In the early 1960’s I was working in the office of the Criminal Court at Otahuhu and on my way home every Friday I visited my hairdresser in Howick where I was living. My mother was very old and lived in a nursing home at Eastbourne, England and every Friday when my hair was under the drier I wrote a letter to her. Having finished my letter I picked up a Woman’s Weekly magazine and the two centre pages held an article and photos of an American couple who had spent a holiday exploring New Zealand. It was a very interesting two pages and they mentioned that their one regret was that they hadn’t been able to stay in a N.Z. home and get to know the people more.

This I thought was a great pity, so I took an airgraph from my bag and wrote a letter to them saying how much I enjoyed their article and I invited them to stay in our house if they came to N.Z. again.

Then I realised that magazines don’t give full addresses of the people they write about. However I saw that they came from Blue Island Illinois and thought if it was a small island maybe my letter would reach them, so I posted it.

Months later I received a letter from Bill and his wife and he said when my letter reached them it was covered with ‘Not known here’ stamps because it had travelled all over America before reaching him. He said that Blue Island is not an island but a place close to Chicago. Our letters went to and fro for quite some time and then he wrote and said, “Win we have enjoyed your letters and we would really like very much to hear your voice, would you please send a cassette next time.”

He said he belonged to a cassette taping club and he thought I should join one as many people would like to correspond with a New Zealander. Without thinking I said on my tape, “Oh I don’t think we have taping clubs here.” In his next tape he said, “here is the address of the secretary of our club who lives in St Heliers, Auckland!!!”

So of course I had to join. Unfortunately it no longer exists. A booklet was sent to me giving names and addresses of people from all over the world and instructions to choose 25 and write a breezy letter about life in N.Z. then make 25 copies and send them out. It was stated that many people had as many correspondents as they could manage but I should get an average of 5 or 6 to tape to. The booklet gave people’s interests and a rough idea of their age group.

At that time we had a young friend of my daughters staying temporarily with us while she was looking for shared accommodation with other young working girls. Del was a lovely girl and she came to stay for a week or two and actually stayed three years; in fact until we sold our house and went overseas.

Del was a very conscientious school teacher and spent so much time on her school work that she had no time for a social life.

My daughter at that time was Women’s Travel Consultant for Qantas and had a wonderful social life presenting fashion parades at Auckland Hotels, so she included Del as much as she could but Del had no confidence in herself.

I asked Del what she would like to do if she wasn’t teaching. She found this a difficult question to answer and eventually said, “I would like to be a receptionist but I’m not easy with people and I can’t type.” This was in 1968. My husband obtained a typewriter and Del went to learn typing.

When I said I had to make 25 copies of my letter, she said she would help me to type them and we used carbon paper and made 3 copies each time. We did 21 and sent them to the people that I had chosen from the book. Eventually I did have 6 tape friends. Some were what Americans call “shut-ins”, e.g. people who were very sick and unable to go out. Our tapes were not personal and never asked what our friend’s career was or had been but talked about our country and life styles. Many years later my husband retired and we decided to take a long holiday in U.S. travelling by motor caravan. When my friends heard this they asked for us to visit them. However my husband and I flew to Seattle first and visited his ex secretary and her husband who had temp work there. Whilst we were there my husband had a very bad eye problem – a virus behind the eye. As medical expenses are high in U.S. we decided to fly to U.K. where Alf could attend a Masonic Hospital. I wrote to explain to my tape friends and received such a response of heartfelt disappointment that we decided to fly and see them briefly. I really did want to meet them.

The following stories are about our wonderful warm experiences with these people. There were times when I found the tapes that I received were rather dull and uninteresting but I decided that there must be a reason why I chose these people to write or tape to and therefore I would continue. Now I can see how we both benefited and how worthwhile it all was.