During Puhoi’s Annual Street Party on the 7 th December His Worship John LAW, the Mayor of Rodney, presented the Society’s President Jenny SCHOLLUM with this award in recognition of over 30 years of service to the community.

We were going to keep the whole thing secret from Jenny and spring it on her as a surprise but, of course, this is Puhoi and she got to hear of our plans. Typically, her response was: “I am reluctant to be nominated for an award. I am grateful to Puhoi for making me what I am - it is my home and it seems only natural to care and share what talents I have and work as I can.”

Jenny is a local girl who grew up on a somewhat isolated Matakana farm and arrived in Puhoi in 1970 as a nineteen year old, having just married into the SCHOLLUM family. She says of herself that, at the time, she was a shy young girl with no experience of life having grown up in a solitary, remote environment but that she was keen to learn, would give anything a go, didn’t mind hard work and liked to achieve the very best standards in everything she did.

Except for the lack of life experience, all of this is still absolutely true of Jenny today. She is still quiet and self-effacing and hates to be in the limelight, as she was during December’s ceremony. But any organisation which has had the good luck to be administered by her has benefited from her no-nonsense enthusiasm and thrived and blossomed under her guidance.

This is what she has to say about her own experiences:
“I was grateful and humbled to be accepted by the extended SCHOLLUM family, by the other inhabitants of Puhoi and, later, by the Church family. I shared their love of ‘500’ and was soon included in card afternoons and so got to hear their stories of old times. This was reinforced by Martin (Matty) RAUNER. Matty was a local character who used to prop up the counter at the shop telling stories for hours about what things used to be like. We lived on his route to the shop and were often entertained by his stories. At the 1972 Anniversary celebrations I sat with 92 year old Mary SCHOLLUM all afternoon, captivated by the old-time music, by her stories and by Puhoi’s history and traditions. The whole community soon felt like ‘home’. We made our own fun and we ran our own services: hall, domain, cemetery and the sports clubs. Almost everyone was involved and I just took my turn as an office bearer. In some cases I stayed involved for many years just because I was interested and it wasn’t really a burden.”

Well, Jenny SCHOLLUM’s continuing involvement has lasted for 35 years and during that time she has spent 27 years as secretary of the Cemetery Committee; she helped restore the Hall in the 1970’s and was on its committee for years and years; she has been on the Church Liturgy Committee for an equal length of time and is still one of the Church organists; she organised the badminton which still takes place every week; and she organised those wonderful Children’s Christmas parties in the Hall.

But all that seems almost incidental when compared with her real love, which is everything that has anything to do with Puhoi’s history, with its traditions and with all those ‘stories’ that she speaks of.

Jenny was one of the Puhoi Historical Society’s earliest members and has been on it’s Committee for the almost 30 years of its existence. During that time she has been its President for several terms and has also served as Secretary and Treasurer. She co-founded the Bohemian Dance Group and was its enthusiastic leader until very recently. She still organises regular bus tours and school group visits to Puhoi to teach anyone who is willing to listen about the history of Bohemians in New Zealand, about the life they led, about their ways and traditions and about their village. And she has always been the co-coordinator of the Society’s well-presented and interesting little museum.

If you put all this together it may sound like the work done by half a dozen different people. But not included in all this is her main achievement: Well away from the public gaze she has been the Historical Society’s chief Archivist and Researcher for many years and the work she has done in this area will be her lasting legacy to Puhoi.

She has painstakingly built on the work of others by researching the genealogy of the first three generations of the Puhoi settler families: who arrived on which ship in what year; who was born when; who was married when and to whom; and who died when and where they were buried. All this is neatly typed out in the days before computers and sources of information are given meticulously so that checks may be made if necessary. She has assembled collections of birth, marriage and death certificates and all available school records from class lists to individual reports. There are around 2000 photographs of individuals, family events, village views and people at work - all meticulously numbered, described and catalogued. And there are audio tapes of old settler descendants, who could still speak the Bohemian dialect, telling their stories. There are facsimiles of Austrian Empire passports, dated 1863, there are folders and folders of neatly ordered newspaper cuttings about Puhoi and its people right to the present day and much, much more.

Present members of the Historical Society have always been aware of filing cabinets full of records, which are so well organised that any newcomer can quickly find his way around. However, it is only over the last two years, while several Society members were involved in transferring these records to computer, that they all discovered not only that the Society’s records were meticulously researched and well organised but that the sheer quantity of the material is quite overwhelming! And mostly it is down to just one woman - Jenny SCHOLLUM !

Jenny’s firm opinion is “… that the older people, who taught me all I know, should really have the awards.” Well, we all beg to differ!

Without question, she has contributed hugely towards making Puhoi the close-knit, caring community that it is today by quietly caring for it over all those years. Her obvious love affair with Puhoi, her enthusiasm, her quiet self-effacing manner, her common sense and her practical, no nonsense approach to every job going have certainly set a benchmark for involvement in the community.

Thank you, Jenny, and bless you for all you have done, not only for the welfare of this community but also for the recording of its history and the upkeep of its traditions.

Completion of Dray Restoration

It’s Done !

28 January 2006 Opening Ceremony

With only very basic tools and little machinery, it took considerable effort to fell the trees and then haul the logs out of the bush and down to the banks of the Puhoi River to be stock piled in readiness for launching and lashing together into rafts for towing down to Auckland. Locally made drays, or wagons as they were variously called, played a big part.

Those at the opening ceremony heard from the Society’s President, Jenny SCHOLLUM:

“Because of the immense significance of bush work to the development of the settlement, the Puhoi people had for years been keeping an eye on one of the few surviving drays which was standing in nearby Redwood Forest. When the first pioneers arrived in 1863, followed soon afterwards by other families, the whole area was covered in dense bush so first priority was to live off the flora and fauna then gradually start to make a living from firewood, split shingles, gum, bark, fungus, timber and logs. They adopted the methods they had seen elsewhere to move the heavy logs – the whim, dams, log chutes, skids and the dray or wagon.”

“In the winter of 2003, Bill MARCROFT began negotiations with Carter Holt Harvey Forests to find out under what conditions this dray could be moved to Puhoi. CHH were extremely generous in offering the dray and it’s shelter to the Puhoi Historical Society on the understanding that the people of Puhoi displayed it in a prominent spot and had the resources available for it’s proper restoration and preservation. In talking to the people of Puhoi, Bill found that the project really captured people’s imagination and he had a lot of offers to help.”

"Bill and Arthur DUNN dismantled everything on site, Russell GREEN, Cody MANKELOW and Arthur helped with the transportation, Bob HALTON gave valuable technical advice and HALLETT ENTERPRISES donated machinery, labour and know how in three stages – digging the holes and re-erecting the poles, lifting the sunken log from the river and putting it on the dray. Arthur stored the dray until the shelter had been re-erected and many hands made quick work of fixing entirely new roofing shingles."

The protective structure being rebuilt.

Normally kauri logs float but one, which for some reason had got jammed and had sunk in the early days, was retrieved from the river bed and was transported and secured onto the dray. This log too is a piece of Puhoi history.

“Quentin LUSH investigated the best way of restoration and carried it out. The Rodney District Council allowed us to use this prominent site almost opposite the Puhoi Hotel and provided funds for the steps and seat. Large and small monetary donations were made amounting to $1200 and the Historical Society backed the rest. A very big thank you to all who helped in any way - a great Community Effort.”

Rob GOLDRING speaking on behalf of Carter Holt Harvey Forests said how delighted CHH was to have been able to help and congratulated the Society on the success of the project and said how fitting it was that the dray was now back in Puhoi.

Jane SHERARD was also among the invited guests representing the local iwis.

A symbolic unveiling of the plaque mounted under the dray followed which took the form of the Society’s President using a Bohemian Museum tool to saw through a manuka (titree) pole taken from the local bush round which the traditional green ribbon had been wound.