Joch Tulloch was born in Hokitika in the same street he lives today, to an English mother who was a psychiatric nurse, and his Cantabrian father. He was named Andrew Kenny but was nicknamed Jock because his dad was also Andy.
(“But when they put me down the hole it’ll be Andrew Kenny on the box.”)
His mother signed him on as an apprentice carpenter straight from school but he damaged his thumb playing football which made it painful holding the hammer.
When he was called up for service he was underage although he was sent to the Pacific in the air force, but being an apprentice carpenter they put him into the army engineers and consequently became separated from the rest of the West Coast boys, most of whom he knew and went into the 2/3 Battalion. “I wanted to go in the army with my mates. If you were just a labourer you ended up in the foot soldiers and if you were a driver you ended up in the ASC (the army service corps). Whatever your trade was when you went in they’d pick you up. I was in the air force, the blue orchids. Then I went in the army – I did three years in NZ in the army.”
During that time they were posted in Nelson along with the Nelson boys, the ‘Cider Suckers’, and camped at the Richmond Racecourse with the Canterbury Yodelling Cowboys and their horses. Jochs time as a trainee soldier was filled with new experiences and hi-jinx, with galloping races to Appleby, and many sessions in the Postboy, the Rising Sun. “Being coasters we liked our beer!”
The army engineers were proposing to build a huge barbed wire fence right around the back of the race course, the back of the freezing works all the way to Tahuna Beach to stop the Japanese landing. The barbed wire was on hand and the stakes ready, cut from hundreds of bluegum trees from 88 Valley. “The idea was that when the Japanese landed, the boats would strike the bottom, they’d have to step out of their landing craft, then they’d have to get through this fence and then, we’d shoot them! And another thing we did, between Nelson and Blenheim on the Wakapuaka Road, we built these great big buttress things to stop the Japanese transport. They really thought they were coming.
Some of this time many of them were camped at Ruby Bay and some of the orchards had asked them to help load the apple boats at Mapua Wharf. Some of the soldiers were asked to pick the apples, and others to load the heavy sulphate of ammonia for the apples onto trolleys and drag it across the Mapua Wharf for the apple orchards. This was before the JPB (Joint Purchasing Board) when they were all bought for the Americans.
When the war started, Jock gave away the carpentry because of his damaged thumb and went truck driving for a while, working for carriers in Hokitika. When the Labour Govt started the aerodrome, Jock put the first load of gravel on the runway and did the most ever loads, 103 in total on the road from the great pit to the runway. As the first runway got longer the MOW boss opened another gravel pit to save time and money.
“Irvine and Stevenson from Dunedin had a whitebait factory in Beach Street. One year the season was so bad for whitebait they canned pears instead; the pears came down from Nelson and every afternoon I used to drive for Camerons in the horse and cart days, in old Hoki here, it was called Camerons Horse and Cart livery Stable. Johnny Cameron got a truck later on. We’d go to the whitebait factory at half past 2 and load up all these cases with the cores of the pears and tailings – and we’d drive halfway over the big Hoki bridge and stop and throw them into the river and come back with the empty boxes ready for tomorrow.
Mr Wood was first, Irvine and Stevenson came after. When we were kids we used to walk along under the Hoki wharf at Revell Street. Woods whitebait factory was there and they used to make their own tins and there was all this sheet tin under the wharf with round shapes cut out – they were all rusted together.
We used to cart the whitebait in all these kerosene tins but outwards so it didn’t damage the whitebait. The tins had to have the holes punched in them so the whitebait would drain and it all went over to Ferrins Company in Christchurch. This is before Irvine and Stevenson came over, they said that they got better money by auction and we used to cart it to the railway station. Later on the guards wouldn’t accept it because the cans were rough like nutmeg graters and hurt the railway guards hands loading them. They protested about it.
There was a man here in town called Barger Shaw, a boat maker. He got Johnny Cameron and I to mix this white powder stuff into the whitebait he’d bought, in a big tin bath. He’d get 2 or 3 kero tins of whitebait in that and he got this white powder off Williams the chemist. We were only kids and we’d have whitebait up to our arms mixing this powder up in the bath. He’d send it to Townsend and Paul in Wellington for auction. The powder must’ve preserved the whitebait long enough to get to Wellington. They used to weigh everything and measure everything, Billy Williams who was an old style chemist.
. They commandeered two brewery trucks from here and some of the boys saw them over in Egypt. When a wars on they commandeer whatever they like.
There were always 3 channels in the Hokitika River and the drag netting people used the third channel and the middle channel was for stands, and the first channel the wharf was there in them days and the boats came in so you only used a drag net from the wharf.
I can tell you about the thirties when they fished in the middle channel there, china men and all. They weren’t called stands, they were called trenches in the old days, and they used coal sacks filled up with riverbed gravel. There was about 12 bags filled up with riverbed gravel – they stood about 12 in a row then they left a gap for a net. They had about 5 gaps, they’d set about 5 nets.
I was 20 years a psychiatric nurse up at Tokonui.
I used to go and get all the broken crockery from the cook at the Red Lion Hotel and put it in the fishermen’s Creek at the back of the old Hokitika Aerodrome. And Des Nolan used to come up from Okura in his plane and he used to twist two wires together to start the aeroplane. And Camerons in Hokitika used to be big carriers and they kept all the whitebait cans in their big stables down here in Revell street. They were stacked up to the bloody roof, these empty whitebait tins and Des would take so many back each time he went back in the plane. We said to Des “You’re not bloody taking off in this weather.” But out he goes, yeah, it didn’t worry Des.
And I left that and I went psychiatric nursing. I did that 34 years. Two years here in Hokitika and I transferred to Tokonui – it had over 1000 patients there at one time. Henry Bennett was the fire captain at Tokonui.
The wifes one of the Maoris out here at Arahura. Her name was Tainui. She used to fish but they got sock nets. She won’t use one. She was working at the Westland Hospital laundry. She came up north with me and we had three children up there. Then we both come home cause Arahura was where she was born. You always come back to Hokitika.
To get back here I had to work 6 months in Ngawatu. I used to get a months leave from the mental. At Tokonui there were murderers and all. It had a 1000 acre farm. They’ve shut them all down now.
Me hips buggared. It’s had it, and they said that me heart wont stand an operation on me hip.
I was a member of the Working mans Club here in Hoki and there were 6 of us used to go down with diesel trucks and stay at Neils Beach, there’s a fisherman’s hut there, beautiful bach too, stove and all. We used to go down and surf cast and fish.
When they used to drive the bloody Hereford cattle up from South Westland they would drive them past the blowhole, they’d put a mouth organ on it, there were roadmen in those days and this blowhole, they’d put two sticks each side of it and tied the mouth organ to it and the wind used to blow the mouth organ and they couldn’t get the cattle to go past. Then later on (they had tobacco tins in those days) they made a kind of propeller and they put a nail through it and the wind used to blow this propeller. Its still there apparently between the Puke Pub and the Kakapokau Bridge. The roadmen designed certain area of roads, Like Mick Maloney, he did the Haast. There’s a photo of old Mick down at the Haast Pub with his wheelbarrow. Old Mick when they put him in Seaview, not because he was mad but because there was no one to look after him, he was an Irishman and an old road man and they used to get him a bottle of whiskey whenever he wanted it.
Babe : Born and bred here, then we went up the north island for about 18 years then came back and been here ever since. I’ve got a lot of whitebait photos. But if you’re out the pa just go and see Jason. Hes got all my brothers photo album. We used to fish halfway out across the river, you could have five, 6,7,8 screens across and as many nets.
In my time when I was a kid they were all trenches not stands – no spotted boards, sock nets and that all came in later. My day it was all supeljack and poles we got from the mill – rimu red pine. You needed them that long cause you had to start on the wharf. That’s why the poles were so long and we kind of walked over the third channel. The wharf went from nearly the bridge right out to sea. But from Revell Street the wharf finished and it was a wall, about a meter wide and you’d walk along the top of that.
Levitts had a big mill at Hari Hari and they used to mill all the white pine and they’d make butter boxes out of them. There a part of the river Mary refers to as the ‘boxes’ – they used to fill the butter boxes with rocks.
BABE :: Pigsty the boxes and the little river – the little river used to run down by the shed nearest the pa and the whitebait was that plentiful that we as kids used to get the condensed milk tins, put holes in the bottom and sit them in the river.
I was out at Stan Grahams shooting. The Home Guard we were building Ken Reeces shop. The boss Amuri King, he was a carpenter and boss put me on as an apprentice. He said “Go Jock down on your bike to get the saw set.” So on me way down at the police station there was a big picket fence. There was a great big notice on the fence of the police station, it had “All the Home Guard report immediately to the town clock!” So I turned the bike around and I shot up to Muri, he was in the Home Guard too. I said, we gotta go down to the town clock, something’s happened. So when we got down there old Bill Eastgate he was the commander, he was strutting up and down and then we found out that Graham had shot a policeman – so they put us in taxis and took us out to….each of us had a gun and 5 rounds of ammunition. Anyway one of the farmers suggested Graham might be in the hut so we had to go into this hut and he wasn’t there, so then we come back to the front of his house again they thought he might be up the top of the Hoki Gorge. We went up there, he wasn’t there and night time came and they said the Home Guard will be relieved by the Kaniere HG you see, so 5 rounds of ammunition to the Kaniere HG. And I gave mine to Maxi Cole and the poor buggar got shot that night.
Jimmy Case was a hard case in Kumara, he made up this song:
You’ve heard of old Ned Kelly
Yet another man of fame
But now we’ve got a new one
his name is Stanley Graham.
Now Stanley was a cocky
Down on the old west coast
he was a famous shot there
and that’s no idle boast
Now on one sunny morning
he crossed it with the law
He shot 4 coppers standing outside his ranch house door
He got supplies together guns and ammo too
and headed for Mt Doughboy to hide out from the blue
Now the job of catching Stan was far too big for the law
they had to get the Home Guard and help from the army corps
They even got Bob Samples modern army tank
so they joined the warlike rank
so pick up your gun Stan and go it while you can
The coppers are all around you they’re out to get their man
You know the country over you know the bestest spots
so all you gotta do Stan is watch out for the cops
and before I end my story I’ll tell you while I can
I wish we had another to take the place of Stan
and the Japs would not be game to come within our shore
and we would live in peace for now and ever more.
See I knew Jimmy Case he used to cut silver pine with my brother in law Tills (Till Taunui) who used to be a Mason.