When the famed Boston Pops Orchestra came to New Zealand in 1966, its conductor American Arthur Fielder (who had an excellent pronunciation of English without a strong accent) said he was at a loss to understand New Zealand girls’ accents in hotels – let alone the Australians ‒ which were even more difficult to comprehend.
Arthur stated New Zealanders drop their “ers” – “we would say ‘cheap-er’, and I heard on the New Zealand radio ‘cheap-ah’.”
“I got told by a waitress ‘something wouldn’t be ready until ‘noi-time’. That was night-time, you know,” he replied.
A total of 72 Queensland girls were recruited in 1967 to work in the South Island, and they were needed to replace a similar number of Australian waitresses and housemaids returning home for Christmas. The girls were paid an average of $20 (2023: $445) plus free board, uniforms, and other fringe benefits. Mr L Short of the Canterbury Hotel Workers’ Union said all the girls “had to buy for themselves was toothpaste, white shoes and silk stockings”.
A devaluation of the New Zealand to the Australian dollar meant in 1968 it was less attractive for the girls to cross the ditch as their wages decreased 25 per cent.
The reduced number of Australian girls coming to the South Island, according to organiser Mr M Rhodes of the Canterbury Hotel Workers’ Union, meant a “decline in the number of attractive, bright, happy-go-lucky Australian girls coming to New Zealand, and would mean fewer eligible girls as wives for New Zealand farmers”.
By early 1970, more favourable economic conditions allowed hotel recruitment offices to be set up in Sydney and Brisbane. Of concern was that New Zealand did not have the necessary standards for waitressing in their hotels, but the Australian girls did. Seventy girls were recruited in March 1971.
One such Australian waitress who had signed up in Brisbane was Judy Dunlop. She had always wanted to travel to New Zealand and escape her big city.
The contract stated the Australian girls had to stay 15 months in New Zealand and work 12 of those in hotels. Six months would be worked in one hotel, and then two stints of three months in two other hotels. If they fulfilled this their airfare would be paid home.
Dunlop would work at Napier’s premium tourist hotel – the Masonic Hotel from June 1971 to August 1972.
She slept in the staff quarters on the ground floor with other Australian girls.
One night she was disturbed by the rattling of milk bottles in the alleyway outside. In the morning, she had noticed her bed had moved about 45cm from the wall – the rattling she had heard was an earthquake – quite foreign to her in Brisbane.
After her 15-month stint had ended, she wanted to stay in New Zealand, and went to work at Rotorua’s Grand Hotel. Judy went back to Australia for her brother’s wedding and met her future husband there and never returned.
Two other waitresses would make their way to the Masonic Hotel from Australia in 1971 – but not as part of the New Zealand Hotel Association recruitment scheme.
Maxine Drake-Brockman of Perth had become friends with Pamela Gardiner of Napier, who was on a working holiday at the Ladybird Lodge. Pamela asked Maxine to go to Napier and she would set her up with a good-paying job and accommodation.
Maxine agreed, and with her good friend, Margaret Tremayne, the 19-year-olds sailed in July 1971 for New Zealand.
Waitressing work was found at the Masonic Hotel, and after first staying in Brewster St, Maxine and Margaret shifted to staff accommodation at the hotel.
Maxine said the money was good, and the ladies earned more than their previous jobs as an office worker and chemist assistant.
Tipping was then common in New Zealand hotels, and some weeks tips were more than their normal wages.
It was somewhat of a shock moving from Perth, where four television stations were operating 18 hours per day – to New Zealand’s one, which was on from 3pm to 10pm.
They could drink in a bar in Australia from age 18, but in New Zealand you had to be 20.
Napier, Maxine and Margaret thought, “was incredibly quiet”. For entertainment on Saturday nights, they and other girls working there would put on fancy dress costumes and walk the Napier CBD streets at 11pm.
Their only companion on the street was a policeman who they nicknamed “P C Plod”. When he said “good evening” to the girls, they would scamper in shrieks down the street.
Maxine, however, liked Napier and stayed “on and off” over the next 21 years, including a stint as a postie here.
She left for Perth permanently in 1992, but still visits her friends here regularly.
Michael Fowler is a Hawke’s Bay historian and writer mfhistory@gmail.com His Stories of Historic Hawke’s Bay book is available from Wardini Havelock North and Napier.
