As the bus headed south, David made an important decision. His early family life in Moera and then the years growing up in the boys’ home in Lower Hutt and Sedgley in Masterton were now behind him. He was embarking on a new chapter in his life, and he wanted to make a completely new start. He wanted to leave behind all that had gone before. He wanted a new identity. Williams was the family name he had been born with, but in truth he had never really been a part of the Williams family. Indeed, the memory of his biological family was one of abandonment—first by his father and then by his mother—which had left him growing up and fending for himself in an institutional setting. David wanted to be done with that part of his life, and the best way to do it, he decided, was to change his name. Instead of being known as David Thomas Williams, he would change his name to David Thomas Bussau. Once he got to Timaru, he would make the change official by deed poll (a legal document drawn up to change a person’s name). Besides, he reasoned, the name change would make it easier for him to fit in as a part of the Bussau family.
As the bus approached Timaru, David felt excitement rising. He was entering a new chapter in his life. Who knew what adventures lay ahead for him?
Chapter 5
A Budding Businessman
When the bus finally arrived in Timaru, Vera and Lyndsay Bussau, accompanied by Rocky, were waiting for David. Rocky ran to David and gave him a big hug as he stepped off the bus.
“It’s so good to see you again,” David said as he returned Rocky’s hug.
They all drove to a rented house near the center of town, where Vera showed David to his room. It took David only a couple of minutes to unpack. He had left almost everything from his former life behind, and he looked forward to the fresh start that living in Timaru would offer him.
The next day David set out to explore the new place he now called home. Timaru was located about one hundred miles south of Christchurch, New Zealand’s third largest city. The town was nestled beside the sea on the edge of a large, fertile coastal plain. On a clear day, beyond the plain, you could see the majestic Southern Alps, sheer and snow-covered as they reached toward the heavens. Unlike Masterton, Timaru was a place where people came to vacation and be by the sea. Just a short distance from the heart of town was Caroline Bay, to which people flocked on sunny afternoons to stroll along the boardwalk and paddle in the chilly water of the Pacific Ocean. As David walked along the boardwalk that day, he decided that he was going to like living in Timaru.
By the time David finally arrived in Timaru, the new school year had begun. Although he had tried hard at Wairarapa College in Masterton, David had fallen short of passing his School Certificate, the national examination most New Zealand students took during their third year of high school. Once he had settled into life in Timaru, David enrolled at Timaru Boys’ High School, where he planned to try again to pass his School Certificate. He also was eager to begin playing on the school sports teams. In addition, he joined a local soccer club and began regularly playing soccer.
After school David divided his time at home between playing with seven-year-old Rocky and doing chores around the house. It wasn’t long, however, before he began to notice that his relationship with Vera and Lyndsay Bussau was different than it had been at Sedgley. As time passed, instead of feeling a part of the family, he began to feel like the house slave. Lyndsay and Vera were always having him do things around the house: mow the lawn, weed the garden, wash the dishes, dust the furniture—and the list went on and on. But David willingly and without complaint did whatever they asked of him, if for no other reason than he had no one to complain to.
Back at Sedgley, David had noticed that Vera could get quite angry at times, yelling at her husband at the top of her lungs. In Timaru her outbursts in the house were even more volatile and frequent. Much to David’s disappointment, family life with the Bussaus reminded him of the grim days with his own family in Moera before being sent to boys’ home. Gone was the fantasy of the cozy, warm family relationship he had daydreamed about before coming to Timaru. David realized that the only one who seemed to care about him as a person was Rocky. In fact, David began to wonder whether all that Lyndsay and Vera Bussau really cared about was his labor and getting their hands on the two thousand pounds he had received as a result of the injury to his hand. The money was still being held in trust for him until he was eighteen years old.
To make matters worse, things were not working out at high school. Although he enjoyed playing on various sports teams at Timaru Boys’ High School, as in Masterton, David couldn’t seem to muster the discipline necessary to apply himself in the classroom. Finally, after six months of trying, he decided it was time for him to leave high school and get a job.
David explained his predicament to his soccer coach, who worked at the local telephone exchange during the day.
“How would you like to work at the exchange?” the coach asked.
“I think that would be all right,” David replied, unsure as to what a job in a telephone exchange might entail.
“I’ll see what I can do for you,” the coach said.
A week later David was working at the local telephone exchange in Timaru. But even after trying as hard as he could, he could find nothing to like about the job. After two months David quit and went to work at Hendersons, a local sports store. This was a job he liked, selling and repairing various kinds of sports equipment. Before long he was repairing fishing rods and reels, fixing cricket bats, restringing tennis racquets, and cleaning and reconditioning shotguns and hunting rifles.
At Hendersons David worked alongside Don, an Olympic champion cross-country skier from Canada who had come south to New Zealand to train during the northern summer. Don was several years older than David, but the two of them struck up a friendship. Often David would tag along with Don on the weekends as he headed for the Southern Alps to go skiing, a new sport to David but one he seemed to have a natural ability for.
Don also introduced David to another new adventure—flying. Don had a private pilot license, and on several occasions he rented a Tiger Moth biplane at the local airport and took David flying with him. David didn’t quite know what to expect the first time he climbed into the open cockpit in front of Don. The Tiger Moth bounced down the runway before lurching into the air, and David gripped the sides of the cockpit until his knuckles turned white. But once they were airborne, he began to relax as Don guided the aircraft higher and circled out over the Canterbury plain. The view was magnificent. Off the right wing were the Southern Alps, and off the left wing was the dark blue Pacific Ocean. When he looked down, David could see the patchwork of fields spread across the plain below. As they flew, the wind rustled through David’s hair and buffeted his face. All in all, David thought flying was an exhilarating experience.
During their working hours at Hendersons, David and Don had an ongoing competition. They would take turns serving the girls who came into the store and see who was the first to get a date with one of them. David had to admit that in this competition Don always had the better of him. Since Don was older and had a Canadian accent, the girls were more interested in going out with him than with David.
At the same time that he began working at Hendersons, David moved out of the Bussau house and into a small flat. He still visited the Bussaus regularly and spent time with Rocky, who had grown very attached to him. But living alone in a flat gave David some space and a lot more free time, which he soon found a way to fill up.
Early one evening as David strolled along the boardwalk at Caroline Bay, he stopped beside a hamburger stand and watched as customers lined up. The line was long, and he wondered whether the owner of the stand might need some help serving customers. During a lull in the line, he went up and spoke to the Greek owner of the hamburger stand. Sure enough, the owner was eager for some help, and David began working at the stand during the weekends. Before long, he was also working there in the evenings after he got off work at Hendersons.
Serving hamburgers was not too much different from serving hot dogs, as he had done back in Masterton, and David quickly mastered the job. As he worked, he thought about his experience with the hot dog stands back in Masterton. Perhaps, he thought, he might be able to duplicate that success with a hamburger stand.
“Would you be willing to sell your business to me?” David asked the owner one evening.
“I could be,” the owner replied in his thick Greek accent.
After some negotiation it was agreed that David would purchase the business for one thousand pounds, which he would pay off in installments. The two men shook hands, and David found himself the owner of a hamburger stand set up in a trailer at Caroline Bay in Timaru.
Now that he was the owner, David got busy working long hours developing the business and making it more profitable. For nearly a year he labored away until he felt he had built a solid and profitable business, and then he sold his hamburger stand for a healthy profit. With the money he made from the sale, David invested in another business, a fish-and-chips stand located farther along Caroline Bay.
Again David saw the potential in this business and set to work maximizing that potential. Before long, his new business had twice the turnover it had when he first bought it. But while David enjoyed the challenge of building up a business, once the business reached the goals he’d set for it, he began to lose interest and look for a new challenge. That was what happened with the fish-and-chips business. Now that it was operating well and making a good profit, the day-to-day managing of the business began to bore David, who then decided it was time to sell. Again David made a good profit from the sale of the business and began to look around for a new challenge. His friend Don had recently left Timaru to return to Canada, and David decided that his next challenge also lay elsewhere, away from Timaru, in Auckland.
Located in the northern half of North Island on an isthmus between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea, Auckland was New Zealand’s largest city. David had never been there before and decided he would like to see what opportunities it had to offer.
Rocky was heartbroken when David told her he was leaving Timaru. He understood how she felt. Over the years he had grown fond of her and would miss her. Still, he promised to write to her often and visit her whenever he could.
His farewell with Rocky over, David left Timaru behind and headed north to Auckland, carrying with him the five thousand pounds he had netted from selling his fish-and-chips business plus the compensation for his injured hand.
Nineteen-year-old David Bussau arrived in Auckland in early 1960 after spending nearly two years in Timaru. As he walked down Queen Street in the heart of Auckland for the first time, he was surprised at how big and bustling the city was. Queen Street ran all the way down to the edge of the harbor. When he reached the end of the street, David caught a glimpse of the big, new harbor bridge that had been opened the year before. The bridge was bigger than any bridge he had ever seen. The city seemed to exude an air of confidence, and David, too, was confident that Auckland was going to be a good place for him. Of course, he first had to find a place to live and a job.
David rented a room in a boarding house in Manurewa, one of Auckland’s southern suburbs, and then found a job in a fertilizer factory nearby. It wasn’t the greatest of jobs, bagging and labeling fertilizer, but David didn’t mind the work. To supplement his income, he drew on a skill he had learned while working at Hendersons in Timaru. In the evenings and on weekends he busied himself restringing tennis racquets. It was a lonely existence, as David had no friends in Auckland, but he was certain that given time, the situation would eventually rectify itself.
