Rob Rattenbury: Move to Whanganui 40 years ago a huge family adventure

It's 40 years this month since the Rattenbury family arrived in Whanganui. Photo / Bevan Conley

OPINION

Coming home to Whanganui from wherever, usually through Pūtiki these days, is comforting, secure. We are home, in our place, where we belong.

It was not always like that. Forty years ago this month, 1983, we arrived in Whanganui in the dark late at night in our 1974 Hillman Avenger GLS with a 7-year-old, a 2-year-old, an enormous German Shepherd and the cat all crammed into the wee yellow beastie.

It had been a long day, watching the contents of our lovely first home being loaded into the back of a huge pantechnicon, not arriving until the next day to unload into a cold, barren police house in Ikitara Rd, with no carpets, no curtains, just blinds, middle of winter with two small children. All our worldly belongings, apart from precious items and personal papers, were stuffed in the back of a truck still in Lower Hutt.

We did not plan some stuff well. We arrived in Whanganui late, a place neither of us knew other than to drive through to Taranaki or, when the wife was small, playing at Kowhai Park on a family holiday. We only knew another couple here, my groomsman and his wife, another cop who had arrived here a year or two before from the Hutt.

When we rode into town in our covered wagon, we sought accommodation at local hotels and motels. Alas, we chose the same night the RSA was hosting its National Indoors Bowls Tournament in Whanganui. The place was awash with bowlers. No room at the inn.

It was about 9pm. The kids needed to be in bed. We were also a bit hungry. The dog needed a run. I found a phone box, remember no mobile phones back then, and rang my mate. Within the hour, the kids were in bed at our friends’ place, fed and asleep.

A huge first day on our new adventure.

Our reasons for leaving Wellington for a place we actually knew little about were many but mostly we wanted out of the rat race. Our lives revolved only around work, both working to make ends meet. We both thought there had to be a better way than this.

The next day we saw our new home for the next few months until we could buy our own place. A plain old state house. Basic. Cold but, thankfully, it had a gas heater so we decided much of the next few months would be camped in the lounge.

The chaps arrived with our furniture eventually. Beds were put up, kitchen stuff sorted, but most items were stowed in one bedroom in storage, still in their cartons. We just unpacked what we thought we would need. This was not going to be our home for long.

We wondered if we had done the right thing. It all sounded a grand plan back in summer when we made the decision. I had to then find a job in the police. Easy for Jen, she was a nurse, just rock up to the matron’s office at the hospital, job waiting.

I looked at vacancies all around the country. We actually considered Hastings but a mate of mine wanted to go there, his hometown, after a year or so overseas so I stood aside for him. Whanganui was it.

After I applied and got the job, we drove up for a look. Seemed a nice town. The people were very friendly. House prices were low but at that time Prime Minister Rob Muldoon had some sort of freeze on wages and loans so finance was not that easy to get.

We walked down Victoria Ave, amazed at all the shops and department stores, all the old hotels still operating. We thought this could be us. It’s quiet, it’s far enough away from extended family for us to live our own lives yet close enough for visits.

The place had a calmness and quietness about it that it has actually, to this day, never lost. An old provincial city comfortable in its own skin. A historic place. No rat race.

The day we shifted in I thought I better report at the police station to tell the local commander I had arrived. I called into Bell St in the evening. The place was deadly quiet, not like my old station which was a form of bedlam most days and nights. I wondered if anyone was in. I rang the bell and was ushered by the telephonist into the senior sergeant’s office to be welcomed by a boss in the middle of his crossword.

“Sergeant Rattenbury, about time, we have been expecting you for a couple of months, glad you could make it.”

“Well gidday to you too,” I thought.

So began what have been the happiest years of our lives.