My DNA

I was fortunate to have nomadic parents who were not fazed by change nor challenge.

My parents, both teachers, decided to live ‘The Good Life’ (a 1970’s British TV series for the uninitiated) living sustainable lives, living off the land. It was the mid 1970’s in NZ. As a family we moved from a two teacher school in Donnelly’s Crossing in Northland (school role of 24 if I recall at the time) to Kawau Island (school role of 0). By choice we had no electricity.

Though at the time I had no understanding of what the move meant to us as a family, in retrospect I can express that it was something often described as a ‘Watershed moment’: a new direction; a fresh perspective; leaving my young self profoundly changed. It would determine my values and what is, and is not important. This would only become clear to me as the years passed.

Kawau Island Living

Our concrete block cottage was located on top of a hill overlooking a bay at the northern end of Kawau Island. The local store was several kilometres away via a dirt track that meandered through manuka scrub, open during tourist season to cater for boaties. Otherwise it was a day trip on the Mail Ferry to Sandspit and a long walk or bus to Warkworth to stock up on long life essentials: toilet paper, flour, milk powder, tinned malt, fluoride tablets, tins of corned beef and the occasional ox tongue. Needless to say, I fished with my father when ever practically possible to avoid ox tongue.

We trawled for bait in the bay with hand held nets, we rowed to the reef and fished with hand reels for dinner. I still prefer hand reels. On good days we ate like kings. On rough days, we ate the bait. My mother prepared them on our wood burning coal-range, lit once a day to bake bread, heat the house in winter and heat the water for the day’s bath. As a valued commodity, the same bath water was used for all five of us – although luckily for me the youngest, I was one of the first to dip. I learned to be grateful.

Learnings that Last a Lifetime

Washing was wrung through a hand-wringer. I loved that. I didn’t love so much when the wind stopped blowing and the windmill no longer pumped water from the rainwater collection tank to the header tank at the top of the garden. We needed running water regardless of which direction the wind blew. Everyone chipped in. Everyone had their number of ‘strokes’ required to hand pump the water. We didn’t take it for granted. I learned how to work hard.

I learned how to time manage. I was up at dawn for Correspondence School studies on foldaway desks (mine, an orange metal one) and looked forward to fishing in the afternoon, learning to fillet, swim, play make-believe and identify blue bottles. I learned the joy of asking why, tirelessly.

We had no pocket money, nor any purpose to spend it. I learned how much my father appreciated vouchers promising bagfuls of kelp for his birthday for the vegetable garden, although he ended up hauling it up the 90 steps from the beach to the veggie patch with 6 foot wallaby proof fencing. Ironically we tamed and hand-fed a few wallabies ‘out front’ by the tree swing, the same tree that the ‘cool-safe’ would sit in the shade of its foliage in summer. I learned the art of patience.

I had learned how to play 500 by kerosene lamp by the age of 7. We grew our own vegetables, built huts and clambered through thick bush just for fun.  We spent hours making birthday presents, singing, being. I learned to embrace my creative side.

We had annual wood cutting weekends, wood piles and wetas, unlimited starry sky viewing, rainy day comic book read-a-thons and broken noses (well just one: my mother’s, straightened without anesthetic if I recall). We enjoyed the delights of battery powered National Radio on Sunday mornings and gleefully quoted random passages of Bad Jelly the Witch and The Goon Show for decades to come. I learned to listen.

Life was pretty simple. Although it sounds like something our great-greats may have done, this was a lifestyle of parental choice. My folks were modern day romantic hippies by all accounts, flanked with pure guts and determination. They were, and still are, incredible.

The recollections I have are huge. Of my childhood these are the most vivid.

Nature & Nurture

I have my parents DNA by nature and by nurture.

Decades later, 40 inch TV monitors and heeled shoes don’t bring me joy. Quite the opposite. For me it’s my intrinsic desire to value meaningful things of a non-consumable nature; a fresh idea, inhaling fresh air, a thoughtful moment, a new perspective or indeed an old perspective (New Zealand’s social history post 1900’s – my own grandmother’s era, is most intriguing).

My father is a story teller and my mother is a creative. They’ve been married 50+ years and are the most alive, mad, youthful, adventurous couple in their mid 70’s that I have ever known. I proudly claim their DNA. Lucky me.

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