The Bodkins of Monte Christo, Clyde, Central Otago

As told by Jane's father Bill Bodkin:

‘My father Arthur Charles Bodkin was the only one of the New Zealand Bodkins to have male descendants. It s remarkable that from all of James Bodkin’s and Eleanor Black’s children, ten in number, there were only four surviving grandchildren. So it was my brother and myself that carry on the line. [Keith’s sons Sam & Theo have both been given the surname Bodkin to ensure that the name continues in New Zealand for another generation].

My father Arthur attended the Clyde primary school and like the others, left from Standard VI to work on the farm. This was in 1902 – Jack and Jim were there, as were the five girls, but Willie had gone off to school in Christchurch.

The Monte Christo farm was predominantly dairy orientated in those days, although there was an orchard as well. It is not difficult to picture the boys bringing in the cows for hand-milking in the byre at the east end of the old stone building (see photo above). Milk was set in flat open-topped pans in the dairy for skimming by the girls – the cream being churned into butter for sale.

My father also tried his hand at selling milk to the townsfolk of Clyde, because I remember him telling me of a run-in that he had with a dog at a customer’s house. The next day he took a handy lump of wood that he called a ‘waddy’ to assist him should the argument recur. However, he met the owner and they reached an agreement about where the dog would be, when and if milk was to be delivered.

My father Arthur has been described as quiet and unassuming. Certainly he did not have any apparent ambitions other than to work quietly on the family farm. Though, not even in my most extravagant of moods, could I describe my father as a progressive farmer. While he worked steadily and often long hours, his outlook was very conservative.

When he met and married Ivy May Kloogh in 1926, at 36 years of age, Monte Christo was divided to give him a farm of his own. A house was built for the newly-weds at the top of the rise overlooking the original homestead. This residence is the only one of the three houses of Monte Christo still in existence as I write in 1998.

Ivy had been helping her brother Albert on a neighbouring orchard when she and Arthur met. My grandfather Nils Peter Kloogh was a native of Sweden – and after emigrating to New Zealand, he became the master of several gold dredges on the Clutha River flats. Ivy was the youngest of the 8 children of Nils and his wife Tamar (nee Kitto).

My mother was always an outdoor girl, preferring to help with the milking or some other outdoor chore rather than doing housework. Her house was constantly untidy, but fortunately she was a competent cook – so we didn’t starve.

Relations between the various Bodkins at Monte Christo in the 1930s and 1940s were continually finely balanced. I think that living so close together was party of the cause but I am sure that my five maiden aunts resented my father marrying my mother. By the time he had reached the age of 36, they probably thought that he would not marry and deprive them of a male in their household. My mother’s lack of concern for the state of her house did not improve matters.

The Bodkins of Monte Christo may have presented a calm picture to the outside world, but within the extended family, they were quite fiery!

During my time with them, my parents milked 35-40 cows, separated the cream and sent it in cans to the Taieri & Peninsula Dairy Factory by train. To augment the rather skimpy income thus obtained, they kept pigs (which consumed the skim milk and reject fruit), and grew a variety of cash crops that included marrows and pumpkins, peas and strawberries, as well as walnuts and almonds.

It was a happy and simple life, as I remember it – in the best traditions of neighbours helping each other with seasonal work like hay-making. We had few luxuries and our needs were basic. These were hard times during the Depression in the 1930s. We had no car or electricity and cooking was on the old black coal range.

We travelled to ‘town’ (Clyde) by bicycle or horse and gig for the few supplies we required, and seldom ventured further. It was years before I realised that you could buy new nails – all the nails that I had ever seen had been reclaimed and straightened!

Maybe once a year, in the winter, when the cows were all dry, we would go to Dunedin, staying at Abbotsford with my mother’s mother and sister. On a rare occasion, my father might go to the Dunedin Winter Show. If my mother went also in school term, my brother and I were boarded out in the aunts’ house. A mixed blessing!

Our house had but a single bedroom, so my brother and I at first slept in the ‘sitting room’ – a kind of front room or lounge which probably was intended to be where guests were entertained. Later a small veranda was closed in and we slept there, often with the door to the porch open. On the many frosty nights, I usually slept with my head completely under the blankets. If I did have my head in the open air, in the morning the covers around my head would be decorated with ice from my breathing vapours.

Lighting in the big kitchen was by kerosene lamp – an ‘Aladdin’ which used a fragile incandescent mantle to distribute light. The dark wooden panels around the room did nothing to enhance visibility. Heating was from the black stove, where my mother had pride of place for keeping warm, with her feet in the oven.

My mother and father were a devoted couple and I never heard any cross words between them – if any altercations did occur, they did not happen in front of the children. However, we were not a demonstrative family and, as we grew older, there were few displays of public affection. I do recall though that my mother and I competed for the ‘first kiss’ after my father had shaved, which he did about three times a week.

While the Bodkins tended to be a serious lot, my mother’s side of the family were possessed of a more highly developed sense of humour. This was most evident in my mother and her brother Albert. Even when she was well into her nineties and living alone in a small cottage in Clyde, Ivy retained her impish nature.'