Mill’s first female worker turns 100

• Published date: 29 September 2022

Then Aline Bailey, she was the first female employee at Waipa Mill when it opened in 1939

She worked as the mill’s typist–telephonist, working nine-hour days for the equivalent of $4.17 per month.

But the mill did not have a toilet for the first year so she would wait until lunchtime to bike about a mile home to use the toilet. The men would go among the trees.

Douglas was born in Palmerston North on September 23, 1922, and celebrated her 100th birthday last Friday. .

She spent her first 15 years in Karioi near Waiouru at boarding school in Palmerston North and at Whanganui Girls’ College.

The family of six moved to Rotorua in 1937 as her father, a forest ranger, had been transferred.

In Karioi the family used candles for light so it was a treat to be able to turn the lights on at the wall.

Douglas went to the city’s only high school at the time, which is now Raukura, Rotorua Boys’ High School.

“Then I wanted to be a nurse and of course, the war was coming and dad said: ‘No, you’re not becoming a nurse, they climb out of windows and go off with boys’. He knew of a job coming up at Waipa Mill. I got the job in 1939 on August 14.”

While Douglas worked at the mill, her father got work in Kaingaroa. She would board during the week and, with no car, bike with her sister from the mill to Kaingaroa on a Friday afternoon and return on Sunday.

“It would take us three hours one way and four hours the other. It was all gravel roads.”

They never punctured a tyre.

Douglas remembers during World War II, a train carrying troops would arrive at the station where Central Mall is now every eight weeks and they would bike down to the station to see the new arrivals.

As Douglas knew how to tap dance, she would also entertain the forces stationed here.

“We went dancing every night and we always wore long dresses.”

After the war, Douglas married her husband, Des, an accountant at the mill, on August 14, 1946, at Rotorua’s Blue Baths.

“We didn’t have a car so we got in a taxi to the bus stop and went to Hamilton for the honeymoon.”

They had three children, Jill, Judi and Kevin, and Douglas became a stay-at-home mum.

They saved a £180 deposit to buy a £2000 (about $350 and $3860 at today’s exchange rate) at home in Rotorua which Douglas still lives in today.

Des died 14 years after their marriage on November 19, 1960. At 38, Douglas was widowed with three children.

She sewed...