Interview with Cora and Charles Bullock

Charles Bullock recalls earliest memory, replacing kerosene lights with electricity; travelling around the district in the Rotowaro Band; working in the mine on the bends of the rope-roads, pit top, clipping, trucking and on face; effect on health; arguments with management; disputes over wet time; making up weight illegally in skips; management avoiding dust time; comparison of Rotowaro and Pukemiro mines; more on deputies; compares pay between mines; travelling to the mine; hours worked; compares work in mines then and now.

Cora Bullock describes Rotowaro School; Pukemiro Junction; going to the technical institute in Ngaruawahia; walking long distances; hours worked at home; working at the Rotowaro Post Office; facilities at Rotowaro; scavaging bottles as a child in the Depression (1930s); going to movies in Huntly as teenager; dances; billiard room in old Rotowaro Hall and alcohol.

Charles Bullock talks about sneaking alcohol into dances; the Glen Afton disaster and accidents and deaths at Rotowaro; falls in the mine; removing pillars; exemption from war service; Welsh miners singing; working in the Huntly East Mine; putting up power poles at Rotowaro and the carbonisation works.

Cora Bullock discusses the flax mill at Rotowaro; raising children; the Country Women's Institute; the medical service at Rotowaro; the 1951 strike; shifting house, local Maori families.

Venue - Huntly

Interviewer(s) - Jamie Mackay

Venue - 200 Hakanoa Street, Huntly

Arrangement: Tape numbers - OHC-004402

Quantity: 1 C90 cassette(s). 1 printed abstract(s). 1 interview(s). 1.28 Hours and minutes Duration.

Finding Aids: Abstract Available - abstracting complete AB 733 - also contains excerpts of tape transcripts.

Original recordings not available for playback. Surrogate copies will be provided.

Alternative form available: Digital copies of the recording and abstract are also available in the Library's Reading Room

Listening copies OHLCD-1455,OHLCD-1456