Former constable's memories from the Kihikihi Police house

The Police house at Kihikihi. Built in 1907. Photos / Jesse Wood

More than 50 years ago the Kihikihi police house was home to Constable Stan Williams.

Stan, now 91, had been a policeman for the previous two years in Hamilton. He was married there and lived there for some time.

The police house was built in 1907, for 700 pounds, but had been unoccupied for some time as the last constable had been committed to Tokanui Psychiatric Hospital. The station closed in 1962.

Stan remembers the May school holidays in 1962 when he, his wife and five children packed up their belongings and moved to Kihikihi.

They hadn't seen their new place before moving in - upon arrival they were shocked.

They arrived at about 5pm with all their furniture and stacked it inside the house.

"The birds had got in under the roof and there was bird poo everywhere. The place was like a dung heap," said Stan.

"We had to set up our beds, tidy the house, clean up the kitchen and that was getting on to about six or seven o'clock."

"We got up the next morning, unpacked some groceries and got the kids some breakfast.

Stan Williams, 91, used to live in the Kihikihi Police house.

"We finished unpacking furniture and tidying the place up, cleaned up all the bird poo and everything.

"I got into Te Awamutu and reported for duty. This was incidentally my first shift on the job, but that was alright."

Even though the one-man Kihikihi Police Station had officially closed, the Williams' still had door knockers as people thought the family moving in was a sign that the station had been resurrected.

"My wife had to put up with this because I worked shift work,

"All people who knocked at the door were told the station was closed and they had to go to Te Awamutu. Well I thought blow this, I'll keep a list of people who called at the door."

It didn't take long for Stan to fill an A4 sheet with names of people knocking.

'I'm talking about all hours of the day and the night because some houses get very dark at night-time, but with our children we decided to leave the passage light on to give them a bit of confidence in the night and because the light was on, we got the knocks during the night," said Stan.

"I went to the boss and I said look I'm not belittling you but these are people that are knocking at the door thinking that the station is open and so you better do something about it and he said no, it stays closed.

"We were there for eight years. Eventually all these callers knocked off and they finally got the message."

Stan got up one morning after it had been pouring with rain all night. He wasn't happy with what he saw as the ceiling paper in the passage was damp and hanging down.

"I got up to see where the leak was and what had happened was the roof on that place was two roofs and there was a gully.

"Back in the history of this place, somewhere along the line they had taken the original roof off and rerolled the iron and made new corrugations and put the roof back on again.

"In the course of putting that on, they missed the original nail hole. They put the nails in a new place. A fair amount of water went down into this gutter. I managed to get up in there with plugs and plug the holes."

Constable Stan Williams before retirement.

The department finally decided to reroof the place after it caused the Williams' a lot of grief.

All government work back then was supervised by the Ministry of Works and by the time they got around to finishing the job, he could have sold the iron off the roof several times.

Farmers would knock at the door and ask what he was going to do with it.

"When we were there Kihikihi was a thriving community. You had about four grocers,
three or four butchers and three or four petrol stations there. It was a busy little town."

The children were all educated at Kihikihi School, Te Awamutu Intermediate and Te Awamutu College.

'In the early days there was a back gate because the road that came up was a paper road. It went over the hill and across Leslie Street and continued to the farmer's property at the back there. Bob Patterson was the farmer.

"I happened to be standing looking down across the paper road which went onto his property. I saw a dog there with a sheep down, pulling wool out of it. I thought this is not good. I didn't have a firearm, so I went back into the house and rang the station and got hold of one of the boys, told him what was happening and I said you better bring the station rifle out and get rid of this dog.

"He eventually arrived and the dog was still pulling the wool out, the sheep hadn't moved. It transpired later that it was a dead sheep and the dog was going to get a free feed."

"Brian Gordon was the cop that came. We thought we'd better shoot the dog - it was no good trying to catch it. I went down by Leslie Street and made sure there was no traffic. I loaded the breach and bang. You know what happened? Rattle, rattle, rattle. The bullet travelled down the damn rifle and dropped out the end. What had happened was the rifle was issued from the army and so was the ammunition. With the bang, the dog pricked its ears and took off. It was the farmer's dog.

"It wasn't long after that, a couple of policemen were shot and killed at domestics up Auckland way. Then a while later, a couple in Wellington the same thing happened. All because of these bloody firearms.

"The department in its wisdom decided that they had better form what they ended up calling the Armed Offenders Squad. They wore mechanics overalls and a beret but had the same firearms that had cost those men their lives, just to save blasted money."

The Police at that time no radios. They didn't get radios until after a breakout from Mt Eden prison.

If Te Awamutu wanted to contact Hamilton they had to use the telephone.

They didn't even have a Police car so Stan used his own vehicle.

"Coming in the back gate was a stable. Going back in history it seems that the constable originally had a horse. Next to that was the chicken house, beside that was the cellblock.
In the cellblock, my children used to have their concerts in there with the kids around the neighbourhood. They'd all get in there, singing and dancing and all the rest of it.

"That cellblock is now out at Mystery Creek museum. The one that is at Kihikihi is the old Te Awamutu cellblock. When they built the new station, I got on to one of the guys in the historic society and I told him what was happening and I said if you want the cellblock grab it, apply to get it and they did."

Inside the Kihikihi Jail, now at Mystery Creek Museum.

Waikeria in those days had a big village so that they had lots of staff on tap for the prison. They would have escapes in those days and Te Awamutu staff would have to go out there and search for the "naughty boys".

"George Wilder and the so called elite of the underworld had been shifted from Mt Eden down to here. They'd built a special wing for them of high tensile steel netting. One of the judges, I think it was Stewart Hardy, went down there to have a look at it. He said it was so tight that a bird couldn't get in or out of it but they had a go," said Stan.

"We got called out one day. One of them had got a bar of soap and he'd carved it to make it look like a bomb, mounted it on a bit of wood and he was going to blow the bloody place up. The finger went on the panic button.

"Four of us went down there. What we were going to do, god only knows. They were going to get out and they had the door open, one of them walked out. One of the officers as he was walking past him, boom, he hit it out of his hands. That was that all over. You couldn't ignore it but how the hell he was going to get explosives in there at that time, who knows."

The original Kihikihi cellblock sits in the Mystery Creek Heritage Village.

The Williams family moved to Kaitaia after Te Awamutu before heading to Auckland, Otahuhu, Papakura and Piopio.

The Police Commissioner came to Piopio to check on Stan and see how he was doing with his sick wife. He told him he could move to any vacancy that came up that he wanted.

After his wife died, Stan moved back to Te Awamutu again to work.

He has been a part of the Te Awamutu Lions Club and was on the council, even running for Mayor at one point.

Stan retired at the age of 60 and he enjoys living in Te Awamutu.

When asked what his favourite thing is about the town he doesn't hesitate to say.

"Well I came back didn't I?"