‘We better get going,’ Dad said. ‘It’s getting dark.’
‘A long way to go, bro,’ Pani answered. ‘You follow me.’
Somebody turned the wireless off. Mum and my aunts came running out, shivering. Without people to give it life, the homestead was somehow frightening. Mum made one last check of the quarters, slammed the door and locked it. The report echoed across the darkening hills.
‘We’re all ready, dear,’ she said. Her lips were trembling, as if she wasn’t sure.
My aunts got into Pani’s Chrysler. His tyres were fit to bursting. With a laugh, Aunt Ruth came back to join us in our car. She got in just in time — there was a whump as the enraged rooster, still after his hens, hit the door.
‘You’re for the pot when we get back,’ Aunt Ruth threatened.
Dad beeped his horn. Pani beeped back.
‘Don’t get too far behind us,’ Dad yelled. ‘One of your headlights is crook.’
Pani waved, Okay.
The sun had turned the sky red. The cars moved out and on to the road. I closed the gate behind them. I caught a glimpse of Nani Mini Tupara waving from far away. She was picking maize and wore a big straw hat.
‘Bye, Nani! Keep Waituhi safe for us!’
I ran to our Pontiac. Silhouetted in the red dusk, our cars looked like gypsy caravans.
Chapter 18
In those days the whole of Poverty Bay, the East Coast and Hawke’s Bay was covered by a grid of roads which wound further and further from the main towns of Gisborne, Opotiki, Whakatane, Napier and Hastings along the coast or up the steep valleys into the interior. On the way were small Pakeha-run settlements similar to Patutahi. They marked the beginning of Pakeha history when a whaler or English trader settled there and began the process of bringing civilisation to the natives. Later, after the land wars and two world wars, the towns became the focus of more settlers when parcels of land around them were granted to rehabilitate soldiers who had fought for King and Country; war memorials of a soldier bending over his rifle sprouted in every town. The settlements had names like Tolaga Bay, Tokomaru Bay, Tikitiki, Te Karaka, Mahia or Nuhaka and they comprised a hotel, petrol station, general store, small community hall where a dance or film was shown at weekends, church and graveyard, rural school and stockyards — and their roads were tar sealed te rori Pakeha. Further out, and you were in dust country. There the settlements were villages like Waituhi, Waihirere, Mangatu and Anaura Bay — brightly coloured houses around a drab meeting house, with not a Pakeha in sight.
Right at the back of beyond, along the even dustier roads which zigged up the valleys and zagged down over culverts, through cattle stops, across fords, through gates that you opened and closed on your way in and out, around hairpin bends and over rickety one-way swing bridges, at the very top of the valleys, were the big sheep and cattle stations. Regardless of their isolation, the big stations and their ability to produce meat and wool for export were the edifices upon which the entire economy of Poverty Bay, the East Coast and Hawke’s Bay depended. Without them, and the constant stream of cattle and sheep trucks which brought their stock and produce down the valleys, there would have been no need for the settlements, freezing works, ports, towns and industries which had grown up to support them.
The big stations knew their self-importance. They were capped by huge two-storeyed houses with names like Windsor, The Willows, Fairleigh or Tara. Some had been constructed of stone shipped from England, France or Italy. They were characterised by wide entrance halls, their floors shining with paving stones that had been hauled in by bullock teams. They had imposing staircases and hallways panelled with English oak. The furniture, four-poster beds, linen and sculptures were all English and had been collected during regular visits by steamship to the Home Country. The master’s study was filled with leatherbound books; there was always a deer’s head over the fireplace. Gravelled driveways led up to the big houses. Rose trellises and arbours of English daisies bordered the driveway. In the middle, a clipped green lawn. The glass in the windows was handmade and shaped like diamonds. From the windows you could see the big red-roofed shearing shed, cattle yards and sheep yards.
To ensure an appropriate distance between station owner and station worker, the quarters for the foreman, musterers, cattlemen, shepherds and their families and all those who were on regular pay were on the far side of the shearing shed. Furthest away were the whares — crude, rough-timbered bunkhouses and kitchen-dining room — for the itinerant workers, the scrubcutters, fencers and, of course, the shearing gangs. They had no ovens, no running water and no electric lights.
My sisters and I loved the shearing season. To this day I don’t know why. Why, for instance, would anyone love all those dusty three- or four-hour journeys to the sheds? Usually we had to travel in convoy to ensure support for one of the other cars just in case it broke down, its radiator boiled over, tyres were punctured, batteries ran flat or an axle snapped under the weight of our accumulated baggage. One year Uncle Hone’s old car gave up the ghost entirely. Dad hitched a tow line which broke as we were going up a steep gradient and Uncle Hone’s car careened back in a wild ride down to the bottom of the hill. It had no brakes. In the second attempt to get the car up the gradient, Dad lashed a spare tyre to the front bumper and our car pushed Uncle Hone’s car to the top of the hill. Uncle was supposed to wait for us at the top so we could get in front of him and prevent a dangerous no-brakes descent. Uncle must have forgotten, because no sooner had he reached the top than down the other side he went.
I can still remember that car as it rocketed out of control down to the bottom of the gradient. How Uncle managed to hold the road was a mystery — we agreed later that it must have been because the weight of all the people inside kept the car from flipping on the corners. On our own way down we had to stop every five minutes to pick up pots and pans, bedding, boxes of food and tin plates that had come loose on that pell-mell descent. What else could we do except dissolve into gales of laughter when we reached the bottom ourselves?
Then there were the fords, where one car would get stuck in the middle of the river. My aunts would yell out, ‘I could do with a swim!’ Out they’d get, their muscled arms heaving away until the car was free. My Aunt Sephora discovered that she had natural flotation when she slipped and went arse over kite down a waterfall and along the deep river.
‘Help!’ she cried. She couldn’t swim. She bobbed along, kept afloat by her natural buoyancy, her red dress inflated by trapped air like a balloon.
After that, my uncles used to sing in jest, ‘When the red red robin goes bob bob bobbin along —’
More dangerous were the swing bridges when some of the boards gave way and the car’s wheels went through. We’d all get out, carefully unload the car to make it lighter, lift the car up from the holes in the bridge and load up again once the car had reached the other side.
Finally there were roads that had been washed out or blocked by slips or peppered with mud-filled potholes. Some places had no roads at all. When such hazards or challenges presented themselves, Uncle Hone would say, ‘She’s right. Let’s have smoko.’ Uncle Hone was the boss of Mahana Four. After smoko, while we kids were skinny dipping in the river, he would korero the problem with the adults and, by the time we got back, something had been worked out. Off we would go, backtracking or sidetracking or driving down to the river bed and motoring along it until we could get back onto the road.
We drove, pushed, pulled and sometimes carried our cars piece by piece to get to the sheds.