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Pat Hewitt came to New Zealand under a scheme which introduced former
English public school boys to the land. The Depression of the 1930's in England however put paid to Pat Hewitt joining the landed gentry. He tells his story to Jack Perkins.
On arrival in Wellington the English Public School Association sent Pat to work on a dairy farm at Te Awamutu, a gruelling job that ended after three months. He then followed up a letter of introduction in Havelock North however the earthquake hit and he was sent down to Napier to house sit for a week during the aftershocks.
After receiving a request to report to the secretary of the EPSA in Palmerston he was advised to head back to England due to a poor report from the dairy farmer. Pat chose to go it alone and sought work north of Auckland for a year with an ex-bushman who taught him fencing and bush clearing.
He spent the next three years milking cows by hand in Tangowahine in exchange for board and made cash by digging up kauri gum to sell in Dargaville. He talks about how they sowed basic slag as a means to improve the soil but caused ill health.
The Employment Agency in Auckland found him a mechanised dairy farm position in the Waikato which he hated. He left in 1939, got married and headed to the Hawkes Bay after being rejected for war service due to his poor eyesight. Pat finally settled in Takapau in the 1940s when it was thriving. Fifty-two years on he reflects on the rural community's decline.