"I started in Council works in those days were. all manual. There was a permanent staff of three - the

Transcription

1 Narrative of Mr Bruce McCallum of Richmond. Mr McCallum was in the works department of the Council for 39 years. He recalls some of the aspects of that work and the development of Council services in Richmond since the mid 'forties. This interview was made on the 29th November 1983 by Les Slater for the Richmond Borough Council. Transcribed from longhand and shorthand notes to typescript by Les Slater. "I started in Council works in those days were all manual. There was a permanent staff of three - the foreman Harry Riddell, the truck driver Keith Ching, and myself. I was assistant foreman, and I did all the usual run of work, mainly with the water supply and connections, maintenance, roads and parks, and the cemetary. We had a truck, a Morris Commercial. We got gravel at six pence a yard from Appleby. It had to be screened onto the truck. We got six pence a day for push bike allowance. We biked everywhere to our jobs, and to waterworks repairs too. The town clerk used a pushbike too. When Harold Lowry became mayor we started into mechanisation, and got an Austin truck instead of having to use bicycles. tractor. We had an Austin standard manual grader. It used to be horse drawn, but it was converted to be drawn by a solid-tyred McCormack

2 2 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 83) Once, when I was on the tractor towing the grader down McShanes road, the connecting pin broke. Well I couldn't hear anything with the noise of the tractor, so it was quite a while before I turned around and saw it down the road! The chap on it was shouting but I couldn't hear above the noise of the tractor. In those days Mick Watt, the town clerk, had a requisition book W>A"TT for when we wanted materials, parts of machinery and things like that, but nowadays there is an order book system for purchases. Excavators started being used in about Previously we had a loader, then a digger. In the 1940's and '50's we used arsenic for controlling the weeds on footpaths and road sides. We sprayed it on. But one day a cow ate some of the sprayed grass, in Gladstone road. It died. That cost the council fifty pounds. We mowed the cemetary with a handmower and a scyth. That took quite a while, and the grass used to get quite long in places. But we kept it in order; but it's in better condition today. Easier with motor mowers and other tools, and now there are more people available.

3 3 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 83) Then there was the roadworks tarpot; well, there was a write-up about that in the Mail, a few years ago. There were two or three drums, of about 80 gallons each, and it had a little iron-horse motor, the motor mower type. It worked, but not very well. In 1943 there were only 45 fire plugs. Today there are 600. When I started there weren't many, not enough, and the pressure wasn't much in seme places - at the ends of the line. We converted ball hydrants to valve hydrants. My main job was with the water supply, and that was mainly locating water pipes for the P and T (Post Office). In the end we had to locate every underground pipe. I used a divining rod, a piece of wire. I found that it was very reliable, but it used to make me tired. It worked every time. One or two fellows in the P and T used to do it too. In the surrmers the water supply became inadequate. The Boding water was at times running over mud straight into the main supply pipe; there was no more water than that, none in reserve, no reservoir at all really, and the water wasn't getting as far as the top end of Queen street, there was that much being used.

4 4 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) There was such a scarcity of water one Christmas, in the 1950's,that there was a complete shutdown. And restrictions several times. That's when patrolling of the Borough started for illegal water vise. We used to go around the streets with the mayor and councillors looking for people using hoses in their gardens, cleaning cars and that sort of thing. And we caught several, some more than once. They all said they didn't know about the restrictions, or said that the kids must have turned the taps on. But the council didn't prosecute; there was always some reason not to. There was one disconnection for illegal water use, and they had a well anyway. We cleaned the reservoir in the winter months, when there was more water about anyway to fill it up. When the Boding was on eels would get up the pipes, but generally they didn't get past the screen. A few got into the pipes when they were really small, and somehow they'd grow in there, even in 2 inch pipes. We'd find them sometimes when someone would complain about the water supply being low pressure; I remember one got trapped and died around someone's water meter. And they'd get stuck at the toby taps. When catchment was leased on farm land, in the early days, the water was contaminated by sheep, but there were no complaints'.

5 5 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) There was the Appleby pump, well we called it the Appleby bore; that was the first acquifer bore. There was the bore by Humes. And I saw by chance that the bore was getting muck into it, frcm cattle; there was a tiny hole in the cap, above ground, but when it rained and the ground flooded, then it was sucking in water polluted by cattle. It was only by chance I discovered that; when we were working there, and I knew there was a problem with pollution, but we didn't know where it was coming from; we couldn't understand how it was happening. Well, because the water was flooding, I heard the sound of water moving under suction into the bore, and I could then see the movement in the water around the pipe. The diameter of the big water pipes is 4 inches and 6 inches. In my last year I just walked the whole of the Borough with a tape, and measured and located all valves and valve hydrants. The waterworks is now drawn up well on the plans; everything is shown. The surveyors for the service, Staig and Smith of Nelson, they put painted pegs in, and curb marks, and put everything on maps showing the location. The ditches used to be cleaned by hand, with spades and

6 6 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) shovels. We cut them down, to shape, and sharpened them, so as to take only the rubbish out, and not make the ditches any deeper or wider. The open drains were being changed to pipes and culverts, and are now nearly all like that. I was also sexton: In those days we had to go there with a suit and tie, and I fitted the rest of my council work around funerals. There were also Saturday and Sunday funerals and burials in those days. We used to dig graves by hand, with spades. I got one pound for single depth - single burial graves, and one pound five shillings for what were called double depth - with space for another burial. At that time my wage was 636 pounds a year, so the extra for digging graves was very useful; it was a bit of overtime. If I did it in the day it was part of my ordinary work and not extra. So I would do it in the early morning or late at night, digging away,with a candle to give some light. I'd be up there at all hours. Quite hard work, especially in the winter, at night in the rain. Now there is a "backhoe" digger for graves. I remember sometimes in the funerals, in the rain.

7 7 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) there'd be flooding there. And once, before the funeral we baled water out of the grave. Well, after the funeral, before we had filled it in, the grave had collected so much water, full, from the run-off and the rain. And the coffin floated to the top. So it was hauled out, the water baled out, the coffin put back, and the grave filled in before it could fill with water again. The old chapel was pulled down. There'd been a bit of a problem with vandalism. There were no nails in it, all dowling. And it took a lot of effort to get it down. Had to use a bulldozer to knock it over, and then it wasn't easy. Lovely timber, old heart rimu, and a bit of totara here and there, on doors and windows. The rubbish collection was twice yearly when I started: and it was not the usual household rubbish. Householders had to take that to the dump themselves. We'd collect in 12 gallon and 44 gallon drums the sort of stuff that couldn't be burned and buried in the garden. The tip in those days took ashes and soot. last long. Once the subdividers started using the tips they didn't

8 8 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) When the tip down Beach road was in operation, in the late 'fifties, there was for a while the problem of spring tides, in February, and if there was a flood, rain and wind from the Bay when there was a high spring tide then the water would come right up. As far up as the refrigeration depot. What it did to the tip was that it took rubbish, bins, the shed, all sorts of things, took these out of the tip, and pounded it out all over the surrounding paddocks. When I started with the council. Bill Deere was nightman {) -'& ft on contract. The rate was five pounds a week for years. He had a horse and cart at first. Later there was a truck, but they had a lot of trouble with that. It went, and it did the job, but it was never really much good; it had a cracked head, and the tie-rods and king-pins were shot. And once the steering wheel came off. It had been bought by the council on the recaimendation of someone who had something to do with the person selling it. So they just said nothing about it, and anyway it lasted the distance, until the sewerage ended the nightsoil collection. The bowling green was all shovelled by hand. Mayor McGlashan used to have to do voluntary work in the comnunity, and people on the council did too. So a lot of work was voluntary, unpaid.

9 9 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) I cut the tops off two fingers on the mower on the T8 tractor. I got 180 pounds compensation for that injury. And I didn't stop work. I just drove round with my fingers bandaged until I got better, and attended council works meetings too. When I was foreman we had works meetings twice each month; these were in the evening. I'd go along without pay. And once a month there was the Borough inspection, with the mayor and the works committee. That would be on a Saturday, for two or three hours. I was a member of the Richmond fire brigade. A big fire was the Star and Garter hotel. Then there was the timber yard i^vrp in Hope; and the freezer at Waitaki. At that fire, at the freezing works, well only three weeks before I had located the only plug, the hydrant. The Ministry of Works had buried it under the road about four weeks before. That one was on the Roding main, and Waimea County asked me to locate it. I had put markings on the bridge, before, 22 yards away, before the MCW earthworks, so I was able to locate it pretty quickly, and dig it out. If we hadn't had that water supply located and ready then the fire could have done a lot more damage by the time it would have taken to find it and dig it out. As it was we were there for over 30 hours

10 10 (Mr Bruce McCallum, 29 xi 1983) After the fire all the firemen were given half a lamb by the Waitaki company. There were lots of other, usually minor fires. But the service today is much better with all the hydrants everywhere in the Borough; it should be possible to get hoses from any,, H road or street to any building.