<I>

  <&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One</&>
  <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies</&>
  <&>Victoria University of Wellington</&>

  <&>0:47</&>
  

  <WSC#DGI020:0005:IM>
      that was before they had that big carrot

  <WSC#DGI020:0010:LE>
      that <{1><[1>well is was before the carrot and it was before</[1>
      the ski fields before the mountain road because the mountain
      road was <{2><[2>actually</[2> being built while we were there
      <,> er and so the whole town got <&>1:00</&> <O>voc</O> to work
      on sundays

  <WSC#DGI020:0015:LE>
      we went up and and did some chiselling of the side of the
      mountain so that was very much a local event <,> but the thing
      really that <.>s</.> strikes me now as as vastly different is
      that you you lived we lived in a much simpler way anyway

  <WSC#DGI020:0020:LE>
      probably so did our friends in town

  <WSC#DGI020:0025:LE>
      i think after the war in the first oh ten years perhaps less
      after the war a lot of men who came back including trevor the
      <O>voc</O> person i was married to er wanted not to stay in
      their ordinary organised jobs

  <WSC#DGI020:0030:LE>
      they didn't want to stay in systems

  <WSC#DGI020:0035:LE>
      they didn't want to stay in town

  <WSC#DGI020:0040:LE>
      they wanted to do what was a pretty modest kind of breaking out
      but breaking out it was and quite a lot of them went to live in
      the country and one of the reasons that the life we led in those
      years we were in ohakune was so interesting to us and it was it
      was really fun was that we had a whole community <&>2:00</&> of
      people who all eventually left and went back to live in town um
      <{3><[3>as we did</[3>

  <WSC#DGI020:0045:IM>
      <[1>which is now a drawcard <O>laughs</O></[1></{1>

  <WSC#DGI020:0050:IM>
      <[2>mm</[2></{2>

  <WSC#DGI020:0055:IM>
      <[3>why did they</[3></{3> do that

  <WSC#DGI020:0060:LE>
      their children grew up and or grew older and they started to
      think that they wanted some of the things that town life had to
      offer i think um

  <WSC#DGI020:0065:LE>
      in in my own case i resisted being there in some ways at the
      beginning um which is just to say that it took me quite a while
      to get used to it but as my family grew and we had our horse
      riding and all the things that you do have in a in a small town
      became very engrossing and by the time we left we were all
      rather appalled at the idea of living anywhere else because it
      it was in its way a very complete life

  <WSC#DGI020:0070:IM>
      and a closeknit community

  <WSC#DGI020:0075:IM>
      was there a lot of support for you as a mother of six children

  <WSC#DGI020:0080:LE>
      yes there was

  <WSC#DGI020:0085:LE>
      not the kind of support that mothers of any number of children
      have now er <&>3:00</&>

  <WSC#DGI020:0090:LE>
      there was not a play centre or a kindergarten or or child care
      of any sort um but i had a lot of friends of course who whose
      children were small and they played together and everybody is
      very accessible in a town as small as ohakune

  <WSC#DGI020:0095:LE>
      i mean it's only got about fourteen or fifteen hundred people

  <WSC#DGI020:0100:LE>
      it's a real little village and so er you you had friends that
      you saw constantly and your little kids played together and so
      on so there was a lot of that

  <WSC#DGI020:0105:IM>
      you moved on from ohakune eventually but it <O>voc</O> it was a
      time your time there and and then later when you moved on of
      great social change

  <WSC#DGI020:0110:IM>
      women's attitudes were were changing

  <WSC#DGI020:0115:IM>
      there was no longer perhaps that that tendency that women
      automatically stayed at home and looked after the children

  <WSC#DGI020:0120:IM>
      how did you cope with the transitions <O>voc</O> that were going
      on in society and in your own life

  <WSC#DGI020:0125:LE>
      well of course it changed my life in an absolutely revolutionary
      way

  <WSC#DGI020:0130:LE>
      i was ready to change i think but er it was it was really very
      <&>4:00</&> fundamental and it rocked my personal boat for for
      many years and out of it of course i became the er you know a
      person who does my own work and lives and works as i do now

  <WSC#DGI020:0135:LE>
      one of the reasons i wanted to write this book though was to
      tell that partly but also to not to say or at least to to make
      sure that the the picture itself of my life didn't say um i
      spent all those years in a little country town with all those
      children just waiting for something better to happen

  <WSC#DGI020:0140:LE>
      it wasn't like that not at all

  <WSC#DGI020:0145:LE>
      when it did happen er it was er it was wonderful and er i i'm
      terribly glad that i happened to be just in time for the women's
      movement to sort of pick me up and take me on but um but before
      that i was actually very happy

  <WSC#DGI020:0150:LE>
      i i enjoyed those years

  <WSC#DGI020:0155:LE>
      i thought my kids were great fun and and i thought the the the
      ordinary things we did with our picnics and our <&>5:00</&>
      gymkhanas for the horses and our trips to taupo and so on i
      thought they were great

  <WSC#DGI020:0160:LE>
      i wasn't i was not languishing there thinking what a poor thing
      i am what a life i lead

  <WSC#DGI020:0165:LE>
      i thought it was an excellent life and that's one of the reasons
      i wanted to write the book

  <WSC#DGI020:0170:IM>
      you speak of it very much in the past as it was of course

  <WSC#DGI020:0175:IM>
      you're almost like a different person now

  <WSC#DGI020:0180:IM>
      how did the changes in you start to occur

  <WSC#DGI020:0185:LE>
      well partly because there were rifts that i didn't recognise in
      my own marriage and they were <,> well to do with the fact that
      men at that time were were very ambitious

  <WSC#DGI020:0190:LE>
      um ambition in teaching which was the sector that i knew about
      but it probably applied to lots of others um was a was a a
      scourge really a terrible driving force

  <WSC#DGI020:0195:LE>
      you had to get on and it was often at that time um at the
      expense of your wife and family um because er we <&>6:00</&> had
      we'd been born into a generation that took it for granted that
      women served their husband's um ambitions and aspirations and
      their needs and indeed they served their family's too and what
      happened to me at about the time that the women's movement was
      coming to new zealand was that i suddenly saw this

  <WSC#DGI020:0200:LE>
      i suddenly saw that i had disappeared in a way <{><[>um and so</[>

  <WSC#DGI020:0205:IM>
      <[>was there a</[></{> turning point for you because in the book
      you relate the the incident where you were sitting down in the
      shade and watching your family playing the cricket and and
      during the summer and you suddenly felt that those were the
      people you loved the the most but you weren't really somehow a
      part of it

  <WSC#DGI020:0210:LE>
      well i was a part of <{><[>it <.>a</.> <.>a</.> as a</[> as a
      sort of servant in a way <O>laughs</O> um but er but THEIR
      perception of ME was the thing that wasn't there

  <WSC#DGI020:0215:LE>
      yes <.>i</.> yes it was exactly like that and the reason i tell
      that story er so precisely is that <&>7:00</&> i couldn't ever
      forget it

  <WSC#DGI020:0220:LE>
      it just did happen in in that really sudden way

  <WSC#DGI020:0225:LE>
      undoubtedly it had been there um in the back of my mind but
      that's when it sort of shot out and i realised what was going on

  <WSC#DGI020:0230:IM>
      <[>in your own <?>identity</?></[></{>

  <WSC#DGI020:0235:IM>
      so you wanted <O>voc</O> you recognised that you wanted a role
      for yourself something for yourself that would be independent of
      your family at that time <latch>

  <WSC#DGI020:0240:LE>
      well i did yes um and it was it was hard to get hold of it

  <WSC#DGI020:0245:LE>
      oddly enough i had always known what i wanted to do

  <WSC#DGI020:0250:LE>
      i had always done writing and in fact i talked about that a bit
      in <title>hot october</title> and i went on doing it but in a
      very submerged rather secret clandestine way

  <WSC#DGI020:0255:IM>
      and you didn't have a lot of time

  <WSC#DGI020:0260:IM>
      i <{><[>mean bringing up six children and so forth it was sort
      of poetry lines on the run really wasn't it <O>laughs</O></[>

  <WSC#DGI020:0265:LE>
      <[>no <O>laughs</O></[></{> late at night when everybody was
      asleep and i was very nearly asleep myself <{><[><laughs>yeah</laughs></[>

  <WSC#DGI020:0270:IM>
      <[><O>laughs</O></[></{> was it the move to huntly that that i
      suppose brought your independence and and your husband's idea of
      your role to a head somehow <&>8:00</&>

  <WSC#DGI020:0275:LE>
      yes it was um

  <WSC#DGI020:0280:LE>
      that's because he took on a new kind of authority

  <WSC#DGI020:0285:LE>
      that's where he became the headmaster of a big school and
      probably more then than now um and and to some extent this is
      true of country schools more than town ones um there was a
      tremendous weight on him and it happened unfortunately for him
      as well as for me just at a time when i was beginning to say
      well in fact i don't want to be just the headmaster's wife

  <WSC#DGI020:0290:LE>
      that's not the only thing i'm here for

  <WSC#DGI020:0295:LE>
      i want to start and to do my own things and to him that seemed a
      betrayal

  <WSC#DGI020:0300:LE>
      um to me it seemed just a necessary next step and there were
      lots of women who felt like that and lots of men and <.>i</.>
      yes it was very hard

  <WSC#DGI020:0305:IM>
      the teaching hierarchy and system through the fifties and
      sixties put a lot of pressure didn't it on teachers

  <WSC#DGI020:0310:IM>
      you you describe that that <&>9:00</&> ambition that <{><[>people
      had</[> that that need to drive to the top <latch>

  <WSC#DGI020:0315:LE>
      <[>mm</[></{> mm <latch>

  <WSC#DGI020:0320:IM>
      has the has the system really got a lot to answer for for the
      sort of experiences that you had

  <WSC#DGI020:0325:LE>
      oh i think so yes um

  <WSC#DGI020:0330:LE>
      i practise not feeling um bitter about anything i don't but if i
      have a residual sort of anger i suppose about things that
      happened to us and to other people it's it's against the system
      yes um

  <WSC#DGI020:0335:LE>
      people er that are a part of <.>s</.> a system and you can say
      that they have um a choice but it's amazing how little choice
      you have outside the the social pattern and the social
      expectations that that you've grown up with and it seems to me
      looking back now that um that trevor was pretty helpless to do
      anything about this and i was fairly helpless to do anything
      about the currents that were that were shifting me

  <WSC#DGI020:0340:LE>
      writing this book has actually <&>10:00</&> er crystallised this
      idea in my mind quite a lot

  <WSC#DGI020:0345:LE>
      i would've said at the beginning that er you make a lot of your
      own choices and in one sense you do but you you have to do them
      within the the limits of the of the social patterns and
      conventions of your time

  <WSC#DGI020:0350:LE>
      even if you're breaking out of them er <.>yo</.> i don't think
      you can do it alone

  <WSC#DGI020:0355:LE>
      i'm quite sure that what i wanted to do and eventually did do um
      i couldn't have done it ALL by myself if there hadn't been all
      these other women who were doing much the same sort of thing

  <WSC#DGI020:0360:IM>
      what was your biggest encouragement then because it WAS
      difficult because there were pressures on you to conform and not
      to change

  <WSC#DGI020:0365:IM>
      what was the thing that that singly helped you through the most
      do you think lauris

  <WSC#DGI020:0370:LE>
      well most of all i suppose the the the thing itself my own
      writing

  <WSC#DGI020:0375:LE>
      i i'd really VERY much wanted to do it and i always had but
      suddenly when i began to to do it with with more concentration
      and give it more time well i used <&>11:00</&> to say sometimes
      in those early years of er of writing and reading that it was
      was like lancing a boil <laughs>that had grown very large</laughs>
      <{><[><O>laughs</O></[> so there was i <.>w</.> i was a very
      urgent sort of writer i suppose and i did publish a great deal
      in in quite a short time and that's because there was an
      ENORMous burst of things that i felt i very badly wanted to say
      and i'm sure that has to do with the delay although i wouldn't
      have known it before

  <WSC#DGI020:0380:IM>
      <[><O>laughs</O></[></{>

  <WSC#DGI020:0385:IM>
      is it only now as you try to write about your experiences in
      your early years that you really have the time to sit back and
      think about what happened and what events shaped you and your
      family

  <WSC#DGI020:0390:LE>
      yes it is um <,> but i think you have to move some distance past
      things anyway to see them um as as a well as a pattern of cause
      and effect really

  <WSC#DGI020:0395:LE>
      that's what i have found writing autobiography is <&>12:00</&>
      is about

  <WSC#DGI020:0400:LE>
      it's about looking at what has happened in your own life and
      around you er and what its consequences are and how you move
      through the next stage and er how you could've known it was
      coming but of course you never do know

  <WSC#DGI020:0405:LE>
      you you only know looking back afterwards <&>12:20</&>
</I>
