By Rhonda Bartle

Down on the farm: Werner and Theresa Gut. Image Daily News.

A surprise beginning

People often underestimate the value of small, locally produced books written by those who lived in times long ago. But genealogists and those of us who work at libraries and research centres quickly come to understand their worth.

It's often through memories and even light hearted anecdotes that history truly comes alive. History is all about people, and the experiences they have lived through can help put the past into perspective.

Werner and Theresa Gut, co-authors of Made in Switzerland – for Kaponga have done Taranaki a favour by recalling what it was like being farming immigrants in a brand new land.

Having both arrived by separate ships in 1949, the pair settled in Kaponga, close to the mountain. But what makes their story unique, is that they might have lived within spitting distance of each other for more than 50 years, yet they only properly got together eight years ago.

Married to other partners for most of their lives, neither would have expected to end up with the other this late in life. But when Theresa, a widow hooked up with Werner a widower, both fate and cupid came a-knocking. They are now married, and the honeymoon continues.

How it all began

When Werner Gut left his homeland, he dreamt of being a cowboy. "I used to read," he says with only a hint of an accent leftover from his Swiss roots.

"Instead of doing homework, I read about crazy things, like Thor Heyerdahl, the Kon Tiki man, who did lots of trekking in the Himalayas, too. I was an adventurer, but then I loved animals, too."

Though his family was 'quite well off', and probably had other plans for him, Werner pursued his goal of working with animals and trained as a farm cadet. Then he spent two years at Strickhof Agricultural College, to gain a Diploma in Agriculture.

At 18 he turned the pages of his atlas and eyed the world, looking for a way to combine animals and adventure. Without knowing it, his father, a difficult man, helped make the decision for him.

"I was clearing out. I didn't fit in where I was. And of course, you have to make a living."

In 1949, not many options were open to a young man from Switzerland, but one of them was emigration.

"You could go to the United States or to Canada, but you had to have money or they wouldn't take you. Here they were happy to take you. They needed workers. You didn't need any money. I had read New Zealand: Your Future. I knew where I was going."

After writing to the Swiss Consulate in Wellington, Werner learned there was a Swiss woman on a Taranaki farm who needed two workers, so he and a friend from college, Werner Speck, packed their bags, and headed down to the Zurich railways station, where their families waved them off.

They sailed from Genoa on the SS Troscana, an old tramp steamer, via the Suez Canal to Ceylon, Australia and New Zealand. It might have been a slow, tedious trip, but Werner made the most of it, improving his English by making friends with an Australian cabin mate.

A post–war bride

Theresa's story is a little different yet some of the details match. She, too, said goodbye to her parents at a railway station, at Zug, and embarked on a long voyage.

She had recently married Paul, a kiwi who had spent most of WWII on active duty, fighting against Rommel in the deserts of Africa before being posted to Italy.

After the war, like most kiwi soldiers, he was to be shipped home from England. But Paul decided first to visit Switzerland, the land his forebears had come from. There he met Theresa and fell in love.

Together, the newlyweds travelled through France to Calais, then took a ferry and a train to London. At South Hampton, the Queen Mary waited to take them to New York.

Theresa tells a funny story about trying to find the ship, a ship so big she missed seeing it at all. "I had never been near the sea, so could not imagine that what looked like a wall in front of me was actually the hull of the Queen Mary!"

To travel half way round the world seemed an amazing adventure for a girl growing up during a war in landlocked Europe, but Theresa was just as excited at the prospect as she was of settling down in far away New Zealand.

From New York, the couple took a train over the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver, and sailed on the SS Orangi for Auckland, where Paul's sister and brother–in–law would drive them to Kaponga, to start a farming life.

Though Paul had always expected to take up a 'rehab' farm on his return from the war, he found he was not entitled, something that irked him all his life. Because he had not been a farmer before enlisting, he was ineligible. Still, in Kaponga, they would find another way.

The farming life

Werner's first promised job didn't eventuate, as the position was filled by the time he arrived in Kaponga. Instead, he was given a start on a different farm, owned by Vern and Vi Tait.

"I was so lucky. I had a good boss," Werner says. "And after him, I got another job with Bernie Hollards up the road." (Hollards Gardens is still a landmark in the area.)

As a single man, Werner found the cowboy life exactly to his liking. Four of his friends from the Strickhof Agricultural College came to join him, and the level of Swiss testosterone rose in Kaponga.

When Werner met and married Norma, a pretty Australian nurse, he reluctantly gave up his cowboy ways to become the proud father of half a dozen kids.

After six years at Hollards, the couple bought a 81 hectare (200 acre) farm further up the mountain end of Manaia Rd, on the road to Dawson Falls, where the rain fell in sheets and Werner planted a staggering 10,000 trees and took up breeding Simmental cattle.

Sadly, at the age of 64, Norma died at home of a brain tumour.

When Theresa and Paul arrived in Kaponga, they also settled on Manaia Rd, where Theresa milked four cows to pay the rent. They, too, stayed 11 happy years.

Like Werner and Norma, they also had six children. Eventually, Theresa and her husband were able to go share–milking – a life they loved.

Theresa became a good friend of Norma Gut, who introduced her to women's groups in the district. Then Paul suffered a heart attack and died in 1987.

After much time had passed, Theresa, who had always remembered Norma's husband Werner as a 'nice man' went to see how he was managing alone. And the rest, as they say, is history.

A book!

Sitting in the comfort of Werner's – and now Theresa's home – the cuckoo in the Swiss clock chortles regularly, and they seem perfectly pleased with the status quo.

Though both have ongoing health issue – Theresa is battling a serious cancer and Werner suffers the farmer's affliction of worn hips, it's as though, out of a dark night, came a bright new day.

They share and appreciate the miracle of a new relationship at the blunt end of life. And if they were fortunate in the past with their partners, they feel just as lucky now.

"I used to drive past the gate in the old truck to go to the factory," Werner says. "There was a little boy outside on a trike, and I was always conscious of that."

"That was my little boy," Theresa says.

"That was Theresa's house, only I didn't know it then."

Made in Switzerland – for Kaponga, indeed. Made for each other. "We're very happy, I have to say," Theresa adds. "When I told the kids we were going to get married, they said, 'Do you really want to live up there, closer to the mountain?' And I said, 'I don't have to sleep outside.' Now they're very happy."

"My buggers just grinned," Werner says.

Sharing knowledge and the past

It was sitting around this same table, swapping stories of their individual, yet almost–shared past, that made the pair decide to write a book.

"We talk to each other, you see," Werner explains, and a grin appears. "We both like red wine and we sit here and we drink a bit and talk about things that come up. And it just came together, the book.

"We had one go at about two or three chapters, and then a break. All up, it took about three months, I think. Looking at it now, we've missed things we could have put in. People who read it say we got to have a following sequence now!"

It's not a bad idea. The farming yarns are distinctly part of Taranaki's early farming days. Oddly though, while Werner has for 20 years written a well–constructed and often political piece for Farm View, an opinion column in Taranaki Daily News, he doesn't consider himself a writer.

"I don't get paid for it. It's just opinion." He's been known to take the odd pot shot at the local Fonterra monopoly which he sees as dictatorship.

"When you're old, you can say what you want, and they can't do anything to you any more. As a young man, you don't want to upset anyone. Now, I don't have to worry."

Together on Manaia Rd: Image Puke Ariki TS2007_1107.

A book is born

The Gut's book, which was published in October 2006, wasn't a 'serious venture to begin with', they say, but it has brought them a lot of pleasure – and the occasional old mate out of the woodwork.

"You'd be amazed how many people lived in Kaponga once. And I didn't write anything bad about anyone, but then, there wasn't many people to say bad things about, though there might have been a cow Theresa named after someone…" Werner stops there, but the twinkle in his eye takes a while to fade.

They recently received a request for a book from Canada, where the buyer revealed he reads Werner's Farm View columns on the Net.

It's hardly surprising. Made in Switzerland – for Kaponga is a warm, vibrant glimpse of young immigrants, always ready to give things a go. Possibly, it's a little more about Werner than Theresa, as he explores a past that included a passion for dogs, horses and cows.

Full of unique Kaponga–ites, and weary Swiss workers who fall asleep while taking baths in 25 gallon (94 litre) milkcans of hot water, the small stories tell of homebrew and courtship, and hard-yakka days of bringing home the daily bread.

Words and interest

Werner and Theresa say it was Terry Tacon, farming editor of the Taranaki Daily News, who 'sold it' by writing an article in the paper's farming section. And sell, it does, to a wide range of readers, both local and overseas.

And though there wasn't an official launch, the authors had a private one. "We thought we'd start off slowly. We drank to it ourselves."

Today, on the property he knows so well, Werner is living out another chapter of his life, and though he still owns the land, it's managed by his youngest son, Jason, while sons Robert and Bruce own neighbouring farms.

"Yep, I still own it, collect the money, pay the bills. I'm officially the boss, but Jason runs it and does what he wants. Ah. It's easier to sit down than to go to work," he says, while Theresa laughs beside him.

Warm, wonderful people. And the book's the same.