garter were Bowers, and McGuire. And I remember Barham who had once had something to do with the Star and Garter. He had a bus, a converted model T Ford and a funny- looking car it was too. Reg Little took it over, and he was terrible - a clown. He used to do all sorts of things; make us laugh, the way he used to drive on the footpaths, weaving about to dodge the lamp posts.

After coming to Richmond I was at college until 1923, I think that was the year. And I remember going in on the train to college.

I used to do a few bits of work around the Star and Garter and Willy E. Wilkes was a friend of my fathers, and he saw that I did these little jobs quite well, so he gave me an apprenticeship. I did carpentry and joinery. But the first five years were around the yard, as a yard hand.

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After the Star and Garter my father lived in Nelson for a while, and then later they moved with his horses to the Wairarapa, someplace near there.And he died at about 50 exercising a horse, racing it on a beach, when he fell or was thrown.

In 1928 I married. My wife was Rosa Marie White. She died five years ago, from asthma; and that is what has really knocked me back. I depended on her a lot. And our first kid came too quickly! Rosa died of asthma; we'd just come in from gardening and she had an attack, and I found her collapsed.

But my first job, before I was with Wilkes,!was working for Ombler, who had a gooseberry garden,

ploughing. I never touched a plough before, and I had to work it all out, and I did it. But ploughing! Ploughing didn't interest me. It was then that I went to work for Wilkes for 7 shillings and sixpence a week, at first.

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While I was an apprentice with Wilkes I waslent to Rainbow Tuffnell to make tanks, with rivets


and hammering, and it was terribly noisy. I didn't care for that work.

Tuffnell was engaged by Wilkes originally when he first came to Richmond.

And while I was at Wilkes I was loaned to Bill Bastin in Wakefield, opposite the school there. We worked all over the district, here there and everywhere. That was in the depression, and Wilkes couldn't sack me, so they loaned me to Bastin. Well I would ride my bike to Wakefield, from Richmond, and back in the evening. I was on one job, at Foxhill school, and in the end all I was doing was varnishing blackboards, and he - Bastin - was late in picking us up. So I gave him a piece of my mind, told him what I thought of him, and left.

Altogether I worked in the building trade for ) 45 years.

I was a member of the carpenters' trade union.although I used only to go to the annual general


meeting when there was a bit of booze and someyarns afterwards, but through a contact there I gota job with Chamberlain and Stannard, as foreman on /

the first state house in Nelson. All over Nelson I have worked on or supervised about 300 state houses\ and throughout the district I guess it would add up to over 500 houses with which I have been associated as a builder.

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I used to build houses in my sleep, dream of / houses, and think of nothing but houses at the height of that house building. My nerves you see. I was living and breathing houses. It was the stress.I'd go onto a job, and see that the chaps were there ,7/and working, but as soon as you'd gone they'd be wasting time again, and reading the paper or something. And I was going all over supervising these houses. Doing nothing but houses, even in my sleep./

Well, my doctor sent me to Hamner Springs for three months. I wasn't an alcoholic though, as most of the patients there are, but he sent me to Hamner because of my nerves. I was there for three months.

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And I had a really good rest there too. But you'd be surprised at the numbers of people from Nelson and Richmond who were there while I was there. Dozens. Most for alcoholism probably.

While I was working for Wilkes, in 1929, I was working on a house in Appleby and we were up in the roof framing, and all the ground started waving and the hedges wobbling. Everything swaying and swinging round quite a bit, and we wondered what was going on; when it occured to us that it was an earthquake we scrambled down. And, out there, well we didn't really notice it very much. But we were soon called to go to the old Saxton farm homestead where the chimney had fallen through the slate roof, and we spent the rest of the day taking the chimney down, brick by brick.

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And when I got home I found my chimney had collapsed on top of the stove, so I had to take that out too.

That house was in 'incubator lane' York Place


where there were four families, in that tiny lane, with large families of young children including my own. The house was on Wilkes property and belonged to Wilkes. While I was there I put in the electric lighting for the house. It was all kerosine lamps, range and fireplaces until then.

I remember the old Plough Inn building first used byWilkes. We used to go in there to get our pay, and nails and things like that were kept there; it was Wilkes' office and storeroom.

On the edge of that section of Wilkes was a two room shed, and there, when I was doing joinery for Wilkes, we used to make the coffins. They're quite difficult to make, until you've made them a few times. WTe did the lot, pitched them on the seams to make them waterproof, and lined them; that's quite a skill, with pillow and lining and side flaps and all. The bottoms were made out of white pine - kahikatea, and the tops out of red pine - rimu.We would make six before Christmas, to last over the holiday period, so that we wouldn't have to come


back and make any at short notice. Or only if someone really big died and we had no coffin of the right size.

Billy Gibbs, the father of Vera Gibbs, drove the hearse for Wilkes, when he wasn't doing other jobs around the yard.

W. E. Wilkes' wife was a Sutton. There was a Sutton had a Bradbury motor cycle. Arthur Martin was the book-keeper for Wilkes. He lived on the corner of Queen St and Edward St, on the site where Mrs Howard Wilkes lived until recently.

During world war two I was manpowered to the Motupipi electrical sub-station, and I couldn't get home for months. They wouldn't let us get any petrol. And my wife was pregnant, having a baby, and I was stuck out there unable to get back for quite a long time. Just as I was being assessed for elegibility for overseas service, and the case was coming up in Nelson one morning, and while it was waiting I was again manpowered; this time to build air-raid shelters.

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I said to Chamberlain that you've stopped my one chance of doing my bit for King and country, but that was it.

Later I worked for Wilkes again, this time as foreman. But I had to sort a few things out first. One of them being that Wilkes paid the lowest award wages, never more.

In the late 1940's and early '50's I was working for myself - after being with Wilkes. I worked on repairing May's store. It was falling down then.I worked on my own, and it was a very big job. The top floor had sagged terribly in the middle. The store was largely post and beam construction, and the piles had sunk years before. Now that work was for Joe Hill who had the store then. I have also built a cider shed for Joe Hill.

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But before I came along Joe Savage had raised the first part of the floor, when he had part of the store. Ken Hill can probably tell you about that part.


The parapet was tailing down and the verandah \ posts were rotten, I repaired the parapet, and replaced the posts by suspending, carrying, the verandah on big steel rods. You can see what it is like now, and you know what it was like before, with the posts, from photographs. Now those posts had a hitching ring on them, for horses, I have one of those rings, from one of those posts, out the back somewhere it is now.

I took the facings off May's windows and cut off half the parapet, and took bricks off the chimney. Simpsons were renting the back of the ground floor, and they used a range, so I replaced the top of that. The stucco was done by Gorrie and Osbourn; they did all of Wilkes' plastering, and that of this house too.

The scaffolding for the repairs was 30 feet high, of 4x3s bolted together.

When W. R. and W. H. May were young there wereat one time I understand 150 employees in May's

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stores, the dressmaking and millinery, and the dairy factory.

After Mays' had the store A, F. Bell had taken over the corner room. He had a straight-8 Buick.That interested me, and I remember him for that.

My first vehicle was a motorbike, in the 19.30's }/

and it was a 2h horse power BSA. My first car was a 1930 model A Austin Mini. Later I had a 1930 model Ford A.

Willie Wilkes would go for a spin in a Sunbeam car. He went to England once a year to get a new one. He used to carry us to our jobs in it. Once it was already full and although I could get in, only just, I couldn't fit in my bag of tools. And Willie said, 'For goodness sake, boy, I travel to England with a smaller bag, less baggage, than that!'

I remember James Hunt, Jimmy, the mayor. He had a pedigree dairy herd; jerseys. He buil^t a reallyfine home in lower Queen Street.

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I boarded at Talbot House in Dorset Street for a while.

George Kidd, X remember, and Warren Kelly.George Kidd was a fine gentleman, a very good mayor and very dapper. Warren Kelly was a Salvation Army man. And Morrie McGlashen. Also Hardy who was before McGlashen.

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Another mayor was Alec Doran, in Doran Street. He is still there. Then came Muir McGlashen.

Bill Maddox in Gladstone Rd built the brick building which is next to the bank on the corner where Papps was, and the building where the dentist now is. And the place next door, where the cabinet makers, joiners were - that was Coleman's - well Harry Hawkin lived in there; he was a carter, carrier. His son Clarence is in Ngawhatu'. A bit simple.

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Where the Wearings store was, on the corner of Queen St and Cambridge St, a Joe Hardy had that place


too; he also had a taxi.

Further up, from the corner along Queen St, was the Beach homestead, called the gables. It went back off the road.

And then there was Jack McFarlane's blacksmith and farrier shop, just a bit over the road from the Star and Garter, but a little lower down.

I remember George Sturgeon from when I was staying, before my marriage, in Betsy Wendelborn's boarding house - where the White Hart hotel was.I was 21 then. George Sturgeon was a boot maker I

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or boot repairer in Queen Street opposite the Post Office. He had an amazing number of dirty stories. He was a dirty devil; always had a racy story. He married a Hart, and went to live in Riwaka, and for years they were on the sideshows.

There was also Hugh's bus service, running from Belgrove. Jack Crimp drove for him. He also used to stay at Betsy Wendelborn's in Gladstone Road,


His wife now lives in Oxford St, near the SalvationArray. She is the daughter of a chap called Steer from Tapawera: He was a bootmaker and one-legged.Sturgeon was a bootmaker and there was something wrong with one of his legs too. Well he sort of shuffled along.

The Crouchers; well originally there was James Croucher and his sons Hayes and Bert (Ethelbert).

the car sales is. We called it 'sparrow turd hall,' because of all the hundreds of sparrows around there, waiting for grains of wheat, and the heaps of droppings.

After the Star and Garter fire I helped with the rebuilding. I worked there for Gibbons. I had to stand on the ground and cut all the roof members.I was the only joker there who could use a steel marking square.

They stored wheat at the place which is now where

J. G. Ward lived opposite Edward St on QueenSt. He was the chemist before Jack Cressy.


I remember four pedigree Jersey herds in Richmond. There was James Hunt’s, and there was Smallbone’s in Salisbury Road, where the Waimea Intermediate School is now. Dr Washbourn had a pedigree dairy herd, and W, E. Wilkes too.

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2 philip kearns 21 & 30 viii 84 - welcome to kete...

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