Month: January 2015

I’ve lost a friend, Warwick Broadhead, who met me off the ferry on my return to Waiheke and drove me plus luggage in his little red car to Rocky Bay.  He’d organised two Argentinean Guys to un-pack my store room, unroll the rugs and place the furniture. Warwick unpacked some kitchen boxes until the teapot and kettle came to light then made tea. He was famous for making tea. I’d been away – off Island – for the first performance on his new solo show, Monkey, which he planned to perform in 30 episodes on the first Saturday of every month.  It is now Friday and I am about to phone him to find our how it all went.  There’s a voicemail on my phone from mutual friend, Richard asking me to call, and an email from both Richard and my cousin Mary Taylor saying that Warwick had died.

I collect Richard from the ferry and drive him to the Warwick’s house, collecting victuals on the way.  His house is on top of a hill above Palm Beach, looking over native bush to the west towards Auckland and east over the Hauraki Gulf. Warwick’s friends and family, led by his younger sister, Anne are gathered – there are nephews, wives, partners and close friends.  The house is mostly one large bare room of specific and magical dimensions.  It has a curved ceiling meeting at a high point in the centre where a cupola entertains a small glass chandelier. At the kitchen end the wife of one nephew is preparing food – people sit on the built in banquettes talking, but the main activity is through the hall in Warwick’s small bedroom where he has been laid out. Strict instructions have been left for the procedures around his death, preparation and burial. There is to be no embalming or refrigeration and he is not to be cremated but buried on a bier (no coffin) at a depth of less than two metres.  There is to be no headstone, just a Kauri tree planted on top of him.  It’s a hot January and Richard is worried about the no refrigeration rule.  Warwick’s sister and family are washing the body and rubbing on fragrant oils and eventually we are invited into the bedroom where he is lying on his side wearing only a loincloth.  As predicted, the body is already starting to go black and we are all invited to place Kawakawa leaves on him.  These have great medicinal properties and were used by the Maori people, so it seems to make sense.  I place a few leaves on his feet, but there is a crowd all eager to help, so I pick the leaves off the branches and hand them to the other mourners.  He has to be turned and with guidance from Anne, everyone contributes.

The family want to use St Mathew’s in the city but are worried that a non religious ceremony may be unacceptable.  I’m able to offer reassurance as the service for Phillip three years ago was held there and they are known to be inclusive.  I make myself useful by driving a couple to catch a ferry, then go home and ring my cousin Marie, the celebrant for Phillip’s funeral. She confirms that St Matthews is inclusive and that there should be no problems and also there is an Auckland cemetery for natural burials.  I ring Warwick’s number and talk to Anne.  They are in the middle of discussing arrangements and so are glad to get the information.  Apparently the natural burial cemetery is full and he will have to go in Waikumete Cemetery in west Auckland at a depth of two metres.  He can’t have everything.  Richard phones, asking me to come and have something to eat and collect him but there’s not much left by the time I get there and we are just about to leave when there is another arrival.

‘Will we see you tomorrow?’ Anne asks.

‘Just to bring Richard up, I think you need the space and there are so many others to visit.’

Her face brightens in tired gratitude.

The funeral is on Tuesday, five days after the death and I’m worried how decayed the body will be in the summer heat.  It’s time to get the black suit on but wearing the jacket is just impossible in this heat.  I pack sandals and shorts and my swimming gear for training later.  There are others on the ferry obviously going to the same funeral. I’ve time for a coffee in town, but this means that when I get to the church it’s fairly full – standing room only or seats behind pillars in the nave.  I eventually find a good seat in the gallery at the back with a clear view of the proceedings.  Warwick is already in position on a bier which has low plywood sides with cut out handles.  He’s covered with white fabric, an ostrich feather fan and flowers.  Someone is swinging an incense burner around to reduce detectable odour of decay.

Once the family and close friends have entered, Anne begins by telling us how he died – on his bed reading a book about angels.  She then goes on to itemise Warwick’s demands for the post death process, which apparently pushed the limits of the Natural Funeral Company and some compromises had to be made on both sides.  Anne describes the fascination of watching the body decay, something that Warwick wanted her to experience.  She links this to the many dead, decaying in the heat, in war-torn parts of the Middle East. Family difficulties are acknowledged and his nephews speak about the life of their gay uncle, who they clearly adore.  They are proud of his achievements and particularly grateful to him for showing them how to be sensitive men – not always easy in this country.  Two of the nephews have been brought up speaking Te Reo Maori so there are speeches and waiata (song) in the language.  The wife of one of the nephews is Maori and sings beautifully as does one of the choristers from his choir.  There is a woman from the Waiheke Spinners and Weavers who speaks. They were very much a part of his life in later years.

Some weeks ago I happened to be on the same ferry and sat chatting with him as he spun his wool using a spindle – amazing. Three years ago I’d collected lichen and used it to dye wool for him to spin.

There are tributes from friends, many of whom performed in his astonishingly creative productions.  They speak of the inspiration and the frustration and of Warwick’s playfulness, bordering on wickedness at times.  His search for spirituality was a life-time journey to escape his Catholic background. This search took him around the world.  He studied the tea ceremony in Japan and brought it back to New Zealand, adapting it to his own design. One friend tells the story of waiting for a train in Turkey and Warwick engaging with a group of very handsome guards in uniform.  With no common language, friends were temporarily made, creating an impromptu play. Photographs were taken in every combination with the eventual discovery that the train had been cancelled.

And so the stories continue for two hours. My friend Richard speaks last – about his relationship with Warwick, describing them as ‘Play Mates’. Richard wants to explore the darker sides and, using the quote form Monty Python’s ‘The Live Of Brian’ explains that Warwick ‘was not the Messiah, he was a very naughty boy.’  He had a need to be the centre of attention and his crimes are listed, including ‘attempted murder’.  This reference goes back to the time Warwick was staying with me and Phillip in London during his ‘Hunting of the Snark’ tour – a one man show he performed in people’s living rooms, using little figurines and props.  Phillip and Warwick took to each other and became firm friends.  Phillip however was a wind up, teasing person and one evening at dinner the play became too much for Warwick who threw the cutlery down the other end of the table.  A deathly silence ensued and Warwick was mortified.  Friendship cooled and forever after, Phillip would always remind him of his attempted murder.  I guess Warwick had some vestiges of Catholic guilt but they eventually patched things up and three years ago on Waiheke, Warwick was a great support when Phillip died.

Richard also recounts his own Father’s funeral only a few weeks ago when Warwick, feeling a lack of attention, began hitting him on the head – hard.  It is all delivered to us so comically that we are roaring with laughter.  Throughout the service there is sadness, silence and great laughter.  One woman gets us all to stand and clap – it goes on for ages.  Warwick liked applause.  He is carried out by his nephews and nieces leaving us to tea, savouries and cakes.

 

Four of us eventually pile into Richard’s Rav4 and speed out to West Auckland and the grave-side.  We are the last to arrive and screech to a halt just in time for the last ceremony. Some of the children have questions, like ‘Do the eyes rot first’ and ‘how will he get down the hole?’  A girl offers a polished stone to be buried with him and one of the nephews had been wearing their father’s silver tie pin all day.  Should this go in as well?  No, some of the other nephews haven’t got to wear it yet.  Finally they are ready to lower the bier with the straps, when Anne cries out that there is plastic.  An artificial rose is recovered – he didn’t’ want to be buried with any plastic.  Someone points out that the clasp on the Ostrich feather fan is plastic.  She makes a gesture of resignation and defiance as if to say that if he wants his Ostrich feathers, he will have to put up with some plastic.  Shovels have been provided and everyone takes a turn to fill the grave while a Maori chap plays a guitar and we join in the singing.  A man with a digger waits quietly to one side, in case.  But the family are determined to complete the job and eventually the digger man, un-needed, trundles his machine up the hillside and away.

Off Island for Christmas

Waihekians refer to being away from Waiheke as ‘Off Island’ as if you are somehow ‘off-line’ or have become disconnected with the centre of the universe.  It’s not that the Islanders don’t take an interest in Auckland, New Zealand or the rest of the world – Island newspaper columns do talk about world and national events – it’s just that all things Waiheke are more important. This attitude has no arrogance or one-upmanship towards the rest of humanity.  We are perfectly happy to welcome visitors, allow the vistas, the wine and the food to speak for themselves then charge the people for their experience.  Many here rely on the tourist trade for their lively-hoods and it’s growing, or getting worse, depending on your point of view.  Driving through Oneroa at the weekend seems more crowded that Queen Street in downtown Auckland.  Corporations choose the Island as the venue for Pre-Christmas parties packing the evening ferries with loud drunken people so that sober Islanders opt to wait for 30 minutes for the new alternative service which is quiet and so far un-crowded.  Now that the holiday is in full swing extra vessels are being employed on some sailings and the new competing company has got a brand new boat, unimaginatively called D6, to replace the small slow one which was always late or cancelled due to bad weather.

So its five days before Christmas and I’m off to ‘Off Island’ aka home to Hawke’s Bay where I grew up.  I’m booked on the 7.30 car ferry to Half Moon Bay and, obeying the instructions to arrive thirty minutes early, I find I’m in time to catch the 7.00 am sailing, on a faster boat.  It’s the first time in a while that Fab Blue Car (now renamed Faulty Blue Car on account of it’s minor oil leak and worn transition) has reached 100 k/h as there are no opportunities to go over 60 k/h on the Island roads.  It takes a while to get used to the different sounds at this speed. I do a coffee break at Tirau then a stop at Taupo to train in the AC baths followed by lunch, then a snooze further on at a beautiful lookout spot which I think might be away from traffic noise.  There’s a steady stream of tourists driving into the part to look at the waterfall, but I manage to sleep through it.

I’m staying with a cousin in Havelock North, but can’t remember how to get there and Google Maps is not playing on my phone so I have to call for instructions.  My cousin trains her two dogs in agility and they win prizes.  Dot, the Jack Russell, was last year the star of a Russian theatre company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Wellington festival.  She had to learn Russian for the role but we thinks she has forgotten it now. It’s Sunday and after a local walk to exercise the dogs, we go to the Farmer’s Market at the Hastings Show-grounds.  This is one of the best farmer’s markets I’ve seen for ages – all food, none of your decorative arts or house cluttering bric-a-brac which you might want, but don’t need.  I bought asparagus to take on for Christmas plus cheese and of course no visit to a farmer’s market is complete without a great cup of coffee.  We have time to drive up Te Mata Peak for fabulous views of Hawke Bay and the vast and fertile Heretaunga plain where so much fruit is grown.  Apples are the main deal here, many of them going to South East Asia where they have to be delicious, attractive and blemish free, maybe Sainsburys buy the seconds.  Jill and Phil have brought the ashes of their last dog to scatter in the redwood grove where he liked to run.  The living dogs, unaware of the purpose of the visit, are chasing pine cones, though Dot has to have an especially small one on account of her jaw size.

 

Being a master swimmer throws up the challenge of finding somewhere to train.  The website for the indoor 25m pool in Waipukurau reports it is closed for retiling, fantastic timing for the holiday season – not.  The outdoor pool at nearby Waipawa is open for business from 11 every morning.  I’m early so time for a great coffee at the now famous Misty River Café in the High Street. It’s on Trip Advisor and service is prompt for coffee and any food on the counter but can be slow getting things out of the kitchen.  I’m sitting by the windlw watching my old home town go bye.  Having coffee in the High Street would have been unheard of when I was a kid, now there are at least three places.  I scan faces for anyone I might recognise, but everyone seems new, even those who might be around my age are not familiar.  It’s pleasing to see that the old town is doing well.  There are no empty shops on the High Street and everyone seems to be in town.

 

The town swimming pool is looking fantastic in the sunshine and I’m one of the first in this morning. I recall the massive queen carnival the town held over 50 years ago to raise money for its construction and my family was heavily involved.  I joined a coaching session here when some parents employed a Japanese swimming instructor and we quickly formed a kids swimming club, hosting meets and travelling to Havelock North and Woodville to compete.  I used to come down to train in the early mornings with a girl from my class.  We had a key to the side gate and would do 30 minutes before school – enough to win the High School senior championship.

 

My brother farms beef and sheep in a district called Wakarara, underneath the Ruahine ranges.  Central Hawke’s Bay is now marketed as Lamb Country but you would be hard pushed to find many lambs on the flat Ruataniwha Planes.  The highly successful dairy industry here has inexorably spread over the land, irrigating fields of grass to intensify production, requiring high levels of fertilisers with consequential nitrogen pollution running into rivers.  You now have to go to higher ground; rolling and hill country to find the lambs which are now in short supply and consequently the most expensive meat you can buy.  For the moment the Wakarara valley is peaceful and beautiful.  Cousins set up their tents and camp on the terraces above the Makaroro River.  It’s a beautiful place with re-emerging forest, thanks to the virtual elimination of Opossums, who since their introduction from Australia, have systematically chomped their way through the native vegetation, targeting young seedlings especially.  Trapping and various methods of control have gone on for decades but only a concerted programme using a controversial poison has worked. It’s a no brainer – either we want fluffy Australian Opossums or our native bush.  You can’t blame the Opossums; they’ve just stumbled upon a benign environment and taken Darwinian advantage.

Every year we say this will be the last time camping here as this is the site of the proposed and controversial Ruataniwha Dam which plans to irrigate the planes. Delays have been caused by objections to the scheme and the latest ruling is that although control of nitrogen run-off into the waterways has been mentioned in the plans, there are no details of what the levels will be set at or how they will be monitored. Added to this, farmers are unlikely to sign up to buying water until they know what these levels are.  All this uncertainty makes it difficult to plan stock levels.  My brother needs to know how many ewe lambs to keep for breeding and how many heifer calves to raise for his flock as a significant area of his land will be flooded.  The on-off nature of the project is just frustrating and we’ll all be relieved once a decision is made one way or the other.  He doesn’t need to irrigate as high levels of intensification are not possible with his sort of farming and anyway the source of the irrigation scheme will be some kilometres downstream.

 

It’s a big family Christmas with nieces and nephew with their partners and children.  I get to glaze the ham, there’s roast lamb, new potatoes and loads of salads. We eat and drink too much and generally laze about looking at the beautiful green hills and my sister-in-law’s lovely garden.  Hooray for the Waipawa Swimming pool – I drive in every second day for my 2k swim and take the opportunity to visit old friends in the district.  I even remember to visit the graves of ancestors in the town cemetery; people who died before I was born, who for some reason my mother also visited at this time of year with flowers. I don’t have any equipment to scrub of the lichen from the almost unreadable headstones, but the yellow lilies look nice.  It’s a scorching hot day, so I don’t expect they will last long.  One of my visits is to local artist and horse-woman Sally Eade.  http://www.sallyeadeart.co.nz/gallery

She works with acrylics and creates textures with plaster and special effects with thinned paint and a blow dryer to name only a few of her techniques.  She says she draws her inspiration from nature, and her work is modern and abstract.  She got started after looking at a highly priced picture which seemed to be un-finished and thought ‘I could do better than that’.  While most of us say this kind of thing, Sally actually went on to do it.

 

So Waiheke is not the only place for art, but I’m anxious to get back and check on my pot plants, vegetables in containers and the rest of the garden.  After speeding up the North Island, there’s a sign as you drive off the ferry and begin to accelerate up the hill. ‘Slow Down – you’ve Arrived.’

 

 

 

Waiheke has a higher than average percentage of artists and arty people, so in the New Zealand ‘have a go’ culture there’s lots of activity here with variable results.  I scour the events listings in the local papers and find that Sculpt Oneroa is opening on Friday at 6pm.  This is a new initiative since I was here last and is open only to Waiheke residents.

As usual I arrive early as I’ve still not got the exact timing for the drive from Rocky Bay so I’ve got time to have a quick look at the work.  The opening is an out-door affair on a space in front of a sculpture shop.  There’s a trestle table with drinks and nibbles around which a few people have gathered – mostly the artists.  At the last minutes people turn up from all directions and after a bit of milling around, there is a po?whiri (welcoming speeches) starting off with one of the artists, a Maori, then the organiser and then it’s all over.  I’ve collected a leaflet and go off to check out the few works I’d missed earlier.

It’s a week later and I’m spoilt for choice.  Miranda Hawthorn has opened her exhibition of sea birds at the The Red Shed (Art Collective) in Palm Beach. http://waihekeredshed.webs.com/the-red-shed-artists

I realise that as I’m away for Christmas, today is my only chance to catch it. Her colourful acrylic paintings include anomalous objects so there’s a Kingfisher in flight with a dangling chain and sink plug in its beak.  A group of birds are ignoring a Faberge egg in their midst while my favourite which makes me laugh out loud is a group of gulls squabbling over a $100 bill.  Miranda is delighted to hear me laugh and we chat about her work and the albatross she painted in response to the death of her father.  There’s an opening of a new exhibition at the Community Art Gallery this evening at 6pm but I shall have to catch this one later as I’m of to Mangare Arts Centre on the mainland for the final performance around Rosanna Raymond’s workshop and exhibition ‘Dead Pigs Don’t Grow on Trees’.

Rosanna has Samoan heritage, writes poetry and is a curator of Polynesian fabric – mainly ceremonial tapa cloth. The first challenge is to get there by public transport – no mean feat in this city of motorways and cars.  All the trains leave from the Britomart Centre just a few metres from the ferry terminus.  I find I can buy a hop on hop off ticket which works just like a London Oyster Card.  There’s a train about to leave which takes me, fairly slowly to Onehunga where I immediately catch a bus which, the driver promises, will take me to Managre.  It’s all been quite easy, but I’m disappointed that so few people are using this bus service.

Because Rosanna is rehearsing her show, it’s not possible to look at the exhibition so I go and wander around the indoor shopping centre hoping perhaps for a coffee.  It’s not that sort of shopping centre, being full of bargain shops, butchers, a fish-market that stinks and various takeaway joints serving the mainly Pacific Island people who live here.  There’s nothing to do except sit in the late afternoon sun and read my book.  It’s a novel which caught my eye in the new Waiheke Library – For Today I am a Boy by Canadian/Chinese writer Kim Fu. It was the title which caught my eye; it’s so clearly about gender and brand new writing, published this year.  The library has apparently sent all of its old books back and got new ones from the Auckland Library system. It’s always advisable to have a book to read as I wait for the ferry and indeed there’s 35-40 minutes of reading time on the journey to and from Auckland.

Dead Pigs strong female performances

It’s time to go into the Arts Centre, have a glass of wine and a nibble before being called into the performance/exhibition space.  What ensues is a powerful performance from strong and for the most part, bare breasted women clothed in traditional raffia skirts and cloaks.  Many early European photographers captured the bare breasted pacific women on film and the exhibition has found a number of these images which were then exploited in the West as soft porn.

The piece is about colonialisation and subjugation of women.  Raymond has penned some strong stuff here performed by her and other strong members of the cast.  Christianity also comes in for a beating when a Pacific woman is scrubbed of her traditional body tattoos by a Christ like figure, dressed in white with illuminated fairy lights halo like around his head.  Out in the open air for the last acts, the Samoan men have the last word, telling of the great navigational feats around the Pacific and treating us to a finale of a twirling flaming baton.

There’s a feast to follow, but I have to get back to my Island and there’s a bus about to leave.  It wanders around the suburbs with only two passengers taking me right into central Auckland and the ferry.