WILLIAM WOODLEY (1892-1962) by B H Woodley
My father William was born at Glenorchy, Southland on the shores of Lake Wakatipu on 2 May 1892. Glenorchy is on the southern end of the lake and Queenstown is on the northern end of the lake which is the premium tourist area in New Zealand today and is world renown for skiing, snow boarding, river rafting, jet boating, and is close to what was the gold mining area and had rich gold deposits which established Southland in the 1800's.
Queenstown is considered to be the "jewel in the crown" as far as tourism is concerned though when William was born the tourist industry had not been developed as this came later in the early 20th century. However, to establish how William came to be born in New Zealand we need to go back a generation to his grandfather.
The first NZ William was born to William Woodley of Berkshire in Pimlico, London (b. 18/03/1830 d.9/11/1909) and then taken back to the family home for christening in Hampstead Norreys, Berkshire. We also know that William Junior was married in London at Westminster at the church of St. John the Baptist in 1856 to Mary Ann Flory -Gray(b.28/01/1836d.4/01/1926) [1][3] and must have some time after decided to emigrate as the five person family left England on the SS Canterbury[4] on 21/09/1863 and arrived in Lyttleton NZ on 10/01/1864.
Queenstown is considered to be the "jewel in the crown" as far as tourism is concerned though when William was born the tourist industry had not been developed as this came later in the early 20th century. However, to establish how William came to be born in New Zealand we need to go back a generation to his grandfather.
The first NZ William was born to William Woodley of Berkshire in Pimlico, London (b. 18/03/1830 d.9/11/1909) and then taken back to the family home for christening in Hampstead Norreys, Berkshire. We also know that William Junior was married in London at Westminster at the church of St. John the Baptist in 1856 to Mary Ann Flory -Gray(b.28/01/1836d.4/01/1926) [1][3] and must have some time after decided to emigrate as the five person family left England on the SS Canterbury[4] on 21/09/1863 and arrived in Lyttleton NZ on 10/01/1864.
They brought a family of three children [4] named Eliza(1857-1934), William(1860-1871) and Henry(1861-1924) ranging in ages from five to one. Mary Ann the mother was pregnant when they sailed and later gave birth to Caroline. Eliza married William Hide. Caroline married David Blair and emigrated to Vancouver, Canada.
William's son Henry was my grandfather who married Elizabeth Wells of Benjeroop, Victoria Australia on 21/12/1884 [6] who was a Scots lass from Blantyre, Lanarkshire and she is buried 10-05-1938 at the Waimari Cemetery, Christchurch. The marriage of Henry (1861-1924) and Elizabeth (1862-1938) produced my father William (1892-1962) his brother James (1886-1957) and five girls, Marion(1889-1950), Una (1891-1973), Ruth (1896-1963), Evelyn (1898-1983) and Bessie (1902-1989).The family business in New Zealand was pastoral farming as owner/occupiers and probably as tenant or labourer farmers in Berkshire and William Junior is recorded as a builders labourer on a birth certificate when he was working in London. The first NZ William farmed at Rangiora and Hilton shortly after emigrating.
The Woodley side of the family had a varied lifestyle in their settlement days as Henry farmed at Hilton and Winchester out of Temuka where father went to school, then Henry went into partnership to purchase a large land holding know as the Earnslaw Station, Glenorchy/Paradise ( the house is still in use and the holding is not far from Queenstown) and then Mossburn close to Lumsden, Southland, and Orch Gardens near Five Rivers in Lumsden also in Southland.
Williams father Henry was shown as living in Thornbury Southland when the two brothers were conscripted to the first world war in Egypt and Palestine and left on 23 September 1916 as part of the 17th Reinforcements.The two brothers William [no.16462] and James [no.20590] served in the Canterbury Mounted Rifles in World War One in Egypt and Palestine, William as a medical orderly and served from 1916 until 1919 even though he had contracted malaria in the earlier stage of the War. James married Margaret Fraser also from Glenorchy close to the Earnslaw sheep station and their wedding photo is now part of the Glenorchy Museum. James eventually moved to the Masterton -Featherston district and is buried in the Masterton cemetery with a soldiers headstone and plaque. He was resident with his wife Margaret Constance at the Teversham Hotel, Fielding when he enlisted for war service and sailed with his brother William as part of the 17th Reinforcements on 23 September 1916 returning in 1918 via Australia. According to Army records at Defence HQ James had several bouts of sickness though it may not have been part of the malaria contagion which had spread throughout many of NZ soldiers in the Middle East.
Most of the Henry Woodley family stayed in the South Island with Marion Una and Ruth marrying into local well known families - the Sharpe family in Glenorchy-Queenstown, the Aitken family in the Rees Valley and Christchurch, and the Chartres family who under a Crown lease operate the large Te Anau Downs holding in the lake area.The Sharpe family also lost a son Gerald Woodley Sharpe and Army sapper in Greece who died 18-05-41 and is at the C.W.G.C. war memorial graves, Athens, Greece.[10]
When William returned from his war servce he was a high country sheep farmer working at the Earnslaw Sheep Station [partly owned by his father in partnership] on the shores of Lake Wakatipu and later Mount Aspiring in the Wanaka area.This must have been hard and tiring work mustering sheep in difficult mountainous terrain and in at times freezing conditions. It appears to me that this is the reason he decided to move north as he had complained to me about the difficult conditons when mustering in the high country, so he decided to take the plunge and purchase his own farm near Wanganui.
The two brothers William and James eventually moved north to farm outside of Wanganui and Masterton.Sister Bessie was unmarried and worked in the Sanitarium Health Food factory, living at Papanui in Christchurch with Henry and Elizabeth her parents, and Evelyn moved to Matamata with her husband Clement Goodall and then Tauranga where she owned a small cafe/milk bar and he a small Mount wharf general store until retirement in the 1960. The Goodall family lost a son Henry Noel a fighter pilot (Sgt.RNZAF S/N 391350) in the European war on 5-06-1941. He was a co-pilot in a Wellington bomber based at Harwell and Newmarket in the UK to March 1941 and then at Maleme Crete and conducted over 21 operational flights over Holland, France, Germany and Bulgaria. He was killed in a flare path accident on the ground and died at RAF Hospital Shallufa, Egypt. His name is enscribed at the Ismailia Egypt war graves cemetary located a short distance from Port Said.[13]
My mothers father Francis Henry Bush had moved the family from Devonport Auckland where he worked for the local Gas Company to a general store at Te Poi in the Waikato area and my mother finished her schooling at Te Poi and was employed as an apprentice tailoress in Matamata by Clem Goodall who had married sister Evelyn - both now deceased - where she met my father William and married before moving to the rather run down farm purchased on a soldiers rehab loan in the Maxwell -Okehu district of Wanganui. They were married at the Dublin Street Methodist Church, Wanganui on the 6th November 1928 my mother at the age of nineteen years though father was in his late thirties.My sister Elizabeth known as Betty was born in 1931 and I was born late in 1936 at Wanganui and my early years until 1953 (17 years) were spent on a 230 acre mixed farm – mainly sheep and cattle farm - on a Maxwell Okehu property with main road access nearly half way between Kai Iwi and Maxwell townships.
As the younger member of a four person family and the only male child as my sister was born five years earlier, I was expected to manage the farm eventually and there was some pressure on me to conform to the farming persona lifestyle. My mother was a natural town dweller who had followed father to the rehab farm shortly after a marriage when introduced to my father by Matamata relatives in the Waikato and who almost certainly had some difficulty in becoming accustomed to the country lifestyle on a small mixed farm which took many years to convert to a profitable farming unit. The previous and first occupant of the farm had reputedly left the farm insolvent or incapable of farming the block after taking possession of a new farm house but according to a diary he had kept it appears did not spend much energy on farming or improvements.
My father appears to have paid seventeen pounds an acre [about 230 acres or 93 hectares more or less] in 1928 for the property which even then was not considered a lot of money and with the farm house only seven years old since purchase according to the “Maxwell Nukumaru- A History of the Districts” (compiled by G Abbott and published 1998 by the Matthews family and a local farmers Committee, Maxwell.)
My early years were spent at the Maxwell Primary School which was the corner stone of the local farming community which in the pre-war days was almost self contained with a Railway Station, market gardener, resident Ministry of Works road worker, Local Hall, General Store and Petrol Station and an Engineering Workshop. The township itself was on the main highway from Wanganui to New Plymouth and was some distance from the Railway Station which was really a dot on the map. Sadly to say and in keeping with the downturn of the rural community in recent years, the township has virtually disappeared and the School was closed down some years ago, and in 1997 and merged with the Kai Iwi Community School when the roll at Maxwell had been reduced to only eleven.
William was a bit of an innovator for he had pigs and a dairy herd for a short period, possibly one or two years, but decided the returns did not justify the outlay and labour. We took the separated milk and cream to the Kai Iwi dairy factory in an old Essex car converted truck which had a shimmy if the vehicle travelled over 30mph.
We also had other money making schemes such as killing possums and then curing their skins when the overseas prices were high, on which we made about 400 pounds in 1950 or about $4000 in 2010, and later delivering field mushrooms to the local dairy factory for preservation in tins until it shut down operations. I was a good shot with the 22 bore rifle from the age of fifteen or earlier so this proved useful when national service was introduced around 1955. As we lived off the land and had a large vegetable garden and a refrigerator for home kill lamb and mutton our living expenses were minimal so the great depression of the twenties did not prove a major issue according to my parents. In those days a man would work on the farm for his food and keep. Some local farmers also grew grain crops such as maize barley corn and root vegetables such as parsnips and potatoes kumara taro and swedes.
I biked to school when I was in my later years at primary and some of my friends even came by horse as the school had a horse paddock. As a result of biking my fitness and muscles were well developed and strong by the age or eight years or so and helping around the farm with the seasonal jobs such as docking and branding lambs and mustering for shearing sheep and baling wool kept me at least physically fit.
Our neighbours the JG Alexander neighbour family bred and trained race horses ( the Cranleigh Stud ) were considered world class and he was made a life member of the NZ Thoroughbred Breeders Association and president of the Wanganui Jockey Club. He and his son Tom were well known in racing and thorough bred circles here and overseas for some forty years.
When we lived on the farm in the thirties to fifties a respectable income could be made from a small holding of some 230 acres. Today it has been absorbed by adjoining properties and the old farm house is now part of a lifestyle block which I visited in 2004. The farm value would be negligible if sold at current prices, though it was sold for top dollar when farming was at its peak value. This is a sad reflection on the changes taking place but probably reflects the increasing reliance placed on artificial fibre materials and the drift to towns and industries. Wool prices appeared to have peaked during the last war in Korea or possibly during the Vietnam conflict in which the USA and its allies including New Zealand and Australia played a prominent roll.
My upbringing was in some ways a contrast between the farm and the country as my sister and I were shipped around from school to school and town to country. I was a pupil at both the Maxwell and Kai Iwi primary schools, the latter for a fairly short period when my Mother had a grudge against the local headmaster at Maxwell. I also spent time at an Intermediate School in Wanganui (Queens Park) now closed when my mother decided to go into business as a dressmaker in Wanganui. The school mistress [Ms Treadwell] was particularly vicious handing out physical punishment for those giving the wrong answers or if she was in a bad mood- today a sacking offence for the teacher! At primary school I formed firm friendships with local farmers lads at Nukumaru and Maxwell who I visited frequently in the weekends and had a further year or two at Maxwell before my Secondary education started.
My parents William and Anne and our family moved to Tauranga from Wanganui when father William retired in 1954 and he died on 23 November 1962 after a family separation when for a short time he was living in Christchurch close to his relatives.
William is buried at the 16th Avenue Tauranga Cemetery with a soldiers plaque as head stone, and mothers ashes are located and marked in the new rose garden section of the Pyes Pa Road Cemetery, Tauranga.
William's son Henry was my grandfather who married Elizabeth Wells of Benjeroop, Victoria Australia on 21/12/1884 [6] who was a Scots lass from Blantyre, Lanarkshire and she is buried 10-05-1938 at the Waimari Cemetery, Christchurch. The marriage of Henry (1861-1924) and Elizabeth (1862-1938) produced my father William (1892-1962) his brother James (1886-1957) and five girls, Marion(1889-1950), Una (1891-1973), Ruth (1896-1963), Evelyn (1898-1983) and Bessie (1902-1989).The family business in New Zealand was pastoral farming as owner/occupiers and probably as tenant or labourer farmers in Berkshire and William Junior is recorded as a builders labourer on a birth certificate when he was working in London. The first NZ William farmed at Rangiora and Hilton shortly after emigrating.
The Woodley side of the family had a varied lifestyle in their settlement days as Henry farmed at Hilton and Winchester out of Temuka where father went to school, then Henry went into partnership to purchase a large land holding know as the Earnslaw Station, Glenorchy/Paradise ( the house is still in use and the holding is not far from Queenstown) and then Mossburn close to Lumsden, Southland, and Orch Gardens near Five Rivers in Lumsden also in Southland.
Williams father Henry was shown as living in Thornbury Southland when the two brothers were conscripted to the first world war in Egypt and Palestine and left on 23 September 1916 as part of the 17th Reinforcements.The two brothers William [no.16462] and James [no.20590] served in the Canterbury Mounted Rifles in World War One in Egypt and Palestine, William as a medical orderly and served from 1916 until 1919 even though he had contracted malaria in the earlier stage of the War. James married Margaret Fraser also from Glenorchy close to the Earnslaw sheep station and their wedding photo is now part of the Glenorchy Museum. James eventually moved to the Masterton -Featherston district and is buried in the Masterton cemetery with a soldiers headstone and plaque. He was resident with his wife Margaret Constance at the Teversham Hotel, Fielding when he enlisted for war service and sailed with his brother William as part of the 17th Reinforcements on 23 September 1916 returning in 1918 via Australia. According to Army records at Defence HQ James had several bouts of sickness though it may not have been part of the malaria contagion which had spread throughout many of NZ soldiers in the Middle East.
Most of the Henry Woodley family stayed in the South Island with Marion Una and Ruth marrying into local well known families - the Sharpe family in Glenorchy-Queenstown, the Aitken family in the Rees Valley and Christchurch, and the Chartres family who under a Crown lease operate the large Te Anau Downs holding in the lake area.The Sharpe family also lost a son Gerald Woodley Sharpe and Army sapper in Greece who died 18-05-41 and is at the C.W.G.C. war memorial graves, Athens, Greece.[10]
When William returned from his war servce he was a high country sheep farmer working at the Earnslaw Sheep Station [partly owned by his father in partnership] on the shores of Lake Wakatipu and later Mount Aspiring in the Wanaka area.This must have been hard and tiring work mustering sheep in difficult mountainous terrain and in at times freezing conditions. It appears to me that this is the reason he decided to move north as he had complained to me about the difficult conditons when mustering in the high country, so he decided to take the plunge and purchase his own farm near Wanganui.
The two brothers William and James eventually moved north to farm outside of Wanganui and Masterton.Sister Bessie was unmarried and worked in the Sanitarium Health Food factory, living at Papanui in Christchurch with Henry and Elizabeth her parents, and Evelyn moved to Matamata with her husband Clement Goodall and then Tauranga where she owned a small cafe/milk bar and he a small Mount wharf general store until retirement in the 1960. The Goodall family lost a son Henry Noel a fighter pilot (Sgt.RNZAF S/N 391350) in the European war on 5-06-1941. He was a co-pilot in a Wellington bomber based at Harwell and Newmarket in the UK to March 1941 and then at Maleme Crete and conducted over 21 operational flights over Holland, France, Germany and Bulgaria. He was killed in a flare path accident on the ground and died at RAF Hospital Shallufa, Egypt. His name is enscribed at the Ismailia Egypt war graves cemetary located a short distance from Port Said.[13]
My mothers father Francis Henry Bush had moved the family from Devonport Auckland where he worked for the local Gas Company to a general store at Te Poi in the Waikato area and my mother finished her schooling at Te Poi and was employed as an apprentice tailoress in Matamata by Clem Goodall who had married sister Evelyn - both now deceased - where she met my father William and married before moving to the rather run down farm purchased on a soldiers rehab loan in the Maxwell -Okehu district of Wanganui. They were married at the Dublin Street Methodist Church, Wanganui on the 6th November 1928 my mother at the age of nineteen years though father was in his late thirties.My sister Elizabeth known as Betty was born in 1931 and I was born late in 1936 at Wanganui and my early years until 1953 (17 years) were spent on a 230 acre mixed farm – mainly sheep and cattle farm - on a Maxwell Okehu property with main road access nearly half way between Kai Iwi and Maxwell townships.
As the younger member of a four person family and the only male child as my sister was born five years earlier, I was expected to manage the farm eventually and there was some pressure on me to conform to the farming persona lifestyle. My mother was a natural town dweller who had followed father to the rehab farm shortly after a marriage when introduced to my father by Matamata relatives in the Waikato and who almost certainly had some difficulty in becoming accustomed to the country lifestyle on a small mixed farm which took many years to convert to a profitable farming unit. The previous and first occupant of the farm had reputedly left the farm insolvent or incapable of farming the block after taking possession of a new farm house but according to a diary he had kept it appears did not spend much energy on farming or improvements.
My father appears to have paid seventeen pounds an acre [about 230 acres or 93 hectares more or less] in 1928 for the property which even then was not considered a lot of money and with the farm house only seven years old since purchase according to the “Maxwell Nukumaru- A History of the Districts” (compiled by G Abbott and published 1998 by the Matthews family and a local farmers Committee, Maxwell.)
My early years were spent at the Maxwell Primary School which was the corner stone of the local farming community which in the pre-war days was almost self contained with a Railway Station, market gardener, resident Ministry of Works road worker, Local Hall, General Store and Petrol Station and an Engineering Workshop. The township itself was on the main highway from Wanganui to New Plymouth and was some distance from the Railway Station which was really a dot on the map. Sadly to say and in keeping with the downturn of the rural community in recent years, the township has virtually disappeared and the School was closed down some years ago, and in 1997 and merged with the Kai Iwi Community School when the roll at Maxwell had been reduced to only eleven.
William was a bit of an innovator for he had pigs and a dairy herd for a short period, possibly one or two years, but decided the returns did not justify the outlay and labour. We took the separated milk and cream to the Kai Iwi dairy factory in an old Essex car converted truck which had a shimmy if the vehicle travelled over 30mph.
We also had other money making schemes such as killing possums and then curing their skins when the overseas prices were high, on which we made about 400 pounds in 1950 or about $4000 in 2010, and later delivering field mushrooms to the local dairy factory for preservation in tins until it shut down operations. I was a good shot with the 22 bore rifle from the age of fifteen or earlier so this proved useful when national service was introduced around 1955. As we lived off the land and had a large vegetable garden and a refrigerator for home kill lamb and mutton our living expenses were minimal so the great depression of the twenties did not prove a major issue according to my parents. In those days a man would work on the farm for his food and keep. Some local farmers also grew grain crops such as maize barley corn and root vegetables such as parsnips and potatoes kumara taro and swedes.
I biked to school when I was in my later years at primary and some of my friends even came by horse as the school had a horse paddock. As a result of biking my fitness and muscles were well developed and strong by the age or eight years or so and helping around the farm with the seasonal jobs such as docking and branding lambs and mustering for shearing sheep and baling wool kept me at least physically fit.
Our neighbours the JG Alexander neighbour family bred and trained race horses ( the Cranleigh Stud ) were considered world class and he was made a life member of the NZ Thoroughbred Breeders Association and president of the Wanganui Jockey Club. He and his son Tom were well known in racing and thorough bred circles here and overseas for some forty years.
When we lived on the farm in the thirties to fifties a respectable income could be made from a small holding of some 230 acres. Today it has been absorbed by adjoining properties and the old farm house is now part of a lifestyle block which I visited in 2004. The farm value would be negligible if sold at current prices, though it was sold for top dollar when farming was at its peak value. This is a sad reflection on the changes taking place but probably reflects the increasing reliance placed on artificial fibre materials and the drift to towns and industries. Wool prices appeared to have peaked during the last war in Korea or possibly during the Vietnam conflict in which the USA and its allies including New Zealand and Australia played a prominent roll.
My upbringing was in some ways a contrast between the farm and the country as my sister and I were shipped around from school to school and town to country. I was a pupil at both the Maxwell and Kai Iwi primary schools, the latter for a fairly short period when my Mother had a grudge against the local headmaster at Maxwell. I also spent time at an Intermediate School in Wanganui (Queens Park) now closed when my mother decided to go into business as a dressmaker in Wanganui. The school mistress [Ms Treadwell] was particularly vicious handing out physical punishment for those giving the wrong answers or if she was in a bad mood- today a sacking offence for the teacher! At primary school I formed firm friendships with local farmers lads at Nukumaru and Maxwell who I visited frequently in the weekends and had a further year or two at Maxwell before my Secondary education started.
My parents William and Anne and our family moved to Tauranga from Wanganui when father William retired in 1954 and he died on 23 November 1962 after a family separation when for a short time he was living in Christchurch close to his relatives.
William is buried at the 16th Avenue Tauranga Cemetery with a soldiers plaque as head stone, and mothers ashes are located and marked in the new rose garden section of the Pyes Pa Road Cemetery, Tauranga.
NOTE: Refer to the page of this site for source references. Most information shown above is provided by BDM registries in NZ, Australia, and UK and from the NZ Defence Forces war records and Archives New Zealand. The geographical information is provided by family historians and may also rely upon the authors opinion. All information is subject to copyright laws.