We had a great time strolling through the different venues checking out information about Jean Batten, who was the first ever woman to fly direct from England to New Zealand in October 1936.

An old time school room, very different from the school rooms of today. 

Reminiscent of Dr Who’s Tardis.  Telephone boxes were very distinctive looking but like everywhere today in the name of saving money, they are no longer found. Too bad if you don’t possess a mobile phone.

This old fashioned butchers shop even had sawdust on the floor. You don’t find that nowadays. Eash week when my mother and I went shopping  he always gave me a piece of rolled up luncheon sausage. I remember my mother telling me that on they day I started school she was very upset and tearful when she went shopping and the butcher sympathetically said to her “ Oh dear, so Wanda started school today!”   He then gave her a prime rib roast for free.  Now you wouldn’t get that sort of treatment today.

You don’t see prices like this anymore. 

After strolling through the old time car section we caught the tram  (similar to this one)  to Keith Hay Park to look at the aviation section.

Replica of Sir Keith Park’s Hurrican Aircraft..  Air Vice-Marshall Sir Keith Park was a New Zealander who joined the British Air force in World War Two. He helped organise the evacuation of Dunkirk. He returned to live in New Zealand in 1948 and MOTAT’s aviation collection is named in his honour.

There is just so much interesting information available so if you are coming to Auckland make sure you check out this fabulous interactive museum. 

On the left as we entered the park through the souvenir shop, was a group of Bedford Trucks. It takes the volunteers anything up to 1000 to restore one of these beauties.

 There is an impressive array of fire engines and vehicles from all over NZ.  This one is a Holden.  We had a similar car which was grey and pink automatic which was ideal when the kids were little.

The fire engine on the left is a Dennis and the one on the right is a Leyland.

This 1960 logging rig was the first truck in NZ able to haul loads of 100 tons of logs out of the Kiangaroa forest. The truck has a 400 hp Cummins Diesel engine and a 15 speed Road Ranger Gearbox. Not bad for an old timer.

Here is a photo of the K900, the first of 30 ‘K’ engines built between 1932 and 1936 at the New Zealand Railway workshops in the Hutt Valley.

Diesel buses – old and new.

Today we decided to visit my uncle and aunty in Kelston. Uncle Vic is now 82 and has a heart condition. He is an amazing man, having only just given up running marathons in the last couple of years.  He still works as a gardener and looks after a couple of young children for a family he has known for some years,  getting their breakfast and taking them to and from school.

Beryl asked us to wait in the lounge as she wanted to surprise Vic. Well he certainly got a surprise alright and it was just wonderful to see him in such good spirits and looking so well considering his heart condition.

We had a great time reminiscing about old times and my cousins Deborah, who never married and is now 54 and her brother Andrew who has 5 children. So lots of photos got passed around.

Everyone says I look like my mother who passed away 10 years ago and Vic called me Gwen a couple of times, so maybe I do, personally I can’t see it. Maybe it’s as we both got older that we grew to look alike. This seems to happen in families

This is my mother when she was 18 or 19.

This is me aged 14. This photo was taken by my very dear friend Neville Brown, who is a fantastic photographer and has traveled around the world taking beautiful photos which he is planning to put into a book about his travels.

Vic and Beryl own a property on Waiheke just down the road from where I lived  in Surfdale.  Waiheke Island has become a wine and olive growing area and is quite the place to visit these days. Growing up on an island of beautiful beaches was an awesome experience and one day I will go back to see how much the island has changed. But I am not ready for that just yet.

When we left we headed of to MOTAT ( Museum of Transport and Technology) and spent a few hours there.  However, on the way we went to see the area where Val and I grew up, he for all his childhood and me until I was 10. After we married we lived in Newton and Mount Roskill until moving to Australia in1981.

I lived at 5 Takau St and we had an orchard at the back of the house, which had really old plum, apple and peach trees. There was an arbor with a grape vine trailing over it and the grapes were large, black and juicy.

My mother was a fantastic cook and would make fruit preserves and jams for the coming year. No tinned stuff in our household. She also cooked the most amazing meals, cakes and bread in a coal range.  The women of her era were truly amazing with what they accomplished without the modern conveniences of today.

I remember the neighbourhood kids would climb the trees and pick the fruit before it was ripe and my mother would catch and scold them.  She tried to get them to understand that they were more than welcome to the fruit once it was ripe and picking it when it was green was not only wasteful, because they didn’t eat all the fruit that they took but that they would get a bellyache from eating green fruit.

Still it was to no avail because the kids, Val included, did the same thing year after year.

Well the house that I live in has been demolished and both the house and the orchard are now a motorway.

Here is where the orchard used to be.

Takau St as it is today.

The house in Haslett St that Val grew up in has been demolished and turned into 2 townhouses.  His family had a Damson Plum tree in the yard.  Damson plums are very bitter and do not make nice eating but they make the best jam ever.

Driving into Haslett St

Vals mother Frances was not a good cook, but she did the most beautiful embroidery and she also played the piano.  She was offered the opportunity as a young lady to become a concert pianist and travel to America, but she lacked confidence in herself, a trait that seems to have passed down to a number of her grandchildren, talented children who lack confidence to pursue their dreams. Hopefully this trait will die out as it is frustrating to watch children push aside their dreams because they doubt themselves or don’t seem to feel they have the right to succeed.