Joyce Hogg, cake decorator supreme

One of her wedding cakes. All the decorations are made of icing.

Creative people find many different ways to use their talents.  For Joyce Hogg it was decorating cakes – hundred of them.   If you wanted a beautifully iced five tier traditional wedding cake Joyce could do it for you.  Perhaps you needed a scale model of your bach down the south coast or a voluptuous mermaid-shaped cake to surprise a work colleague or a perfect replica of a Halloween pumpkin.  Joyce has done them all.  For more than 60 years her creations have been making people smile (and probably put on weight as well).

It all started when she was a little girl growing up in Martinborough.   She would make “cakes” out of her brother’s potting clay.  “I did progress a bit beyond that!! I loved baking and especially enjoyed doing the wedding cakes.”  Before you rush to call and commission one of her masterpieces, I’m afraid you are too late. Joyce, now 85, has hung up her apron these days. “You would have to ask me pretty nicely if you want a cake today.”

Joyce has another claim to fame here in Martinborough.   She was the school’s first teaching assistant back in 1962, and only the second one in New Zealand after the government introduced the scheme.   She’ll tell you she fell into it by accident and that she didn’t have any special skills.   The school obviously thought otherwise and she was given more and more responsibilities and ended up staying 30 years.  She left not long after her eldest grandson, Brent Roper, started there.  “I tease him that the school wasn’t big enough for the two of us!”

Joyce now lives in one of the Wharekaka villas.   That’s fitting, given that she worked for many years in a voluntary capacity to help make Wharekaka what it is today.   She was a Trustee for two terms before resigning to look after her husband John who died of cancer in 1988 and served on the Auxiliary for another 13 years.  There isn’t much she doesn’t know about Wharekaka and its history.

Apart from her family of course (Susan, Rodney and Karen and their children and now grandchildren) the two other big commitments in Joyce’s life have been the Red Cross and St Andrew’s Church.  In both cases she has been recognised with medals for more than 50 years service, and featured in the media including The Star.   

“I think it’s very important to step back though and let others have a turn.  It’s the only way to get young people in.” 

All this community work has kept Joyce very busy.   “I haven’t led a lonely life in the 30 odd years that I have been on my own.   I’ve been involved in so many things that got me out and about.”   Now, she says, dodgy knees and increasing deafness have “quietened me down a bit.”  That’s probably good news for Tigger, the former Wharekaka cat who lives with her.  He will get more lap time as a consequence.

I ask Joyce what she’s learnt from her long and active life.  “This is what I told my kids and this is what I believe. ‘If you want to do something, or want to go somewhere, do it!  Do it, and hang onto life with both hands.’”  Well said, Joyce.

Chris Cassels