Day 5 Having a Feilding Day

By the numbers

2 bus’

2 archive centres

14.51 kms

17,886 steps

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the weather as I was going to spend all day in Feilding. It could just start raining 20 mins up the road for all I would know. The sky looked clear, but there was strong wind. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt and my new hat with a flap to protect my neck from the sun. I might look dorky, but I should have been wearing it yesterday as I got sunburnt then. I had the rest of my dinner from the night before as I had gotten a large meal and couldn’t finish it off, and weak coffee from the motel supplied stash. The motel is basically where I only spend the night and stash my bags.

 

The bus that I was meant to be catching had its start from Palmerston North as it headed for Auckland. I arrived early and gave the driver my name and I was able to board whenever I wanted to. So many people asked where the bus was going as it had the destination on the front. I was off to Feilding as I wanted to do some research and had emailed a family history archive centre, who never got back to me. I knew they were all volunteers though so that could be why. It didn’t take long for the bus to arrive and drop me off in the town. I could have taken a local bus, but I didn’t know at the time of booking, I could have done that. I made my way to the local museum via the sale yards, but I had learnt I could do a tour of them too even though I was a day early.

 

The Coach house museum was all about the early settlers and their way of life in the early days and how the area become known as Feilding. It was named after someone and was all part of an emigration plan to settle people from England who wanted a new life out of poverty. I was after information on some of the settlers who had been assisted to New Zealand. The ticket seller had come into the museum to grab me when the archivist was available. Turns out once the archivist was available that the information had been compiled into a book that was published this year by a researcher who I had last had contact with a number of years ago. The archivist did give me some lessons on how to search for people through newspapers and even another local archive centre. I had actually thought that place was where I happened to be. No there was actually an actual Archive Centre that had material from many old councils with records being available online too. I said I would be there after I finished at the museum. I was blessed with good fortune. Once I finished with the archivist, I went for a wander through the museum to complete my local history journey by looking at old vehicles like John Deere tractors and a horse drawn hearse. I did see several names I recognised and did use notes on my phone to type them out.

 

Having half a day left before I could catch a bus back to Palmerston North, meant the local archives was a blessing in disguise as I wanted to look through some rate books for the locality of Pohangina near Palmerston North. I had used my phone to search for the records I wanted to look at and since they were two rates books, I was looking for my 3x great grandfather who was in that town and it seemed before he died, someone else had paid his rates and was his neighbour. I followed the neighbour for a number of years and seemed to be well off. I have no idea who he is, but seems to be interesting to me. The archives closed at 430pm and it wasn’t long after 4pm that I had finished looking through and taking pictures of the records. I checked what I was taking pictures of to make sure they could be read as that would have been awkward getting home and everything was blurry. On my first visit to Feilding I had come across this archives centre and I had wanted to visit it again, but I never knew it had become some sort of hub.

 

All day I could hear the noise of something racing around a track, so on a whim and because I had the time, I decided to go looking for the source of this noise. I walked down the road from the Coach House museum towards a park on my map called Kowhai, but a sign next to it had Mansfeild Park that after Googling came up as a race circuit. I was hoping the racing noises wouldn’t stop as I got closer and I didn’t know if I could watch anything on the race track. The wind had picked up and it tried to take my hat off me at the same time, but luckily it attaches itself to me. My bladder wanted to say hello, and I went to use the loo and there was dead silence when I got out as it was like the racing finished at 5pm. I walked to the entrance of the circuit and people were driving out so I would pretty much guess I missed out on watching some sort of race demonstration, even though I wasn’t sure if I could actually get inside to watch. There is only so far you can push being innocent and acting dumb, though I would just push anyway.. I did get to see something I wasn’t expecting and that was the old Tote building that was once part of the horse race track. It was New Zealand’s first electric totaliser that could place bets on the horses for you, much like the TAB offices.

 

I ended up walking back to the train station through the middle of Feilding as it was getting closer to the time I had to catch the bus. I knew if I was late the bus would be on time, but if I was early, the bus would be late. It was coming from Auckland and I had no idea if there was plenty of road works along the way. I did get to see the bus going to Wanganui going in the other direction. I was the only one to be picked up in Feilding just like I was the only one to get off. Palmerston North was actually pretty quiet when I got back just after 7pm. I think today the graduates from university were being congratulated as they were setting up a tent in the central park.