Joy Veint - A True Blue ‘Local’
Born into a legendary Wakatipu high country station family, Joy Veint enjoyed a fabulous outdoor childhood growing up on beautiful Mount Aurum Station at Skippers. Her runholder father, ‘Mick’ Sarginson, was renowned locally for his tenacity tackling the rugged and remote sheep station from 1957 until 1969.
In addition to having four kids in that time Joy’s mother Myrna catered for the Mount Cook tour buses at Mount Aurum homestead, when they were visiting Skippers, turning out scones and pikelets daily. “It was pretty isolated and cut off in winter so Mum brought us out to Queenstown, or Wanaka to her Mount Iron farming family, from May until August. We all went – the chickens, the cat.” They did Correspondence School, attending Queenstown School in winter. “I learned to knit up there, but I was a bit of a tomboy. Not many girls wanted to do sleepovers as it was so isolated.”
Considered a luxury in such remote country then, the family had electricity, thanks to Mick’s ingenuity. He’d tow many an unfamiliar stranded visitor out of the Shotover River in his tractor and clear slips. There’d be medical emergencies or accidents at all hours needing help. Unfortunately the ‘big snow of 1968’, when “Ballarat Street was a ski lane”, put Joy’s dad off the station and they moved to Queenstown.
Mick flew light planes. Neighbouring Branches Station runholder Lin Herron and friend (Sir) Tim Wallis would often drop into the station in the chopper doing deer recovery work.
Joy and two friends felt pretty cool when Mick flew them into the high school Branches Camp, then under the strict military-style reign of teacher Ian Daniel, while the other kids rode in in cars. “We had to dig our own long drops.”
‘Busy Bees’ handcrafts were held at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, many of the stones featured there Mick brought in from Mount Aurum.
At 16 Joy started work at the Post Office Telephone Exchange, initially one of 20 manual operators. She worked there for 13 years until the new automated exchange cut over in 1988. “We went from 1000 phone numbers to nearly 2000 and everybody had to queue for toll calls.” Many residents were on party lines and while some accused the operators of listening in they didn’t. Local cops Gavin Jensen and Carl Cross would sometimes stop by on the beat on the overnight shift. They received all emergency call-outs first and unfortunately Joy had to sit helplessly on her board when the call came in that a car, carrying her cousin, had plunged off the Skippers Road hundreds of metres with fatal consequences one night.
She went to Training School to learn how to manage the many wedding telegrams arriving on Saturdays. “On the Exchange’s last day we sucked in helium balloons and talked to our toll callers like Donald Duck,” she grins.
Joy flatted in the Post Office staff flats and there were three pubs in town – Wicked Willies, Eichardt’s and The Mountaineer. At 18, Joy, under the 20-year-old drinking age, was feeling quite smug one night that she’d borrowed 20-year-old Allison Cooper’s BNZ bank uniform blazer sporting her name tag. “We were all in Diggins Bar – Dad often drank there, when Sergeant Maloney walked in! I was shaking in my boots. He walked over, grabbed the badge, turned it around and said, ‘What’s your name?’ My face was bright red. He knew me, and my dad,” says Joy. “Publican Tony Hill came over and saved me saying, ‘Don’t worry, her dad was here. He must’ve just popped out’. Tony saved us all the time.”
By 20 (1979) she’d saved enough money, working nights at Skyline as well, to buy a Robins Road section for $14,000 and build her own house.
Marrying Doug Veint in 1986 they had three talented sportsmen sons, all national swimming representatives, one an international kayaker. Joy founded the Remarkables Swimming Club and served on the committee for many years. “Swimming was our whole life. It was hectic.”
She also returned to work for NZ Post for another 13 years as a mum in 2000 by which time the family had built on 22.2ha in Hunter Road, which Joy helped develop into a small successful deer farm. “Two spiker stags were going down on a new-born fawn so I wrapped it in a bag of lavender and fed it colostrum and it survived.” More pets followed and her love of animals is now reflected in a thriving little farm.
Joy’s run four half marathons, loves the mountains and outdoors, her dad’s tenacious, high country, can do spirit brushing off on his kids.
“I didn’t appreciate it back then but I love to camp up there now and our family always loves going back to Mount Aurum.”
“Home is where the heart is and I never want to be anywhere else. You stand on Mount Dewar or the Skippers Saddle and you’re up in the clouds.”
