Calling all Burke-Philp descendants

If you are a reader of this blog, and happen to be a descendant of Martin Burke and Ann Philp, we are having a Burke Family Gathering mid-February 2024 in Christchurch. 

Martin and Ann arrived in Lyttelton in February 1864 onboard the Mermaid, with their first child, Mary Burke, my great-grandmother.

This gathering marks 160 years since the Burke family arrived in New Zealand, and will also allow us to view the new memorial plaque for Martin Burke in Sydenham Cemetery. 

You can read more about what's planned for the gathering on this website.

https://burkefamilynz.org/

'Stretcher Bearer' by Peter MacKenzie

Last night I attended the play 'Stretcher Bearer', in Feilding, written and performed by Peter MacKenzie, telling the story of his grandfather Bill Smith. It was a play that reopened the Feilding Little Players Theatre, after major earthquake strengthening work.

Peter MacKenzie has meticulously researched this work, which revolves around the life of Bill Smith, originally a local boy from Taonui, who became a stretcher bearer in WW1. It was a serious work, revolving as it did around the realities of everyday life on the battlefields of WW1, and I am glad I was able to be there with friends, not alone.

I was unprepared for the personal connection I would end up feeling during the performance of this work. Two of my great-uncles died in WW1. James Riordan was wounded in the Battle of the Somme on 22 September 1916, was admitted and transferred to 38 'Cas Clg Stn'- which I now know means Casualty Clearing Station- and subsequently to No 18 General Hospital. He died of his wounds on 11 October 1916 and is buried in Etaples. John Francis Payn was killed in action on 3 October 1918, in the last weeks of the war. He was initially buried in a cemetery near Crevecour-sur-l'Escault, near where huge battles took place over a bridge near a canal, the taking of which was seen as vital towards winning the war.

(I wrote about visiting the cemeteries where both these great-uncles lie back here.)

As it happened, Bill Smith was a stretcher bearer both in the Battle of the Somme, and near the canal where late battles were fought. Stretcher bearers, perhaps even Bill himself, would have carried James Riordan back to the casualty clearing station. And other stretcher bearers would have retrieved the body of John Francis Payn, buried now in Flèsquieres Hill British Cemetery.

I had never before thought of the role of the stretcher bearers in the last days of my two great-uncles. Bill Smith's story added another dimension to my understanding of their wartime experiences. I am grateful to Peter MacKenzie for writing and performing this extraordinary work. And when Bill Smith's grand-daughter-in-law sang the Ode, I could barely hold back my tears.

Waitara to Lepperton Railway Trip

Recently I was in Taranaki for the Garden Festival, and I noticed that one of the 'events' was to take a trip along the Waitara to Lepperton Railway line, run by the Waitara Railway Preservation Society. To be fair, I am not sure I would have got around to taking this trip, except it was... raining... so not ideal for garden viewing. But as it turned out, this was a dose of nostalgia plus for me, and I am so very glad I took the trip.
To put things in context, my Dad, James Kevin Riordan, was a railway guard based at Waitara during my childhood.

One of the events I recalled from childhood, when I was just four, was taking a walk down to the Waitara railway yards from our house, and seeing a wagon backed up against the engine shed. I remember asking Dad why it was there- I must have been familiar enough with the yards to know a wagon wouldn't usually be there. And Dad told me it was so they couldn't steal the train. I thought he was being a bit silly with that answer. But years later I discovered that the train had indeed been taken on a joy ride the previous night, and my father was one of those involved with 'chasing' it.

The railway line to Lepperton forms one of my special memories. When I was of school age, Dad would occasionally ring home in the school holidays if the train was only going as far as Lepperton, and we could hitch a ride in the guard's van. The guard's van door might even be open, and it seemed awfully daring to go near it. I was fascinated to watch as wagons were coupled and uncoupled and as Dad used the lever to switch over the lines that the train was moving on. 

My father, sadly, passed away of a heart attack when I was just eight, but these precious memories are still there.
So, with all that personal history behind me, I boarded the train at Waitara on 3 November 2023 for the trip to Lepperton. It was staffed by enthusiastic members of the Waitara Railway Preservation Society, and I was duly issued a ticket for the trip.

There was a great viewing wagon on the rear, but it was rather too rainy to enjoy it on this trip!

At Lepperton was an exciting part of the journey for me. The Railway Preservation Society had bought the line etc but couldn't travel on the KiwiRail part of the tracks. Where the historic line from Waitara met the Lepperton tracks, a farmer had kindly sold them an adjacent strip of land and they had built a 'deviation'. But to go back to Waitara, it wasn't really safe for the engine to be at the rear, as we had several road intersections to cross, so the engine was allowed to be driven along a section of KiwiRail track, then changed over onto the deviation to be at the front to take the train home to Waitara again.

These kind of movements were exactly the kinds of jobs my father was in charge of as a guard. When I saw the guard rejoin this engine to the carriages, it took me right back to childhood. 

There was no sign left of the Lepperton yards, and no sign of the tall signalling tower. I had actually asked if these were still in existence at the previous year's garden festival and was assured by locals that they did, but no...

We took the journey back to Waitara, over the Waiongana Stream, past the Brixton sidings where the Society has yards to repair buildings and rolling stock etc, and under the overbridge where Big Jim's Hill road passes by.

We passed above my old primary school, St Joseph's Waitara. I am pretty certain this house has been moved here more recently, as I seem to remember looking straight up the hill across paddocks to see the train occasionally passing by while I was at school.

Then finally, just a short distance from the Waitara Railway Station, we passed by the house that my parents built for us, and that we moved into in 1960. It used to have a quarter acre section below it that we played in, and where my father had planted fruit trees of many kinds. (Now there are a couple of townhouses on the lower part of the section.) It made me realise, that every day when Dad left Waitara in the guard's van, whether his journey was to Lepperton or New Plymouth, he saw our family home and was reminded of his young family.

This was a great train trip- highly recommend it- and for me personally, it was a very nostalgic one.
Margaret Riordan
12 November 2023.