They didn't make it in time and Phyll was born somewhere between White Pine Bush and Napier.
It was a hard life at White Pines, on the Napier Wairoa Rd. There was no car, power or telephone and the family never saw a doctor, all five children surviving measles, chickenpox, jaundice, influenza and injuries.
In 1925 Percy arranged for the Education Board to build a school nearby and Phyll became one of the first pupils at Kaiwaka School.
In those days the children used to hand-milk 17 cows before and after school. Holidays were spent at Waipatiki Beach, with the family in an old horse-drawn wagon and Phyll and sister Eileen walking the house cow down the 8-mile dirt track to the beach. Eventually Percy bought an old Armstrong Sidley car and the family made a trip to Taupo, but the children had to walk behind the car on the steep hills.
On February 3, 1931 Percy was shearing when there was a mighty roar and the shearing shed collapsed around him. The land was rolling and shaking and he raced to the farm house, also collapsed. Rita had been thrown against a wire fence but was unharmed. He ran to the school and found the children huddled together, surrounded by large cracks in the ground.
There was smoke pouring into the sky above Napier and with no buildings, Percy strung canvas over the clothes line for shelter. After a large aftershock on February 13 the family became hysterical. They headed South but found Napier had hardly any drinking water and the main camp had dysentry. Trains out of Hastings were taking evacuees so they kept going South, getting to Palmerston North at 2am where they slept on seats at the racecourse. Several days later they reached family in Timaru.
Percy returned to rebuild the farm and the family eventually followed, but disaster struck again in 1938 when 23 inches of rain fell in three days, the homestead was surrounded and farm buildings, fences, equipment and dogs swept away. Bridges and roads were gone and the family isolated for weeks. Running out of food Percy spelled out "help" on the roof with wet firewood and a plane dropped supplies.
Phyll met Harold Fraser before WWII, marrying him in 1944 when he returned from overseas.
They farmed in Willow Flat and then Putorino and had five children. On retiring they moved to Napier and started to travel all over the world.
After Harold passed away Phyll eventually remarried, but her second husband Colin died in 2000. Phyll still enjoyed travelling and went to London on her own when she was 80. Now, she lives with daughter June in CHB in a home surrounded by farmland and animals.
