Joanna

I have a sister that never left home even though she was born in 1972.  I dropped by last week and paid her a visit. I always do if I am ‘home’, even if travelling through in the middle of the night.  You can do that when you are family, calling in at rude hours.  She never complains.  Sometimes the chat is silent. Families are good at that too – communicating with silences that is. But this time Steve was with me and I felt a bit self-conscious about talking in front of him, even though he is the dearest friend and knows me well. Even saying hello seemed a bit awkward.  So I stuck my hands in my pockets and shuffled my feet, got a bit emotional and after an awkward silence moved on.   Next time I am back I will bring some paint for things are a bit weathered at her place and I would like to think people know there are folk who care. We can have a chat as the paint is brushed and I can take my time.  I nodded to old Jim nearby, said hello to John (Joanna’s former babysitter), dipped me lid at Rodney whose truck once fell off a mountain and whose mother is no longer able to deliver him the weekly flowers, her last delivery now dry and broken stalks. She hangs out just a short walk away. We stood with David, mentor and friend, and gazed in silence over the countryside. He and his parents look out over Joanna as do many others I know. It’s getting to be quite a community up there on the hill. Sadly some of them have no voice but I am always pleased at what Joanna has to say. She tells those who would mull these things that she is ‘a child of the covenant’, speaking of a sure hope of eternal and unfailing commitment by her creator that, though her mortal remains look over a corner of Otago, she lives on in His presence and in that ‘presence there is a fullness of joy’. She is a great encourager that Joanna, sister of mine.

1969 – an Age of Innocence?

Funny how these pictures keep drawing you back (pun alert). To an age of innocence, which is not how anyone would usually describe 1969. Mind you I am not entirely convinced the date on the picture is correct – I like to think I would have been drawing my Dad in this way in 1965 or 66 perhaps, not 1969.  By 1969 I am sure he would have wondered at the floppy eared, sparse hair, Three Mile Island rabbit rendition of him. I think more highly of him than that! Read more

Victorian Invercargill

My childhood recollections of Invercargill include a bullock being shot, and burning my feet in a mound of white ash – the logs had long since stopped smoking and the pile of talcum soft ash in the middle of Don’s paddock was too much to resist. It hid orange hot coals underneath. Read more

Waihola (13)

In 2006 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer. Read more

Making a Molehill Out of Mt Everest

One of the more gratifying experiences I had when serving as an officer in the military was to hear, in the wee hours of the morning, after midnight when no one was stirring – except perhaps those Russian submarines – one of the junior staff, emptying bins and sweeping floors, declare he was forsaking his uniform and was off to university. He went on to become a doctor with more degrees than the rest of us put together. Despite the military telling him he was only good enough to clean up after the rest of us. Read more

Escape from Colditz

My boyhood years were spent with my siblings in small rural town in Otago, New Zealand. More rural than town, our upbringing had a Huck Finn flavour about it in some respects. A well established and fond memory are the “contraptions” built by one of the brothers, the building of one being distilled in this (very) short story.

Escape from Colditz
A Story by PickledEel

Not so Sleepy Wellington – but Still Windy

I thought when I interviewed with Eric that my next overseas trip was going to be back into Asia but I ended up in New Zealand last week. In Wellington to be precise. Which is where the New Zealanders hide their politicians. In a building that the locals call the Beehive. It kind of looks like one of those upturned wicker type beehives , though nothing like the boxes we used to raid as kids - there were no bears in our woods doing that. It was the local ten year old boys, who would have copped a hiding if we had ever been caught. Wellington for me is always about memories of the Wahine disaster in 1968, also marked for being the year one of my sisters was born. Later I sailed into Wellington from Lyttleton and the bow of the Wahine was still protruding from the harbour waters. It has long gone but I still see it there in my minds eye. A buoy still marks the spot. Interestingly when I was there last week the winds that blew about town approached some of the speeds that lashed the harbour when that ship went down. Wellington has changed a lot since I was there in the early 1970s but it has a slow country town air which is pleasant. You can walk the length of the CBD very quickly but a slow stroll takes you through a quite cosmopolitan dining and drinking scene which is not what I have ever associated with this very windy place. I happened to be there in February actually and the businessman I was with for lunch bumped into two ex Army friends as we walked to lunch. Men he had not seen since his Army days. Its that sort of village.

The video here catches a more recent ferry heading for the harbour mouth, then the view out over Wellington (with the QE2 in port) and then some views of the Malborough Sounds as we headed back to Sydney.

Possums (12)

In 2005 David Paton, good friend, mentor, example, and inspiration died after experiencing an aggressive cancer. I flew to New Zealand to attend his funeral. On the flight back I started writing some notes that were intended to capture something of what David meant to me. Taking a deep breath I thought I would share them more widely here on this blog. They are less coherent than I would like but they tell a story of what a difference one life, honestly lived, can make to those around them. These notes are offered up in 15 chapters which I will post out over the next few weeks. And in order that you can put a face to a name, here he is, on the Stewart Island ferry, catching some “zeds”. Or “zees” depending on what part of the world you hail from.

The pet possum was a rare animal, treated with compassion and given a citizenship in the house that few other animals ever had. Ordinarily the Australian brush possum is hunted without respite, it being a noxious pest in New Zealand, causing millions of dollars of damage to forestry and agricultural resources every year. They are hunted with a passion and were the source of some pocket money as we grew up. Out on the Run, with the dogs loose it only required a whispered “sic ‘em” to have a pack of half a dozen dogs or so (sometimes more) to get their blood up and to tear off towards the nearest outcrop of rock to hunt out a possum. Whether there was one resident there or not. David would amble along behind to see what would flush out but often he was the one grabbing this or that dog and force feeding it down a hole or crevice. Sometimes a possum would flush or sometimes a possum would deter the dog with a well aimed swipe at the nose. Sometimes there was only a lot of noise, dust, and slow grins and absolutely no possum to show for the hunt. One possum escapade was especially memorable. It was at Waihola. On that place there was a very old woolshed. At one end there was a lean-too structure which was only a single story high, with a corrugated roof. Somehow we had learned there was a possum resident in the roof but we were unable to flush it out. With a ceiling pinned to the reverse side of the rafters there were plenty of places for it to hide and no way for us to see in. David’s solution was to pick up one of his scrawniest dogs (he used to bring a selection of them down to Waihola, and in the days prior to the purchase of the truck they would all be piled into that old Ford) and stuff it under a loose bit of corrugated iron on which he would then stand to prevent the dog reversing out. Hardly any need since every dog knew that a hunt was on with the cue “sic ‘em” and the place stank of the possum in any event. There was a huge commotion from within the roof as the dog scrambled around in the dark, barking and yelping and the possum growled and shrieked. I have no idea how the possum got out but remember being surprised at its appearance as a dark blur evacuating from under the guttering, flying across the yard and scrambling up the trunk of a huge old macrocarpa tree nearby. Its second mistake was to pause to look around and get its bearings. David shot it dead. We then spent some effort in extracting the dog from under the iron and I recall a few sheets having to be lifted. That old woolshed came down a few years later and was replaced by a new structure that did not leak but had none of the adventure in it that its collapsing possum ridden predecessor had.

Standing on the high country of the Run on a snowy day I paused with David and watched the “bread bus” making its way along the pigroot. David had stopped striding across the tussock to point out that the bus was travelling way too fast on a road covered with ice (he would know) and only opened that morning by the council grader. He suggested we watch it disappear around a bend on the side of the distance spur, across the gully and in the far distance and see if it reappeared on the road further down the valley. “My bet” said David, “is that we don’t see it reappear.” And we didn’t. An hour later we edged our way carefully back up that same bend and found the bus on its side in the snow. The driver seemed very nonplussed and was sitting in the snow drinking from a thermos flask and making wise cracks about the mail not getting through. But as we chatted we realised he was very shaken – as he had swung around the bend only seconds after vanishing from our view he had lost control and was heading for a dramatic drop into the creek below. Somehow he had wrested his careening vehicle to the other side of the road where he had deliberately aimed for the ditch in an effort to get the thing to stop. We left him in the snow and ice, in the rapidly dropping ice blue shadow of the end of the day and said we would call the council to see if he could get him towed out. An hour later the grader came through and about an hour later the bus crept past David’s house, somewhat chastened no doubt.

We left the Run late one night in pouring rain. We had been up there at midnight in late spring, shooting rabbits using a spotlight. The booming .303 was something of an overkill, deafening those in the cabin and proving to be more of a fun factor than anything else. I can still hear Steve saying “Bruce, put that thing away!” as the muzzle flash lit up the night and the thunder of the shot cracked across the gullies. The rain increased to a point where, even if there was a rabbit out there we would be hard pressed to see it so we departed the top of the Run and headed down to the highway. Travelling back to David’s place, as we drove up a long gentle slope in the highway a rabbit hopped out onto the road just at the edge of the headlights. Not in any hurry but just edging along in a slow lope. David asked me to pass over the .303 which I did. Leaning out the driver’s window he proceeded to blast ten rounds up the highway. One hand still on the wheel. Chunks of Highway 75 were flung into the night but the rabbit continued its slow lope, seemingly oblivious to the noise behind it and the destruction around it. In the end it hopped into the verge and stopped after which we duly dispatched it from a distance of only inches. The “one shot, one horse” legend was in tatters!

But not so much that I ever failed to appreciate his praise for my shooting. Getting a pat on the back from David was rare but when it came it was very special. Once at Waihola he took about five or six of us kids up to what was then known as the CYC paddock, the only patch of green grass on the place. From a high vantage point we looked down onto a large puddle on which was floating a thin stick, about half an inch thick and barely visible. About 75 yards away he said. Giving us all one round he then handed his rifle to one of the group and asked us to hit the stick. One after another twig was bounced around in the water until I was handed the rifle. Taking quick aim and dropping the sights on it I fired the round and the twig became two. David was impressed. I savoured that praise for years.

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The Run (11)

Previous Chapter

The Run was a wild place. Probably still is. Country like it has become well known around the world thanks to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Despite what I recount above, my most precarious driving experiences were up on that place with David edging his truck over steep edges with no view over the bonnet of the descent or the destination. Here were wild horses which we occasionally went up to shoot for “dog tucker”. David’s favourite rifle was a .22Hornet – a .22 on steroids. I watched him one day, truck still rolling, open the door, and with rifle poised, vehicle moving, fire a round over a distance of about 50 yards at a running horse. To bring a horse down with a .22 is quite something and only a shot that reaches the brain will do it.

Up on “The Run” – scoping with the Hornet for pigs. I was always intrigued by the dogs which always knew to look in the direction David pointed his rifle.

Akaroa

Bruce Elder, a journalist writing for the Sydney Morning Herald, has I think, the best job in the world – reporting on anything obscure, fun, intriguing, captivating or otherwise whatever takes his fancy as he travels around New Zealand. Those following his travels are occasionally invited to suggest places to go or to see, and I recently suggested he drop in and have a look at Akaroa (Google Earth lat=-43.8032578797, lon=172.967248723). Which in turn prodded a flood of memories.

It’s a small village on Banks Peninsula. My grandparents retired there, and as kids we used to gratefully lose two weeks of our summer holidays somewhere and everywhere in the village. I am pleased to add that thirty years later I revisited the place and, unlike some other places of my childhood memories, it was as delicious as I remembered it. Even if we were a couple of months off summer.

It is an interesting place, in part because it is the only French colonial settlement in New Zealand. Perhaps in all Australasia – I am not sure about that. The local legend we heard as kids had the French emigrants, heading up Akaroa harbour, beaten by hours to their settlement “claim” by a British runner sent with a flag from the other side of the peninsula. Whatever the truth of that, the French set up home here and as kids we ran around streets named Rue this and Rue that.

And summer at Akaroa was about running around. Eating apricots from the large tree that grew behind the post office. Nicking purple plums from off trees hanging over someones fence. Spending hours in the water. Jumping off Daleys Wharf. Fishing of the main wharf. Eating crayfish - thanks to my grandfather’s part time job at the small fish processing plant on the main wharf, before he gave that away for his bowls. Digging pipis out of the beach and cooking then up in a billy fired by driftwood. Picking our way down to the beach from the camping ground on soft bitumen melting in the heat. Damming the creek that ran out across the beach. Swimming to the diving platform anchored off the beach. Collecting shells among the rocks. Lying under canvas (you can still smell it) in stifling heat and listening to people walking past late at night. Scones and cream (and raspberry jam) at Nanas. Kiwifruit vines growing wild over the powerlines and there for the taking. The sweet smell of passionfruit. Running all day. No parents – they were around somewhere. We usually caught up with them at meal times! Otherwise we ran loose. Huck Finn, eat your heart out. Another lifetime. Another place. A world away.

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