Facets of Pukerua Bay – A Sentimental Slant
When all the world was young, lad
And all the trees were green …
Pukerua Bay became Home in the winter of 1969. Married in the mid-sixties, we’d pass through the village as we fled city weekends. Breasting the Pukerua hill and its trees and farmland – and that wonderful first sight of Kapiti Island – we knew we’d left the city behind. Drawn to the rural charm of the Bay, we bought a third of an acre of hillside. Not then, but now shaded by pines thoughtlessly planted. We were the late-comers, and the better plots had already been claimed. A bulldozer scraped a level spot for house and clothes line, a digger came to dig our septic tank (oh, the grief that septic tank caused!!), and the builders poured massive concrete foundations. The roof went on, the flag went up, the crate of beer was provided. A crisis when we discovered no allowance had been made for a water storage tank. Decisions about wallpaper and paint, a battle over the number of lights in the kitchen, oh the stress of it all! Waiting, waiting for a calm day, the painter exclaimed “Gawd, it can blow here!!” After an age, we eventually moved into our shiny new house on the 4th of July 1969, Independence Day. Sixty-three years earlier, my Cincinnati grandmother sailed in to the harbour on a perfect sparkling Wellington winter day, and thought she’d come to paradise. Our 4th of July sunset transformed for an instant the steep coastal hills a rich red, and we reckoned we’d come to paradise too.
The wind
I’m sick of the wind. The painter had warned us about it. The relentless nor’wester made the house shudder, ripped sheets from the line and dumped them in the neighbour’s garden. For years, until the shrubs and trees took hold, fine clay dust blown from other new properties around us was wiped from windowsills only to reappear the next day. The trees that had attracted us to the Bay were not so plentiful in our neighbourhood. All that seemed to grow were taupata, manuka, and pohutukawas! So we planted these and kept them alive with bathwater during the summer droughts. There were four attempts before a lawn would grow. The seed was washed down the hill in the rain or blown away. Brown edges to the leaves, seedlings with their necks broken; other people’s paddling pools, tree branches, junk mail and tins blowing up our drive. I’m sick of the bloody wind!
Water tanks, and septic tanks
When we bought our hillside, water and sewerage were promised to arrive “next year”. So we learned not to believe all we heard and lived with septic tanks and water shortages for 13 or 14 years of babies and small children and the laundry they generate. Five thousand gallons sounds a lot of water, but as the dry spells lengthened we’d lift the lid of the tank and stare fascinated at the worms and other creatures at the bottom. We scanned the summer skies for signs of rain; city workmates were uncomprehending of our joy when it rained. When the tanks ran dry, Buckland and Evans brought a truckload of water from Plimmerton, at great cost. We kept a sharp eye for running taps, agonised when ‘townie’ visitors wasted our precious water and learned the art of recycling bathwater into the washing machine/to the loo/on to the garden. In the early years our large storage tank held its own and we didn’t need to buy water. Then the babies arrived.
Because of our steep hillside, the septic tank effluent was pumped up the hill and allowed to disperse deep underground. Occasionally the mercury switch that triggered the pump would fail, and noses would wrinkle at the pong and the tell-tale seepage. Pukerua Bay menfolk learned to be competent amateur plumbers.
Generations of Bay children were deprived: they were deprived of real, honest-to-goodness, abundant water play on hot summer days. A bucket of water might be spared to make mud, but never a hose. A major landmark in Pukerua Bay’s history was the arrival of sewerage and water supply systems, ending the years of overflowing septic tanks (and the visits of “Joe’s Takeaways” septic tank cleaners) and empty water tanks. A furious debate over whether the Bay should in fact be linked to mains water and sewerage. “The old people won’t be able to afford it” some said. And people who would happily drink water from questionable sources worried about the chemicals and poisons that made the water supply clean. Rainwater is wonderful for washing hair and for making a good cup of tea, and I suspect the immune systems of Pukeruvians are no longer as robust as before! But the great day eventually came and brought with it the summer fun of playing with a hose and making a giant mud slide on our hill. Our daughter will carry to her grave the scar from that first mudslide, when she landed on a brick fragment in the vegie garden.
The beach
Dad often took his little girl, bouncing with excitement, for outings to the beach. “Don’t bring her home wet” I’d whine. But home they’d come, sopping, wringing wet on the coldest winter’s day, clutching shells and treasures, a blue child into a hot bath to thaw. We bought one of those new-fangled back-pack baby carriers for our first baby. We’d take a walk to the beach via SH1 with Baby bouncing on Dad’s back. Cars would toot and the occupants wave and marvel at this novel sight. Once I decided to back-pack Baby to the beach via the Rawhiti Road “Goat Track”, a decision soon regretted as I’d forgotten how steep the track was. The track was steep and hazardous, and a baby on the back put quite a different perspective to the adventure.
Our children spent many happy hours fossicking in the rock pools at the beach. Young Jo owned a pair of togs of extremely stretchy fabric (they lasted for years!). She decided to cram quantities of pumice inside the togs to test flotation possibilities. Others on the beach were weak with laughter at the sight of a grotesque, freakish little body suddenly two or three times its normal width! She soon found that the coarse sand produced an even more spectacular result, as the lowermost part of the costume took the weight and stretched alarmingly to her knees. As the children grew older there were expeditions to the beach to build fires and cook sausages and damper. A cache of coins was once found at Marble Arch, a treasure amounting to forty-eight cents! Thirty years on, we never tire of walking along our beach. I regretted not walking along the coast to Plimmerton before our children arrived, as it was seventeen years before I finally made the journey. To walk the coast during a storm is the most dramatic time, as the waves crash and pound the rocks, hurling themselves on to the steep shore, racing back out to sea.
The views
Pukerua Bay is endowed with grandstand views across farmland, to the ranges, and out to sea, away to the South Island. The higher you climb, the more there is to see. A small neighbour, thinking he was alone, perched on our fence post and shouted into the wind, “I can see the whole world from here!”. We’ve made night-time expeditions through the Raroa Reserve to the top of the cliff to see Haley’s and the more recent comets – at the very spot where Peter Jackson filmed the cliff-face scene in “Bad Taste”. We like to take visitors to the top of the cliffs and present them with the coast below, Kapiti, the South Island, Egmont …
The hills
We have always been fortunate that the Carrads generously allow people to roam the hills to the west. Mushrooms!! But it’s been a long time since we’ve seen the groups of enterprising children with “Mushrooms for sale”. We’ve often roamed the hills high amongst the clouds looking for mushrooms: is that a cluster on the far side of that next gully? Autumn also signalled the hill climbing and grass-sliding seasons, when groups of squealing youngsters hurtled downwards on flattened-out cardboard cartons. The dry grass made for a fast ride, and when the cardboard cartons eventually disintegrated, home they’d come, cheeks glowing. It’s good to see that cardboard sledging is still popular.
The shops
In 1969 we were pretty much self-sufficient; one hardly needed a car at all. Dr Bryson held regular clinics in the Plunket rooms. Scott’s general store was a village-well of a country store where we could buy the groceries (delivered to the door, of course), cases of fruit to bottle, chook food, knitting patterns and wool, petrol, gumboots, books-and-toys-and-babies-singlets …. The Scotts sold up and moved on. The new owner tidied up the place and got rid of all the ‘unnecessary stock’. This was no good: it meant a trip to Plimmerton to buy a reel of cotton, so we did all the shopping elsewhere until the store eventually sickened and died. Casey’s Plimmerton Butchery truck made the journey twice a week. We’d emerge from our doorways when the toot-toot announced the arrival of Casey’s truck. The door was opened with a flourish, and the wind would blow dust, dirt and leaves all over the wares! The Department of Health said it was unhygienic and had to stop. Bread was delivered too, still warm, into letterboxes each morning, and a greengrocer visited twice a week. The village buzzed at the news of a new block of shops coming to Rawhiti Road: there was a supermarket, a butcher, bottle store and dairy. But the butcher shop caught fire, and eventually the building was sold to private owners. For a few deprived years the Bay had no shops at all, until the arrival of the present businesses on the main highway. The post office is long gone too, perhaps just as well, as we cheated the highway traffic to reach it.
Plunket mothers …
The transition from city office to the mum-and-baby world was eased greatly by the Plunket Society. The Plunket nurse visited mothers in their homes, and later we took our babes to the rooms near the intersection of Beach Road and SH1. Plunket meetings were the only ‘time off’ some mothers had from new responsibilities, and we talked babies and laughed, and organised the cake stalls and the fairs. Plunket cake stalls were a regular event and the funds dribbled in. But surprisingly there were some who did not want to contribute in any way. They would say, no, they didn’t have time. So I learned powerful new lessons: that it’s generally the busiest people who have the time, and if asked to help with fund-raising don’t harangue the volunteer who’s doing the asking! I was president for a year or two, and a major task at this time was selling the old Plunket rooms and building new ones near the library. Plunket secretary at the time, Janet Bugden, worked very hard on this project and it was a great tribute to all her efforts when the rooms were opened.
… and Playcentre
We had a wonderful playcentre, a building shared with the tennis club. How fortunate our children were to have this experience; lifelong friendships were made by children and parents. Kids, mums and dads played, laughed and learned together, and Playcentre was the hub of our world for a few years. I watched my preschooler cautiously pick his way to the top of a shed. Mother’s protective instincts screamed to call him back to safety, but I learned from the others to let him try for the top – “He’s OK, let him go – kids know what their limits are”. And there was the realisation that not all kids revelled in the mess of fingerpaint, mud and water the way my own wallowing little piglet did. Growing and learning, having fun, outings to the zoo or fire station, and then eventually out into the world of …
… School
Pukerua Bay has a fine school. It seemed an eternity for our daughter, with her December birthday, to wait for that first day of school. The excitement of the “new block”, an airy, open plan room with stripey carpet! Those first few hot February weeks taking the children to the school pool in the afternoons and the terrible February when a broken thumb meant no swimming for a few weeks. And how indignant I became when someone’s father said that being a mother at home was a life of ease and indolence, ‘look at you, nothing to do but sit out in the sun at the pool’. The first stirrings of the new feminism: I learned about the different perceptions of raising children that men and women had: on family outings to the beach the Dad was quite free to lie in the sun and bake, with his eyes closed, whereas I was constantly on duty, never once taking my eyes from the children.
The school gala was, and is, one of the Bay’s great highlights. A frenzy of cake and fudge-making, digging out of white elephants, outgrown toys and old books, sewing and stitching, sending of bags of sugar to school, to be brought home again if you’d volunteered to be a sweet-maker. And the awful discovery (a hot coal still raked over on tense domestic occasions), when I sent off a precious book to the gala, never to be seen again. The counting out of money, and the ferrying home of treasure and old books that might be recycled at next year’s gala.
One year I was persuaded to be a clown: I have never been so exhausted, with the running about and racing around the school field, falling over one another, doing our best to be clowns and entertain! If we stopped to rest, we instantly became self-conscious and felt ridiculous. Mercifully, so well made up as to be unrecognisable, so our kids were spared the humiliation of having an embarrassing mother. Robyn, a fellow clown, was also demonstrating her wool spinning skills. I remember her treadling at the wheel, resplendent in costume and clown make-up. She sighed wearily, “I think we’ll just have sausages and tomatoes for tea tonight”.
The Form Two trips across Cook Strait to Curious Cove … visits to the dental clinic … Lucky Books … learning-to-swim … school reports (“the teacher must have him confused with another boy”) … the adored Mister Braun finally blowing his top… my quiet little boy, a man of few words, bursting through the door with the day’s big news item: “Today I got my name in Mrs Arlidge’s Chatterbox!” … Brownies and Cubs … soccer and cricket … the school sports.
The earth and its mantle
Our grassy hillside was disciplined by a man wearing steel-capped boots and armed with a Flymo on the end of a rope. We planted a few tough native trees and shrubs, but I longed for a garden. “You’re mad, you’re wasting your time”, they said. “The soil’s no good, there’s too much wind, you can’t water it and everything will die in the summer.” Well, I’ll have a go anyway. I started by digging a hole in the level clay area that had been scraped for a clothesline, dug in the scraps and manufactured some soil. Silverbeet miraculously came forth, shredded around the edges yes, but proudly edible. I fashioned terraces on the hill face and planted rosemary hedges to keep out the gales. Broccoli and carrots endured the winter but I watched my summer crops, so optimistically planted, perish in the summer heat. Years more of digging and planting and learning by mistakes … and then the miracle of a piped water supply. Twenty years later I have my garden: a third of an acre, with no lawn. There was a lawn once, but it was whittled away gradually when the Flymo-man wasn’t around to see the mischief, to make room for more perennials, roses and shrubs, all crammed together to keep one another upright. My substitute babies, surrogate grandchildren: nurtured, fussed over. A place to escape the mad world of nineties technology, a joy in all seasons.
The seasons
Thirty years of frigid winter winds that chill but keep the frost from settling, and a few memorable snowfalls. Each October my eyes eagerly search out first stars of the native clematis on the highway. Gorse and broom flowers, and the pink cape daisy – weeds! – colour the spring. November brings a rush of bloom from the creamy rose opposite the horse paddock – Alberic barbier, the Wellington rose. I take cuttings, discover a rose that is indifferent to salty gales, and it becomes a hedge to shelter my crops. On the northernmost track to the beach it tumbles down the bank, to the water’s edge, delicate buttery blossoms, indestructible. A little later comes the bright pink, nameless rose, just as happy in the elements. Pohutukawa blossom at Christmas … the spikes and plumes of flax and toetoe … wild sweet pea and mallows … a bowl of wild blackberries, grudgingly surrendered and at a price … abandoned apple trees that only some of us know about … the green grassy hills, turning to brown … green again when it rains at last — and then the mushrooms of autumn.
Olaf the Leadlighter made me a picture window, capturing in lead and glass the essence of Ocean, and Kapiti, Little Boxes on a Hillside, and Storms. Some day I must leave it and go, and will weep.
