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50 years as (mostly) Kiwis BY GERALD FORD
Five siblings who moved to Wairarapa from England 50 years ago reunited in the region this month to celebrate the jubilee anniversary of the move. The Harper family, led by parents Ian and Prue, emigrated to Masterton in 1967, with Mr Harper taking up a job teaching at Hadlow Preparatory School, then an allboys school. The youngest child was then 9 and the oldest Marilyn (now Totman) was 18. Travel had been nothing new to them, Mrs Totman related. Mr Harper had worked with the United Kingdom’s Colonial Service and four of the siblings were born in Sarawak, Borneo, and the fifth in Zambia. Every two-and-a-half years, the family would travel back to the UK, usually by ship, to see both sets of grandparents with whom they also kept in touch by letter. “We did have a very privileged childhood actually – although there were about 12 different schools,” Mrs Totman said. After Zambia gained independence in 1964, Mr Harper moved the family back the United Kingdom where he was a school principal in Somerset. “They lived abroad for so long, they couldn’t settle in England. They found the class system difficult, and they hated the cold,” Mrs Totman said. The family emigrated to New Zealand as “10-pound Poms”, a term that referred to assisted immigration schemes developed by the Australian and New Zealand governments after World War II. “The story is he (Dad) went to London and couldn’t find the Australian Embassy so he went to the New Zealand Embassy instead. So on that whim we ended up in New Zealand,” Mrs Totman said. The immigration took “so long to be
CONTINUED ON PAGE 3 The Harper siblings with their parents Ian and Prue Harper, as photographed by the Wairarapa Times-Age on arrival in Masterton in 1967. Children from left Marilyn, 18, Olivia, 14, Clare, 9, Jack, 11, and Scilla, 17. PHOTO/SUPPLIED
approved” and by the time it was, young Marilyn was 18 years old and had begun her nursing training. “And then somebody said to me, ‘Are you going too?’ and I thought, ‘I suppose they have hospitals in New Zealand”. The Harpers were one of the earlier families to emigrate by airplane – 36 hours of flying with five stops including a night in
Hong Kong. After a few months in Masterton they moved to a small farm block at Dalefield. Mr Harper continued teaching at Hadlow school until he retired, also coaching rugby and cricket. Her father was “a very unusual and innovative teacher” – remembered well by former pupils at his funeral some years
ago, Mrs Totman said. “So many remembered him and his quirky, eccentric, English ways”. The reunion came about because “my youngest sister (Clare Harper-Lee) said, ‘Come on, it’s been 50 years on May 6 …’ and so they came, one from Australia and one from Northland, and we had a hilarious weekend.”
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