The school roll was 70 percent Māori. Many of the parents worked at the Mars pet-food factory (airport sign: ‘Wanganui, home of Whiskas!’). Many were unemployed. ‘A lot of the kids are from gang homes,’ she said. ‘People think of us as a ghetto but most houses are still on a quarter-acre section. And we have 100 percent attendance on parents’ day. I tell them, “It’s a legal requirement!”’ She laughed, and then she said, ‘The reality is that parents at Aramoho care about their children as much as any parents.’
We were joined by her husband Henry Ngapo, the school principal. There was an immediate impression of dignity and calm, strength and mana. ‘I’m originally from Waiheke Island,’ he said. ‘Pisshead for a father. No money. But I’ve got five tertiary qualifications, including a Fulbright. I tell that to the kids. We’ve got one girl who wants to be a doctor. Her parents are very supportive. Her father was one of the men implicated in the killing of baby Jhia.’ He meant the Mongrel Mob drive-by shooting that killed the two-year-old daughter of a Black Power member in 2007. Henry said, ‘It was a really horrific time. The kids were stressed to the max. But the guy I was telling you about, the father, something clicked inside his head after that. He doesn’t drink anymore, stopped smoking dope. He wants the best for his daughter.’
Helen taught social studies. ‘The kids said, “We’d like to learn about revolution” so I gave them a quote from Zapata – “Revolution is not a bed of roses” – and said, “Tell me what it means.” This girl, the one who we’re talking about, said, “Tears will be shed and hearts will be broken.” A seven year old. Can you believe that?’
Other, similarly unofficial signs of life, hope and goodness in Wanganui ran riot at the apparently endless home of potter Ross Mitchell-Anyon. It was impossible to locate anything as prosaic as a front door or a back door in his ramshackle, sprawling house on the banks of the river. ‘Built it myself,’ he said. ‘Wood butchery.’
It was more than merely chaotic. Ross was like a man who had declared war on blank space. His hair was all over the shop. He drove a big black bomb. The paintings on his walls included a portrait of David Bain. He threw planks on to an enormous outdoor brick fireplace; the warmth brought people from thin air. ‘It’s like a bloody hippie commune here,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I seem to attract waifs and strays.’
He drove into town in his six-cylinder 1962 Vanguard 6. ‘It’s a portable blackboard,’ he said. He’d chalked its side doors with the notorious letter H. ‘I own that one,’ he said, pointing to the former Ministry of Works building. It cost $75,000. ‘That’s one of mine,’ he said, driving past the former Wanganui Chronicle building. It cost $115,000. Both are tenanted by local artists and musicians.
‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘I’m a poozler.’ What? ‘A scrounger, an arranger of bits and pieces. I’d always bought parts of buildings – windows, boards – and then I thought, why not buy the building?’ I bought my first one dirt cheap. They still are. Wanganui’s art scene is such because of the cheapness of the real estate: you don’t have to charge much rent for studio space. I had someone wanting to buy the Chronicle building. They offered me a lot of money, but they wanted to knock it down so I told them to get fucked. I’ve got the glass artist guys in there. People like that keep the blood going through Wanganui.’
He parked the car near the Sarjeant Gallery. His public sculpture ‘Handspan’, which features over 5,000 casts of hands, was being dedicated in Queen’s Park. He looked around. ‘Oh, there’s my hand,’ he said. ‘Haven’t seen that in years. Ha! There’s Helen Clark’s.’ The sculpture had been funded by a peace activist called Gita Brooke. Gita’s husband Anthony really was the last White Rajah of Sarawak. His family held absolute rule over the Malaysian state from 1843 until 1945.
Later, back at his house, Ross and his posh sexy girlfriend Bobbi Magdalinos, a school inspector, stoked up the giant fireplace. Bobbi said she’d only recently moved to Wanganui. Her husband, Napier architect Paris Magdalinos, had died in July the year before. She said, ‘There I was, the widow in mourning black. Three months later I fall in love with a bohemian potter in Wanganui.’
We looked into the flames, and into something even more compelling and primal: a dirty great big hole in the ground directly in front of the fireplace. It was art, a statement. Mitchell-Anyon had concreted the sides. A very, very long ladder stood in it. You could barely see the bottom. It looked like a journey into the centre of the Earth. Bobbi said, ‘We were sitting here one night by the fire and Ross said, “I’m going to dig a hole.” And I said, “Fantastic.” Because that’s what you say to someone like Ross.’
He said, ‘You can go up, and you can go down. But not many people go down.’ No. We continued looking at the hole. It was a void. It was an abyss.
Mercer
Fog
The graveyard was across the road from the school and over the fence from a three-bedroom house on the edge of a paddock. It was raining hard at last; summer’s drought had rusted the countryside. Mercer – exactly halfway between Auckland and Hamilton, a fast 40-minute drive in either direction – smelled of chimney smoke on a Friday morning in early winter. A thrush was singing above the dirt track that led to the gates of the primary school, which
