What sort of a place was it?

It was no good. There were about 3 houses in it and there was an hotel and that was the place that I came out to be at service at and it wasn't finished. There was carpenters, painters and all in the.house the night we got there. We came from Hamilton with a two horse wagon, with a sick woman and a new born baby and furniture and all sorts in this big long wagon and two horses and the poor horses had to break their way through high high teatree. There was no roads, no nothing.

How long did it take you to get over from Hamilton?

It took us from 11.30 and we got to the hotel there at 6 o'clock and that was going all the time. We stopped a while on the road on account of the horses to give them a bit of feed. Then we came on again. We had to break the road all the way till we got to Waihau. Through teatree, mud and water.

How many of you were working at the hotel?

How many women? Only one woman and that was me. The sick woman was laid in bed. She took fits and I had to be mother to the baby and I had to be cook for the rest of them. I had only the boss and another man to cook for. The missus couldn't eat, she was too sick, and then I had to nurse the baby and do the washing and look after all the work in the hotel. It wasn't a proper hotel then. It had just started, hadn't been properly finished. When it was finished then it was a proper hotel.

That would have been about 1875? What was the country like around here then?

Wild country it was. We used to have to send in to Hamilton to get food out. We had to get the bread and meat and everything out from Hamilton for a while.

When did you first see Te Aroha?

That was when I was at the hotel. When I took a walk down from the hotel to the river. You had to walk through high teatree right from the hotel down to the river. Then you could stand and have a look over here and it was a wild, wild country.

Nobody living here?

There was nothing here until a little past 80, then it started to get a place.

When the gold started?

That was when Te Aroha was first called Te Aroha. It was 1880.

What was it called before that? It just wasn't?

I don't know. I think a wilderness.

I remember you telling me about a butcher who used to bring his meat round on a horse.