Overview
Tinui and Anzac Day
A collection of clothes worn by the O'Brien children in the 1950s and 60s are a fabulous visual representation of children’s style and fashion from this era. The associated stories of rural New Zealand life are equally fascinating. In the following, Shelley Venimore (née O’Brien) reminisces about the importance of Anzac Day in the rural Tinui community.
Tinui
The community we lived in at Tinui was a mixture of local landowners and post-World War II ballot farmers – ex-servicemen who had obtained land through a ballot system. Dad’s brother Pat won a ballot farm and Dad missed out. Uncle Pat became ill and requested that the entitlement for his ballot farm be passed over to my father, Donald, before he died in 1950. Until that time Mum and Dad had lived in Pirinoa, where Maureen, my older sister, was born.
Anzac Day
Tinui had lots of returned servicemen from World War II, which influenced the annual events in the local hall. The Tinui War Memorial Hall was built to replace an old hall around 1955. Tinui is remarkable as being the site of the first Anzac service in New Zealand in 1916, one year after Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli. A wooden cross was carried to the top of the Taipo, also known as Mount Maunsell, a local landmark. My mother tells the story of how two of my great uncles, Walter Street and Fred Street, were among the children who helped to carry the cross to the top of the Taipo as part of the first service. The annual Anzac service was very important to us and as a school we practised songs so we could sing beautifully on that day every year.