Pipiwharauroa

Rangi Puano Moeke

(continued from last month)

Part of our training at Trentham involved mock apprehensions, four cops in one car with one in “pursuit” in another car. The tricks that were played!

I remember one particular training session in which I was the pursuing officerrunning a license check on the driver, who decided to give me the license of one of his comrades acting as a passenger - just wanting to see if I would fall for the guise or pick up on what they’d done. Nope, not this time mate.

The migration North

My days in Wellington came to an end as I was promoted to a Traffic Officer (Car) position in Orewa. For a while, it was just me in my Holden Kingswood in a sole capacity, a short time later I was joined by a Traffic Officer (TO) Motorcycle, his name was Steve Sargent. Then shortly after his arrival we were joined by a Sergeant who managed our area.

Orewa was a great little community being newly developed and in 1977 our youngest child Rangi Puano (Junior) was born, making us a family of 5.

I need to rewind a little at this stage, as before I started my journey into the Ministry of Transport, I’d played rugby for the Black and Whites - The mighty YMP, back home in Gisborne!

Missing the camaraderie of those days, I decided to put on my ‘retired’ boots and started playing for the Silverdale Rubgy Club. They were only a 10 minute drive from Orewa so that saved on petrol and travel time.

Scanning through these old photos (that my wife has carefully filed away) I came across an old “Spot The Ball” competition, reminiscing about when the local newspaper would take a photo of any particular sport - with a ball - and you would have to guess by circling an area inside a grid, where you thought the ball was, in relation to the player. Anna and I were regular entrants to these competitions, feeling that we were pretty well versed in all ball sports.

Well, low and behold this particular entry had been filled out by (yours truly - or was it my wife) and the entry won! Whoever it was, thought it would be a good idea to put our son’s name down on the entry form - Rangi Puano Moeke Jnr.

Already newspaper worthy, at the ripe age of 9 months old!

I’m sure the newspaper results read $5.00, but this payment voucher reads 500 - I can only assume it means 500 cents. Better not show this to Rangi Junior, he might expect a bit of interest after 44 years.

$5.00 was a lot of money back then, it would help pay for my petrol to and from Orewa and Auckland. These days, you would be lucky to pull the lever on the petrol pump - and there goes your $5.00.

Working for the government (MoT) meant that pay days were a fortnightly affair. We would take the kids into Auckland every couple of weeks and ‘shout’ ourselves a Chinese feed and let them experience the big city lights.

The return home

By 1980 I’d returned to Gisborne with my family where we bought our first home in Kaiti.

Knowing the mischief I used to get up to as a teenager, I looked out for jovial drivers, taking the back road down Kaiti Hill to escape a pursuing black and white vehicle. My approach was similar to the policies used in Wellington, whereby I tried to instill in the offenders, particularly the younger ones, the consequences of their