During the early 1920s slump, I went to work for my cousin Cecil Addenbrooke at Mangamahu, back where I was born.

This farm, Ruakiwi, (burrow of a kiwi) was owned by my Uncle Hubert Addenbrooke who bought it in the 1880s and it is still owned by his descendants today. I worked for Cecil for nearly four years and it seemed like another home to me, after my parents had sold out and retired to Wanganui.

COWBOY

I started work for Cecil at Ruakiwi as a cowboy although I was quite experienced and could do a man's job, seeing that I had been brought up on back-country towns all my life.

The cowboy in America rides buckjumpers and has some thrills, but the cowboy in my day was the name of a young learner who was started off with the easier farm jobs until he became more ex perienced.

The cowboy was most times with the boss, lived in a whare near his house and tuckered with the boss and his family.

The cowboy milked the cows, then skimmed off the cream for churning into butter and feeding the skilly to the calves, killed the mutton for the house and for dog tucker, cut the kindling, helped the boss with the vege garden and the dagging and gradually got a pup or two of his own and learnt how to work sheep. All shepherds started this way.

I started on jobs I already had some experience with but being young I was always called like others, the cowboy.

THE BREAKFAST BOAR

While I was chopping wood before breakfast at the Ruakiwi home stead I spotted a large boar making his way along the side of the hill above the house.

I grabbed the axe, let my two dogs go and then set sail in pursuit. The dogs bailed the pig inside the roadside fence and I grabbed him by the hind leg through the wire of the fence. I hung on to him for a while but it was impossible holding a strong struggling pig.

He broke free and eventually was bailed among some lawyers at the end of a water course. I managed to get on top of the log he had backed into underneath and I cut some lawyer vines so as I could get a deadly stroke to his head.

But I landed the axe blade off centre and he moved further down into the wet gut of the gully. He was bleeding profusely and I waited until he got weaker from loss of blood and then finished him off.

Then I went back for breakfast.

THE DIP-POST

An unusual incident happened one day at Ruakiwi on Cecil's bound a ry fence, that had number six wire on it. We had one dip-post being sta pled, ready to force the wire under, and the wire was so tight we had to lever it under the key staple with a strong-bladed spade. After we had stapled the wires on most of the posts, Cecil came to the dip and thought it was stapled too low, so he put his hammer claws over the top of the wire to extract the staple.

The hammer flew out of his hand, the handle hitting him on the side of his head, and he hopped around for a few seconds. Then the hammer came down and buried its head in the soft ground between his feet. Had it come down on his head it could have been fatal but I saw the funny side of it all afterwards. The dip-post was wide with a flat surface, so the handle must had slid up the post like an arrow, otherwise it would have spun in the air.

THE FIRST POSSUMS

I was camped out there on this job and one morning I spied in a birch tree two eyes looking at me, so I climbed up to try and shake the animal off, so that my two dogs could stand over it. There were three of these birch trees in a row, almost touching each other, and when I climbed one, it jumped into the next.

At last I drove it to the end of a branch, shook it off onto the ground, and then the dogs stood over it while it lay on its back ready to fight the dogs. While the dogs were standing over it, I grabbed it by the tail, but it twisted itself onto my arm, and scratched me badly, so I let it go. The dogs still stood over it, so I walked over to my camp and brought back a big chaff sack to put it in.

That evening I took it down to the homestead. A couple of visitors were there but no-one knew what it was for a long time, for none of them had seen any possums in the district before.

Where I was camping was a patch of bush and on investigating I discovered by the droppings and scratches on the trees that they had been quite thickly populated by possums for two years.

THE RIFLE CLUB

We had a very successful rifle club, the Mangamahu Army Defence Rifle Club, which was well patronised by all the settlers round about. This shoot was held fortnightly for the biggest part of the year. The members became a very keen competitive lot, and I happened to be one of the top shots.

This club had started well before the First World War, but I was too young then for I think it first started in about 1909. The club folded up in 1914, when the war started, but became very popular again when it reopened in 1919.

I can remember being the first one to score a possible after the war years, for I was only 18 years of age then. We all used .303 rifles from the Army Defence Stores, which cost anything from one pound to two pound ten shillings. Mine cost me one pound ten shillings and it turned out to be an excellent buy.

I shot quite well for about two seasons, and then I heard that I could get what they called a match barrel fitted for five pounds. I think these might have been the first of their day. This rifle became the most accurate of any rifles I have owned. It turned out to be a most deadly weapon amongst the over-populated wild pigs which caused the farmers much trouble.

I don't remember having to register rifles from the Army Stores, in fact registration of rifles from the Army was not necessary. But when I bought a pump-action .22 repeater about 1915, it had to be registered.Each member of the Rifle Club was allowed 200 rounds each year for practice. I was keen on pig hunting, but other members didn't use half theirs, so I had far more ammo than I could possibly use to keep the wild pig population down.

KING DICK - THE BIGGEST BOAR EVER

Across the river from Cecil's there was amongst the many wild pigs, an extra large boar on a holding called Wharemata. The boar's refuge was a two thousand-acre block of bush reserve which was situated between the Whangaehu Valley and the Mangawhero Valley. Although the bush was his refuge, he came out to feed in the bracken fern, second growth and scrubby valleys.

He was known to be in the vicinity for many years. This pig went by the name of King Dick, and was a great fighter, especially amongst the pig dogs, a few dogs being killed by him (mainly through lack of attention by their owners).

I remember one young fellow who had made up his mind to get this pig, going out several times during the year with his two holding dogs. One of his dogs got badly ripped along the stomach, which allowed his intestines to come out and drag on the ground. They became perforated through dragging on the rough surface and the dog died in a few days.

I had been eager to get this pig for about two years, but he was too clever for me, even when I carried a rifle, for he seemed to make for the dense cover while I was out or range every time. My dogs were sheep dogs, which usually stood off to bark and bail him, and even one of them got ripped, but I usually carried a needle and thread and something to use as a muzzle in case of being bitten while operating.

Twice I had to carry a dog on my horse in front of me, but a sick dog seems to know it is for the best.

KING DICK'S END

It seemed impossible to get this boar, but I finally arranged with two other shepherds to make a big noise mustering the block, while I stationed myself on a high rock which emerged from a low saddle leading into the main bush, where I had noticed the main lot of pigs used to make for.

Numbers of pigs of all sizes came past me, but I was not firing a shot except only at the big boars. I waited for about three hours in the one place, where I estimated at least a hundred pigs passed me. I shot three fair-size boars, but no King Dick.

I could hear the shepherds' dogs in the distance, and thought King Dick has beaten me again, but on viewing a steep sidling opposite me, I saw my quarry coming full tilt down the steep sidling with his long brushy tail (typical on old boars) swinging from side to side.

When he got to the valley bottom just below me, he stopped for a breather, only about a hundred yards below me. He received a fatal shot. Eventually the shepherds arrived on the scene after I had cut the head and trotters off.

We made for home and found, when we arrived, that Cecil had visitors. We took the trotters in to show them, but they wouldn't believe us. They thought the trotters were the legs of a cattle-beast until they went out to see the head.

MANGAMAHU DANCES

At Mangamahu we used to have quite big woolshed dances. The wool room and shearing board were ideal for dancing, the moving of woolbales and fleeces over the years had made the floor quite greasy. When cleaned up and polished, it made a shiny glossy dance floor.

We used to drag a big bag of sand with cloth around, with a motorbike, and with the flaked candle grease it made a slippery, shiny, glossy floor. Tarpaulins were used around the catching pens to cover the walls for the Ladies and Gents dressing rooms. What with all the decorations of ferns and material from the bush, one would hardly know they were in a big woolshed.

We used to have three or four big dances a year, the Settlers Ball, the Bachelors Ball, the Spinsters Ball, as well as some small dances. For the bigger dances the orchestra was hired from Wanganui, but for smaller dances we had a piano.

I used to play the accordion now and then to give the pianist a spell. The accordion was especially good for waltzes, polkas and schottische, the timing beat of the base with the music was distinct and the waltzing especially kept the dancers in an easy timing rhythm. The accordion seemed to get a great hearing.

For the Lancers, the energetic males, when wound up, used to swing their partners off their feet amongst a noise of happy screams.There was always some alcoholic drink, etc, but nobody seemed to get out of order.

UNDERGROUND HOLE

After one dance, I was riding back to camp in the early hours of the morning. I was half asleep on my horse going along a sheep track through some open bush when the ground gave way and my horse and I fell into an underground hole. The horse landed on his back with his hooves flurrying around, and I was very lucky to escape unhurt. We got the horse on his feet, then went on to the camp not far away to get a shovel and axe, then came back to dig a place for the horse to get out.