29/04/2026
Sincere condolences to Betty's family and friends, especially her best friend and life partner, Pip. I interviewed Betty about her parents, Mavis and Ken Green, when I was gathering history for the opening of renovated Oropi Memorial Hall. It seems fitting to share this with you all. Moana Bianchin (Hodge)
Mum and Dad moved to Oropi in 1946 from Whakamaramara. They bought land on the west face of Mount Misery down to the corner of Ohauiti and McPhail Road. They subdivided off half of the property on the Mount Misery side and sold it to Eric Brogden and family. Eric supervised and did much of the building of the 1953 Oropi Memorial Hall. There were four children; Kelvin, Betty, Trevor and Ross.
We supplied cream to the Tauranga Dairy Factory which was on the corner of Eleventh Ave and Devonport Road, now the site of the Hauraki Company of the Defense Force. Each supplier had a number painted on their cream can. Ours was L37. We milked about 20 cows twice a day by hand and later bought a milking machine plant driven by a Lister Stationary Engine. We also had an Anderson Engine which pumped water from the river and another that drove the sheep shearing plant. We separated the cream from the skim milk and fed 3 or 4 pigs with the skim milk.
There was no power or telephone in 1946 in McPhail Rd. When the phone was finally connected we were on a party line of 11 families from the Ohauiti Rd end. Some people “hogged” the phone more than others. Our phone number was 2977-Z. When the phone rang for us, our ring was long-long-short-short _ _ . . Which is Morse Code for Z. Power was eventually supplied from Ohauiti - all families had to pay towards the cost and pay a guaranteed amount regardless of usage.
Mum took over driving the school run before there were buses from Mrs Weightman in approx. 1949. She drove the families dark green 1934 Oldsmobile. I remember helping her do the lambing beat for Doug Burling on McPhail Road on the way to school when I was about four, when he wasn’t well. We would check the ewes at lambing time on the way home from the morning run to school. In the afternoon we would leave home early and do the lambing beat before our first school pick up, and report to Mr Burling who lived in the Thistlewaite cottage behind today’s Oropi Rural Meat premises.
When we went to high school we boarded in town with Mr and Mrs Dawkins Monday to Friday, and came home for the weekends. The Oropi School had a horse paddock in front of the lawsoniana hedge, approx. where the current west rugby goal posts are now. In the 1950s Freda Pio, Linda Rogers, and I would sometimes ride to school on our horses. Mum Dad and I bought the farm on the corner of Oropi Road and Oropi Gorge Road from Noel Chittock in 1983. Mum and Dad built the house on the Oropi Gorge side of the farm and Pip and I lived in the Kensington house which was the original Oropi School house in 1899. [Aside: Graham Oliver’s mother was a Kensington.] Oropi Rural Meats began their home-kill business in 1990 on the site of the Patterson’s (then Chittocks) cowshed. [Aside: Wesley Fleming’s mother was a Patterson.] The Pattersons came here in 1928 from Ireland. You can still see a steel leg rope eyelet from the old cowshed in the back of the Rural Meats premise which would have been used to tether the cows during milking.
Local legend has it that Poodle Ake would stay overnight in the lean-to beside the Pattersons house so he could get up early and help milk the cows first thing in the morning. The area we lived in was called the Waoku (pronounced locally as the Wargoo).
Joe Monk, the Principal of Oropi School, lived in the school house with his family. They had a house cow which they kept in the school horse paddock. The school boys took turns to milk the cow. She loved eating paper and all children were told not to feed her paper, however when Mr Monk caught the boys feeding her paper (as boys do) they were given the strap. Once when we burnt some paper rubbish in the horse paddock the cow walked over the fire and ate the paper.
Kelvin lives in Tauranga now and Trevor, Ross and I still live in Oropi.
Betty Green, 2016
