<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side one <&>1:02 tut and um i looked at this ad and i thought yes i might as well apply for that because one of the categories they had was for an agriculturist animal husbandry officer i thought well that's me you know farm boy you <.>just er that should be easy enough and um so i applied and duly i er came to wellington which was an adventure in itself it was sort of the biggest trip i'd ever done in my life had er morris er thousand van and er i camped at wanaka and er it took about three days to get to wellington and three days to get back <.>i er you know i just thought well i don't care if i don't get it i mean i've got a great trip anyway er to actually get across to south east asia was beyond belief when you came to wellington then they would have er interviewed you er tried to find out whether you were <{><[>suitable <[>oh yes yes it was an interesting day the interview in the sense that er there are a lot of extremely er <&>2:00 good minded um wellington burghers er of a certain section of society that probably didn't pay regular er union fees to the boiler makers or the freezing workers union laughs yeah and i did an interview and they asked all sorts of questions one was how would i treat animals if i came across a foot and mouth outbreak and i just said oh i'd shoot them inhales er which of course was the given answer in the veterinary world if i'd gone round in vietnam where i came across foot and mouth which i did a lot and started shooting them i would have been shot immediately laughs because er animals can survive for many years <&>2:36 with foot and mouth <&>one minute eight seconds of IJ monologue <&>3:44 and once you realised that you were working in an environment where you didn't have a lot of support in the sense that you didn't have a warehouse at your disposal from which you distributed largesse mm er you rolled your sleeves up or in my case you took off your <&>4:00 safari jacket and down to your black farming singlet and er put on a pair of obriens boots and got stuck in um <.>s there was no glamour tut it was just a matter of doing a job and the job was to work in certain refugee camps around that area er and do what you wanted to <{><[>so there you are <[>so no one told you what to do no one said oh your <.>prio priority one is there there and there you set the priorities um you worked out what you could do and what was the most effective um i made contact with the ministry of er agriculture officials and er worked in the animal health field as much as possible and got all sorts of vaccination and immunisation programmes going inhales but more importantly i wanted to work in er establishing market gardens and things like that and er and you'd go to a refugee camp and you'd start talking about this and they'd say that's all very well that's great you know market garden wonderful but we haven't got a well <,> so in actual fact i <&>5:00 spent um probably a lot of my <.>first even up to six months in vietnam digging wells tut er and getting people to dig wells um and providing cement at the right times inhales i found that if you provided cement for the casing and the upper works of a well we're talking about something which is um tut a little over a metre in diameter and can go some ten metres down if you provided the cement too soon um you could actually be passing the local market the market nearest to the village er to which you had distributed the cement some two days before you could pass that market place and find the same cement on sale laughs <{><[>laughs mm <[>so er i tended to deliver the cement when the mixing er when it was mixing time and things like that i can remember some <&>6:00 rather violent arguments with village chiefs over things like that tut er i in fact picked a village chief up once and carted him across the room and put him against the wall he was threatening me with his rifle and i had accused him of selling cement er because i'd just seen it and the cement wasn't there and the well hadn't been finished so you know everything sort of added up and er he started threatening me with his rifle so i just picked him up and marched him back of the room er it seemed <.>that what one would do in a high <{1><[1>country hut er if someone was threatening you and er so i did that with him and the next time i called at the village he put down his rifle and um in this most disturbing <.>hou habit for a new zealand bloke who's come from the high country um that asians have er he walked round the village with me hand in hand <{2><[2>laughs i found that harder to deal with than the rifle <[1>mm <[2>laughs laughs yes it's not quite the <.>kind kind of thing you'd see round the average shearing shed or wherever we didn't hold hands a lot in the <&>7:00 high country jack <{><[>no we didn't no no and if you did um i think there would have been an awful lot of talk but that's the way it was and those were the sort of adjustments you had to make that you were working in a different society the other thing i think you realised very early on was that though you would never become a really competent linguist that as long as you are talking through an interpreter everything you say and the whole programme you're trying to get across and the help is someone else's interpretation and um so i tried to learn basic vietnamese as soon as i could i speak apPALLing paddy field vietnamese <[>no no laughs mm with a southland accent <{><[>at that time i still burred my rs it wasn't until er i joined broadcasting some years later and er was told the r's had to go er if i wanted to get a living out of this microphone nonsense um that they disappeared so <,> to <.>th i suppose there's a bit of an actor in me um in the sense that <&>8:00 i'm quite happy to gesticulate and wave and perform and mime and what not and you can get on just fine <[>laughs mm with a few basic words and er and all the nice gentilities er cos i know there were times particularly when i was er i suppose <.>i slightly aggressive with some of my approaches cos i was used to going out and building a bloody fence <,> getting on with the damn job rather than going through even at a hamlet level er the protocol that went through and the consideration in the time honoured way because we just don't relate to the traditional values that people have in making decisions within a hamlet or village structure now you had to be something of a wheeler dealer didn't you laughs we were um yes i mean we would make the average second hand car er merchant in new zealand er tut look like a bank of england er executive i suppose in some of the things we got up to we did not have a regular supply <&>9:00 system in the sense that um you could just draw on supplies there were sources of supply <,> there were supplies that should have been readily available for the work we did it was controlled by local officials generally they wore an army uniform they had a couple of pips or whatever it was that they wore on their shoulders they were army officers working in a civilian field and they seemed to be very fat and they seemed to live very well and their wives wore a lot of very expensive make up <,> in other words they were milking the system tut um and we could never get the stuff out er i do remember throwing one out of the road of <.>a a warehouse door um and getting in and just helping myself to the cement and hearing the little click of automatic rifles <{><[>red cross officials would be horrified to hear all this er <.>the the good people of new zealand <.>who who um encouraged us to go there and do the good work but in actual fact to do the good work you <&>10:00 had to get a rid of an awful lot of avarice and er and selfinterest so it was very difficult to get the supplies that we should have had <,> the american army was a wonderful storehouse it's the best equipped army in the world and at that time was probably the most poorly trained tut um both the new zealand army and the new zealand red cross were very good at er appropriating on an individual level i mean colonels didn't go round flogging things in the new zealand army the privates and the sergeants were far too good at that at er acquiring bartering trading whatever tut so for new zealand beer or for something else we'd guarded in some other way or for holding a party tut um at which some new zealand nurses may be in attendance um one could um get a lot of cement <[>laughs so you'd <.>i you'd invite the americans and say look there'll be some girls here er so long as you supply some <.>c cement <&>11:00 no we would never say there'd be some girls there one we would get killed by the new zealand girls <{1><[1>women the nurses er who were there but we had parties from time to time they knew about that and um they would suggest that they have a party at our place and we'd say fine and will there be some er nurses there er take potluck <{2><[2>and sometimes there might have been sometimes there wouldn't but er i don't want to start a lynching now and <.>i i certainly didn't get lynched then um tut but no it's not as if we were trying to use new zealand women <.>in in the wrong sort of sense but we were part of a community where there were um voc european women which of course for <.>new er american soldiers seemed to be a very attractive state er but those were all VERY professional women who did an aMAZing job <[1>mm mm <[2>mm tut so you had your pet schemes you had your ways of doing things <{><[>what were <.>you <.>what what were some of the things you did <&>12:00 <[>yes we did <.>we tut <.>w i think the first thing you did was you made friends with quarter master sergeants in the u s er army officers weren't any use at all um it's the sergeants that control the supply of any army and um tut and they were friendly chaps occasionally new zealand or more particularly australian beer would wander their way inhales um and we would help them out you see they have <.>a a thing in the american army called an annual inspection tut and er everything has to be virtually the same as it was last year and everything is <.>absolutely all the books and the parade grounds and everything are inspected inhales and sometimes there can appear in a yard of a quarter master sergeant an awful lot of the wrong things or too many of something and one sunday morning a quarter master sergeant rang me and said i'm getting an inspection on tuesday and i've got far too much cement can you help me out tut he had seven <&>13:00 and a half tonne of cement and we took the lot laughs um and we er <,> we carted it all and we had wagoner jeeps which is a fourwheel drive er we had two of those fourwheel drive type station wagon tut a land rover and an international harvester fifteen hundred weight truck australian assembled and it had a motor like <.>a a missile and steering er like a drunk <.>i it was something very seriously wrong with it and we carted that seven and a half tonne in little more than a morning um er a three four mile <.>dis er distance i suppose and stacked it on our verandah and put it under plastic and so that <.>was we had that there oh <.>it that was about three months' supply and we got that through having good contacts with the man in the first place really on a human level mm er no bribing and no payment um he liked us and we <.>ma well we made sure he did and he was a good guy anyway <&>14:00 tut john did you ever get caught out or come close to getting caught out <,> the schemes laughs <{><[>cos it wasn't strictly according to the book was it i suppose <[>no well no it wasn't but <.>i of course in a society like vietnam and in the society that was imposed upon it at that time through the war and um overseas interests there wasn't an existing structure anyway in the true sense mm in that we lived outside vietnamese law um in that sort of er sense um and what about your masters er back in <.>the the red cross hierarchy um i mean they would have perhaps frowned on what you were doing <.>or no i think they were um amused by it and pleased that we were able to survive because <{><[>to get things done yes because the new zealand red cross there's no way that they could have er sent across cement and construction materials and things like that i mean they were fabulous with the little things <&>15:00 that we needed whether it was seeds or certain drugs sewing machines for setting up sewing centres in um in villages er school equipment and things like that <[>for the new <.>zealand yes mm um after all's said and done american army cement was destined for er for vietnam mm it's just that it wasn't used for um mortar and placements and er and dugouts it was used for wells and drains and schools and things like that and village dispensaries inhales now the war of course was going on all around you there wasn't a front line it was <.>the the viet kong were in the er in the jungle so you <.>w it would have touched you you would have come into contact with it during the course of your work yes yes um i mean they were sort <.>of they could be anywhere or er everywhere but of course at <&>16:00 that time um after the test um er of sixty eight which was their er big offensive <{><[>mm <[>their huge offensive in the sense that they totally disrupted vietnam in every way um and after that of course there was <.>a a long slow regrouping and um so there wasn't nearly as much activity during our time there in many respects as there had been in the preceding years inhales um but yes it happened from time to time that you would get a warning shot across your bows in certain villages um so what er literally you mean when you were working in certain villages what you'd come under mortar fire or something <{><[>like that <[>no no no it'd <.>be just be stray er a k forty seven um shots just across <.>your you know it was fired across you bows so to speak when you were walking from point a to point b point b being just a bit too close into the bush for their liking and <&>17:00 working in a <.>b village or hamlet in that case um tut that was of strategic importance still because though it was in one of those sandy plateaus it was very close to a range of hills um the village decided that they would have an official opening of these wells and they had done <.>them a couple of them up that were closer to the road with red kiwis on them and red crosses and my name was on one and um hong tuk tu tan telan was on another that is new zealand red cross in vietnamese <&>17:32