Arnett’s demob and New life down under

Arnett's House in Papanui

Arnett at the races with parishioners Bin and Teresa and Paul.

When Arnett got home from the army he had no house as the family house had been rented. There was no job in the dairy as his job had been taken by some one else. He found his girlfriend six months pregnant to a Canadian soldier so was leaving the country to marry him. His famous words to her were, "What happened to you?"That’s the thanks you get for putting your life on the line. In retrospect Arnett says that if he knew then what he knows now and how he would be treated by the Government and business after his army period he would never fight for them again. As far as he could see he was no more use to them so he could easily be discarded with. The only job Arnett could get that paid enough money to live was in the mines. It was a dirty job and after two years Arnett knew that if he stayed in that Job he would die young.

Arnett applied for assisted passage to New Zealand but was refused as he was in a job that was considered vital to the country. That was not to deter him he had saved over a hundred pounds so he paid for his own passage. It took him six months to get to Australia as the old steamer he went on kept breaking down. But as he said it gave him a chance to see some of the world. Before he left England he was living with my Aunty Nellie and he had seen me a couple of times in the late forties but he wouldn’t see me again until 1989 over forty years later. All he knew was that my mother had said that she was moving to the East coast and he naturally assumed that I was with her, but I wasn’t. Unbeknown to him or my Aunty Nellie I was up the road in a children’s home, and that is why we lost touch for forty years.

Eventually Arnett after dropping in South Africa for a month or so landed in Australia, there he worked for a year or two and then decided to join his cousin in New Zealand. Here he met his future wife Evelyn who had been married before and had two children which he treated as his own. They were married for over forty years and Evelyn died while Arnett for the first time returned to the country of his birth to be with me at my ordination in June 1994. Arnett still lives in the house they bought when they first got married in Papanui and is one of the reasons why I am here in New Zealand on my sabbatical.