Horncastle's Suitcase

By Graeme Horncastle

I couldn't spell and had hardly written a letter in my life. I'd always had someone else to do mail for me. But I was determined to learn, and with one finger I started. I decided to write about some of the things I remembered from childhood, and that's how I got properly started. Before long I had learned my way around the keyboard and had become a two-finger typist. Then, as with anything else I do, I started working on it day and night. At 55 years of age I figured it was high time I learned how to use a computer as they were everywhere and I had fallen behind.
Who was I? Where did I come from, why was I here, where was I going? These questions wore away at me. This is the sort of mind-searching people in my condition often go through. My mind was repairing itself after a succession of tragedies in my life, especially the untimely death of my beloved daughter Shelley. I needed to keep my mind occupied without putting too much pressure on myself. So I started by writing about the early part of my life. I thought it might help my confused state of mind. There was plenty I wanted to say but it wasn't easy to get it down. Even the spellchecker wasn't much help as it couldn't recognise many of the New Zealand words and expressions I was writing.
At first, when sleeping, my nightmares came back, and then the mixed dreams of events over the last fifty years, slipping backwards and forwards in time and not making a lot of sense. But with time the dreams became more pleasant, my mind started to settle, and a clear picture started to emerge. It showed what I was thinking about the people in my life and the events that had shaped me into who I am today.
Gradually, putting all this together increased my understanding and helped me to see people in a different light. I learned to judge them differently. Mainly, I learned to judge them less harshly. And perhaps also to be a bit less hard on myself sometimes.
This was writing as therapy, and it worked very well for me. I can now advise anybody that if you do this you may be surprised by the insights you will gain. Writing is a good way to make you think things through.
I judged my father very harshly when I started writing, because I was in the early stages of recovery from alcoholism. This doesn't mean I didn't love him, it just shows how the alcoholism took over and clouded his judgement and feelings. As the book and my recovery progressed I developed a lot more insight into his condition and how it made him the way he was. As a result now I feel far more compassion and sympathy for him. I still take the piss out of him a lot in this book but I have really learned how the way he turned out was all down to his family history. Life for him was always either being at a big party or being sunk in a state of despair. There was very little in between. There was no medication available for his condition – except self-medication with the booze.
The way he lived his life helps explains a lot about how I've lived mine. The biggest difference is that I was born in better times. Not just better off money wise but better times socially. No longer is there the same stigma attached to mental illness, and abusive behaviour isn't just covered up or excused any more. Today, alcoholics have more chance of getting good treatment and understanding. I can even go into a bar and order a raspberry and Coke without being called a wowser. That's one sign that the world is getting better. This book is another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Graeme Horncastle
• Release date: Apr 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476279978

Graeme Horncastle

From a casual first glance one could assume this book is just a boring chronicle of a family. First impressions can be wrong and certainly are in this case. The story consists of a rollercoaster ride, right from birth in Blenheim, to childhood on a 30-cow dairy farm near Karamea on the West Coast of New Zealand where he was raised by a "devoted mother and a frustrated eccentric father". Life was great on the Coast for youngsters with weird and wacky incidents but with a father who increasingly took to the bottle, the economics of the farm were rocky and life was full of challenges. Then followed a teenage marriage with a child due. Graeme Horncastle gritted his teeth and was determined to make a go of it. He was succeeding but then tragedy intervened with the loss of a daughter to cancer, the aftermath of grief and despair, alcoholism, depression, marital crisis and attempted suicide. Then slowly Graeme, with support, dragged himself up and got his life back together again. Today the Horncastle family own and operate the 86 room Pavilions Hotel in Christchurch New Zealand. Born in Blenheim in September 1951, Graeme returned to Marlborough and in particular Picton where he and his wife Maureen took over Oxley's Tavern. Then Australia and then to Christchurch where the author tells of the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The book is well produced, well illustrated, and makes for absorbing reading. Graeme is honest, at times almost brutally, but the stories and incidents range from laughter to tears. There's never been a dull moment in Graeme Horncastle's life with its highs and lows. That is relayed to the reader for an entertaining read.

Book preview

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_685a24e3.jpg

HORNCASTLE’S suitcase

A family nightmare. One man’s dream.

by Graeme Horncastle

What others are saying about Horncastle’s Suitcase

I wanted to drop you an email to let you know I read your book and loved it! I wasn’t keen on reading it at first, why would I want to read about someone else’s family, I have my own very large one. Anyway I couldn’t put it down until I finished it, had some laughs and a tear or two.

- Christine Berry

Finished the book last night, quickest one I have read. Excellent read & I found myself reading it quicker to find out how it ends even though I knew the ending. The story was really worth putting on paper and If I didn't know you and the family it would be hard to believe it was a true story !

- Mike Wilson- Queensland

This is an honest story of the hardships endured by the Horncastle family, but shows there is always sunshine after rain.

- Tony Kokshoorn, Mayor Grey District

I found it very difficult to put down once I started reading it. It is beautifully written and I am sure that the way you have done this has helped you face your demons at times.

- Mary-Anne

Just have to let you know how very much I enjoyed it. In fact would go as far as to say one of the best books I have ever read. Once started couldn't put it down.

- Dave Watson

HORNCASTLE’S suitcase

Publisher- Pavilions Hotel Ltd

42 Papanui Rd, Christchurch 8144, New Zealand

Phone: [phone]

www.pavilionshotel.co.nz

Copyright Graeme Horncastle 2011

Editorial services by Bradstock & Associates, Christchurch

Cover Designed by Mark Winstanley / Go Ahead Graphics

Smashwords Edition

A print version of this book is available for purchase from the publisher listed above. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

About the Author

Author’s preface

Prologue: Karamea

Chapter 1 The suitcase

Chapter 2 Jim and Noeline – the early days

Chapter 3 I come into the world

Chapter 4 Family life on the farm

Chapter 5 Horses and tractors

Chapter 6 The milk run

Chapter 7 School days and the Royal Humane Society medal

Chapter 8 Les and I grow up

Chapter 9 Work, girls, and parties

Chapter 10 The boat launching

Chapter 11 I meet Maureen

Chapter 12 My daughters are born

Chapter 13 Getting started in business

Chapter 14 The old man’s downhill slide

Chapter 15 Mum passes away

Chapter 16 Hotels: the start

Chapter 17 First lot of depression

Chapter 18 The old man’s declining years

Chapter 19 The Leisure Lodge days

Chapter 20 Pavilions Hotel and the Good Life

Chapter 21 The real nightmare

Chapter 22 The only way out?

Chapter 23 The world changes

Chapter 24 We make forty years of marriage

Chapter 25 No Rocket Science! Succeeding in business

Chapter 26 The Christchurch earthquakes of 2010 and 2011

Chapter 27 Closing the suitcase

Glossary

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_284b82e2.jpg

About the Author

My name is Graeme Horncastle, I’m 60 and last year I wrote my first book. It saved my life, and by the response and reviews it has been getting, it's helping many others, too.

The book is a recount of my life growing up on the West Coast in a poor farming family of 12. It's a quick paced read that takes you into my personal life- my alcoholic father, making do out of nothing, finding wealth in business, losing a daughter to cancer, attempted suicide, depression, alcoholism, and coming back out the other side to amazing family and friends. I own the Pavilions Hotel in Christchurch New Zealand and get to meet great people every day. I'm still here and I want to make a difference.

Author’s preface

There I was, sitting in our house in Raby Bay, Australia, after a long illness, fiddling around with my brand new laptop computer. I’d just taken it out of the box and was working through the instruction booklet. It was hard to use it at first as I couldn't spell and had hardly written a letter in my life. I’d always had someone else to do mail for me. But I was determined to learn, and with one finger I started. Thinking about what to do, I decided to write about some of the things I remembered from childhood, and that's how I got properly started. Before long I had learned my way around the keyboard and had become a two-finger typist. Then, as with anything else I do, I started working on it day and night. At 55 years of age I figured it was high time I learned how to use one of these things as they were everywhere and I had fallen behind. I’d never needed one personally in the past, but life’s full of new experiences and I needed something new to occupy me. Up to this point computers hadn’t personally helped me get ahead or make more money. Nor had they helped me solve any of the problems that had eaten me away over the past 40 years. Who was I? Where did I come from, why was I here, where was I going? These questions wore away at me. This is the sort of mind-searching people in my condition often go through. My mind was repairing itself after a succession of tragedies in my life, especially the untimely death of my beloved daughter Shelley. I needed to keep my mind occupied without putting too much pressure on myself. So I started by writing about the early part of my life. I thought it might help my confused state of mind. There was plenty I wanted to say but it wasn’t easy to get it down. Even the spellchecker wasn’t much help as it couldn't even recognise many of the words I was writing. I’d try to write a word like story but it would come out as rosti, and the spell checker would accept it as a real word (apparently it’s some some kind of Swiss potato recipe).

I wasn’t getting much faster at typing but it didn’t matter. In fact that was good, because it gave me time to collect my thoughts better before putting them down. Soon I learned that words on paper add up gradually, just like money in a bank. I got into the routine of writing a few hundred more words every day. Gradually I was accumulating what looked like a nice little growing nest-egg of words. Soon I was only sleeping three hours a night as the events of the past poured out of my mind and into the computer. Mind you, that nest egg was taking a long time to hatch. My first draft was pretty rough.

At first, when sleeping, my nightmares came back, and then the mixed dreams of events over the last fifty years, slipping backwards and forwards in time and not making a lot of sense. But with time the dreams became more pleasant, my mind started to settle, and a clear picture started to emerge. It showed what I was thinking about the people in my life and the events that had shaped me into who I am today.

Debbie’s kids, my grandchildren Brooke, now 17, and Jared, 14, were around one day while I was working on the book. They asked Maureen what I was doing and when she told them, Brooke asked, Is Grandad going mad again? Maureen replied, No; he just wants to tell his story to help himself and help other people. It was quite a proud moment as it helped me focus on my story. My whole extended family could see the positive effect it was having on my health. They encouraged me and wanted to read each new chapter as I finished it. They would jog my memory of stories and events, and told me honestly when they thought I was writing crap.

Gradually, putting all this together increased my understanding and helped me to see people in a different light. I learned to judge them differently. Mainly, I learned to judge them less harshly. And perhaps also to be a bit less hard on myself sometimes.

This was writing as therapy, and it worked very well for me. I can now advise anybody that if you do this you may be surprised by the insights you will gain. Writing is a good way to make you think things through. I am sorry if some people may feel I have been tough on them in this story, but I haven’t been soft on myself either, and besides, I can only tell a story the way I remember it unfolding. I judged my father very harshly when I started writing, because I was in the early stages of recovery from alcoholism. This doesn’t mean I didn’t love him, it just shows how the alcoholism took over and clouded his judgement and feelings. As the book and my recovery progressed I developed a lot more insight into his condition and how it made him the way he was. As a result now I feel far more compassion and sympathy for him. I still take the piss out of him a lot in these pages but I have really learned how the way he turned out was all down to his family history. Life for him was always either being at a big party or being sunk in a state of despair. There was very little in between. There was no medication available for his condition – except selfmedication with the booze.

The way he lived his life helps explains a lot about how I’ve lived mine. The biggest difference is that I was born in better times. Not just better off money wise but better times socially. No longer is there the same stigma attached to mental illness, and abusive behaviour isn’t just covered up or excused any more. Today, alcoholics have more chance of getting good treatment and understanding. I can even go into a bar and order a raspberry and Coke without being called a wowser. That’s one sign that the world is getting better.

I bought a computer program called Naturally Speaking which could turn my spoken words into text on the screen. The young man who sold it to me came to teach me to use it and Maureen said she would go shopping while he was there. As she was heading out the door the first thing the salesman said was that he’d show me how to teach the computer to recognise new words. This was essential because although the program had a vocabulary of 360,000 words, none of them would be New Zealand slang or Maori words and place names in everyday use. The computer needed to learn those words, the same way a child is constantly building its vocabulary with new words it hears. So I said, Well then, let's start with the word ‘Greymouth’. But there was one small problem. He was dyslexic, so he didn’t know the correct spelling either. And as for me, I couldn’t spell to save myself –– which was half the reason for getting the program in the first place. We looked at each other for a moment or two and laughed. Then I leaped up, opened the door and called out to Maureen who was just getting into the car, Er … I think this might be a three-person job…

My grandchildren almost split their sides with laughter when they heard this story. I suppose when you’re a kid you’re more conscious of spelling than many adults are. They thought it hilarious to think here was something their grandfather couldn’t do but they could.

Prologue: Karamea

My home town was Karamea, a small farming and sawmilling town in the northernmost part of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. A strip of flat coastal plains rolls back from surf beaches to steep rain forest, and a big river and a couple of smaller ones flow down from a hinterland that’s been shattered by many earthquakes in the recent past. The climate is mild and wet, almost subtropical, but surprisingly the early Maoris didn’t use this area a lot and only the remains of small settlements right on the coast have been found. Mainly they used it as a stopover as they went further south for greenstone, NZ jade, which they used for tools and ornaments. Karamea has the kindest climate of anywhere on the West Coast but it still was too tough for even those early Maoris to permanently settle without the benefits of wool and metal. There was no escape from the rain and wind that swept all the way across the Tasman Sea and the Indian Ocean and still does.

Probably the first white men to land in the area were sealers in 1836, but they only passed through to do a bit of looting and pillaging of the natural resources. Not far to the north, the place Abel Tasman had called Murderers Bay became Golden Bay after New Zealand’s first gold rush in 1854. That was closely followed by the rush south to Hokitika ten years later. These places were golden all right, so there had to be gold in between them as well, and the miners flocked in. Some came by boat to the mouths of the Karamea River, or to the Little Wanganui River mouth at the south end of the beach. Others walked over the Heaphy Track from Golden Bay and the Wangapeka Track from Nelson. All of them soon left again, as they didn’t find much very gold and there were much better pickings elsewhere.

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_215a3f15.jpg

The scow Te Aroha at Little Wanganui in 1947. These flat-bottomed boats took most cargo in and out of the area until the river mouths became silted up and trucks took over their job.

Loggers and early farmers came in the 1870s, helped by a government settlement scheme. They were hardy stock, from England and the Shetland Islands, and were more persistent than the miners. At first they tried farming the elevated river terraces but the soil was too poor. Down on the river flats the ground was swampy but more fertile, and as soon as the forest was cleared and drains dug it was good farmland. Quickly a flat patchwork of green grass spread along the valley floors and over the coastal dunes. They called it the Promised Land on the south side of the Karamea River, and The Land of Promise on the north side. It wasn’t until 1916 that a road was put through to connect Karamea with the outside world via Westport, which itself was another small town and still pretty remote. The road originally went around the bottom of the bluff down through Glasseye Creek and along the beach to Karamea. When the 1929 earthquake destroyed that area the road was re-routed inland, around the top of a high escarpment known as the Karamea Bluff, which was a defining feature of the area, and then down a couple

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_4f2c151d.jpg

An early photo of the road around Karamea Bluff – steep, narrow and always either dusty or muddy.

of wider valleys that passed our home farm. Then it ran slightly inland of the beach, up to the town of Karamea. Even after these improvements it was still two hours on a steep and winding road from Westport. Any time the road wasn’t muddy it was dusty, and parts of it regularly got washed out. Cars weren’t so good or reliable either and for some people this made the journey to the outside world a real mental barrier. The drive to town was always a major trip, and even when you got to Westport you still weren’t exactly in the big smoke. That road also discouraged visitors to Karamea, especially since it wasn’t a through road. There’s been talk from time to time of linking it to Golden Bay to add another tourist circuit but it’s never come to anything. Gradually the road has been improved over the years, though in places it’s some of the steepest in New Zealand. It’s sealed now, the worst corners have been widened and the fords have been bridged, but still in places it’s like a river when the rain comes down the way it can do on the Coast. Now you can drive from Westport to Karamea in an hour and a half, passing through a small settlement at Little Wanganui about twenty minutes before you reach the town of Karamea. Tourists reckon it’s a great scenic trip because of all the mighty rainforest. And they’re right in a way, because in summer the huge rata trees with their riot of red flowers are pretty impressive. The scenery along the coast north of Westport is very beautiful on a fine day.

Karamea has always been a bit wet for sheep, but good for cattle, and dairying provided a living for a thousand or so people during the time I lived there. Karamea was my home town and the Karamea district was my patch; I lived there for the early part of my life, from the mid-1950s to 1967 when I left to start my own grown-up life. Today, when you arrive there by road you pass farms, farmstays, camping grounds and motels, then you come to an intersection with two shops. This spot is called Market Cross. Turn left here and you drive along a straight road for a couple of kilometres through a sprawling settlement of shops, churches, motels, a derelict dairy factory and the Karamea Hotel. That’s the town of Karamea, and the folks who live there are proud of their community. For the tourist, there’s no nightlife or big shopping. The attractions are the West Coast scenery and the the Heaphy and Wangapeka walking tracks. There are also the limestone arches on the Oparara River, one of the most under-rated scenic attractions in the whole country. Most visitors to Karamea know what to expect and never come away disappointed. If you want a place to go away from the busy world, this is the place to go.

Chapter 1 The suitcase

It’s now 20 years since the old man died and about 30 years since Mum was alive. They had left us 500 acres of hill-country farmland, one of the two farms they had had, above the river mouth at Little Wanganui, the south end of the long sweeping Karamea beach. That second farm was left to their eight surviving children – five boys and three girls – but it was poor, hilly, largely bush-covered land. There wasn’t even any road access or a bridge across the creek you had to cross to get there. So the land lay disused for years after my father died, until the family decided they wanted to be rid of it and would rather have whatever cash they could get.

Little Wanganui is a pleasant, sheltered estuary with golden sand and overhanging yellow-flowered kowhai trees. I went out there a few years ago, crossing the estuary

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_m63f1b039.jpg

Little Wanganui township from the air, 1960s. It hasn’t changed much since. Our farm was up a valley to the east (left) of this picture.

at low tide as it was the only way to get there on foot. I came ashore on the south side and stumbled over the boulders that have come down the valley from the big earthquakes that give this country its nickname of the Shakey Isles. I walked up on to the small foreshore area below the hills, the only bit of flat land. In earlier years there had been a house and a cowshed where a family called the Shoremans had scraped a meagre living as they cleared the land on the hill. The buildings were long gone before my parents bought the place. I suppose I was looking for something to show that my parents had ever been there, because the landscape has changed – it’s now a deer farm with a high fence all round – and the West Coast takes back its own very fast. Before long I came across the remains of a one-stand shearing shed that the old man had built. It was made of corrugated iron and not much bigger than a long-drop. The door was wide open and half-off its hinges. Looking inside, I saw that anything of value was long gone. Only a few nuts and bolts and parts off the Lister diesel engine that used to drive the shearing plant were still there. There was nothing to remind me of the old man.

But then I walked around the shed and found that he had left his mark after all. In faded paintwork you could just make out the words Fuck off. That brought a grin to my face. It was him all over. In his later years he didn’t welcome visitors, and never missed a chance to make that clear. I sat down for a while in the long warm grass and lit a smoke. Sitting there in the quiet, I visualised the old man working away in the makeshift yard that he had put up to hold these rough-looking animals. With the old Lister diesel thumping away, driving his single shearing handpiece. The sheep weren’t shorn regularly like on other farms, but only when the wool price was high or he needed some beer money. So as you can imagine, these animals looked like ordinary sheep but were wild and untamed. Many of them weren’t even dog-shy because when the old man went to round them up that might be the first time they’d ever seen a dog. The old man was no great sheep-shearer, either. Any animal he’d shorn didn’t end up looking like whatever kind of animal it was any more, because he did such a rough job: bits of wool still hanging off them, skin cut and bleeding red, but glad the nightmare was over for them. I lit another smoke and stretched out in the warm sunshine. Thinking a bit more about the old man’s shearing reminded me how we kids used to count ourselves lucky that it was always Mum who cut our hair at home. And I remembered how, after the old man died, the sheep ran wild for years, great big dirty brown round things with no visible head or legs. The last of them weren’t shot out until some years later. Most of the time they stayed hidden in the bush.

Mum died ten years before the old man. At the time the girls divided up the small amount of personal goods that were left and I got two nice items of ancient rose glassware, a jug and a bowl. I think they’re about three hundred years old, and that Mary gave them to me because she knew I would take care of them. They were probably the most valuable things Mum ever had, and it made me think about where they had been over the years and how they must have been packed away and brought out again each time when shifting or painting. Most things don’t mean much to me after all these years, but every time I see them they bring my mind back to all those people that have lived their lives and now passed on. My mother was of Irish descent so they must have originally come from Ireland and I wonder: if they could talk, what stories would they be able to tell? For a long time I had nothing else in the way of a keepsake to remind me of my mother and father. Then, a few years ago I was visiting my sister Mary and she said she had an old suitcase of the old man’s. We went out to the garage and there it was, still unopened after many years. A well-worn old dark brown rather battered-looking suitcase covered in dust. As I unclipped the catches and opened it, the smell of the past came back. Inside the lid was the address: Horncastle, Karamea, No 1 R D, Westport, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It had all his paper work and old photos in it. It was the last surviving link to all the things I wanted to know about.

Mary said, I don’t know what to do with it. Do you want it? Did I what! This wasn’t like a new car or a house; it was something special in a way that is harder to explain. Money can’t buy memories, you can only get them from family and friends. Here was a bit of everybody’s life that had touched him over his short 57 years.

There were old letters, photos, financial stuff and farm records. There were telegrams congratulating my parents on their wedding day, and home-made cards we kids had made for Mum on Mother’s Day. There was a big bundle of telegrams, sympathy cards and the tickets off floral tributes dating from my mother’s premature death.

The suitcase contained old carbon paper books with the copies of my parents’ letters. Both of them were very good correspondents and wrote in pretty good English. Their handwriting was always neat and clearly legible; they were even good spellers most of the time. They were of that generation where kids came out of school knowing how to write a letter properly. There were pages of notes and calculations for quotes the old man did on building jobs, all carefully detailed and itemised. There was even a book, Adventure Stories, which had belonged to him as a small boy.

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_m61fcc9df.jpg

The suitcase as I first saw it: a treasure trove of family history. You can see this today in the bar at the Pavilions Hotel.

I pored over the contents of this case for hours on end, soaking up all the history that oozed out of it. Still every time I look I learn more: what things cost in those days; the heartache of work gone wrong; the joy or the worry of a new baby. The suitcase also provided some background to family stories like the time the old man watered down the milk, because there was a letter he wrote to the court in Westport saying that Mum had let water get into the milk and he’d make sure it never happened again. Things like a letter from Debbie when she was 14, writing to her dying grandfather. There was Mum’s diary recording every day’s work on the farm. The suitcase just went on and on releasing its story that had been locked away for so long. There were puzzles like a wedding telegram signed From the muscle bound fifteen quid a week school teacher and Harbourmaster, and risqué jokes like Here’s hoping there won’t be a berth on the boat. Another telegram was addressed to my mother: Congratulations on great effort love to you both Molly, and this one sent a shiver though me when I saw the date on it, 10 September 1951 – the day after I was born.

With the best of intentions, Maureen offered to buy me a new suitcase for all this stuff. To her it was just a shabby old worn-out case and only the contents were important. She didn’t understand how special the suitcase was to me as well; and how could she? To me it was more than a suitcase. It was a piece of family history in its own right. It was the family’s suitcase. All of us had used it over the years whenever we visited friends and relations. Mum took it to the hospital when she had her babies, and still the old man used it in his final days as he went to and from hospital. Anyway, I told Maureen as nicely as I could to leave it well alone (though those were not quite my actual words), and it’s been a standing joke between us ever since. Now it occupies pride of place in Jimmy’s Bar at the Pavilions Hotel, where anyone can come in and see it and enjoy a drink while checking out all the other pieces of family nostalgia we have all round the walls to add atmosphere. So let’s just open the suitcase and look inside …

Chapter 2 Jim and Noeline – the early days

We Horncastles are New Zealanders through and through. New Zealand’s an interesting country, full of oddities like glaciers flowing through rain forest, wine cheaper than bottled water, and people who eat spaghetti sandwiches. You have to give way when you turn left, gravel is called metal and a corner grocery is called a dairy. Every country is unique but New Zealand is more unique than most. It was the last place in the world to be settled by humans, and the first to give women the vote. The indigenous people, the Maoris, arrived only a few hundred years before the Europeans, not thousands of years before. By the time the white man arrived it was no longer okay to kill off or enslave natives so the two cultures have managed to make a reasonable job of getting along together. Maori men even got the vote before Pakeha women did. Who said we’re racist? We had more respect for the dark races than our own women.

There used to be ten times as many sheep as people but now the cow has ousted most of them and we have the world’s biggest dairy company. We export the best of everything we produce, including wine, meat and fish. We even export our best educated and skilled people; or rather, they export themselves because there’s much more opportunity and money elsewhere. Those of us who stay behind tell ourselves New Zealand is the best country in the world. A lot of the tourists who come here will agree with us. Some of them never go back. Wealth in New Zealand is about much more than just money.

tmp_6e4432f7facc525778cbc659d7563e7e_dvFtfb_html_m45b8de1c.jpg

This early photo of my parents turned up in the suitcase when I first sorted through it. On the back my father wrote, Love and sweet dreams for the future.

New Zealanders love to skite about the things that make us special. We have the best scenery, beaches, outdoor activities. We invented the pavlova, the courier bag, the electric fence, the buzzy bee and the bungy jump. Orange roughy were first caught around New Zealand and we have the fastest racehorses, the fastest Olympic rowers and the world’s fastest Indian. Then there’s rugby, which New Zealanders love and are best in the world at – which really just means we’re better than the Aussies, the South Africans, the Poms and the Frogs. They’re the only others crazy enough to play a game where you have to pass the ball backwards when you’re running with it. We are so rugby-mad we almost had a civil war over it, back in 1981 when the Springboks were visiting just before the end of apartheid in South Africa.