Histories

ADDRESS AT LLOYD’S FUNERAL

Lloyd was my cousin. Our fathers were identical twins. Lloyd and I were the same age and his sister, Pam, the same age as my sister, Jill. As children we spent lots of time together and, when I was at primary school, I spent most of my school holidays here, in Woodlands, with Lloyd.

Uncle Bert, at that time, owned the Woodlands butchers shop which, in later life, Lloyd took over. The grocer shop next door, was owned by our grandfather, Charles Henry Wyeth (known to his grandchildren as Gaga—the name Lloyd adopted when he had grandchildren). The 2 of us went out with Gaga, occasionally, when he delivered groceries around the district. Our great grandfather Charles Wyeth was born in Wellington, in 1843, and in 1869 he came down to Woodlands, where he later married. He and his wife had 12 children—6 of each, and, when I first came to stay here, Woodlands was full of Wyeths—the last of our bloodline to live here, was Lloyd.

Woodlands was a fun place to be in, with Lloyd!

My memories go back to when his family lived in the old house attached to our grandfather’s grocer shop and, under Lloyd’s leadership, the blind leading the blind, we explored Woodlands, including the old bakeshop, where the pub now stands, and the abandoned factory, near where this church is, which, coincidentally, is on the site where, from 1868, the Woodlands meat canning factory, our ancestors were tinsmiths in, stood.
Lloyd’s family later shifted to a house not far from the Woodlands Railway station and, from there, Lloyd took me:-

1. Swimming in a muddy swimming hole, in the Waihopai creek, with lots of other Woodlands children.
2. Off to his father’s slaughter house, to watch a butcher at work
3. And, on one occasion, camping in a tent Lloyd had made, of scrim, by a bend in the creek below the house— but, like all good campers, we went home for our meals.
4. We also spent a night sleeping in an underground hut he had dug in a paddock behind their home.
5. And, several times, we set fire to gorse in farmers’ paddocks as we walked, across country to visit the family shops-Lloyd had the matches!

Occasionally, when I was staying with them in Woodlands, Aunty Daisy, Lloyd’s mother, would shout us a trip into the cinema, in Invercargill, which meant us catching the train at the Woodlands Railway Station and leaving the film (often before it had finished) to catch the 4pm train back to Woodlands.  Lloyd reminded me, not too many months before he died, of the time that he missed the 4pm train because he had to see the end of the film-- he then walked to our place in Chapman Street, where he stayed the night, and his father picked him up next day—I don’t think he was very popular for that!

Our childhood was spent before OSH was invented, which is why no-one thought it strange when we children, there were probably 6 of us all together, sat on a rug, in the back of Uncle Bert’s butcher’s van (no windows) when they went over from Woodlands to visit Aunty Daisy’s family in Hedgehope, at various times—this was before they owned a car.

The Lloyd I knew in those years, was a bit of a daredevil, fun loving, adventurous, and, to me, then, worldly wise-he has left me with lots of memories—memories I will always cherish!