By Rhonda Bartle

A Danish dancer sets sail

Ivy McWhirter has lived in the same house in New Plymouth for more than 60 years, yet it is only by a strange twist of fate that she was born in New Zealand at all.

When he was just 17, her father Wilhelm Klausen Lemberg, decided to sail to America to seek his fortune. Along with three other young men, all of whom, like Wilhelm, had lost their mothers, he went down to the nearest dockyard to book a passage to the so-called land of dreams.

Wilhelm's talent and future lay in his dancing. He had risen to assistant dance instructor in his Danish home town. Perhaps in America he'd make it, and become rich and famous.

Wilhelm and the other young Danes could not speak English, but when they indicated to the captain of the Lochnagar that they were hoping for safe passage, he beckoned them all aboard. They wouldn't learn until they were far out to sea that they were sailing in the wrong direction.

As Wilhelm's daughter Ivy McWhirter says, "From what I heard, the captain was so anxious to take their money, he more or less put it across them."

But if it hadn't been for the Captain's trickery, Ivy would not be living in New Plymouth now.

A farming life

Ivy McWhirter is 95 years-old, elegant, beautiful and sharp. She tells her father's tale with a hint of irony.

"Dancing wasn't much help when he got here so my father became a farmer,' she says. "There was not much of an outlet for his dancing here in New Zealand. He had to fell bush near Dannevirke, in the Wairarapa."

The European settlement of Dannevirke began in 1872, with the arrival of 13 Danish and eight Norwegian families brought out under the Vogel Immigration Scheme.

Immediately, the men were given sections in 'Seventy Mile Bush.' The bush had to be cleared before roads and a railway could be built. Any rare spare time, was taken up building houses.

Dannevirke grew to be an important service centre for the rural areas around it. When Wilhelm arrived there in 1888, he found himself working amongst fellow Scandinavians while walking on streets with familiar Danish names: Hamlet, Thyra and Christian.

A very difficult birth

As a symbol of his new life, Wilhelm Klausen Lemberg, reversed his name to Wilhelm Lemberg Klausen and took up 32 hectares of farmland at Mauriceville. When he met and married Johanna Kjestrup, three children were born there.

Ivy was christened Alice - but called Ivy because there was another Alice in the wider family - and was their third child. After a terrible delivery, she was given just three days to live.

"It was a very difficult birth and, of course, in those days, in Mauriceville – that's halfway between Eketahuna and Masterton – the midwife was there at the home, so dad cycled off to Masterton on his pushbike to fetch the doctor."

Fortunately, both Ivy and her mother were saved, though there would be no more children in the family.

"My grandmother took me over because mother was very ill and unable to feed me. Grandma fed me with a spoon, a wee bit of cow's milk. That was in 1910 - I'm getting ancient."

Almost a lonely life

Ivy was eight when Spanish influenza tore through the country. "I remember my sister caught the flu and became very ill. There was a Doctor Jackson who came through the district every day to see what was going on, and he always said that he looked through the window into my sister's bedroom to see if she was still there.

"And of course, the rest of us all got the flu, but she was the one who was seriously ill. Everybody finally recovered, but all the neighbours milked the cows and did the farm work because everyone in the family was ill."

While she was just a baby, Ivy lost her 12-year-old brother to Diphtheria, and describes her subsequent childhood as 'quite lonely.'

"He was the eldest and was sitting his Junior Scholarship at the time. He was clever and a good artist. My sister Maggie was more than six years older than me. She was more like a mother. She was a grown-up, really. And she married when she was about 20. She married a Dane."

Before Ivy turned 13, she had left school to help run her parent's farm and milk 90 cows. "I would quite liked to have been a nurse, but mother wasn't very well, she'd had a slight stroke. And then father's health declined."

Leaving village life behind

Yet Ivy still describes her early years as a 'good life.' "I think it was," she says. "Everyone worked in together and although we worked hard, we had a social life and recreation. We had marvellous dances and concerts. Everybody joined in together. Every family went to the outings."

She met her husband George when he came to work at the Mauriceville Dairy Company. Their wedding was a community affair, with everyone in the village in attendance.

George held the position of Chairman of Mauriceville Dairy Company for sixteen years, and when he left, the couple moved to New Plymouth to settle with their five children.

Ivy recalls those first days in their new town with dismay, as all the children were struck down by Scarlet Fever, and it would be a full year before they fully recovered.

Once the children left home, the McWhirters moved overseas. "George was big on travelling so we moved a lot after we married, to places like Indonesia and Thailand. George worked for New Zealand Dairy Products and put up a baby food factory in Yogyakarta, and we lived in Bangkok for two years."

An active member in Women's Division of Federated Farmers (WDFF) and a life member of the New Zealand Red Cross, Ivy worked in a Bangkok orphanage, something quite rare for the time. "They were looking for people and I said 'Yes'. I found it very enjoyable."

A flight with Kingsford Smith

Ask Ivy for one of life's highlights and she immediately reveals she flew with Charles Kingsford Smith.

"I didn't tell my parents about it, but I'd been saving up. I was about 16 and determined to fly with him. I was fascinated by flying. They could fly – with no connection to the earth!

"And so I went in with the neighbours and secured my seat on the plane and took a flight. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Smithy was very quiet, he just walked around the plane and then he sat down. It's something I'll never forget. It was the most beautiful day and I was satisfied."

Once, she met the Danish Queen at a garden party in Dannevirke. "She looked across the lawn and came straight over and talked to us. She was quite a casual person and easy to have a conversation with."

She also loved visiting Denmark as an adult. "I felt a bond with the country. And when they found out I came from New Zealand and could speak Danish! We had a marvellous time. We spoke Danish because Grandma lived with us and she didn't speak English.

"I still speak Danish," Ivy says. "Most of my family has more or less emigrated over the years. Father met mother out here – she was a New Zealand-born Scandinavian. Now, we're married into all kinds of races. We're a mixed family now."

Today, Ivy still lives in the same high-roofed villa her family moved into six decades ago, which came with a bomb shelter in the garden. And though she mourns the recent loss of her driver's licence which means she now has to taxi into town, she pauses for a little reflective thought.

"Yes. I've had some interesting things happen, considering I wasn't meant to live. I think I've done quite well."