Ohakea in the early 1960s

At least one if not two weeks each year all the airmen had to do ‘fire piquet’. This involved six guys sleeping in the fire section for the week.

Day one we were taught how to mount a fire hydrant into the fitting underground, run two feeder hoses to the fire truck, pick up and run out one section of hose, attach the nozzle and wait for the water. I think I could do it even now, fifty years later.

Usually, this was done as a dry exercise, but if someone had made a smart wise crack at the professional fireman taking the exercise it suddenly became a wet drill.

And while you are there, run a second length of line out.

You weren't allowed to wait for all the water to run out of the hose before you disconnected the nozzle.

Sometimes, there was water, hose, nozzle, men all going in different directions, with the fireman yelling at you to hurry up.

After hours, to fill in time, the firemen would introduce you to poker. Of course, there was a no gambling rule on base but they got away with it.

The accommodation at Ohakea was two storied ten men rooms. I was lucky and got one of the upstairs dorms.

In summer, when all the windows were wide open to catch a cooling breeze, and you felt like upsetting the guys in the lower dorm.

Later in the evening, usually about ten pm, you would get a cup of water, loudly run towards one of the windows, make vomiting noises and pour the water slowly out the window. Onto the lower windows if you could.

There was a sudden rush to slam all the windows closed on the lower level.

The rooms on the south side of the main passageway had “Harco” heaters fitted.

These were a fire box with provision for Kerosene to be drip fed into a burner cup. The amount of heat produced was proportional to the rate the Kerosene dripped into the burner.

One heater for a ten man room didn’t have much success, so one of the rooms substituted 100/130 octane petrol for the kerosene.

This worked much better until one of the members of the room decided to dry his towel on the outer box of the heater.

If he had done it after tea all would have been well, but while he was at tea the towel started to smoke.

This smoke filled the room and started to escape under the door into the main passageway.

The fire alarm was raised and the first fireman, fortunately, one of the bully firemen, complete with nozzle and hose raced into the start of the room passage, where the smoke was billowing under the door, blocking all vision.

He yelled “Water On” and directed the water straight into the closed door. The door withstood the sudden force and all the water bounced back and almost drowned the fireman.

One of the room members who had shown up by then opened the door, grabbed the smoking towel [it still hadn’t burst into flame, just smoldered the whole time] and threw it out the window.

Panic over, but for quite a while the call of ‘water on’ could be heard from behind the fireman as he walked around base.

As part of the equipment in the dorm was one ‘barracks box’ 3ft x 2ft x 18 inches tall, for each bed space. This was placed at the foot of each bed.

This was lockable and used to store things you didn’t want the bosses to see when they did their weekly inspections.

One of my dorm ‘s rules were: 1 bottle of Vodka for your birthday, 2 bottles of vodka for getting engaged, and 3 bottles of vodka for getting married.

This obviously was kept in the barrack box, safely locked away.

While I was away one weekend, shortly after getting engaged, with the wedding coming up soon, one of the guys had a discussion about how good his bow and arrow was.

To settle the argument, my barracks box was upended and he fired a couple of arrows into it.

I can definitively say that his bow was very effective, the arrows passed through the bottom of the box, through a new pair of boots, a couple of pairs of sox and lodged into the lid.

Fortunately, they didn’t go completely through the lid, so there was no visible damage, and they missed the five bottles of vodka.

The boots were later replaced by the clothing store man, it cost a dozen torch batteries to do the swap, his kids had some toys that went through batteries in no time.

While we consuming one of the bottles one evening somebody mentioned he had missed tea and was feeling a bit hungry.

Another member jumps up and disappeared out the door. About ten minutes he returned with a couple of sliced loaves of bread and a five pound tin of marmalade.

So we set to, demolishing the bread and marmalade washing it down with the vodka. This was fine until somebody accidentally flicked a bit of marmalade onto another one of the guys.

Instant reaction, a knife full of marmalade was flicked in the general direction of the original offender.

Did you know? A five pound tin of marmalade can cover a ten man room in about five minutes, and take all weekend to clean up afterward.

This was the era when ‘Coffee shops’ first made their way to NZ, and it was considered the done thing to go to a coffee shop, listen to a band over a cup of coffee, then return to base.

One of the guys in the dorm was the proud owner of a Porsche

We found it was possible to fit five men in it and still go over 100 mph on the speedo.
Just as well we were smaller and lighter in those days.

He related the story of, one weekend going up to New Plymouth, about 3 hours away, to visit his mother.

For a change he decided to take the coast road back to base, this follows the bump sticking out of the left hand side of the North Island.

He was happily cruising at about 75 mph [25 mph over the limit] when a traffic cop appeared behind him.

A quick spurt to get a couple of corners ahead of the cop, and into the hotel car park at Oakura.

Heads down, he watched the cop go wailing past. He decided to have a wee break to let the cop get tired of chasing shadows when the cop returned and saw him in the car park.

He came over admired the Porsche and spent a few minutes talking. Then he asked if Dave was in a hurry.

I would like you to do a few known high speed runs past my radar, so I can check it.

Who could say no to an offer like that?.

Half an hour later Dave was base bound again, with the thanks of the cop still ringing in his ears.

Late 1961 one of the boys was tragically killed in a car accident. He had purchased on old two seat car, [possibly a TR4, or similar] and was concerned at the lack of seat belts.

Seat belts were just starting to be introduced to the new expensive cars at this time.

He managed to acquire a set of seat harness from an aircraft parachute,[ don’t ask] and had fitted them to his car.

He now had the best harness on the road, a full five strap [one through the crutch[ racing harness.

On his way to work one morning he was forced to dodge an oncoming car, he spun, slid, and was stopped by a power pole on the side of the road.

Normally, with his full harness, this would have been just a job for the insurance co.

Unfortunately, in the spin, or by a loose object from the other car, he was knocked out, and then the car caught fire.

The first two on the scene were civilians who didn’t know how to undo his seat belt.

By the time number three, who was another serviceman, arrived the fire was of such intensity that he was unable to free the driver.