Frederick James Girling

   Another name for Frederick was Fred.

  General Notes:

During the latter years of his life Dad told stories of his young days in New Plymouth.
Notable among them were tales of he and his brothers built trollies and rode them down the hill street (Gover street?) near there home through intersections at a rate of knots.
They and their freinds also collected bottles from the street and sold them.
With the proceeds they would buy a pound of sausages and proceed to, armed with a fry pan and all the neccessities, to light a fire on the banks of the Te Henui stream and spend a sunny afternoon swimming and eating open air fried food.
His secondary school was New Plymouth Boys High, during which he was a member of the High School Cadets.
During school holidays he would cycle from NewPlymouth to Waverley to visit with his brother Ralph.(quite a mission considering the roads were nothing like we have today!!)
On one visit he was invited to work for the Farmers Co-op (forunner of Taranaki Farmers), he left school and began a varied career which would take him as far afeild as Italy.
He first went into action in the area of Florence, was wounded within a few weeks,near Rimini on the Adriatic coast and returned to action eight weeks later and fought with infantry and tanks all the way to Trieste in north eastern Italy
After returnning from war in Italy in 1946 he went into business with his brother Jack, later sold out and bought a milk run, which apparently was quite successful.
In the mid 1950's he took up farming at Rawhitiroa near Eltham where he farmed dairy ows and chickens.
In 1959 the family moved to Pukearuhe.
The at least one hundred year old (at the time, evidenced by news papers which were usedto line the wall, uncovered during redecorations done by my parents ) house was run down, with no proper laundry, rotten weatherboards and very bad, totally undrinkable water.
I clearly remember Dad digging the new well at the head of a small tributary to the roupo swamp which runs the length of the farm, and him recladding much of the house with second hand corragated iron.
In 1968 Dad sold his interest in the farm and moved the family to Epiha road, Motunui where he and mother sharemilked a farm owned by the Davidson family.
In the early eighties, Mum and Dad retired from farming and bought the house in Waitara,


In his younger days, dad's interests included pig hunting, particularly in the bush inland from Waitotara and he was a strong swimmer, he spoke of swimming the Suez canal in Egypt during the war and commented on the strong current.
Throughout his life he played indoor and later outdoor bowls, by far prefering the latter.
Later in life he began working with wood in his shed at the back of the Waitara property, he built furniture for their home and a large cabinet for Ralph.
Also toys, particularly rocking horses for his growing family of Great Grandchildren.
Unfortunately the dust from the wood working tools apparently contributed to his lung disease which took hold about the mid-late ninties.
During his lifetime, dad was a keen vegetable gardener and was very proud of his crops, particularly his super tom tomatoes.
These grew very large, some approaching 100mm across.
He maintained his garden, despite difficulty due to his resporitory disease into the last few months of his life

  Occupation:

• Soldier. Served in Italy during WW 2 1944 - 1946
The picture to the right is the 22 Battalion colours

• Farmer. Farmed at Rawhitiroa, inland from Eltham, Pukearuhe and Motunui north of New Plymouth.
The picture to the right is the farm at Pukearuhe.

• Builder. Worked on building the Taranaki Base Hospital

Frederick married Hazel Isabel Holmes. (Hazel Isabel Holmes died on 13 Mar 1988 in Morrinsville, Waikato, Nz.)

Frederick next married Joyce Eileen Allan, daughter of Kenneth Fitzroy Allan and Grace Eva, on 22 May 1953. (Joyce Eileen Allan was born on 16 May 1930 in New Plymouth New Zealand, died on 3 Jun 2011 in Waikato Hospital Hamilton Nz and was buried on 9 Jun 2011 in Waitara Cemetary (Services Section) Waitara New Zealand.)