Another season was upon us. It was going to be our second season, but our first as experienced pickers. And in contract apple-picking, experience counts for a lot. So we were looking forward to a profitable few months.
The apple-picking basics are simple - any moron can do it ... and they frequently do. The general idea is, of course, to move apples from the trees into wooden bins as quickly as you can. Simple enough. It’s the quickly bit that causes all the problems. Basically there’s a distinct conflict of interest between the apple’s handling requirements (apples aren’t made of wood, but the bins are), and the pickers’ requirement to make money, exacerbated by the orchardists’ selective harvesting requirements. In the end, it’s not so much technique which matters, as knowing where the line of acceptable bruising (that is, tolerated bruising, because in orchardspeak no bruise is good bruise) lies.
And the season did start well. Our improved abilities and improved fitness meant we were literally twice as fast as the year previously. We steamed through the first week, gained further momentum in the second, picked up the pace another notch in the third. We were rolling confidently towards a record-breaking season ... and then the emotional wheels began falling off.
We’d found our dream section. We were planning our dream house. But Marion started to wonder if it all wasn’t really the beginning of some eternal nightmare. What had once seemed so straightforward, so uncomplicated, so perfect, began to darken with sinister undertones. We weren’t building a home, but a prison! And it wasn’t freedom we were weaving, but a heavy chain of commitment shackling us to a miserable piece of dirt. Only now, now that it was serious, did she begin to honestly consider the ramifications of our decision. Only now did it all become real. She began seriously questioning our plans, our future, herself ... and us.
What were we going to do here?
What were we doing here?
They were familiar questions. The exact same questions, in fact, that I had asked less than a year before. So I repeated the answers she had once given me.
We were going to build a home. A base. A place for our accumulated stuff. We were going to develop the land, to slowly progress towards basic self-sufficiency. We were going to create a life of simple pleasures. We were going to eat and sleep and swim and read and study and grow. We were going to pursue our interests. We were going to travel, to live in other towns, to discover new places, but always coming home. We were going to live together, enjoy each other’s company, start a family. We were going to live.
We were here, because land was cheap. Because there was always work (not work we wanted, but work when we needed it). Because it was only 150 kilometres to the city. Because it was quiet and peaceful and clean and simple and beautiful. Because we could do anything here. Because we could be ourselves here.
I was committed, but Marion was suddenly allergic to commitment.
I wanted to stay, but she wanted not so much to leave, as to flee. It didn’t matter where, as long as it was away. It didn’t matter who, as long as it wasn’t me.
Life suddenly seemed to lose its point. It was pointless picking apples. Pointless thinking about building a home. Pointless to think about anything except sorting our life out, rediscovering each other, redefining our dreams. So we headed to Germany. A few months staying with Marion’s family, travelling again, seeing new things, forgetting about the past or the future ... that’s what we needed.
But staying with Marion’s family proved quickly untenable, mainly due to the insidious effects of locked-in syndrome (commonly called the Wendy complex, or reverse Peter Pan psychosis). Defined as “a chronic psychological state in which offspring are eternally perceived as children”, this insidious affliction affects up to 90% of all parents with post-pubescent children, and yet remains virtually ignored by the medical establishment.
First symptoms usually appear as the patient’s offspring reach adolescence. These may include irrational behaviour (hiding car-keys, counting the change in pockets, marking whisky bottles), emotional delusions/misconceptions (offspring’s behaviour - growing long hair, mis-kicking penalties, failing maths - is designed purely to embarrass/annoy them), and increasingly illogical thought processes (disagreement is falsely labelled being disagreeable, development of personal taste is interpreted as rejection of parental taste, disliking pumpkin equals disliking provider of pumpkin).
Nobody quite knows how or why (some researchers have suggested a kind of empathic puberty may be responsible), but at some point during this normal, healthy (though often tumultuous) emotional sparring, a mental trigger is activated, thus setting in motion an unstoppable chain of mental ‘gate closures’. Our memories are very much like sheep, and LIS the deranged shepherd in charge of the pure parental flock, ensuring all diseased, disagreeable or simply wrong memories are shunted safely away. There is no known cure.
It seems there’s an unwritten international human law that the more interesting children become, the less interested the parents. Surely the primary role of parents should be to raise complex individuals capable of independent thought - children better than themselves? But better has become a word laden with mistrust. We may no longer be better, only different. But surely better is preferable to bland lies? Shouldn’t we hope our children are better than ourselves? Not more, not less, not bigger, faster or cleverer - just better. Rather than being proud of their children’s independence, proud of their evolution, most parents seem to rue the loss of dependence, begrudge their children’s hard-won talents ... or worse, ignore them totally.
Marion was a 28-year-old married woman who had gathered a wealth of experience travelling and working in numerous jobs in numerous countries under vastly differing conditions and cultures before ‘settling’ on the other end of the world, but by the time we’d risen three floors to her mother’s apartment in a concrete termite mound in the middle of a concrete termite village, she had been miraculously transformed into an innocent (read ‘stupid’) 14-year-old girl ... at least in her mother’s eyes. All her experiences, her thoughts, opinions, ideals and knowledge, meant nothing. We tried to fit in. We tried not to cause undue difficulties. We tried to be reasonable. We tried to be ready for lunch at precisely 12 o’clock. But nothing worked. So we decided to go travelling.
But we quickly realised we didn’t feel like travelling either. Wandering around gawping at strange buildings and strangers’ lives had somehow lost its allure in the intervening years. Tourist attractions no longer held any attraction. Poverty was simply depressing. Cultural difference was simply a hassle.
We had to go somewhere, so we headed eastward into the new German states. There was nothing new. It was all the same, except greyer, dirtier, less friendly. Campground attendants weren’t yet accustomed to strangers wanting to camp. Restaurant prices hadn’t yet been inflated to pay for a waiter’s smile. It was cheap - train prices even reduced hitching to a quirky extravagance - and once cheap had been reason enough. Now cheap was simply depressing, so we headed back to Offenbach to consider our options.
The grey city and greyer skies soon had us casting our eyes southwards. We needed sun. Turkey beckoned. Years before, my sister Raene and I had started our travels together in Greece. After a ruinous (ie full of ruins) few days in sleet-stained Athens, we’d spent an idyllic week on Rhodos (and another week in Rhodos harbour waiting for the ferry to finally leave). Apart from being a beautiful island, it was also a major entryway between Greece and Turkey, so we met lots of travellers returning from Ataturk’s (attaboy’s uncle?) republic, and everyone, without exception, had simply raved about Turkey. But our plans lay elsewhere, and although Raene later joined the ranks of ravers, I somehow never got around to it.
Now was my chance. Friendly people, wonderful beaches, clean seas and cheap living - it all sounded too good to be true. And it was.
The people were friendly - we were all friends, invited for chai, invited to stay - as long as they wanted to sell you something or simply to boost their egos. Both of us quickly tired of the grinning lies and the hypocrisy (laughing with German customers one moment, spitting their hatred as soon as they were alone with us ‘Australians’), the leering, arrogant men and everything dirtied by the same dark greed.
The cigarette-butted beaches were no longer wonderful, the suntanned seas no longer clean, and it was no longer even cheap.
Of course there were exacerbating factors. An uncertain morning spent jostling with surly crowds (and even surlier officials) outside the Bulgarian embassy for the dubious ‘honour’ of securing an expensive transit visa had already pricked our sense of outrage.
Two days in a crowded bus had done little to boost our already-flagging morale, especially when rest-room attendants in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria demanded payment in foreign currency... but not coins! Neither of us were going to pay 10 Deutschmark to use a bathroom. The constant delays at random checkpoints manned by heavily-armed guards whose sole enjoyment in life seemed to be to ensure everybody was fully awake, certainly didn’t improve our reserves of goodwill.
(The Yugoslavian war had reached a temporary, and shaky, impasse, opening the borders between the newly-formed independent states for the first time in months. Our bus was one of the first to pass through, and the borders closed soon afterwards, providentially opening for a few days to allow our return trip before closing again, this time permanently.)
Being the rope in a desperate tug-of-war between rival restaurant owners certainly didn’t help relieve our stress. Neither did it help relieve the restaurants’ financial crises, because we’d rather eat nowhere than allow ourselves to be hijacked. It wasn’t our fault the Yugoslavian war had strangled the flow of tourists.
The bus conductors who constantly allowed three half-empty buses or more to depart to our destination before allowing us on board, didn’t enhance our opinion of the local people. And it didn’t matter that the brand new Turkish-built car (less than 30 kilometres on the clock) we finally rented to overcome the heat, the unreliable public transport service, and the 30 kilograms of carpets we’d already bought (we had a house - we needed carpets!) was constantly breaking down (despite the fact it had been outrageously expensive) or that it required regular servicing (and we had to drive vast distances out of our way in order to find an approved repairer).
What really annoyed us was the dealer who later tried to charge us double because we were bringing the car back two weeks early! According to his ‘logic’, we swapped the car halfway through the trip - after the first car broke down - so we had in fact had two cars. Our original deal was a special - one full month for x lire - but because we hadn’t rented the car for the entire month, we now had to be charged standard rates - the first car for six days at the daily rate, and the second car at the slightly discounted weekly rate. Altogether it meant we owed them for the days we didn’t use. So we asked for the keys back and said we would, under the circumstances, prefer to continue our rental for the duration. We’d park the car outside and send the keys back at the end of our rental period... from Germany! He realised we were serious, and with a final, muttered insult, turned away.
We hadn’t even started full of joy in the first place!
It was proving impossible to escape the past or the future. So our minds turned again to our house. Our home.
We visited a friend in Frankfurt. She took us to the Chinese gardens, and there, among the concrete lions and crooked bridges, we discovered our home’s ideal size. Eleven metres by five metres.
We wandered through the Offenbach Rathaus, and there, among the display boards of the alternative insulation expo, we discovered our home’s ideal roof. A living, growing, grass roof.
Together with the ideas we’d collected over the past six months, over an entire lifetime, the whole concept began to take shape.
I drew diagrams and began working through the details.
Marion built a cardboard model (and a little cardboard couple).
We would have a single, open-plan living/kitchen area downstairs with two mezzanine bedrooms, reached by ladder and connected by a narrow walkway (quickly widened once cardboard me had banged his head twenty times while trying to walk between bedrooms). Low ceilings, no interior walls, an open fireplace, lots of rafters, semi-circle stained-glass windows in the peak of each end. A toilet/bathroom out the back. A front verandah running the length of the house. And a grass roof.
For the first time we saw our home. It was wonderful ...
Showing posts with label apple picking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apple picking. Show all posts
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Friday, December 10, 2010
Love at first site II
How did I come to live here? Planning seems to have had little to do with it, though there were distinct moments when planning proved indispensable. Coincidence implies too much detachment and too little effort, though often coincidence seems like the only word to describe the chain of events which brought me here. And Fate seems far too grandiose, though often I have felt Fate was the only explanation for the result of so much (or so little) planning and coincidence. In reality, it was all three, plus another thousand words which only a better Thesaurus than mine could possibly do justice to.
But which thread should I pull out first?
Where did the story of finding this site, of building this life, truly begin?
Was it the day Roger Metcalf responded to the ad we placed in the Molyneux Mail and invited us to view his house down by the river? Our ad appeared on October 30, 1990, sandwiched between an ad for old-fashioned roses at $3.50 each, and one suggesting winter sportspersons should keep fit by playing golf during the summer -
WANTED TO BUY
We are looking for a place to live in
the Clutha Valley. Our IDEAL place
would be an old cottage (in any con-
dition on a few acres (if possible
with trees and not flat) either down
by the Clutha River or up in the hills,
a ‘bit away from things’.
so if you have or know of anything
like it or close to it OR just a NICE
piece of land, please let us know.
Contact Kyle & Marion
c/- Bengerview Tearooms
We were permanent ‘temporary’ workers on Con van der Voort’s orchard in Ettrick at the time - permanent in the sense that we were employed on a long-term basis; temporary in that our conditions of employment were of the no-work-no-pay variety - and in the middle of the annual lull. Pruning and tying down had finished, but thinning hadn’t yet started. Which was fine by us, because it left plenty of time available for what we considered to be our real job - finding a home.
Of course the ad wasn’t our first course of action.
We’d already been to every real estate agent from Roxburgh to Lawrence, but without success. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but after taking a tiki tour around the area with the Roxburgh agent, we began to believe the only details real estate agents listened to were those with a dollar sign in front. He showed us 10 or so properties - all guaranteed bargains! - from sprawling old villas to near-new Lockwoods, postage-stamp downtown sections to barren hillsides, some obviously for sale, others just-as-obviously happily inhabited, though our shiny-eyed guide cared naught for such distinctions, living, as he was, in his imaginary world of perpetually migrating herds of buyers and sellers. His selections followed no logical pattern, but they did have one thing in common ... a total lack of resemblance to anything we’d described. Despite our best efforts to narrow the search by pointing out any property which vaguely fitted our parameters, our quest became progressively surreal. If Windsor Castle had suddenly loomed ahead, rather than exhibiting surprise, the agent would have simply asserted he personally knew the owners were thinking of selling, and that it was exactly what we were looking for ... if we were willing to spend just a little more ...
In hindsight, our big mistake was showing at least some willingness to budge from our original “limit” of $35,000. At the time, flexibility seemed a virtue. After all, we didn’t want any self-imposed boundaries to get in the way of possibly acquiring our dream house and/or section. But flexibility is a word guaranteed to light up an agent’s face, because if you’re willing to do the house-hunting limbo, an agent is only too happy to keep lowering that bar until you’re dragging yourself through the mud. Flexibility is a weakness, and real estate agents can sniff out weaknesses with frightening alacrity. (Do once-normal people learn this skill at real estate school, or is it people with some dubious intuitive talent who drift naturally into jobs selling real estate or used cars?) In the agent’s mind, our ‘limit’ quickly became little more than a rough guideline for a possible deposit as he played upon our desire not to appear totally naive (“$35,000? Of course you realise this is going to be the next big boom area, right? All the clever buyers are looking for properties with ‘development potential’. In a couple of years you could double your investment ...”), or stingy (“It’d really break my heart to see anyone forced to sell their property for so little. They couldn’t even buy a parking space in Dunedin for $35,000 ...”), or just plain stupid (“Everyone knows there just aren’t any sections smaller than 30 hectares anymore. And you want a house as well ...?”). But in our defence, it wasn’t our fault. We were young. We were inexperienced. And, worst of all, we truly believed agents were there to help us!
Before resorting to agents, we’d tried scouting around for a place on our own, with just as little success, though with much less stress. We spent every spare moment prowling every highway and by-way and my way in Central Otago. We no longer just drove to Alexandra or Dunedin, we detoured there, eventually arriving at some unGodly hour with only an extra digit on our speedo to show for our efforts. Every drive was a major expedition, but that was nothing new. Every drive in our vomit-green Commer van (ex-Post Office, circa 1961) was an expedition. The van had been ‘converted’ into a replica campervan by someone who probably never intended it to be used as a campervan. (Perhaps it’s some indication of the general unsightliness of the machine that its previous owners nicknamed it Fugly - short for fucking ugly - a name which has stuck, for better or worse.) It had a sleeping alcove, though after one night inside Marion referred to it as “the coffin” and refused to sleep there anymore. It was fully wired with romantic lighting (two desk lamps) and conveniently-located powerpoints (behind the curtains), though we only managed to get plugged-in once (most motorcamps having strange obsessions about certificates and warrants) and promptly blew up the camp’s fusebox. In fairness, though it wasn’t built by a craftsman, it was, at least, intended to last. The owner had gone to great lengths to ensure all the fittings were solid. No flimsy, fandangled modern materials for him! He’d chosen only the best in 3/4 inch chipboard able to withstand the weight of a minor elephant herd. Unfortunately, the combined weight of the interior fittings was probably equal to a minor elephant herd, so the van was never ‘nippy’. But it did have a powerful low gear that could take us almost anywhere, and it ensured we maintained a leisurely progress. The petrol fumes leaking into the cabin encouraged us to keep our driving hours to a minimum, and we never had to worry about breaking the speed limit ... not even in the city. (In fact, if we were snapped by a speed camera, we could probably get copies printed before we’d reached the end of the main street.)
In the process of searching for anything remotely fitting our requirements, we’d become well acquainted with every nice house and/or section in the general vicinity. We’d investigated every derelict stone ruin or barn, climbing through acres of gorse, brambles and barbed wire, as well as braving dogs, bulls and irate tractors. We stood for hours scanning barren hillsides with binoculars, searching for a glimmer of a For Sale sign or an abandoned shack on which we could make an offer. At times the only thing which kept us persevering was an obscure mathematical formula which stated : no agents = no commission.
No matter how much we searched, we never found anything to compare with the house which had largely been responsible for bringing us back to this area ...
Six months earlier, towards the end of our first apple-picking season, we’d joined a few other pickers on a short tour of the local area, and had “discovered” our dream house - an old stone cottage by the Clutha, just around the corner from the Lonely Graves. At the time we hadn’t even considered living in the area, so there was really no consideration given to finding out more about it. As we headed back to Ettrick, we couldn’t help but imagine living there. It was such an idyllic location with character oozing from every stone. If we could one day find a house like that in a location like that ...
As we reached the turnoff back to Millers Flat, we halted for a few minutes to scavenge for walnuts from the two trees we’d spied in a paddock on the way. There’s no food as tasty as free roadside food (especially when there’s a sign which reads “You take my nuts, I’ll take yours!”), but in this case there was no food. And that ended our brief sojourn in Millers Flat.
By the end of the season, Marion was already talking about staying in the area.
“After all,” she argued, “there’s always work if we need it, the weather’s good, we already know a few people, and land is cheap.”
All good arguments, but I wasn’t convinced. It all seemed a little too rushed.
“We haven’t seen the rest of the country yet,” I argued in return. “And don’t you think it’s a bit far from the city? And sure there’s work, but is that really kind of work we want?”
So we decided to continue our travels through the country. But instead of resuming our tandem tour, we loaded everything into Fugly and headed west. And although we had our adventures (such as slipping backwards down a steep dirt road in the middle of a wet night after missing the entrance to a friend’s secret hide-away ...) and made some important discoveries about the van (like - our handbrake doesn’t work very well, as we began slipping backwards down a steep dirt road in the middle of a wet night after missing the entrance to a friend’s secret hide-away ... or our turning circle is somewhat wider than State Highway One ... or it’s difficult to find reverse gear when the front of the van is teetering on the edge of S.H.1 and there’s a police car approaching wondering who’s blocking the lane ... or look our gearstick is only attached by a single strand of Sellotape ...), about New Zealand (like - the relationship between latitude and barbecues ... or between rest areas and dope-smoking ... and that when a sign recommends taking a corner at 35 km/h, it’s a good idea to listen ...), about New Zealanders (like - the further north you travel, the more “Australian” they seem ... or that four policemen are equivalent to one misplaced reverse gear ... or that Keri-Keri house-sitters are expected to not only clean the pool, feed the animals and mow the lawns, but to look after the owners’ son, and be willing to pay for the privilege ...), and about ourselves (like - we don’t want to house-sit in Keri-Keri ... or we’re not team players, especially when the team is contract kiwi-picking and the team’s earnings are to be divided equally between us and every member of the extended Maori family who completed our team, from the father who spends the day slumped over the mini-tractor, the grandmother who has to stop every ten minutes to adjust her pacemaker, and the swarms of children who carry each kiwifruit to the bin individually, with their hovering mother ever-present to help ease their burdens ...), all-in-all, it was a very subdued trip. A gloom descended upon us as we left Ettrick, and it wasn’t to lift until we returned six weeks later.
Perhaps it was just a normal end-of-season downer. Every day for three months we’d circumnavigated a one-kilometre square piece of dirt which was, for all intents and purposes, our entire universe. Its four outposts were our accommodation, the orchard, the shop and the pub, and the soap-opera world of seasonal apple-pickers quietly unfolding within its borders was our entire life. Suddenly it was over. The last apple was picked. We were free. But like the wretched dog which padded dusty circles in the shed beside our house, we’d become tethered to this highway-straddling apple-factory by its specious familiarity and false camaraderie. Here life was simple, know-able. Here there were people and parties and work and conversations and laughter. We didn’t want to be alone. Being alone was suddenly unfamiliar, frightening.
Perhaps it had something to do with the strain which had developed between us as the season wore on. A strain which first manifested itself in Dunedin when we spent three weeks with Christiaan, a Dutch cyclist, and Wendy, a Canadian, having bonfires on the beach, bodysurfing in St Clair’s angry sea, cycling, eating, talking and relaxing. The first week we stayed to reward ourselves for our efforts. The second week we stayed because Christiaan and Wendy were discovering life-altering things about each other behind the closed flap of Christiaan’s tent. And the third week we stayed because we’d decided to join Christiaan (and Mads, a Danish cyclist) picking apples in Ettrick For me it was all too long, too close, too intense. For Marion it was simply heaven. For both of us, it was a presager of things to come.
Perhaps it had something to do with Mads’ death. He’d come to New Zealand for the fishing and the great outdoors, but decided to join us apple-picking. We cycled from Dunedin together (with our tandem normally cruising behind, tucked neatly into a wind shadow the size of a small lorry) and at every stop there was always a moment of surprise when only one person disembarked. He must have been a Boy Scout when he was younger, because he was certainly prepared for anything - camping, fishing, tramping, building small settlements, disarming nuclear weapons - if you needed it, he had it ... in triplicate. Together with Christiaan, we moved into Pine Tree Corner, which not only had pine trees in abundance, but also a kitchen thick with grease and bedrooms sprinkled with cherry seeds and used condoms. The previous tenants had been Kampucheans - reports varied between 20 and 30 occupants - who’d worked down the road at Parker’s berry orchard, and they’d certainly made themselves at home (the place had a distinctive Third World ambience ... right down to the charred cat skins in the burner).
We cleaned it up, and although we never managed to remove the smell of turmeric and coriander from the walls, it became the scene of much merriment. At times it was like living with two hyperactive teenagers (shaving-foam messages on the mirror, mashed potato eating competitions, and tossing every stray item into the fire with a jubilant cry of “BURN IT!”), but their antics often provided a respite from the slow and back-breaking work. There was the morning ritual of warming up the old valve wireless in time for Chicken Man, the slogans taken up with childish fervour (“Never pick the same apple twice” was a particular favourite), the familiar songs (Christiaan singing “My baby wrote me a letter” on the ride to work after receiving a note from Wendy), the poems written on apples (including Mads’ famous “Ode to Margaret in the Packing Shed” and its memorable line - Margaret with eyes like a deer in the mist ...), afternoon ice-creams at the store, the jokes and, most of all, the laughter. But eventually there was more rain than work, so Mads decided to load up his newly acquired motorcycle and finally get some serious fishing done. The West Coast beckoned. A week later we got the news that he’d been killed in a head-on collision near Murchison. There was no more laughter.
Perhaps our rather down-beat tour of the country had nothing to do with any of these. Perhaps it was all three, or simply the effects of the petrol fumes leaking into the cabin. Whatever its cause, the weight began to lift from our shoulders as soon as we made the decision to leave Keri-Keri and head back to Ettrick. We didn’t know what awaited us - would we find work, would we find a house, was the stone cottage for sale - but we knew that, at least for now, it was where we wanted to be. So we headed south as fast as Fugly could carry us.
A week later we were back in the orchard raking prunings and comfortably settled into a house which was to be our home for the next year.
A week later and Marion was off work for a month with RSI in the wrist, while I continued to rake branches ... and rake branches ... and rake branches. It was a tedious and tiring task, made all the more tedious and tiring by Marion’s absence. In her place I had Jason and AC-DC to keep me company. Hell’s Bells, Rock and Roll Aint Noise Pollution ... but that certainly was.
A month later and Marion was back at work, but not with me. She’d been assigned to the more technical task of grafting which reputedly required a ‘woman’s touch’, while us ‘blokes’ maintained our rugged progress through the endless rows of dead wood. And that’s exactly how such work makes you feel - like so much dead wood. There’s no skill involved, no potential to generate enthusiasm, and absolutely no appreciation of your efforts. In fact, among the orchard fraternity, it is almost universally accepted that employment is a battle of wits (or halfwits?). The workers are devoting most of their braincells to the task of finding newer and more devious ways of working as little as possible without the boss realising. The boss is devoting most of his braincells to the task of finding newer and more devious ways of exploiting the workers - getting them to work more for less reward, and without them realising it.
I soon discovered there was no point to working hard... but I couldn’t help myself. The days were long enough without dawdling over the work, and so I progressed through the various tasks with reasonable proficiency. I was always on time, was never sick, and was obviously reliable and capable. Did this earn me any brownie points? Of course not! I was still chastised if Jason and I were spied at the shop too soon after five o’clock (no allowances being made for the enthusiasm with which Jason finished work or the speed at which he felt comfortable behind the wheel of his suped-up Mazda, and since his was the only transport from the orchard’s farthest outposts, I had to be ready to roll at a moment’s notice ...), or if we were ‘caught’ still having smoko at 10.16 (no allowances being made for the possibility we may have wanted to finish a row before starting our break ...).
Such is the lot of an orchard worker. Working on a commercial apple orchard must be one of life’s most fruitless exercises - forgive the pun - though I must admit to being slightly biased against large-scale production of any kind. For the uninitiated, an orchard may seem like a healthier, more natural alternative to a factory, with sunshine and fresh air aplenty, birds and bees frolicking overhead, their songs accompanying you as you stroll through flowering meadows with a basket on your arm. But natural and commercial have as much to do with each other as politics and honesty. Sure there’s sunshine and birds, but it’s mostly tractor fumes and engine noise, making you wonder if you haven’t mistakenly wandered onto the set of some futuristic odyssey and Stanley Kubrick will yell “CUT” at any minute. And your first glimpse of a respirator-wearing, space-suited sprayer driver roaring towards you is a bit of a giveaway that this is not a healthy place to be (though real Men don’t bother with respirators... they just die of cancer at 40). Modern horticulture is a form of mental illness, or the ultimate practice of denial. To gaze upon a modern orchard is to gaze upon the face of insanity. Such destructive and poisonous activities undertaken unquestioningly in the name of sustaining humanity ... in the name of producing food!
As for the work itself - mundane, repetitious, dispiriting, de-humanising, pointless, hard and poorly-paid are a few words which spring to mind. Each step in the process of producing one commercial apple runs contrary to nature, and it is the successful orchardist’s task to thwart the natural processes at every turn.
The selection of apple varieties no longer has any bearing to Darwin’s theories. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, but the flashest. A new apple sort isn’t chosen because of its ability to withstand specific climatic conditions or its resistance to particular diseases (after all, that’s the duty of the chemical companies), but because of it’s potential marketability. Bananas are more popular than apples? Let’s give the consumer a banana-flavoured apple! Oranges look impressive under fluorescent lights? Let’s create an orange-coloured apple! Then there’s branding to consider. Consumers can’t be expected to eat the same type of apple two years in a row - it’s just not fashionable. And not forgetting the ever-present issue of profitability. Scarcity is the solution. Once there are enough Super Royal Delicious being produced, it’s time to start phasing them out so the prices don’t fall too low.
Once planted, the long process of deformation can begin. Unfortunately, trees just aren’t the right shape. If left alone, they’ll grow all tree-like, which can hardly be profitable. So they must be trained to grow according to the desired orchard layout - either made to run along wires like some leafy circus performer, or twisted into a perfect cross. Whichever system is used, the tree must be physically restrained by webs of ropes and wires like braces on a sweet-loving child.
Of course, although the tree has been largely civilised, its natural urges still remain uncontrolled. Every year it will break free from its shackles and, under the cover of its waxy green coat, will sprout in wild abandon, emboldened by the sun and its swelling progeny. But too soon its efforts are exposed by the cold winter, and it will again be pruned back to resemble a Christmas tree left too long in the living room.
The most futile task has to be thinning. Literally, it involves ‘thinning out’ the fruit by pulling off millions of tiny apples which are deemed superfluous to requirements. How, you might ask, could any apple be unwanted? Well, an apple tree normally produces far more apple blossoms than it could possibly support apples, based on the understanding that, under natural conditions, many of these budding apples (hhm, hmm) will fail to reach maturity, due to the vagaries of frosts, wind and generally app(a)lling (enough already!) weather conditions. Months of successful frost-fighting leaves the trees sagging beneath the fruits of the orchardists’ labour. Successful intervention requires subsequent intervention, in the form of thinning, otherwise at the end of the growing season the tree will be laden with large bunches of golf-ball-sized apples banging together like click-clacks instead of large, intermittently-spaced apples adorning each branch like shiny baubles on a trainspotter’s Christmas tree.
The only task which seems somehow meaningful is picking, so it’s probably the highlight of the orchard year. Of course, the problem with picking is it requires apple-pickers. And although the majority of pickers are wonderful people (travellers, students and generally normal people looking to make some money), it also tends to attract its fair share of life’s losers. Social retards who revel in the nicknames once bestowed upon them in jest (like Ten Bins or Black Apple), wearing them like hard-won badges of honour.
Of course my opinion is shaded by events, but it is my truth and I don’t feel any inclination to abandon it just yet. You may think, perhaps, that I have no right to judge anyone so harshly. But, as my story unfolds, perhaps you’ll forgive my bitterness. After all, I have judged no-one so harshly as myself ...
In the meantime, all this work really had nothing to do with finding a home.
The first scent of spring, thick with birdsong and blossoms, wafted through the valley, soaking every pore with new life and renewed hope. Mornings rattled awake by bogan starlings squabbling in the spouting over every shiny fibre. Days humming with dewy bee choirs scooping sunlight from vases of silky potpourri. Nights filled with rustling urgency as shifty possums feast on the first guileless leaves shyly unfolding in the garden before clambering onto the roof to tap boastful morse messages celebrating their conquest of the night. And dreams of stone cottages ...
We visited ‘our’ house every weekend. We took friends along. We took our Boss along. Nobody was spared our enthusiasm. The stone cottage was going to be ours - no matter what.
No detective could have traced the owners more efficiently, more doggedly. We were on their trail, and the scent was strong in our nose. Friends of friends of acquaintances of relatives of friends informed us the owners had bought the place as a holiday bach, and they only used it two weeks every year. Friends of associates of clients of lawyers of a friend’s podiatrist gave us a name. Noel at Bengerview Tearooms gave us an address in Dunedin. The operator gave us a phone number. We called.
Joyce, the owner, was kind, understanding ... sympathetic. She wasn’t disconcerted by our enthusiasm (bordering at times on desperation) for the cottage. In fact, our ebullience seemed to engender a sense of kinship and she invited us to visit her to discuss the matter further. We accepted her offer, and were soon sitting on her sofa leafing through photos and listening to details of the cottage’s history as well as her own family’s affiliation. Seventeen years earlier, she and her husband, Bill, had also been infected by the site’s magic. At the time the cottage had been derelict, abandoned, and they had been aggrieved by the obvious neglect. So they had bought it, and slowly restored it to some semblance of its original condition. For most of the family, it was a wonderful holiday bach, and they spent many hot Christmases together there. For Bill, it was a passion, and he was fascinated by the history not only of the cottage, but of the local area known as Horseshoe Bend, where the river sweeps around towards the Lonely Graves. Now Bill had passed on, and for Joyce, the place would never be the same.
The idea of passing the cottage onto someone with Bill’s enthusiasm seemed tempting. The thought of a couple - a family - living there permanently seemed somehow right. She doubted she’d ever wish to stay there again with so many ghosts of summer memories rattling through the cool, dark rooms. And the fact we were offering twice the government valuation certainly made ours the best offer she was ever likely to get. So she said she’d think about it. Said there was the rest of her family to consult first. But ...
We left bristling with optimism. How could she not take our offer? We’d look after the place better than anyone else. We’d love the place as much as Bill had. We’d fill its walls with happiness and contentment. We’d let her family visit during the holidays. We’d do anything if she just said ‘YES’.
She said ‘NO’. Her family had vetoed the idea. Understandable, but no less heartbreaking.
But after a short dive into depression and incomprehension, anger and despair, I suddenly found myself imbued with a greater sense of inevitability. The fact we had failed to acquire our ‘dream’ cottage (despite the extraordinary lengths we’d gone) surely meant there must be something better out there waiting for us. Didn’t it? And if we were brutally honest, our ‘dream’ cottage wasn’t without it’s undreamy qualities - it was close to the road (a quiet road, to be sure, but still a regularly-used one), the section was extremely small, the price we were willing to pay would have left us almost totally broke, plus there was the not-unsubstantial shadow of the possible future dam looming over the place. Surely we could find better?
Our failed scouting efforts eroded this belief somewhat.
The agent saga further undermined our confidence.
Finding a home might still be inevitable, but perhaps, inevitably, it might just have to be somewhere else.
The ad in the Molyneux Mail was our final hope. (If you’ve seen the Molyneux Mail, you’ll realise just what a slim hope it was!)
Roger Metcalf called the Bengerview Tearooms that evening. We got his message from Noel the next morning when we turned up to check for mail. We answered his call immediately, and despite giving us few details, he suggested his house might be exactly what we were looking for, so we should come out to see it.
An hour later we turned up at his front door, and I felt my heart beat a little faster... this could be it! It was definitely an old cottage (a three-bedroom villa, in fact) on a few acres (six or so), with lots of trees (it used to be a nursery), on the banks of the Clutha, and being almost five kilometres from Millers Flat on the Lonely Graves road, it certainly was “a bit away from things”. In fact, it was close to perfect ... except for two things. We’d assumed the combination of “old” and “in any condition” would really be interpreted as “something cheap” or, to use a favourite real estate phrase, a “handyman special”. Unfortunately, those had probably been Roger’s exact sentiments when he’d bought the house two years earlier. In the meantime, he’d embarked on an ambitious modernisation programme which made the Pharaohs seem like amateur do-it-yourselfers. By the time he’d run out of steam, the kitchen had been extended to include a mini-ballroom, he’d added a battery of bay windows in case the sun started rising in the south, had removed every wall with a ‘w’ in it, as well as re-plumbing and re-wiring anything older than his cat. (Despite all this effort, though, it was still far from a castle, which then begs the question - why did Electricorp offer to install a moat, free of charge, for the subsequent owners?) Naturally enough, Roger wished to be compensated not only for his substantial financial investment, but for the dreams of a prosperous rural existence which had turned sour in the process. But the $30,000 we’ll-take-it-without-a-second-thought cottage was now a $95,000 way-out-of-our-league-especially-since-we’d-want-to-totally-denovate-the-place country estate, so we had to turn him down.
As we went to leave, pausing a moment at the gate to let our regret sniff along the driveway one last time, Roger cocked his head down the road and said :
“That section on the corner might be for sale...”
Marion and I turned our heads to follow his gaze.
“...the one across the stream ... with the walnut trees ...”
Stream? Walnut trees?
“...I think it’s about five acres ... and the owners live in Gore ...”
Five acres? Gore? ..... five acres?
Roger was left standing in our dust as we drove down the road to check out the section.
We crossed the bridge over the Minzion Burn, drove past the first sheep-flecked paddock, the walnut trees ... the very same walnut trees we’d investigated during out first visit to the Lonely Graves ... then pulled up to a gate standing slightly askew by a corrugated iron shed. We dragged the gate open and walked through.
We squinted through the shed’s louvred front windows into the gloom. Inside there was a large, black car of indeterminate vintage poking its nose out from beneath an oil-stained tarpaulin as though sniffing the motives of these unwanted intruders. Apart from a web of hoses and wires hanging from a hook on the back wall, the rest of the shed was empty.
We walked over the top paddock, across to one of the rocky knolls jutting like warts from the tufted skin. From this vantage point we surveyed the rest of the section - following the border fence up the hill until it ducked into a solid wall of gorse, down to the rocky scar and the silent concrete monoliths weaving among the poplars, right down to the bridge. Behind us the road wound around the section’s border. And below us, creating the other boundary, ran the Minzion. It chuckled flirtatiously over the rocks, inviting, welcoming. It sang of a thousand hot summers, of a thousand men who had come to scour its banks for gold, of a thousand men who had drunk its cool tea, of a thousand years of waiting for this moment ...
This was it. I knew it immediately. The stone cottage was forgotten. Everything was forgotten. Here I could live. Here I could be sustained. Here I could build a life - any life.
But now wasn’t the time to dream. Now was the time to act.
We returned, reluctantly, to Ettrick. We quickly found the owners, the Wilsons, in Gore. They were a friendly couple, and suggested we visit them in Gore to negotiate. Negotiation took the form of a long chat over a cup of tea. Although they’d always lived in Gore, they’d been holidaying in Millers Flat for many years (escaping the cold, wet Southland summers). They owned a holiday bach closer to the village, and had purchased the property ten years earlier with a view to eventually building their retirement home on the site. (A plan which had suffered a major setback when the Roxburgh hospital closed, making the closest hospital more than 60 kilometres away ... a little too far for their liking.) Now they’d accepted that they were unlikely to ever build there (or even retire to Millers Flat), so were looking to dispose of both properties. The thought of someone building on the site seemed to please them, and we quickly reached an agreement. They would sell us the section for the government valuation - $7000. (The shed was valued at $4000, the land $3000.)
But there was a hitch ...
The land was currently under contract to the local estate agent. But the Wilsons had been less than happy with his service (not only had he excluded it from our tour, but he hadn’t even gotten around to putting up a For Sale sign), and suggested, if we were willing to wait until their contract expired at the end of the month (two weeks away), we could purchase the property directly from them. We naturally agreed.
Estate agents don’t give up so easy. For whatever reason (could the local grapevine really be so efficient?) the agent suddenly got around to stapling a For Sale sign to the shed door, and the next day he advised the Wilsons he had a buyer, though it was subject to the buyer’s ability to secure financing. He informed them the buyer had been given a month to come up with the money, and sent a new contract for the Wilsons to sign to enable him to continue his negotiations.
The Wilsons objected. They wouldn’t sign a new contract, and either the money was available in two weeks, or they would pursue other options. (No mention was made of our part in the scheme of things.)
Two weeks later the contract expired with no official buyer.
And so, on the 21st of December, 1990 at 12.22pm, our $7000 having been cleared and all contracts finalised, transfer number 770532 was made. The property, being Section 27, Block XII on the public maps of the Benger District, being the parcels of land containing together three acres, three roods and thirty perches more or less (together with a strip of railway land and the 22-yard strip of Queen’s Chain running along the Minzion giving a total closer to five acres), was transferred to Kyle Raymond Mewburn of Ettrick, orchard worker, and Marion Mewburn of Ettrick, married woman. (Which wasn’t our idea! On the contract we’d written orchard worker, but perhaps the lawyer was simply trying to keep the deeds consistent - all the way back to 1926!)
The section was ours! We had a home!
Now the hard bit could start ...
But which thread should I pull out first?
Where did the story of finding this site, of building this life, truly begin?
Was it the day Roger Metcalf responded to the ad we placed in the Molyneux Mail and invited us to view his house down by the river? Our ad appeared on October 30, 1990, sandwiched between an ad for old-fashioned roses at $3.50 each, and one suggesting winter sportspersons should keep fit by playing golf during the summer -
WANTED TO BUY
We are looking for a place to live in
the Clutha Valley. Our IDEAL place
would be an old cottage (in any con-
dition on a few acres (if possible
with trees and not flat) either down
by the Clutha River or up in the hills,
a ‘bit away from things’.
so if you have or know of anything
like it or close to it OR just a NICE
piece of land, please let us know.
Contact Kyle & Marion
c/- Bengerview Tearooms
We were permanent ‘temporary’ workers on Con van der Voort’s orchard in Ettrick at the time - permanent in the sense that we were employed on a long-term basis; temporary in that our conditions of employment were of the no-work-no-pay variety - and in the middle of the annual lull. Pruning and tying down had finished, but thinning hadn’t yet started. Which was fine by us, because it left plenty of time available for what we considered to be our real job - finding a home.
Of course the ad wasn’t our first course of action.
We’d already been to every real estate agent from Roxburgh to Lawrence, but without success. Perhaps it was only my imagination, but after taking a tiki tour around the area with the Roxburgh agent, we began to believe the only details real estate agents listened to were those with a dollar sign in front. He showed us 10 or so properties - all guaranteed bargains! - from sprawling old villas to near-new Lockwoods, postage-stamp downtown sections to barren hillsides, some obviously for sale, others just-as-obviously happily inhabited, though our shiny-eyed guide cared naught for such distinctions, living, as he was, in his imaginary world of perpetually migrating herds of buyers and sellers. His selections followed no logical pattern, but they did have one thing in common ... a total lack of resemblance to anything we’d described. Despite our best efforts to narrow the search by pointing out any property which vaguely fitted our parameters, our quest became progressively surreal. If Windsor Castle had suddenly loomed ahead, rather than exhibiting surprise, the agent would have simply asserted he personally knew the owners were thinking of selling, and that it was exactly what we were looking for ... if we were willing to spend just a little more ...
In hindsight, our big mistake was showing at least some willingness to budge from our original “limit” of $35,000. At the time, flexibility seemed a virtue. After all, we didn’t want any self-imposed boundaries to get in the way of possibly acquiring our dream house and/or section. But flexibility is a word guaranteed to light up an agent’s face, because if you’re willing to do the house-hunting limbo, an agent is only too happy to keep lowering that bar until you’re dragging yourself through the mud. Flexibility is a weakness, and real estate agents can sniff out weaknesses with frightening alacrity. (Do once-normal people learn this skill at real estate school, or is it people with some dubious intuitive talent who drift naturally into jobs selling real estate or used cars?) In the agent’s mind, our ‘limit’ quickly became little more than a rough guideline for a possible deposit as he played upon our desire not to appear totally naive (“$35,000? Of course you realise this is going to be the next big boom area, right? All the clever buyers are looking for properties with ‘development potential’. In a couple of years you could double your investment ...”), or stingy (“It’d really break my heart to see anyone forced to sell their property for so little. They couldn’t even buy a parking space in Dunedin for $35,000 ...”), or just plain stupid (“Everyone knows there just aren’t any sections smaller than 30 hectares anymore. And you want a house as well ...?”). But in our defence, it wasn’t our fault. We were young. We were inexperienced. And, worst of all, we truly believed agents were there to help us!
Before resorting to agents, we’d tried scouting around for a place on our own, with just as little success, though with much less stress. We spent every spare moment prowling every highway and by-way and my way in Central Otago. We no longer just drove to Alexandra or Dunedin, we detoured there, eventually arriving at some unGodly hour with only an extra digit on our speedo to show for our efforts. Every drive was a major expedition, but that was nothing new. Every drive in our vomit-green Commer van (ex-Post Office, circa 1961) was an expedition. The van had been ‘converted’ into a replica campervan by someone who probably never intended it to be used as a campervan. (Perhaps it’s some indication of the general unsightliness of the machine that its previous owners nicknamed it Fugly - short for fucking ugly - a name which has stuck, for better or worse.) It had a sleeping alcove, though after one night inside Marion referred to it as “the coffin” and refused to sleep there anymore. It was fully wired with romantic lighting (two desk lamps) and conveniently-located powerpoints (behind the curtains), though we only managed to get plugged-in once (most motorcamps having strange obsessions about certificates and warrants) and promptly blew up the camp’s fusebox. In fairness, though it wasn’t built by a craftsman, it was, at least, intended to last. The owner had gone to great lengths to ensure all the fittings were solid. No flimsy, fandangled modern materials for him! He’d chosen only the best in 3/4 inch chipboard able to withstand the weight of a minor elephant herd. Unfortunately, the combined weight of the interior fittings was probably equal to a minor elephant herd, so the van was never ‘nippy’. But it did have a powerful low gear that could take us almost anywhere, and it ensured we maintained a leisurely progress. The petrol fumes leaking into the cabin encouraged us to keep our driving hours to a minimum, and we never had to worry about breaking the speed limit ... not even in the city. (In fact, if we were snapped by a speed camera, we could probably get copies printed before we’d reached the end of the main street.)
In the process of searching for anything remotely fitting our requirements, we’d become well acquainted with every nice house and/or section in the general vicinity. We’d investigated every derelict stone ruin or barn, climbing through acres of gorse, brambles and barbed wire, as well as braving dogs, bulls and irate tractors. We stood for hours scanning barren hillsides with binoculars, searching for a glimmer of a For Sale sign or an abandoned shack on which we could make an offer. At times the only thing which kept us persevering was an obscure mathematical formula which stated : no agents = no commission.
No matter how much we searched, we never found anything to compare with the house which had largely been responsible for bringing us back to this area ...
Six months earlier, towards the end of our first apple-picking season, we’d joined a few other pickers on a short tour of the local area, and had “discovered” our dream house - an old stone cottage by the Clutha, just around the corner from the Lonely Graves. At the time we hadn’t even considered living in the area, so there was really no consideration given to finding out more about it. As we headed back to Ettrick, we couldn’t help but imagine living there. It was such an idyllic location with character oozing from every stone. If we could one day find a house like that in a location like that ...
As we reached the turnoff back to Millers Flat, we halted for a few minutes to scavenge for walnuts from the two trees we’d spied in a paddock on the way. There’s no food as tasty as free roadside food (especially when there’s a sign which reads “You take my nuts, I’ll take yours!”), but in this case there was no food. And that ended our brief sojourn in Millers Flat.
By the end of the season, Marion was already talking about staying in the area.
“After all,” she argued, “there’s always work if we need it, the weather’s good, we already know a few people, and land is cheap.”
All good arguments, but I wasn’t convinced. It all seemed a little too rushed.
“We haven’t seen the rest of the country yet,” I argued in return. “And don’t you think it’s a bit far from the city? And sure there’s work, but is that really kind of work we want?”
So we decided to continue our travels through the country. But instead of resuming our tandem tour, we loaded everything into Fugly and headed west. And although we had our adventures (such as slipping backwards down a steep dirt road in the middle of a wet night after missing the entrance to a friend’s secret hide-away ...) and made some important discoveries about the van (like - our handbrake doesn’t work very well, as we began slipping backwards down a steep dirt road in the middle of a wet night after missing the entrance to a friend’s secret hide-away ... or our turning circle is somewhat wider than State Highway One ... or it’s difficult to find reverse gear when the front of the van is teetering on the edge of S.H.1 and there’s a police car approaching wondering who’s blocking the lane ... or look our gearstick is only attached by a single strand of Sellotape ...), about New Zealand (like - the relationship between latitude and barbecues ... or between rest areas and dope-smoking ... and that when a sign recommends taking a corner at 35 km/h, it’s a good idea to listen ...), about New Zealanders (like - the further north you travel, the more “Australian” they seem ... or that four policemen are equivalent to one misplaced reverse gear ... or that Keri-Keri house-sitters are expected to not only clean the pool, feed the animals and mow the lawns, but to look after the owners’ son, and be willing to pay for the privilege ...), and about ourselves (like - we don’t want to house-sit in Keri-Keri ... or we’re not team players, especially when the team is contract kiwi-picking and the team’s earnings are to be divided equally between us and every member of the extended Maori family who completed our team, from the father who spends the day slumped over the mini-tractor, the grandmother who has to stop every ten minutes to adjust her pacemaker, and the swarms of children who carry each kiwifruit to the bin individually, with their hovering mother ever-present to help ease their burdens ...), all-in-all, it was a very subdued trip. A gloom descended upon us as we left Ettrick, and it wasn’t to lift until we returned six weeks later.
Perhaps it was just a normal end-of-season downer. Every day for three months we’d circumnavigated a one-kilometre square piece of dirt which was, for all intents and purposes, our entire universe. Its four outposts were our accommodation, the orchard, the shop and the pub, and the soap-opera world of seasonal apple-pickers quietly unfolding within its borders was our entire life. Suddenly it was over. The last apple was picked. We were free. But like the wretched dog which padded dusty circles in the shed beside our house, we’d become tethered to this highway-straddling apple-factory by its specious familiarity and false camaraderie. Here life was simple, know-able. Here there were people and parties and work and conversations and laughter. We didn’t want to be alone. Being alone was suddenly unfamiliar, frightening.
Perhaps it had something to do with the strain which had developed between us as the season wore on. A strain which first manifested itself in Dunedin when we spent three weeks with Christiaan, a Dutch cyclist, and Wendy, a Canadian, having bonfires on the beach, bodysurfing in St Clair’s angry sea, cycling, eating, talking and relaxing. The first week we stayed to reward ourselves for our efforts. The second week we stayed because Christiaan and Wendy were discovering life-altering things about each other behind the closed flap of Christiaan’s tent. And the third week we stayed because we’d decided to join Christiaan (and Mads, a Danish cyclist) picking apples in Ettrick For me it was all too long, too close, too intense. For Marion it was simply heaven. For both of us, it was a presager of things to come.
Perhaps it had something to do with Mads’ death. He’d come to New Zealand for the fishing and the great outdoors, but decided to join us apple-picking. We cycled from Dunedin together (with our tandem normally cruising behind, tucked neatly into a wind shadow the size of a small lorry) and at every stop there was always a moment of surprise when only one person disembarked. He must have been a Boy Scout when he was younger, because he was certainly prepared for anything - camping, fishing, tramping, building small settlements, disarming nuclear weapons - if you needed it, he had it ... in triplicate. Together with Christiaan, we moved into Pine Tree Corner, which not only had pine trees in abundance, but also a kitchen thick with grease and bedrooms sprinkled with cherry seeds and used condoms. The previous tenants had been Kampucheans - reports varied between 20 and 30 occupants - who’d worked down the road at Parker’s berry orchard, and they’d certainly made themselves at home (the place had a distinctive Third World ambience ... right down to the charred cat skins in the burner).
We cleaned it up, and although we never managed to remove the smell of turmeric and coriander from the walls, it became the scene of much merriment. At times it was like living with two hyperactive teenagers (shaving-foam messages on the mirror, mashed potato eating competitions, and tossing every stray item into the fire with a jubilant cry of “BURN IT!”), but their antics often provided a respite from the slow and back-breaking work. There was the morning ritual of warming up the old valve wireless in time for Chicken Man, the slogans taken up with childish fervour (“Never pick the same apple twice” was a particular favourite), the familiar songs (Christiaan singing “My baby wrote me a letter” on the ride to work after receiving a note from Wendy), the poems written on apples (including Mads’ famous “Ode to Margaret in the Packing Shed” and its memorable line - Margaret with eyes like a deer in the mist ...), afternoon ice-creams at the store, the jokes and, most of all, the laughter. But eventually there was more rain than work, so Mads decided to load up his newly acquired motorcycle and finally get some serious fishing done. The West Coast beckoned. A week later we got the news that he’d been killed in a head-on collision near Murchison. There was no more laughter.
Perhaps our rather down-beat tour of the country had nothing to do with any of these. Perhaps it was all three, or simply the effects of the petrol fumes leaking into the cabin. Whatever its cause, the weight began to lift from our shoulders as soon as we made the decision to leave Keri-Keri and head back to Ettrick. We didn’t know what awaited us - would we find work, would we find a house, was the stone cottage for sale - but we knew that, at least for now, it was where we wanted to be. So we headed south as fast as Fugly could carry us.
A week later we were back in the orchard raking prunings and comfortably settled into a house which was to be our home for the next year.
A week later and Marion was off work for a month with RSI in the wrist, while I continued to rake branches ... and rake branches ... and rake branches. It was a tedious and tiring task, made all the more tedious and tiring by Marion’s absence. In her place I had Jason and AC-DC to keep me company. Hell’s Bells, Rock and Roll Aint Noise Pollution ... but that certainly was.
A month later and Marion was back at work, but not with me. She’d been assigned to the more technical task of grafting which reputedly required a ‘woman’s touch’, while us ‘blokes’ maintained our rugged progress through the endless rows of dead wood. And that’s exactly how such work makes you feel - like so much dead wood. There’s no skill involved, no potential to generate enthusiasm, and absolutely no appreciation of your efforts. In fact, among the orchard fraternity, it is almost universally accepted that employment is a battle of wits (or halfwits?). The workers are devoting most of their braincells to the task of finding newer and more devious ways of working as little as possible without the boss realising. The boss is devoting most of his braincells to the task of finding newer and more devious ways of exploiting the workers - getting them to work more for less reward, and without them realising it.
I soon discovered there was no point to working hard... but I couldn’t help myself. The days were long enough without dawdling over the work, and so I progressed through the various tasks with reasonable proficiency. I was always on time, was never sick, and was obviously reliable and capable. Did this earn me any brownie points? Of course not! I was still chastised if Jason and I were spied at the shop too soon after five o’clock (no allowances being made for the enthusiasm with which Jason finished work or the speed at which he felt comfortable behind the wheel of his suped-up Mazda, and since his was the only transport from the orchard’s farthest outposts, I had to be ready to roll at a moment’s notice ...), or if we were ‘caught’ still having smoko at 10.16 (no allowances being made for the possibility we may have wanted to finish a row before starting our break ...).
Such is the lot of an orchard worker. Working on a commercial apple orchard must be one of life’s most fruitless exercises - forgive the pun - though I must admit to being slightly biased against large-scale production of any kind. For the uninitiated, an orchard may seem like a healthier, more natural alternative to a factory, with sunshine and fresh air aplenty, birds and bees frolicking overhead, their songs accompanying you as you stroll through flowering meadows with a basket on your arm. But natural and commercial have as much to do with each other as politics and honesty. Sure there’s sunshine and birds, but it’s mostly tractor fumes and engine noise, making you wonder if you haven’t mistakenly wandered onto the set of some futuristic odyssey and Stanley Kubrick will yell “CUT” at any minute. And your first glimpse of a respirator-wearing, space-suited sprayer driver roaring towards you is a bit of a giveaway that this is not a healthy place to be (though real Men don’t bother with respirators... they just die of cancer at 40). Modern horticulture is a form of mental illness, or the ultimate practice of denial. To gaze upon a modern orchard is to gaze upon the face of insanity. Such destructive and poisonous activities undertaken unquestioningly in the name of sustaining humanity ... in the name of producing food!
As for the work itself - mundane, repetitious, dispiriting, de-humanising, pointless, hard and poorly-paid are a few words which spring to mind. Each step in the process of producing one commercial apple runs contrary to nature, and it is the successful orchardist’s task to thwart the natural processes at every turn.
The selection of apple varieties no longer has any bearing to Darwin’s theories. It’s no longer survival of the fittest, but the flashest. A new apple sort isn’t chosen because of its ability to withstand specific climatic conditions or its resistance to particular diseases (after all, that’s the duty of the chemical companies), but because of it’s potential marketability. Bananas are more popular than apples? Let’s give the consumer a banana-flavoured apple! Oranges look impressive under fluorescent lights? Let’s create an orange-coloured apple! Then there’s branding to consider. Consumers can’t be expected to eat the same type of apple two years in a row - it’s just not fashionable. And not forgetting the ever-present issue of profitability. Scarcity is the solution. Once there are enough Super Royal Delicious being produced, it’s time to start phasing them out so the prices don’t fall too low.
Once planted, the long process of deformation can begin. Unfortunately, trees just aren’t the right shape. If left alone, they’ll grow all tree-like, which can hardly be profitable. So they must be trained to grow according to the desired orchard layout - either made to run along wires like some leafy circus performer, or twisted into a perfect cross. Whichever system is used, the tree must be physically restrained by webs of ropes and wires like braces on a sweet-loving child.
Of course, although the tree has been largely civilised, its natural urges still remain uncontrolled. Every year it will break free from its shackles and, under the cover of its waxy green coat, will sprout in wild abandon, emboldened by the sun and its swelling progeny. But too soon its efforts are exposed by the cold winter, and it will again be pruned back to resemble a Christmas tree left too long in the living room.
The most futile task has to be thinning. Literally, it involves ‘thinning out’ the fruit by pulling off millions of tiny apples which are deemed superfluous to requirements. How, you might ask, could any apple be unwanted? Well, an apple tree normally produces far more apple blossoms than it could possibly support apples, based on the understanding that, under natural conditions, many of these budding apples (hhm, hmm) will fail to reach maturity, due to the vagaries of frosts, wind and generally app(a)lling (enough already!) weather conditions. Months of successful frost-fighting leaves the trees sagging beneath the fruits of the orchardists’ labour. Successful intervention requires subsequent intervention, in the form of thinning, otherwise at the end of the growing season the tree will be laden with large bunches of golf-ball-sized apples banging together like click-clacks instead of large, intermittently-spaced apples adorning each branch like shiny baubles on a trainspotter’s Christmas tree.
The only task which seems somehow meaningful is picking, so it’s probably the highlight of the orchard year. Of course, the problem with picking is it requires apple-pickers. And although the majority of pickers are wonderful people (travellers, students and generally normal people looking to make some money), it also tends to attract its fair share of life’s losers. Social retards who revel in the nicknames once bestowed upon them in jest (like Ten Bins or Black Apple), wearing them like hard-won badges of honour.
Of course my opinion is shaded by events, but it is my truth and I don’t feel any inclination to abandon it just yet. You may think, perhaps, that I have no right to judge anyone so harshly. But, as my story unfolds, perhaps you’ll forgive my bitterness. After all, I have judged no-one so harshly as myself ...
In the meantime, all this work really had nothing to do with finding a home.
The first scent of spring, thick with birdsong and blossoms, wafted through the valley, soaking every pore with new life and renewed hope. Mornings rattled awake by bogan starlings squabbling in the spouting over every shiny fibre. Days humming with dewy bee choirs scooping sunlight from vases of silky potpourri. Nights filled with rustling urgency as shifty possums feast on the first guileless leaves shyly unfolding in the garden before clambering onto the roof to tap boastful morse messages celebrating their conquest of the night. And dreams of stone cottages ...
We visited ‘our’ house every weekend. We took friends along. We took our Boss along. Nobody was spared our enthusiasm. The stone cottage was going to be ours - no matter what.
No detective could have traced the owners more efficiently, more doggedly. We were on their trail, and the scent was strong in our nose. Friends of friends of acquaintances of relatives of friends informed us the owners had bought the place as a holiday bach, and they only used it two weeks every year. Friends of associates of clients of lawyers of a friend’s podiatrist gave us a name. Noel at Bengerview Tearooms gave us an address in Dunedin. The operator gave us a phone number. We called.
Joyce, the owner, was kind, understanding ... sympathetic. She wasn’t disconcerted by our enthusiasm (bordering at times on desperation) for the cottage. In fact, our ebullience seemed to engender a sense of kinship and she invited us to visit her to discuss the matter further. We accepted her offer, and were soon sitting on her sofa leafing through photos and listening to details of the cottage’s history as well as her own family’s affiliation. Seventeen years earlier, she and her husband, Bill, had also been infected by the site’s magic. At the time the cottage had been derelict, abandoned, and they had been aggrieved by the obvious neglect. So they had bought it, and slowly restored it to some semblance of its original condition. For most of the family, it was a wonderful holiday bach, and they spent many hot Christmases together there. For Bill, it was a passion, and he was fascinated by the history not only of the cottage, but of the local area known as Horseshoe Bend, where the river sweeps around towards the Lonely Graves. Now Bill had passed on, and for Joyce, the place would never be the same.
The idea of passing the cottage onto someone with Bill’s enthusiasm seemed tempting. The thought of a couple - a family - living there permanently seemed somehow right. She doubted she’d ever wish to stay there again with so many ghosts of summer memories rattling through the cool, dark rooms. And the fact we were offering twice the government valuation certainly made ours the best offer she was ever likely to get. So she said she’d think about it. Said there was the rest of her family to consult first. But ...
We left bristling with optimism. How could she not take our offer? We’d look after the place better than anyone else. We’d love the place as much as Bill had. We’d fill its walls with happiness and contentment. We’d let her family visit during the holidays. We’d do anything if she just said ‘YES’.
She said ‘NO’. Her family had vetoed the idea. Understandable, but no less heartbreaking.
But after a short dive into depression and incomprehension, anger and despair, I suddenly found myself imbued with a greater sense of inevitability. The fact we had failed to acquire our ‘dream’ cottage (despite the extraordinary lengths we’d gone) surely meant there must be something better out there waiting for us. Didn’t it? And if we were brutally honest, our ‘dream’ cottage wasn’t without it’s undreamy qualities - it was close to the road (a quiet road, to be sure, but still a regularly-used one), the section was extremely small, the price we were willing to pay would have left us almost totally broke, plus there was the not-unsubstantial shadow of the possible future dam looming over the place. Surely we could find better?
Our failed scouting efforts eroded this belief somewhat.
The agent saga further undermined our confidence.
Finding a home might still be inevitable, but perhaps, inevitably, it might just have to be somewhere else.
The ad in the Molyneux Mail was our final hope. (If you’ve seen the Molyneux Mail, you’ll realise just what a slim hope it was!)
Roger Metcalf called the Bengerview Tearooms that evening. We got his message from Noel the next morning when we turned up to check for mail. We answered his call immediately, and despite giving us few details, he suggested his house might be exactly what we were looking for, so we should come out to see it.
An hour later we turned up at his front door, and I felt my heart beat a little faster... this could be it! It was definitely an old cottage (a three-bedroom villa, in fact) on a few acres (six or so), with lots of trees (it used to be a nursery), on the banks of the Clutha, and being almost five kilometres from Millers Flat on the Lonely Graves road, it certainly was “a bit away from things”. In fact, it was close to perfect ... except for two things. We’d assumed the combination of “old” and “in any condition” would really be interpreted as “something cheap” or, to use a favourite real estate phrase, a “handyman special”. Unfortunately, those had probably been Roger’s exact sentiments when he’d bought the house two years earlier. In the meantime, he’d embarked on an ambitious modernisation programme which made the Pharaohs seem like amateur do-it-yourselfers. By the time he’d run out of steam, the kitchen had been extended to include a mini-ballroom, he’d added a battery of bay windows in case the sun started rising in the south, had removed every wall with a ‘w’ in it, as well as re-plumbing and re-wiring anything older than his cat. (Despite all this effort, though, it was still far from a castle, which then begs the question - why did Electricorp offer to install a moat, free of charge, for the subsequent owners?) Naturally enough, Roger wished to be compensated not only for his substantial financial investment, but for the dreams of a prosperous rural existence which had turned sour in the process. But the $30,000 we’ll-take-it-without-a-second-thought cottage was now a $95,000 way-out-of-our-league-especially-since-we’d-want-to-totally-denovate-the-place country estate, so we had to turn him down.
As we went to leave, pausing a moment at the gate to let our regret sniff along the driveway one last time, Roger cocked his head down the road and said :
“That section on the corner might be for sale...”
Marion and I turned our heads to follow his gaze.
“...the one across the stream ... with the walnut trees ...”
Stream? Walnut trees?
“...I think it’s about five acres ... and the owners live in Gore ...”
Five acres? Gore? ..... five acres?
Roger was left standing in our dust as we drove down the road to check out the section.
We crossed the bridge over the Minzion Burn, drove past the first sheep-flecked paddock, the walnut trees ... the very same walnut trees we’d investigated during out first visit to the Lonely Graves ... then pulled up to a gate standing slightly askew by a corrugated iron shed. We dragged the gate open and walked through.
We squinted through the shed’s louvred front windows into the gloom. Inside there was a large, black car of indeterminate vintage poking its nose out from beneath an oil-stained tarpaulin as though sniffing the motives of these unwanted intruders. Apart from a web of hoses and wires hanging from a hook on the back wall, the rest of the shed was empty.
We walked over the top paddock, across to one of the rocky knolls jutting like warts from the tufted skin. From this vantage point we surveyed the rest of the section - following the border fence up the hill until it ducked into a solid wall of gorse, down to the rocky scar and the silent concrete monoliths weaving among the poplars, right down to the bridge. Behind us the road wound around the section’s border. And below us, creating the other boundary, ran the Minzion. It chuckled flirtatiously over the rocks, inviting, welcoming. It sang of a thousand hot summers, of a thousand men who had come to scour its banks for gold, of a thousand men who had drunk its cool tea, of a thousand years of waiting for this moment ...
This was it. I knew it immediately. The stone cottage was forgotten. Everything was forgotten. Here I could live. Here I could be sustained. Here I could build a life - any life.
But now wasn’t the time to dream. Now was the time to act.
We returned, reluctantly, to Ettrick. We quickly found the owners, the Wilsons, in Gore. They were a friendly couple, and suggested we visit them in Gore to negotiate. Negotiation took the form of a long chat over a cup of tea. Although they’d always lived in Gore, they’d been holidaying in Millers Flat for many years (escaping the cold, wet Southland summers). They owned a holiday bach closer to the village, and had purchased the property ten years earlier with a view to eventually building their retirement home on the site. (A plan which had suffered a major setback when the Roxburgh hospital closed, making the closest hospital more than 60 kilometres away ... a little too far for their liking.) Now they’d accepted that they were unlikely to ever build there (or even retire to Millers Flat), so were looking to dispose of both properties. The thought of someone building on the site seemed to please them, and we quickly reached an agreement. They would sell us the section for the government valuation - $7000. (The shed was valued at $4000, the land $3000.)
But there was a hitch ...
The land was currently under contract to the local estate agent. But the Wilsons had been less than happy with his service (not only had he excluded it from our tour, but he hadn’t even gotten around to putting up a For Sale sign), and suggested, if we were willing to wait until their contract expired at the end of the month (two weeks away), we could purchase the property directly from them. We naturally agreed.
Estate agents don’t give up so easy. For whatever reason (could the local grapevine really be so efficient?) the agent suddenly got around to stapling a For Sale sign to the shed door, and the next day he advised the Wilsons he had a buyer, though it was subject to the buyer’s ability to secure financing. He informed them the buyer had been given a month to come up with the money, and sent a new contract for the Wilsons to sign to enable him to continue his negotiations.
The Wilsons objected. They wouldn’t sign a new contract, and either the money was available in two weeks, or they would pursue other options. (No mention was made of our part in the scheme of things.)
Two weeks later the contract expired with no official buyer.
And so, on the 21st of December, 1990 at 12.22pm, our $7000 having been cleared and all contracts finalised, transfer number 770532 was made. The property, being Section 27, Block XII on the public maps of the Benger District, being the parcels of land containing together three acres, three roods and thirty perches more or less (together with a strip of railway land and the 22-yard strip of Queen’s Chain running along the Minzion giving a total closer to five acres), was transferred to Kyle Raymond Mewburn of Ettrick, orchard worker, and Marion Mewburn of Ettrick, married woman. (Which wasn’t our idea! On the contract we’d written orchard worker, but perhaps the lawyer was simply trying to keep the deeds consistent - all the way back to 1926!)
The section was ours! We had a home!
Now the hard bit could start ...
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