I recall both my mother and her sister, Anne, (Sister Mary Lawrence), stating that whenever their grandmother came in from Gillespie’s Beach to the Williams home at Weheka, the older children knew that another addition to the family was in the offing.
Some decades would elapse before pioneer nurses and those acting as midwives would become part of the local scene. These pioneer women were tough. Despite the famine years in Ireland, and the relatively spartan conditions at Gillespie’s with its hard work, plain food and pregnancy, Margaret was 87 years of age when she died.
We who live in an electronic age, with quick and inexpensive communication world-wide might find it difficult to comprehend that our New Zealand forebears lived minus radio, telephone, motorised transport, and the many other modern inventions we take for granted. There was no electricity or gas. Washing machines and refrigerators lay in the future, as did electrical tools and machinery which would have lightened the task of clearing the land and building shelters in remote areas. Keeping a large family fed, breakfast, lunch and tea, was a full-time job with hours upon hours spent in the kitchen. Growing daughters would eventually ease the burden for in these years children, when old enough, were expected to help with allotted tasks.
It needs again to be remembered that these Irish settlers probably thought themselves extremely lucky and well-off. As already mentioned, back home in Ireland food had been scarce and limited in variety for the vast majority who were poor. Their futures in Ireland were also limited, dependent upon others for a roof over their heads and a piece of ground in which to grow food. Gillespie’s, being on the west side of the South Island, had very heavy rainfall. So had the western counties in Ireland which they had left behind so they were accustomed to rain. Coast residents also seem to eventually become immune to the sandflies which would bother tourists in later years.
Two entries in the Grey River Argus are of interest.
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