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

He was an old man who used to coma round and the only way he could bring the meat was in two sacks and the meat in each sack across the horse's saddle and then he would walk and lead the horse and when we wanted meat we had to get him to cut off a piece out of one of the sacks. After he had cut the piece off he would come in and get thanked fur it, he would go into the bar and have a drink and he would forget about his meat and poor old horse would go away to have a feed and then take a roll and roll all over the meat. It was awful. Then we would go and tell him the horse was rolling on the meat. "That's all right" he'd say "that won't hurt". It was lovely.

Did he go and sell the meat after that?

Yes. He sold every bit of it. Of course 2-3 people didn't see it because they were down the paddock a bit living.

What would you pay for meat then?

I forget.

After you left Waihau you came to live at Te Aroha?

After left Waihau I came down to Te Aroha yes. It wasn't much of a place then either.

How old would you be then - do you remember?

I was a married woman then. I was 22 when I got married.

I'm trying to fix a date you see. That would make it about 1879. Just about the 80s when the place was first starting. Where did you live?

Where did I live when I first came to Te Aroha? I lived in a hotel for a fortnight because I couldn't get a house or no place else to live. There wasn't a place to get, only what people were living in themselves and that was only about a room. They put up a room at a time to live in and then they gradually added on to the houses afterwards. I couldn't get a house to live and I lived in the hotel for a while and then I told you about the whare. When she got a little house up and she had shifted from the whare down into the township here and I was talking to her and she says to me "What's the matter with you" and I said "I'm looking for a house to get to live in and I can't get a place. She says "My dear, there's a nice little whare up there:. Do you see that place up the hill? That was mine. I've shifted out of that. If you would like to come up and see it, you can have it." So we both went up together and we looked at the place and it was very comfortable with two big large rooms in it about the size of this place I suppose. Two large rooms and I took it and shifted up into it and I lived there then for four years.