East Takaka’s stories meticulously preserved
Beryl Rogers, above, looking over her local history school project she did back in 1941 and, top, working at the East Takaka Post Office. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
East Takaka would have much forgotten history if not for the efforts and well-recorded memories of Beryl Rogers, the author of several books about the area, including histories of the East Takaka school and church.
Beryl also co-authored the History of the Urewhenua Women’s Institute and is still instrumental in the maintenance of the East Takaka cemetery records and headstones, the history of which she knows intimately.
Several weekends ago, the Nelson Historical Society (NHS) included Beryl on their East Takaka field trip. They collected her from home in their big bus and took her up to the local hall and cemetery to hear her stories before going out to Loop Road, where she showed them the site of the East Takaka terminus (referred to in its day as the “head of the line”) of the Takaka tramway (1882 – 1905), which snaked from there around to Paynes Ford and then down through Takaka before heading down to Waitapu.
NHS president Ken Wright said afterwards that they were impressed.
“There was nothing Beryl didn’t seem to know about the place and all the events that happened there over the years.”
Perhaps it’s not surprising. Beryl has lived in East Takaka for all her 84 years, still living on the same farm she grew up on. She was the youngest of two daughters of Allen and Gladys (nee Stent) Hitchcock, amd World War 2 was already underway when Beryl started her high school study by correspondence. One notable Form Four school project she was given was to record her local history, an exercise that she now looks back on as cementing her future interest in the area. That project (which she still keeps) included lots of photos and was very well received by her teacher. Many of the things Beryl photographed—like the post office and what remained then of the terminus—have now long gone.
Beryl left school at 14 so she could start at the East Takaka Post Office as an assistant to postmaster Laurie Barnett. Her job was post, telegrams and telephone and she worked a split shift—8.45am to 10am and again from 11am to 1.30pm—timed to coincide with The Nelson Mail car drop-offs and pickups. Because the East Takaka PO was a “telegraph bureau”, many local people came to use the party line telephone that was shared with Uruwhenua and Upper Takaka.
The very first post office at East Takaka had opened in 1877 and was originally called the Takaka East PO. It was just a filled-in end of the verandah at Whitborough, the property owned by William Barnett who became the first postmaster. His wife Sarah took over the job after his death, but in 1903 the post office was shifted up the road to Baigent’s homestead, Fairholme. In 1919, the post office moved again, to Jim Franklyn’s house opposite the church, but early one morning in 1936 the house was destroyed by fire, along with much of the post office stores and equipment. Only the telephone, some mail and a cash box was rescued.
The service was continued in a nearby whare for a few months while residents constructed a tiny building, just 2.5m by 3m, just beside where the tennis courts are now. Service car passengers often said they were intrigued by the unique, stand-alone smallness of the building. Monica Barnett, Edna Manson, Geraldine Barnett and Beryl Rogers all worked there.
Beryl married Charley Rogers of Upper Takaka in 1958. They met while playing tennis at the East Takaka Tennis Club. Recalls Beryl: “Petrol was in short supply after the war, so we did a lot of socialising very locally. There was none of this going round getting into mischief like what happens these days.”
Charley worked for the Post and Telegraph and was seconded over to Nelson when they installed the province’s first automatic exchange. After that he did 25 years for Wally Birdsall at the Takaka Service Station, on the corner where the Mobil service station is now, where he started out greasing vehicles but ended up running the office and pumping gas.
When Beryl’s father became ill, Charley and Beryl took over her father’s dairy farm. Charley carried on his day job as well and also helped out on the school bus run, coming home to milk the cows with Beryl. The couple never had any children, but treated a couple of local ones like their own. Charley passed away three years ago, and Beryl has always had support from nearby extended family.
“I never felt like leaving the area to live, not once,” said Beryl. “We never even went away on a holiday like people do now. I guess I was brought up in the Depression which was followed by WW2, and that shaped our lives. I’ve always found more than enough to interest me here and the history in particular is just fascinating. I’ve tried to be meticulous, always verifying everything as I go. That’s important to me, getting it all right so that when it’s passed on, it’s a correct record of what went by.”
Beryl has been keen to ensure that the East Takaka terminus of the Takaka Tramway is marked so it’s not forgotten. It was once a bustling place, with timber arriving from large mills up the valley and a landing built for unloading wool bales, while just 200m away was the busy Lewis flour mill. Junction Road ran off the East Takaka Road at Church Corner, and gave settlers access to the ford across the Takaka River. To make sure all this isn’t forgotten, Beryl has convinced the Heritage Committee to commission a plaque with a photo that will be installed at the “head of the line”, and she is more than happy to pay for it.
“I don’t care what it costs. I just want to make sure the location of what was such an important part of this area’s history never gets forgotten.”
Gerard Hindmarsh
