The Farm on Aerodrome Road
Dad drove the big yellow truck with the homemade wooden mudguards and our belongings lashed high over the tray. He shared the cab with mum, my little sister and me. It must have been about 1955. I would have been four that year. We came up from the South Island and, after spending a few weeks with my father’s sister in Auckland, headed south again. It was night when we arrived at the farm. I remember how tired we were, and mum taking my sister and me inside to sleep.
The farmhouse faced North-West at the end of a short gravel driveway off Aerodrome Road. At that time, Aerodrome Road, also gravel, connected with Maunganui Road. The old wooden bungalow had a built-in veranda and a huge rhododendron tree at the front. Chickens lived in a large meshed run behind the house near the vegetable garden. It was a dairy farm, with cow sheds two paddocks from the house on the South side.
The veranda looked across a small paddock for the house cow mum milked each morning. Beyond that, the forbidden territory of the bull paddock, with two bulls and a few large pine trees at the far edge. Beyond the bull paddock, train tracks separated the farm from Maunganui Road. The train went past at the same times every day, the driver blowing its whistle to alert traffic at the intersection of Aerodrome and Maunganui Roads. I thought he blew his whistle to say hello, so I always waved frantically from the fence whenever I saw the train.
Dad worked at a joinery factory across the road and mum cooked for the farmhands. John Roud managed the farm and extra workers came in when needed, which seemed to be quite often.
John was a busy man, although he preferred peace and quiet when he could get it.
“Does she ever stop talking?” I overheard him ask my mother.
However, he was tolerant of my endless curiosity and patiently answered my questions: “How do cows make milk? Why are the cows bulling? Why aren’t those calves with their mothers?”
John taught me how to manage Tip, the main farm dog: “Stay. Lie down. Go home”, each command delivered in firm tones with a pointed finger, followed by a big grin when he obeyed. And, when John killed a chicken for the table, he showed me the glossy white eggs forming inside. He took me to watch the cows birthing their calves and I became a small expert on bovine maternity. I spent a lot of time following John around.
Mum baked scones and pikelets for morning teas and spent hours in the kitchen cooking meals. She carried food down to the cowshed at meal and break times. My sister and I usually went with her, particularly after I made an attempt at doing the dishes when she left me behind while on one of her deliveries. She didn’t look as happy as I’d anticipated when she returned that morning and found me standing on a chair at the bench, with sudsy water spread from one end of the kitchen to the other.
We had to “be good” at the cowshed; it was a busy place. One day at the cowshed felt different right from the start. There were extra workers and mum had been busy baking from early morning. At the cowshed, my sister and I waited in the little concrete room beside the milking shed, safe from the bustle of men dehorning the cows. The sound of mooing and smell of blood was overwhelming. I could see the paddock behind the cowshed through gaps in the walls, a surreal landscape where cows with big round eyes spouted twin red fountains from their heads.
That same day, I watched John supervise five or six men using ropes, poles and prods to force a full-grown bull up the loading ramp. It bellowed, kicked, and crashed into the wooden palings. We didn’t need warnings to keep behind the concrete wall – the sound of splintering wood and palpable rage of the bull were enough to know it was dangerous. Men held the bull’s head steady with poles and ropes while a vet punched a copper ring through its nose. That was enough excitement for one day and I was relieved to get back to the house for an afternoon sleep.
We left the farm, moving to Campbell Road, when I was about seven. I was allowed one of the dogs, a bitch that wasn’t kept for long after she weaned an unexpected litter. I missed her. I missed the farm. But mostly, for a long time, I missed my best friend, John.