Letters From New Zealand

Learning To Ride— ... I was reminded of our exploits when working on Lismore Station up the river from Wanganui. The station had five house cows for milk and during the period that I was there they employed several cowmen-gardeners and a cowgirl or two, each of whom had disappointing employment records and experience. One girl came all the way from Wellington, with the main part of her gear being a two foot high stack of old 78rpm cowboy records. Her other experience was nil. I found this very frustrating as, being the junior shepherd, I was detailed to assist her with the milking and usually found that I would milk four and a half cows while she managed to get a cupful—but then none of us is perfect! One day I was up on the hill above the homestead waiting for the two other shepherds to bring up a mob of sheep when I looked down to see our intrepid milkmaid heading down the track to the road, astride the quietest station pony. I was quite impressed until she reached the fir...

2012 August—   I’m not too sure if the paper delivery man thinks that I need the exercise, or whether he has been upset in some way, but his aim on some mornings is, to say the least, erratic. There are some variations to his various pitches—the fast ball; which goes straight over the plate (the blue water-supply tap cover,) The curve ball; which is liable to finish against the neighbours front garden plot, and on the colder mornings, his favourite, the slider; which ends up under the hedge. He doesn’t seem to display the same variations with the papers for the priest—the drive runs next to ours, and I have, in a moment of frustration, been tempted some mornings to whip that one instead, and leave him to seek divine intervention to locate the day’s news! Extract from:  Letters From New Zealand: Farming, Fishing and Golf

After twenty years of weekly letters, you start to notice that you’ve acquired a pretty sizeable amount of material. I’m not sure when I first had the idea of putting the letters into some kind of book, but it was quite a while ago. I knew that to put together anything, I would first have to transcribe the letters onto the computer. The early letters were all hand-written on blue aerogrammes. Aerogrammes, for those unfamiliar, are a single sheet of paper that you fold in thirds to send, and are slightly cheaper to post than regular airmail letters. They are about the size of a standard piece of paper, but when folded, two of the three panels of one side make up the back and front of the “envelope.” One advantage for the writer is that you don’t have to fill both sides of the paper! When I started out, I typed each letter into a separate Microsoft Word document which I labelled with the YEAR, MONTH and DAY (1986 04 05). In some cases the letters were undated and I had to try an...

In the age of the internet and iPhones, of Skype and email, It seems hard to believe that 30 years ago, when I left home and moved to Australia, there were only two ways to communicate; you wrote letters, or you phoned. 
And in those days, long distance phone calls were still expensive. A short call might cost $14 or more; and that was real money back then!  At 21 I had moved from New Zealand to Australia; a little over three hours by plane. I wasn’t a great communicator; but I usually spoke by phone with either my parents, sister or grandmother at least a couple of times a month. And occasionally I would write a letter.  While I was a lousy correspondent, my father started writing to me weekly. 
For the first few months, the letters were occassional, with my mother often writing the first part of the letter, and my father finishing it, or vice versa. By the second year my father had taken over the writing duties while my mother would proof-read the letters; corre...