The Coal Yard & other stories

Page 3
Also in this room the piano that Aunts Hazel and Elsie had learned to play on was given a hard time by little fingers. Calls from the adults to stop thumping and to be gentle were heard nearly every visiting day. There are two good things about two storey houses. The view from high up and sliding down the banisters. What fun!
The only accident that I know of was when Miss Sara Cross, an elderly boarder, missed her grip while walking down the stairs. She was black and blue and took some time to recover.
Nola Still was at the foot of the stairs and got quite a fright. Harriet Conway and her sister Sue came out to NZ. Sue was first to marry and Harriet not long after. At the coal yard there were rooms for lodgers and Harriet lived there. She had a heart condition. Sugar was rationed during the 1st World War and Harriet remembered how it had been in England and so bought a huge 50lb bag and stored it in the linen room upstairs. Dave Still (compiler of these notes) new it as the dark room as it had no windows and stored old boxes of stuff and was also called a box room. (There is three names now for this place). The sugar was forgotten until Fred Ellis found it and the family used up the loose stuff from the centre of the bag. The outside was hard and may be what Old Miss Cross (mentioned above) broke into pieces and gave to Dave and his sister Heather as “sweets”. Anyway Harriet married a bloke Dreaver who worked in a Dunedin Drapery. Conway’s had no accommodation when they came and Grandad Ellis (William) took them in. A Conway girl became Mrs. Rollinson and lived on a farm on the Whare Flat Road. A walking track to the Silver Peaks started near their gate and was called the Rollinson’s track. Now there is a road over it leading to Wireless transmitters on top of the “Swampy” summit.

One of the dairy farmers in the district was Don Cameron who had 15 or so cows. For many years he used a horse and cart for deliveries, until he bought an old Ford truck. The advantage of the truck was that you had a warm cab to get into when you went home. The horse and cart however also had it’s advantages. While making deliveries the horse could follow along the road, and wait at corners while deliveries were made up lanes and side streets.
High up on Rudd’s Road on the side of (Mount) Flagstaff was another dairy farm, which, was caught out by a big slip on the road. The farmer telephoned to Bill Ellis and asked him to bring the truck to the slip and collect the milk. They carried the milk cans across the slip to the one ton Chevy truck. Once the milk cans were loaded, Bill had to reverse the truck a long way down the road before he could turn a round.
W.Ellis Advertisement
The Sonntag family who came from Bavaria lived in Brockville Road, down the valley. There was old Tom and Charlie. Charlie's wife Edith was a soccer coach. Charlie used to go to the wharf for fish offal for the garden. There was an Ettrick Sonntag, who Ettrick street was probably named after. Herman was the oldest and then Ettrick followed by Reinah Herman got tuberculosis and was nursed at home. Reinah was a tall bony sort of a girl, but died three months after being married. She died in hospital. On this steep part of Brockville Road, near a big bluegum was a horse trough nearby. The horses found this refreshment stop partway up the hill, very welcome.

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