Community

"In the little community there were all sorts of organisations and everybody seemed to be on them and everybody helped everybody else, like the Red Cross, the Lions Club and the Rotary Club and the A & P Show committee, and they had this annual show every year where everybody put their produce in like you do at the Winter Show in Hamilton. And one year I thought, oh, I could make a sponge and I'd put a sponge in and I thought oh this'll be good, and I'd asked my mothers opinion, is that in long enough, shall I take it out? Whatever. Put the sponge in, and won first prize. And of course I was most taken aback when they had `Mrs I Brown' on it, and I was only in my teens"

Used to have an axemans carnival at Waotu, with stalls to sell things to help the community. The brass bands played at them, they were quite social events, with merry-go-rounds, ferris wheel, and dodgems.