Members Stories

My First Train Journey out of Auckland 50 years ago

Easter 1948 was approaching as arrangements were made for my mother and me to travel to the King Country. Twelve months earlier two of my uncles and their wives had bought the store at Mapiu, on the main road approximately halfway between Te Kuiti and Taumaranui. The business was quite large in those days, besides the General Store and Post Office, there were three petrol pumps to one side of the store, and a few yards farther on past the store-keeper’s house, the garages housing the store van and the local school bus which went with the business. Mapiu had its own primary school. As it was a farming area, some children had a bus ride of several miles each day.

Good Friday morning was warm and sunny when Mr Storey our local taxi driver arrived at our front door. I remember thinking on our way to Newmarket, how empty the normally busy Remuera Road was, even the trams were few and far between, running to a Sunday timetable.

What a contrast to the busy platform awaiting us at the Auckland Railway Station. Bustling with people, porters and luggage. The hissing steam engine seemed eager to be on its way – Oh the excitement!! At last we inched our way out of the station and soon gathered up speed on our journey south.

At Mercer I had my first experience of the stampede to the refreshment rooms. After our early breakfast, they were a welcome sight. From memory, I think our train was the Auckland to Rotorua Express, as sadly we had to leave it at Frankton Junction and watch it depart without us. Eventually another train pulled in, which we boarded. These carriages seemed so spartan and empty compared to the coaches on the express. Very slowly we made our journey south, stopping at nearly every station. In the late afternoon we arrived at a very quiet Te Kuiti, where my uncle and aunt were waiting to greet us, and take us on to Mapiu where some new experiences awaited this ten year old city-bred girl.

The 25 miles of metal road we had to travel with its endless twists and turns seemed to go on forever. At dusk we reached Mapiu. This aunt and uncle, a childless couple, had moved to a farm cottage down a side road about two miles from the store several months earlier, as the store-keeper’s house was too small for two households. The only form of electricity was from a noisy generator in an outside shed. I was also introduced to the coal range and the “dunny” that night. The next morning I was acquainted with my aunt’s “laundry”, a copper complete with chimney out on its own in a corner of the garden. I soon learnt to walk in the centre of the footbridge spanning a creek about ten feet below, as none of the planks were nailed down. I nearly tipped myself into the creek bed when I stepped near the edge. A keen dahlia grower, my uncle already had a large bed of dahlias in flower. A blaze of colour in an otherwise green countryside.

The store was open Saturday morning, so we set out about 10:30 with Jock the dog to walk there, passing paddocks of sheep and cattle on the way. The countryside was very hilly round there and I wondered how settlers had managed to clear and grass some of it.

The store was a hive of activity with a tremendous range of goods for sale. I could have spent hours looking round the shelves. Leather boots, gumboots and billy cans with lids hung from hooks on the ceiling.

That afternoon I was introduced to cows at close quarters when I was taken to an ajoining farm where our family got their milk daily. The cows were ambling into the yard in front of the milking shed, then I saw them being milked.

Sunday sped by, there was plenty more contryside to see and my first glimpse of the mountains on the central plateau, way, way to the south. Little did I know then that I was going to be Ruapehu’s neighbour in later life for thirteen years.

We had to be up and packed early on Easter Monday for the day long journey back to Auckland in reverse, right down to Mr Storey our taxi driver who was waiting at the station to transport us home.

Changes had started to take place in Mapiu, when I spent a summer holiday there in the 1950’s. This time I was able to go by bus from Auckland to the store door. Also the power had arrived – sort of!! It wasn’t available round the clock. Some nights, my cousin Anne and I would try and stay awake to see the lights flick off twice at 10:55, then be turned off by the Power Board at 11pm for the rest of the night. I don’t know why. Mapiu also a little tarseal by then, it stretched about 50 yards eithe side of the store, which meant I had to take my 2½ year old cousin Peter, down the road to watch the grader at work – something he didn’t tire of.

Seven to eight years ago a friend and I called at Mapiu Store, a very quiet business then, owned by an elderly couple. We bought a memento each, and tried to buy some petrol without success, as the tank was empty. We were told, “There was some there last week.” Mapiu by then had a service station just down the road, so fuel needs were still catered for.

Anne’s brother and family visited us from England three years ago. Whilst here, Anne and her husband took us round the old haunts. They found Mapiu Store had closed down, another country store consigned to New Zealand’s history.

Jeanette Coleman
July 1988