Mrs Leslea Morgan heard her two daughters before she saw them at Wellington Railway station. Pamela, twenty, and Sandra, eighteen, screamed, "Mum, Mum" as their mother walked off a bus from Seatoun about 4 pm. The three embraced, crying, then one of the girls raced off to find her father, who had been watching for his wife as he helped survivors from rescue boats at the ferry wharf. The family piled into their car and headed for their home at Petone.

The Morgans' tearful reunion was repeated many times that afternoon as dazed survivors trailed into the station's gaunt foyer from Seatoun, Eastbourne, and the city wharves. Just after 2 pm, police, Union Company officials and railways staff hurriedly began organising the station as a survivor reception-centre. The cafeteria adjoining the foyer was to provide food and hot drinks, medical staff were called in to deal with minor injuries, and later, Salvation Army and Red Cross personnel came to assist.

As the early survivors trooped into the station at mid-afternoon the full extent of the disaster was still unknown but already Wellington was opening its heart to those who had suffered. Offers of accommodation flooded into the police.

After radio newscasts had revealed that survivors were being taken to the station, relatives and friends of those who had been on the Wahine gathered quietly behind the crowd-control barriers. The tense, anxious wait common to all disasters began. For some the vigil was in vain; others spent hours waiting, only to learn that loved ones were already in hospital. For some the wait was mercifully short.

Tears rolled down the face of Mrs Margaret Spidy as she waited for her daughter Susan and son-in-law Graeme Betteridge. Not for a minute did she doubt Susan and Graeme would be safe, but she found the atmosphere pervading the station unnerving. A neighbour who accompanied her to the station spotted the Betteridges first. "My poor bedraggled daughter," Mrs Spidy recalls. "She was frozen, and shaking from shock more than cold." The Betteridges had been in the first lifeboat in to Seatoun.

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Rob Brittain also was at the station by the time survivors from the first lifeboat arrived. He had helped carry some of them up the beach from the boat, so he knew that his wife Karalyn and baby daughter Joanne had not been among them. Water dripped from his clothes as he watched more survivors piling out of buses, cars and taxis. But there was no sign of his wife or child and when he asked people if they had seen them, all he got were shaken heads and "Sorry, no."

Blanket-draped survivors milled about the foyer or sat in the cafeteria with bowls of soup and hot tea. Their eyes revealed the shock of their experience and there was little conversation. Some of the older women, their dignity and security temporarily shattered, stared about vacantly, their age made more obvious by water-streaked makeup and wet, corded hair.

Phones were busy as out-of-town survivors tried to contact their families. The Post Office poured in staff to take telegrams. There were no charges.

Mr and Mrs O'Neill and their six children wandered about the station for over an hour while they tried unsuccessfully to contact a Wellington Seventh Day Adventist minister. Then Mr O'Neill remembered the private hotel booking he had made earlier for the night of 10 April. The O'Neills were taken to the hotel and there the children were bathed and put to bed wrapped in towels. Their pyjamas had gone down with the ship. "They all sang themselves to sleep. They didn't appear to have suffered any shock," Mr O'Neill recalls.

The parents did not sleep easily. Mr O'Neill woke at 1 am and thought he could still hear people crying out. The O'Neills cancelled their planned sea trip to Australia at the suggestion of the church and spent three nights in Wellington before flying to Sydney. Mr O'Neill did not have enough money to pay for his family's hotel accommodation, but when he tried to arrange payment the management declined to accept a cent.

Father McGlynn got to the station from the ferry wharf, had a cup of tea, then ambled out to see if anyone was looking for him. No one was, so the indomitable old Irishman took a cab to Lower Hutt. There he had a bath and an early night. "I could have said Mass, but the long gospel for that day made me a bit doubtful of myself."

Other arrivals from the ferry wharf included Mr and Mrs page 197Dunford of Christchurch. Mrs Dunford was happy to be on solid ground again. "I thanked God we were safe and uninjured. My son saw us, yelled 'Mum', and started pushing through the crowds. Nobody could stop him. The tears were rolling down his face and I cried too. I never thought I would cry tears of joy."

At Wellington Hospital Australian Mrs Gladys Donohoo was in a ward crowded with survivors; men down one side, women down the other. She was about to dictate a telegram to her son in Sydney when a survivor almost hidden by blankets was wheeled past her bed. Mrs Donohoo recognised a familiar bald spot on the back of the patient's head. "I asked the woman taking the telegram if she would see if it was my husband. She came back and said 'If your name is Donohoo, he is yours.' I asked her to add his name to the telegram. They wheeled my husband to my bed. He said he hadn't expected to see me again."

The Australian couple, discharged from hospital next day, cancelled the rest of their New Zealand tour and flew home. Their dramatic experience remains a vivid memory to Mrs Donohoo: "Sometimes I close my eyes and I am back in the moment of time when my husband tied on his lifejacket. I can see the wall of water through the porthole and hear the wind howling and remember thinking, 'We all have to die some time.' "

Because of disrupted telephones and the remoteness of the Pencarrow coastline, news of the loss of life on the eastern side of the harbour was slow in coming through. Only those connected with the drama on the far shore knew the full extent of the tragedy. When Major Ray Tong of the Salvation Army got to the railway station he, like thousands of others, had no inkling that anyone had died. But then he met Mr Ronald Emmett, a homeward-bound English migrant, who told him he had lost his wife. "That was the first indication we had that all was not well."

Major Tong took Mr Emmett and his three young daughters back to the People's Palace and then began to ferry half a ton of clothing by car to the railway station.

The press did not learn of the heavy loss of life until about 5.30 pm and it was a little later that the NZBC began to broadcast the tragic news. Pressure on the information centre at police headquarters doubled as relatives and friends of Wahine passengers and crew telephoned for news. But the police were unable to answer page 198many inquiries because survivor lists were still only in their initial stage.

The railway station's social hall was turned into a clothing centre, and in it were placed the clothes supplied by the Salvation Army and Red Cross. Major Tong and his staff of about forty helped survivors find suitable dress, and quietly moved about the station trying to locate particular survivors. Major Tong was moved by many reunions: "It brought a lump to my throat to see them holding each other again."

Some people were brought together in odd ways. Bill lies of Dunedin found his wife after he gave an order for shoes and socks to a woman clerk from a department store. The woman, one of a number organising replacement clothes for survivors on the instructions of the Union Company, met Mrs lies, a Pencarrow shore survivor, a few minutes later as she made her rounds in another part of the station. She told Mrs lies she had taken an order from a Mr lies, and the Dunedin couple were reunited shortly after.

Late in the afternoon a taxi took Miss Margaret Millar of Gore, and several other eastern bays survivors, into Wellington. At the station Miss Millar searched for her Christchurch friends, Mr and Mrs Lawrie Nathan, and found them in the cafeteria. The two women embraced. "We just hugged each other and cried and cried," Miss Millar remembers. The Nathans also had landed safely on the Pencarrow coast. All three were later taken to a Presbyterian old people's home in suburban Island Bay and billeted several nights before flying to Christchurch.

Many survivors were taken care of on the night of 10 April by complete strangers. "Wellington builder Arthur Parson and his wife took Fred Lee of Kaitaia to their home from the station and then set about trying to find Mrs Lee. Mrs Parson finally located the Kaitaia woman in Wellington Hospital at 11 pm and gave her the news her husband was safe. Next morning Mrs Parson took Mrs Lee home.

Mr and Mrs Arthur Gatland of Tauranga were taken from the station to the Wilton home of Mr and Mrs Brian Buchanan. "We can never forget the kindness of this young couple. They forgot nothing that might contribute to our comfort," says Mrs Gatland.

Land agent Peter Madarasz had expected his young bride to be at the station when he got there from the ferry wharf, but he had page 199to wait for about three hours before Sue came in on a bus from Eastbourne. Their car and honeymoon finery were lost with the Wahine, but all that really mattered was that they were safe and together again. Wrapped in blankets they walked from the station across the road to the Waterloo Hotel for a drink before going by taxi to the Hutt Valley home of Sue's parents.

A patient but despairing Rob Brittain waited at the station until 6 pm when the flow of survivors was easing to a trickle. His wife and daughter had not arrived. "I was beginning to lose hope. I knew Joanne couldn't have survived long in the water." He drove to Miramar on the off chance that his wife and child had slipped by him at the station and gone home. But there was no sign of them so, back to the station; still no sign of them. A sympathetic policeman took Brittain to central police headquarters where the complex task of sorting out the names of those who had lived and those who had died was under way.

Brittain had probably missed his wife when he drove to Miramar. Karalyn was among the last in from Eastbourne and remembers only a few people waiting at the station. A doctor examined her feet and said she needed hospital treatment. Someone telephoned the hospital and found that a child fitting Joanne's description had been admitted. "For the first time I had a cry," says Mrs Brittain. At Wellington Hospital she was treated in casualty before being taken to a ward to see the child who might be her daughter. "From a few feet away I saw an arm thrown back and some curls. I went closer and saw her fast asleep. I didn't touch her or anything. It was enough to know she was safe and well." The sailor who jumped from the Wahine with Joanne had taken great care of her. She didn't have a bruise. And apart from cut feet Mrs Brittain was well. Fortunately her pregnancy was unaffected by the dramatic events of 10 April and on 23 July she gave birth to a healthy boy. Rob Brittain was still at police headquarters when he heard the wonderful words "They are both well at Wellington Hospital."

For him the nerve-racking day was over at last. But other people were still searching for those they loved. The grandmother of David Hick located the boy during the evening at Hutt Hospital. His little sister Alma was one of three children who had died, but somehow someone had got David ashore on the eastern side of the harbour.

Mrs Ilene Hansen of Wanganui, who had come ashore on thepage 200Pencarrow coast, spent the night in a Salvation Army hostel, not knowing whether her husband had survived. She found him next morning in Hutt Hospital. It was to be a month before he was well enough to be flown home.

Police helped the Masterton son of seventy-eight-year-old Arthur Welsh trace his father to Wellington Hospital. When the son telephoned the family in Gore with the news that Mr Welsh was alive and well he heard that Mrs Welsh also was safe. A nurse had taken her to her home from the railway station and telephoned Gore.

Wellington people went to endless trouble to reunite and assist survivors. After Dr Bill Treadwell arrived at the station from Eastbourne with eleven-year-old Ivan Farmer he discovered Andre Farmer, seven, being looked after by an Air Force man, Jack Sutton, nineteen, who had taken charge of Andre at Seatoun. Dr Treadwell took Ivan and Andre to his home and put them to bed, then tried to find out what had happened to their mother and elder brother. After several telephone calls he established there was a woman in Wellington Hospital with a name that was either Farmer or Palmer. At 11 pm he arrived at the hospital, and a sister on duty told him that a Mrs Farmer, who thought she had lost two young sons, was in Ward 2. An elder son was in Ward 20.

At the far end of a long row of beds in Ward 2 he found Mrs Farmer. "You can stop worrying now," he told her. "Your two little boys are tucked up in bed at my home." She burst into tears. Dr Treadwell strode on to Ward 20 to give the eldest Farmer boy, Kim, seventeen, the news about his brothers. Next day Mrs Treadwell picked up Mrs Farmer and Kim from hospital and shuttled them and Andre and Ivan around town, getting all four outfitted. Dr Treadwell arranged supplies of drugs for Ivan and purchased books and toys for him and Andre. Mrs Treadwell rushed the Farmers to the liner Southern Cross and got them aboard just before the ship pulled out for Australia and South Africa at 3.30 pm.

While search and rescue teams patrolled the Pencarrow coastline during the evening of 10 April, Wellington police headquarters blazed with lights as the accounting of disaster continued. In a first-floor mess room, relatives or friends of Wahine passengers and crew gathered to hear some of the incomplete survivor lists read out. The system was abandoned after a short trial because of page 201the confused state of the lists, and the police began dealing with people singly. Telephones rang continuously. Callers sought information or gave names of survivors not recorded earlier.

Early in the evening police discovered they had names of far more survivors than the total number of passengers and crew who had been on the Wahine. There was much duplication of names, different spellings of the same name, different addresses for the same survivor. In the chaos of the afternoon the names of many rescuers had gone on the lists. In a few cases names of the dead were also on the list. No name could be deleted until painstakingly checked out.

Newsmen hounded the police for casualty figures. It was near midnight before a death toll of over forty was officially announced and the first names on the death list released. The police were still unable to say how many were missing, but rumours of a far higher death toll proved inaccurate. Police worked far into the night trying to make sense of the survivor lists. At the city morgue the grim and difficult job of identifying the bodies had begun.

Some days elapsed before the final figures of 51 dead and 684 survivors were known. Forty-three of the dead were over the age of forty. Seven of the victims were Australians, the rest New Zealanders.

Forty-seven bodies, forty-three from the eastern shore and four from the harbour itself were recovered on 10 April. Over the next nine days the sea yielded the remaining four bodies.