Meet Irene Thomas our Secretary

I spent my early years on a farm in Puaha Valley, Banks Peninsula.    We were a family of seven children and I loved every aspect of farm life. I would do any of the outside chores without being told but I hated drying dishes. As you can imagine, it came as a great shock when I started high school and lived in a hostel in Christchurch with 70 other girls.

 My year and a half there was a very unhappy time. Fortunately when I was half-way through the 4^th form year my parents moved to Oamaru. I left school in my 16^th year and started work as a grocery assistant in Farmers Department Store. Two years later I moved to a sports depot /government tourist agency and then, until we married, I worked at Polytechnic, which sold manchester, haberdashery, furniture and clothing.

 The next few years kept me home-bound looking after our three children and in 1969 we moved to Nelson.

I began work at the Packhouse in Nayland Road when it opened and worked there each apple season for 17 years. I enjoyed working in the despatch department taping cartons and later operating sealing machines. The first year was certainly an eye-opener for a sheltered wife and mother!

 Les and I have enjoyed our ‘retirement’. In 1990 we began an adventure that took us to Australia for ten winters. Les’ dream had been to drive big tractors so he did just that working on farms in Western Australia. We worked on one farm for eight seeding seasons and two others for a season

each. He drove round in 500 acre paddocks for 10-15 hour days ploughing, fire-harrowing, drilling or direct-seeding. I just did anything that came along. There was always something interesting and varied going on. I think the favourite thing for me was raising pet lambs.

When we finished the season each year we would travel around Australia and then come home about October for the summer.

 The first time I was a secretary I was seventeen. I think it was my brother who got me into being secretary/treasurer for the Oamaru Badminton Club but no one had told me that a couple of months later the New Zealand championships were being held and all these hoards of registrations started coming in so I was very much ‘thrown in at the deep end’. Over the years I served in this capacity for kindergarten and school parents meetings and church leaders’ meetings and conferences.  The past seven years I have been involved in setting up and administering our Annesbrook Church library and Resource Centre but retired in December of last year. I have just remembered! About 20 years ago, I vowed that my secretarial skills had dried up and I wasn’t going to do any more minutes – ever.
Oh well.      Irene