May 1950, I had arrived in Wellington after leaving Southampton six and a half weeks ago. My first venture outside of England, as I had not even been to any other country in the British Isles. Now I had landed in Wellington, New Zealand on the other side of the world. I had a job to go to, that was important, and I was relieved that we would be starting work to earn wages almost immediately as I had very little money left. I had collected some mail as I left the ship and I was reading it as the 'bus that had been waiting to take us to our accommodation headed away from the dock. While in the middle of reading my last letter the 'bus jerked to a stop, causing me to look up and out of the window to see that we had arrived in front of several rows of huts. It was raining, though not cold as I stood up to leave the vehicle with the other new arrivals. We trouped into an office to receive information at the reception office.
We found there were several rows of chairs facing a desk, the man sitting there said he was the Post Office Accommodation Manager and asked us to be seated. He said, "You are now in a section of the New Zealand Army camp at Trentham, this part of the camp has been allocated to the Post Office to accommodate new arrivals. The accommodation is temporary only for a period of two months, it is expected that by that time you will have found your own place to live". He also told us that Post Office employees were paid fortnightly and that we would have to pay for two weeks board in advance, at two pounds ten shillings each week that meant that I would be left with eight pounds to last me until our first pay day in two weeks time. This meant that I could survive without problems as that was more than I had in England to spend on myself over that period.
Our ship had anchored outside Wellington harbour the night before we disembarked and we had seen lights winking from around the distant city. Our imagination had caused us to speculate what adventures we would enjoy and we were impatient to investigate the big city. I was invited to join in with a group of other people who wanted to experience Wellington's Saturday night entertainment and we set out to the Trentham Railway station to see what new experience we could find.