Lea Snowdon
Glory days of the country hall relived
NO BULL: Lea Snowdon's family has been a part of the Rerewhakaaitu community for 60 years.
PHOTO/STEPHEN PARKER 110913SP7
Farmer's wife true daughter of land
When Lea Snowdon's parents arrived at Rerewhakaaitu the farm they'd drawn in a returned servicemen's ballot was scrub-covered and prone to bush sickness.
Sixty years on, Lea and her husband Kerry's farm is as computer-driven as any city office. Their dairy herd's drafted via the punch of a key, the amount of pasture and dry feed a cow needs to maintain optimum weight is electronically calculated.
However, one thing that's remained constant in the rural hinterland is the presence of its community hall. Local halls such as that at Rerewhakaaitu are being celebrated at an exhibition opening at the Rotorua Museum tonight.
Entitled "Down The Hall on Saturday Night", it highlights the glory days of country halls when they were places where dances and church services were held, indoor sports played, and were community centres where events of mutual concern were thrashed out.
When it became easier to travel into town and lifestyle blocks replaced larger farms, country halls lost their lustre. Some remain rarely used but Rerewhakaaitu's has taken on a new lease of life.
It was this summer's "once in 40-year" drought that led to its rebirth as the heart of the community. Lea Snowdon's thrilled it has; her father was among those who helped build it in the 1950s.
"It took the drought to remind us we needed somewhere to get together and talk things through, reassure and care for each other, buddy people up so that we knew we were all in this together; that's what brought us back to the hall."
Since then, the district's rediscovered it's an invaluable communal asset.
"It's great it's back serving the purpose it was meant to. We've had a 'house full' quiz night, the Playcentre's 40th anniversary ball's coming up, lots more's planned," Lea assures us.
If anyone's a Rerewhakaaitu girl to the core it's Lea.
She was born after her pioneering parents, the late Ted and Peggy Bevin, began to break in their ballot-won block.
"We lived in a part-house, the toilet was on skids at the front gate."
She spent her primary and intermediate years at the local school and, apart from the first years of her marriage, has never lived far from the district. Her two sons were Rerewhakaaitu-raised, the elder remains on the family farm.
Growing up with the tough challenges of taming the district's uncompromising land was not the only difficulty to dog Lea's early years. Her father was killed when she was 4. "His tractor rolled, he didn't make it across a stream."
Her mother coped with the tragedy with the courageous grit of a typical countrywoman.
"After a week grieving she looked in the mirror and said 'this isn't about me, it's about my family, they need me'."
Lea's 15-year-old brother left school to work on the farm.
A few years on Peggy remarried neighbouring farmer Duncan Marshall who'd lost his wife to cancer.
In a candid self-analysis, Lea tells us of a childhood marred by a lack of self-confidence and the respect she carries for Rerewhakaaitu women Mary Burge and Marj Griffiths, who helped shape her adult years.
"I was a tomboy, never really a scholar, a cot case when it came to exams which made me feel inferior, but these wonderful rural women let me know that there were plenty of other things I could do than go to university, they were true mentors who gave me confidence to be myself."
Lea's lack of self-esteem was misplaced. From Girls' High she walked into a job with State Insurance, remaining with the company after marriage took her to Christchurch.
There can be few more typical "it could only happen in Rerewhakaaitu-Rotorua" scenarios than her Kerosene Creek meeting with Kerry Snowdon.
"I was 15 or 16, there with a girlfriend, we got chatting to these guys on motorbikes, they were from the Woodsmen's school at Kaiangaroa, living in the hostel. Kerry ended up boarding in our spare bach, I was boarding in town, we were both in relationships that broke up and one day said to each other 'aren't we being stupid?' That was that."
They married when she was 21, Kerry's forestry job taking them south.
The couple lived in a caravan, taking it with them to Taumarunui before returning to Rerewhakaaitu where Kerry worked for an agricultural contractor before contract, then sharemilking on Maori trust blocks.
They bought their own farm 11 years ago - in Rerewhakaaitu, naturally.
"We thought we should do it to prepare for retirement before we ran out of energy."
Despite working alongside her husband and son, Lea's no run-of-the-mill farmer's wife. Between milkings she's a massage and healing therapist working with crystals and rocks.
"One day about 10 years ago a tohunga [Maori priest] came up to me in the mall [Rotorua Central], and said 'you are a healer I can see it around your body', I knew I had something in my hands but not how to control it."
Encouraged, she trained in massage therapy. "Once you get your hands in the business the rest's quite spiritual. If people think 'this is just a lot of crap' I can smell it on them."
Farming and healing apart, Lea, along with her mother, was hand-picked by Ans Westra, as ideal subjects for the leading photographer's portfolio celebrating rural women.
"We were in army clothing, I was putting up an electric fence, I guess she saw me as the second generation of daughters of the land."