Terence – Avondale
“Last text I would have sent was to a friend of mine in Wellington; just said, ‘hi’. She’s older than me, I don’t know her real well.
I sort of know her through the internet – I’ve never met her. She seems a nice enough lady and we get on well. She sent me a joke from a friend of a friend of a friend, and it wound up with me, but, yeah, we get on well.
I was born in Henderson, Lincoln Road. I’ve worked as a boat-builder, in heavy concrete construction, furniture-making, timber yards; yeah done lots of different jobs.
I’ve found living in Auckland is more of an attitude than living someplace else. You actually have to physically want to live in Auckland than, say, Hamilton or somewhere like that. You’ll find most people don’t particularly like where they live. I mean, they don’t actually love it; they tolerate it. That’s the way I see it, anyway.
People come here because they get the higher wages or they have other reasons; maybe family, things like that. It varies a great deal. Auckland’s changed from when I was a kid. When I was growing up, you knew your neighbours quite well, and they were there for years; now you’re lucky if they’re there for six months. You don’t really get to know them well. So, you make your connections where you can.
I live in a boarding house, so I come here every day. It gets me out of the room and you make your connections. You get to know people in the streets. I probably know most people in the Avondale area, but I don’t know them real well; more of just a nodding connection as you see them walking down the street. You get a core of friends that you develop and stay with. So I’ve got maybe a half dozen friends who I know real well here in Auckland these days. Apart from that, I don’t do much else. Just sitting around waiting for that Gold Card to turn up.
Auckland’s a big city, but I think we moved away from it when we went to one big city. I think Auckland needs to go back to its rural areas.”
