Person Sheet
NameJoy Doreen Glass 
Birth10 Jan 1924
DeathFeb 2003, Ashburton NZ
FatherAmos Norman Glass (1885-1965)
MotherEmma Alice Gertrude Brooker (1895-1963)
Notes for Joy Doreen Glass
Joy Rawcliffe
Joy Doreen Glass was born on 10 January 1924 at Rangi Marie Home in Oamaru. She was the 2nd child in a family with an older sister (June) and 3 younger brothers – Moss , Frank and Edgar. She lived with her parents at 47 Greta Street until she left home in about 1950.
Schooling
She attended South Oamaru Primary School from early 1929 until the end of standard 4. She remembers teachers ‘Lanky’ Bossun in standard 2 and Miss Martin in standard 4.
The primary school was very close, just around the corner and Joy remembers going home to have lunch with her mother and house-keeper. She would have liked to have had lunch at school with the other children.
Her form 1 and 2 years were at Oamaru Junior High School. Form 1 teacher Miss Romans was interesting, an attractive woman with painted nails who smoked. Girls from all over Oamaru attended and she noticed poverty for the first time. Many didn’t have shoes. Joy cannot recall any Maori children in any of her schools, they were very rare. Nor can she remember any Chinese kids. They must have gone to school in the country. An antipathy towards Catholics was evident at school but not at home. Her young brothers used to play with the McNulty children.
She started ‘Brownies’ (junior guides) when she was about 8. She always had a doll or 2 but can’t recall any special toy. Bears were for boys. While her Dad was keen on fitness and biked to work he wouldn’t buy his children bikes. They always walked to school. High School, on the Thames Highway, was at least a mile.
Finally she attended Waitaki Girls Senior School for 4 years - forms 3-6. Joy didn’t like High School and when we see the class photo of the time it appears that few did. She thinks that she was an average student academically and socially. At senior school there were about 4 classes. She started in the 3B class and wonders why she was promoted to 3A where clever students like Janet Frame worked. Janet was from a humble background and Joy recalls that she smelt.
At High School Joy recalls studying English, Arithmetic, History, Geography and Commercial. The students were also streamed in ‘career’ terms. There were 3 major career electives:
Professional – for top girls who needed to prepare for tertiary learning
Commercial – focused on typing skills and shorthand
Domestic - ?
Joy elected the Commercial option. She thinks she left Senior school in about 1939/40 around the start of the war. She doesn’t use the war to orient her own memories because she can’t recall discussion of the war in her family. The war did impact however and there was petrol, clothing and food rationing.
The family members got on well together and Joy cannot recall violent emotions or discipline openly expressed. Her father had a strap and used it even on the girls. They had to bend over the bath (clothed). She remembers him saying that ‘this will hurt me more than you’; he was a very gentle man. She does recall her mother as less patient; eg running around the house after the boys. Her mother was a good house-keeper and manager. There were no open displays of affection from parents towards their children in her family. Joy shared a bedroom with her older sister until she left home.
Her favourite memories at this time are of the long summer holiday when the whole family except her father and sometimes the domestic servant went to Kakanui. They rented a crib there for a few years then purchased a crib of their own on a corner site. They travelled there on Arthur Orr’s bus which seems like a covered wagon looking back now. Her father stayed behind to supervise at his shop and travelled out to join the family at the week-end. He brought lots of fruit and vegetables from his garden. He had a large garden in an ‘empty’ section he owned just down the road.
Her father was the proprietor at this time of ‘Glass and Sons’ a paint and glass shop in Oamaru. She is not sure if his father or uncle started the business. Her Dad was dedicated to it and never retired, handing it on to his son Edgar.
The first family vehicle Joy recalls is an Oakland then after a V8 Ford.
Employment
After leaving school Joy went to work in the typing pool in the office at the Farmers store in Oamaru for about 5 years. She thinks her Dad was disappointed that she didn’t do the next step up which for young women in those days was teacher training college. The work involved typing invoices relating to sales and the balancing of accounts relating to these invoices at month end. Even though she was not paying board at home she does not recall having much spare money. She spent much of it on fashionable clothing and the main entertainment the Cinema. On Friday night or Saturday she would go with Eunice and her sister June to a film at the main theatre the Majestic. Nothing happened in Oamaru on the Sabbath (Sunday) in those days. She recalls the film ‘Waterloo Bridge’ staring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
Eunice Carrad was the supervising typist and Mum became good friends with her; Eunice married Joy’s sister June’s future husband. Eunice went to work as a voluntary nurse in the war in the pacific around 1943.
Leaving Home - Karitane Nursing
Soon after the war Joy applied to be trained as a Karitane nurse in Karitane north of Dunedin. Her father had to pay the cost of the training. She recalls going to Dunedin with her mother probably by train then staying in a Hotel, eventually living for the 16 months with other young women in a hostel.
Sir Truby King had founded Plunkett and he was probably very influential with this training also. Joy recalls the military emphasis on the regularity of child feeding, bowel movements etc so as to produce healthy kids. Karitane work was considered reasonably prestigious work for a woman at this time.
Joy enjoyed the 16 months of training, especially the contact with other women her own age and she made wonderful life-long friends, including Elsa Gilbert (Wood) in Hamilton, Mary Shand (Timaru), and Rachel Price (Dunedin). Rachel was from a wealthy family and the only one to ever have access to a motor car. Usually they walked the mile to the tram terminus (end of the line) at Anderson’s Bay and caught the tram to the town centre. Another woman (Jean Thomas) had been trained already and also became a good friend helping Joy to work placements. Basically the graduated nurse lived with the family with the young children (0-8 yrs) and assisted with child feeding and rearing. Placements usually lasted 2-6 months. A Karitane bureau helped arrange some placements but net-working was also important and the nurse was paid directly by the family. She doesn’t recall problems with any of her employers.
Her first posting, perhaps in 1947/48 was with a family near Mosgiel and there were many subsequent postings around Dunedin, Oamaru and even one in Wellington.
Joy went to a placement at Lower Hutt arranged by her friend Jean Thomas in 1950. It may have only been for 2/3 months because she and Jean then went apple-picking in Thorpe’s Orchard in the Motueka region. The flight from Wellington to Nelson was her first plane flight. The apple picking was hard work and not too lucrative, this export industry being affected by the Waterfront Strike that year. She then returned to the Oamaru area and thinks she saw a lot more of Bill in 1951.
Joy worked as a Karitane nurse until she got married in 1952.
Marriage to Bill Rawcliffe
In about 1948 or 49 Joy was posted to the Wallace family (Hugh and Betty) who farmed near Oamaru. They had 3 children. It is here that she met her future husband. Returned serviceman Bill Rawcliffe worked as a farm worker for Mr Wallace and other farmers while waiting and hoping for a farm to come up for him in a Returned Serviceman’s farm ballot. In 1950 or 51 Bill did get a farm in Mid-Canterbury.
The Wallace’s were confident hosts and entertainers and Joy remembers they played cards and drank alcohol.
Joy and Bill were married at St. Lukes Church on the corner of Tees Street on a cold frosty day on 14 June 1952. Joy can’t recall any reaction from her parents to her union with Bill. But certainly Bill got on well with them and Joy was comfortable with Bills parents, especially his father, a ‘nice old guy’.
The honeymoon – on the night of their wedding they travelled in Bill’s Morris car to Ashburton and stayed at the Devon Hotel. The next morning they went out to the farm on Taverners Rd inland from Chertsey. This is the first time Joy saw the ‘farm’.
They travelled through Porters Pass then down the West Coast as far as the road would go in those days (Paringa). They saw the Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph. They then travelled up to Nelson and stayed with Bill’s sister Anne and husband Veer. Then on to Picton, staying for a week in a Hotel then down the coast to Oamaru and eventually to the farm to live.
Joy thinks the Morris car may have lasted until 1956. The State must have been involved to some extent because she recalls him being told firmly he was still in the Morris ‘class’ when he sought to upgrade. The next vehicle she thinks was a brown Morris Oxford. Then there was a light blue (1967ish) Holden, yellow Holden Belmont (72ish), from there (with children leaving or driving) a move to smaller Japanese cars, ie an orange 180B Datsun automatic, white then blue Toyotas.
Gibbslea Farm
It was a bit of a desert at this time, no trees and hardly any fences. It was “desolate”. Bill must have got the farm around 1951 in a ballot. He may have had to pay ₤500 for it and certainly the State was heavily involved. At first they lived in a portable cabin on wheels owned by the Lands and Survey Department. Apparently Bill was employed by that agency to some degree for some years (to bring the land into production?) The State provided old farm machinery and farm advisory services to help ensure the scheme was a success.
Soon after their wedding Bill bought 3 army huts joined together and this served as their living quarters for a year while a new house was being built. It was very cold in winter and she recalls them burning Mt. Somers coal in their range. Their hair was blackened by the soot.
Archie Bradford of Ashburton built their house which was finished in the winter of 1953. They picked an option from the few available designs available and paid ₤100 extra to have a brick exterior. Bricks and timber were in short supply and it took a year to build. The builders would disappear periodically though when Bill complained to Archie he threatened to take them away more permanently if he complained again.
It was very exciting when they did eventually move in – running water, electricity etc. Joy’s family gave them ₤100 towards the new furniture. They bought a bedroom suite (bed, duchess, tallboy and small table all made from Southland beech) from Cox’s in Christchurch.
This house was eventually extended around the time of Andrew’s birth to add an extra bedroom and a lounge.
While the new house was a huge leap forward there were still primitive aspects by today’s standards. Water came from the roof via a tank. There was no garden. Joy enjoyed developing the flower gardens. Delphiniums were her favourite. A lawn was made and hedging to provide some shelter.
Farm priorties
The farm had an airfield on it during the war. It was now covered with browntop grass. It had to be sown in new pasture before it would support a significant new sheep flock. In the next years many trees were planted around the house and for in the form of shelter belts. They had an International tractor. Bill had several dogs (Luke was his favourite) right from the start. There was no farm truck early on; he walked around the sheep. The builders built a shearing shed around the same time as the house.
Social Life
They had no babysitters and there was very little social life until the children went to school. They sometimes went to the cinema in Ashburton but never eat out. Jim and May Hanarahan next door had been very good to them, giving Bill a paddock of hay one early year. The first rural friends she recalls were Jim and Joan Copland. Bill’s mother visited the farm once, his father may have been in a nursing home by this stage. Joy’s parents came up to the farm for Xmas in the new home from 1953 until around 1960. From the 1960’s her sister June Kennedy, husband Lewis and son Hugh usually came for Xmas.
Television was installed about 1965. The NZBC’s sole channel began broadcasts about 4pm. Before and after Joy enjoyed the National Radio station in the kitchen.
Joy got her driver’s licence about the time of Robyn’s birth. She sat the test in the Morris at Rakaia.
The family all went for a holiday in January or February. Joy recalls going to Kakanui then in later years for quite a few weeks to Tahunanui, Nelson. They would stay for up to 3 weeks. Bill really enjoyed family holidays and at one stage would have liked to retire to Nelson.
Children and Schooling
Robyn 17 November 1953
Clare, 20 January 1956
John, 16 May 1958
Andrew 10 July 1961
From the birth of Robyn until Andrew went to school on his birthday in 1966 Joy would have had children at home. None went to any outside child-care, although she does recall that the Womens Division of Federated Farmers arranged some home help. These women lived in the home. They were not high quality helpers.
At this time house-work was more time-consuming with cloth nappies, wringer washing machine, no clothes driers or dish-washers.
All the children went by school bus to Borough School in Ashburton starting on their 5th birthday. The nearer Fairton School was considered lower quality and was circumvented. Joy recalls them also going to swimming lessons in the school holidays. Many years later Bill served on the school committee.
Robyn and Clare went to Boarding school in Christchurch from about 1969. Robyn left for training to be a dental nurse in Christchurch.
Clare left for Otago University in 1974/5.
John started university in Christchurch in 1977.
Andrew was at boarding school (Waihi then St Andrews College) from ???
Through all this until the mid 1970s? there was also a farm worker to feed. A house was built over the road in 1970 to accommodate a ‘married man’ (Brian Goddard). There was a farm worker who would live in the army huts from very early days on the farm. Some didn’t last very long. One fell asleep at the tractor wheel went through a boundary fence and woke up in the neighbour’s paddock. Brian began in about 1960 and became very popular and part of the family. Bill helped him get a dairy farm near Greenpark about 1971.
In the late 1970s Joy and her friend Joan Copland went to the UK for a long holiday. Daughter Clare who was then based in London served as a hostess and driver for some of that trip. About a decade previously Joan and Joy had walked the Milford track.
Community Involvement
There was a church service at Chertsey once a month and Joy tried to get her family there. She and Bill usually attended in Rakaia also.
She attended Country Women’s Institute from when Robyn was a baby which met in Chertsey about once a month.
But Rakaia Plunket was more important to her. She developed many of her best friends there and became closely involved with fund-raising, wine and cheese evenings, dances, etc. She served as the President for some years.
She was also out collecting for charities sometimes, eg Braille in particular.
Retirement to Ashburton
The farm was sold with a clearing sale in July 1985 and Joy and Bill retired to 63 Catherwood Avenue Ashburton.
She enjoyed about 3 holidays to Sydney with Bill where Clare was based. They played Scrabble many nights.
Bill had a major stroke in November 1994 and after many months in a hospital spent the rest of his life in a nursing home in Ashburton. This obviously had a dramatic effect on her life.
In 1999 Joy went to the Republic of Ireland for 5 weeks to visit John.
Joy Doreen Glass was born on 10 January 1924 at Rangi Marie Home in Oamaru. She was the 2nd child in a family with an older sister (June) and 3 younger brothers – Moss , Frank and Edgar. She lived with her parents at 47 Greta Street until she left home in about 1950.
Schooling
She attended South Oamaru Primary School from early 1929 until the end of standard 4. She remembers teachers ‘Lanky’ Bossun in standard 2 and Miss Martin in standard 4.
The primary school was very close, just around the corner and Joy remembers going home to have lunch with her mother and house-keeper. She would have liked to have had lunch at school with the other children.
Her form 1 and 2 years were at Oamaru Junior High School. Form 1 teacher Miss Romans was interesting, an attractive woman with painted nails who smoked. Girls from all over Oamaru attended and she noticed poverty for the first time. Many didn’t have shoes. Joy cannot recall any Maori children in any of her schools, they were very rare. Nor can she remember any Chinese kids. They must have gone to school in the country. An antipathy towards Catholics was evident at school but not at home. Her young brothers used to play with the McNulty children.
She started ‘Brownies’ (junior guides) when she was about 8. She always had a doll or 2 but can’t recall any special toy. Bears were for boys. While her Dad was keen on fitness and biked to work he wouldn’t buy his children bikes. They always walked to school. High School, on the Thames Highway, was at least a mile.
Finally she attended Waitaki Girls Senior School for 4 years - forms 3-6. Joy didn’t like High School and when we see the class photo of the time it appears that few did. She thinks that she was an average student academically and socially. At senior school there were about 4 classes. She started in the 3B class and wonders why she was promoted to 3A where clever students like Janet Frame worked. Janet was from a humble background and Joy recalls that she smelt.
At High School Joy recalls studying English, Arithmetic, History, Geography and Commercial. The students were also streamed in ‘career’ terms. There were 3 major career electives:
Professional – for top girls who needed to prepare for tertiary learning
Commercial – focused on typing skills and shorthand
Domestic - ?
Joy elected the Commercial option. She thinks she left Senior school in about 1939/40 around the start of the war. She doesn’t use the war to orient her own memories because she can’t recall discussion of the war in her family. The war did impact however and there was petrol, clothing and food rationing.
The family members got on well together and Joy cannot recall violent emotions or discipline openly expressed. Her father had a strap and used it even on the girls. They had to bend over the bath (clothed). She remembers him saying that ‘this will hurt me more than you’; he was a very gentle man. She does recall her mother as less patient; eg running around the house after the boys. Her mother was a good house-keeper and manager. There were no open displays of affection from parents towards their children in her family. Joy shared a bedroom with her older sister until she left home.
Her favourite memories at this time are of the long summer holiday when the whole family except her father and sometimes the domestic servant went to Kakanui. They rented a crib there for a few years then purchased a crib of their own on a corner site. They travelled there on Arthur Orr’s bus which seems like a covered wagon looking back now. Her father stayed behind to supervise at his shop and travelled out to join the family at the week-end. He brought lots of fruit and vegetables from his garden. He had a large garden in an ‘empty’ section he owned just down the road.
Her father was the proprietor at this time of ‘Glass and Sons’ a paint and glass shop in Oamaru. She is not sure if his father or uncle started the business. Her Dad was dedicated to it and never retired, handing it on to his son Edgar.
The first family vehicle Joy recalls is an Oakland then after a V8 Ford.
Employment
After leaving school Joy went to work in the typing pool in the office at the Farmers store in Oamaru for about 5 years. She thinks her Dad was disappointed that she didn’t do the next step up which for young women in those days was teacher training college. The work involved typing invoices relating to sales and the balancing of accounts relating to these invoices at month end. Even though she was not paying board at home she does not recall having much spare money. She spent much of it on fashionable clothing and the main entertainment the Cinema. On Friday night or Saturday she would go with Eunice and her sister June to a film at the main theatre the Majestic. Nothing happened in Oamaru on the Sabbath (Sunday) in those days. She recalls the film ‘Waterloo Bridge’ staring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.
Eunice Carrad was the supervising typist and Mum became good friends with her; Eunice married Joy’s sister June’s future husband. Eunice went to work as a voluntary nurse in the war in the pacific around 1943.
Leaving Home - Karitane Nursing
Soon after the war Joy applied to be trained as a Karitane nurse in Karitane north of Dunedin. Her father had to pay the cost of the training. She recalls going to Dunedin with her mother probably by train then staying in a Hotel, eventually living for the 16 months with other young women in a hostel.
Sir Truby King had founded Plunkett and he was probably very influential with this training also. Joy recalls the military emphasis on the regularity of child feeding, bowel movements etc so as to produce healthy kids. Karitane work was considered reasonably prestigious work for a woman at this time.
Joy enjoyed the 16 months of training, especially the contact with other women her own age and she made wonderful life-long friends, including Elsa Gilbert (Wood) in Hamilton, Mary Shand (Timaru), and Rachel Price (Dunedin). Rachel was from a wealthy family and the only one to ever have access to a motor car. Usually they walked the mile to the tram terminus (end of the line) at Anderson’s Bay and caught the tram to the town centre. Another woman (Jean Thomas) had been trained already and also became a good friend helping Joy to work placements. Basically the graduated nurse lived with the family with the young children (0-8 yrs) and assisted with child feeding and rearing. Placements usually lasted 2-6 months. A Karitane bureau helped arrange some placements but net-working was also important and the nurse was paid directly by the family. She doesn’t recall problems with any of her employers.
Her first posting, perhaps in 1947/48 was with a family near Mosgiel and there were many subsequent postings around Dunedin, Oamaru and even one in Wellington.
Joy went to a placement at Lower Hutt arranged by her friend Jean Thomas in 1950. It may have only been for 2/3 months because she and Jean then went apple-picking in Thorpe’s Orchard in the Motueka region. The flight from Wellington to Nelson was her first plane flight. The apple picking was hard work and not too lucrative, this export industry being affected by the Waterfront Strike that year. She then returned to the Oamaru area and thinks she saw a lot more of Bill in 1951.
Joy worked as a Karitane nurse until she got married in 1952.
Marriage to Bill Rawcliffe
In about 1948 or 49 Joy was posted to the Wallace family (Hugh and Betty) who farmed near Oamaru. They had 3 children. It is here that she met her future husband. Returned serviceman Bill Rawcliffe worked as a farm worker for Mr Wallace and other farmers while waiting and hoping for a farm to come up for him in a Returned Serviceman’s farm ballot. In 1950 or 51 Bill did get a farm in Mid-Canterbury.
The Wallace’s were confident hosts and entertainers and Joy remembers they played cards and drank alcohol.
Joy and Bill were married at St. Lukes Church on the corner of Tees Street on a cold frosty day on 14 June 1952. Joy can’t recall any reaction from her parents to her union with Bill. But certainly Bill got on well with them and Joy was comfortable with Bills parents, especially his father, a ‘nice old guy’.
The honeymoon – on the night of their wedding they travelled in Bill’s Morris car to Ashburton and stayed at the Devon Hotel. The next morning they went out to the farm on Taverners Rd inland from Chertsey. This is the first time Joy saw the ‘farm’.
They travelled through Porters Pass then down the West Coast as far as the road would go in those days (Paringa). They saw the Fox Glacier and Franz Joseph. They then travelled up to Nelson and stayed with Bill’s sister Anne and husband Veer. Then on to Picton, staying for a week in a Hotel then down the coast to Oamaru and eventually to the farm to live.
Joy thinks the Morris car may have lasted until 1956. The State must have been involved to some extent because she recalls him being told firmly he was still in the Morris ‘class’ when he sought to upgrade. The next vehicle she thinks was a brown Morris Oxford. Then there was a light blue (1967ish) Holden, yellow Holden Belmont (72ish), from there (with children leaving or driving) a move to smaller Japanese cars, ie an orange 180B Datsun automatic, white then blue Toyotas.
Gibbslea Farm
It was a bit of a desert at this time, no trees and hardly any fences. It was “desolate”. Bill must have got the farm around 1951 in a ballot. He may have had to pay ₤500 for it and certainly the State was heavily involved. At first they lived in a portable cabin on wheels owned by the Lands and Survey Department. Apparently Bill was employed by that agency to some degree for some years (to bring the land into production?) The State provided old farm machinery and farm advisory services to help ensure the scheme was a success.
Soon after their wedding Bill bought 3 army huts joined together and this served as their living quarters for a year while a new house was being built. It was very cold in winter and she recalls them burning Mt. Somers coal in their range. Their hair was blackened by the soot.
Archie Bradford of Ashburton built their house which was finished in the winter of 1953. They picked an option from the few available designs available and paid ₤100 extra to have a brick exterior. Bricks and timber were in short supply and it took a year to build. The builders would disappear periodically though when Bill complained to Archie he threatened to take them away more permanently if he complained again.
It was very exciting when they did eventually move in – running water, electricity etc. Joy’s family gave them ₤100 towards the new furniture. They bought a bedroom suite (bed, duchess, tallboy and small table all made from Southland beech) from Cox’s in Christchurch.
This house was eventually extended around the time of Andrew’s birth to add an extra bedroom and a lounge.
While the new house was a huge leap forward there were still primitive aspects by today’s standards. Water came from the roof via a tank. There was no garden. Joy enjoyed developing the flower gardens. Delphiniums were her favourite. A lawn was made and hedging to provide some shelter.
Farm priorties
The farm had an airfield on it during the war. It was now covered with browntop grass. It had to be sown in new pasture before it would support a significant new sheep flock. In the next years many trees were planted around the house and for in the form of shelter belts. They had an International tractor. Bill had several dogs (Luke was his favourite) right from the start. There was no farm truck early on; he walked around the sheep. The builders built a shearing shed around the same time as the house.
Social Life
They had no babysitters and there was very little social life until the children went to school. They sometimes went to the cinema in Ashburton but never eat out. Jim and May Hanarahan next door had been very good to them, giving Bill a paddock of hay one early year. The first rural friends she recalls were Jim and Joan Copland. Bill’s mother visited the farm once, his father may have been in a nursing home by this stage. Joy’s parents came up to the farm for Xmas in the new home from 1953 until around 1960. From the 1960’s her sister June Kennedy, husband Lewis and son Hugh usually came for Xmas.
Television was installed about 1965. The NZBC’s sole channel began broadcasts about 4pm. Before and after Joy enjoyed the National Radio station in the kitchen.
Joy got her driver’s licence about the time of Robyn’s birth. She sat the test in the Morris at Rakaia.
The family all went for a holiday in January or February. Joy recalls going to Kakanui then in later years for quite a few weeks to Tahunanui, Nelson. They would stay for up to 3 weeks. Bill really enjoyed family holidays and at one stage would have liked to retire to Nelson.
Children and Schooling
Robyn 17 November 1953
Clare, 20 January 1956
John, 16 May 1958
Andrew 10 July 1961
From the birth of Robyn until Andrew went to school on his birthday in 1966 Joy would have had children at home. None went to any outside child-care, although she does recall that the Womens Division of Federated Farmers arranged some home help. These women lived in the home. They were not high quality helpers.
At this time house-work was more time-consuming with cloth nappies, wringer washing machine, no clothes driers or dish-washers.
All the children went by school bus to Borough School in Ashburton starting on their 5th birthday. The nearer Fairton School was considered lower quality and was circumvented. Joy recalls them also going to swimming lessons in the school holidays. Many years later Bill served on the school committee.
Robyn and Clare went to Boarding school in Christchurch from about 1969. Robyn left for training to be a dental nurse in Christchurch.
Clare left for Otago University in 1974/5.
John started university in Christchurch in 1977.
Andrew was at boarding school (Waihi then St Andrews College) from ???
Through all this until the mid 1970s? there was also a farm worker to feed. A house was built over the road in 1970 to accommodate a ‘married man’ (Brian Goddard). There was a farm worker who would live in the army huts from very early days on the farm. Some didn’t last very long. One fell asleep at the tractor wheel went through a boundary fence and woke up in the neighbour’s paddock. Brian began in about 1960 and became very popular and part of the family. Bill helped him get a dairy farm near Greenpark about 1971.
In the late 1970s Joy and her friend Joan Copland went to the UK for a long holiday. Daughter Clare who was then based in London served as a hostess and driver for some of that trip. About a decade previously Joan and Joy had walked the Milford track.
Community Involvement
There was a church service at Chertsey once a month and Joy tried to get her family there. She and Bill usually attended in Rakaia also.
She attended Country Women’s Institute from when Robyn was a baby which met in Chertsey about once a month.
But Rakaia Plunket was more important to her. She developed many of her best friends there and became closely involved with fund-raising, wine and cheese evenings, dances, etc. She served as the President for some years.
She was also out collecting for charities sometimes, eg Braille in particular.
Retirement to Ashburton
The farm was sold with a clearing sale in July 1985 and Joy and Bill retired to 63 Catherwood Avenue Ashburton.
She enjoyed about 3 holidays to Sydney with Bill where Clare was based. They played Scrabble many nights.
Bill had a major stroke in November 1994 and after many months in a hospital spent the rest of his life in a nursing home in Ashburton. This obviously had a dramatic effect on her life.
In 1999 Joy went to the Republic of Ireland for 5 weeks to visit John.