Letter congratulating Poppy (Gran) on her engagement to Hugh McLaren (both pictured).Gran’s half-sister Alexandra Nina Caverhill was called Lalla, married Bill Gentry in 1926 and lived in
Wellington. He was a military man and went with the NZ division to Greece in 1940 and later to
Crete. He was part of the joint chiefs of staff planning the occupation forces in Japan in 1947 and he
had a pen that was part of the Japanese surrender. Bon and Arn (my dad) used that pen to sign their
wedding register when they were married. Bill was knighted in 1958 with a KBE.
Bonnie went to Queen Margaret College in Wellington and saw a lot of Aunt Lalla and continued the
friendship with Bill and Lalla throughout her life.
Another Aunt who was special to Mum was Lina (Colina), Bon’s father’s (Hugh’s) sister who married
Alan Standish (Tim) Wilder and lived on a farm out of Waipukurau. Mum trained and nursed at the
Waipukurau hospital through the war and spent a lot of time with her Aunt Lina. Lieutenant-Colonel
‘Tim’ Wilder led the Twenty-fifth Battalion overseas with the Third Echelon in August 1940 and took
it successfully through a difficult rear guard action at Molos in Greece and was promoted Brigadier in
September 1941.
Bon’s letters to her parents from Waipukurau share a lot about her love of nursing as she organised
to work with the doctors operating on a range of conditions suffered by locals. Her Friend, Audrey
(later married to John McFarlane, Raukawa Angus stud farmer) struggled with the exams but Mum
passed hers and became a registered nurse living in the nurse’s home. The matron ran the place
with an iron fist and mum reported that she often had to read her letters from home on the “lav”
while on duty rather than wait until her shift ended. Lina clearly loved Bon and the two of them
shared ideas on fashion and outfits to wear to parties including a wedding in Hastings when Aunt
Lina hosted mum at the Art Deco Masonic hotel on the Napier parade.^2
(^2) Read more about Bon’s life in “KC The Life and Times of Ken Eastwood.”