They grimaced when they named the local arsonist who, they suspected, had burned down the museum last year; he was, they said, ‘a dipstick’. They shrugged when they described the new dairy farmers as ‘North Island knob heads’. But they narrowed their eyes when they said: ‘He’s different.’ They meant Graeme Ingils, the outsider with the signs and the dogs. They also said it of Gavin Bell, proprietor and editor of the town’s excellent newspaper The Winton Record – he was new to Winton, had come from Matamata in the North Island in 1994. Asked about Gillian, they said, ‘She’s different.’
The antagonism was less to do with her agitations about the temperature reading than her famous and quite radical overhaul of Winton’s Open Day. Open Day is held every year on a Sunday and attracts visitors from Southland; there are stalls, music, floral displays. Most amazing of all, the shops are open. According to Gillian, though, ‘It’d waned. I spent my time apologising to people from Queenstown who came expecting an event. I began to think, what do we do here that’s special?’ And then one day last year she had an epiphany. She was driving home on a gravel road when she suddenly braked hard. She’d seen Fonterra’s slogan on a letterbox: IT STARTS HERE. ‘I thought, It’s the grass! It’s always about the grass, and what we turn it into!’
The light bulb in her head illuminated the idea that dairying produces ice cream. She pushed – and pushed and pushed – the Winton Business Association and Winton Area Promotions, and Winton’s Open Day thus became Winton’s Ice-Cream Sunday Festival. There were ice-cream stalls, weird and wonderful ice-cream flavours, ice-cream art. Gillian said, ‘It was terrific. It created a dynamic and was the biggest open day ever. Shopkeepers were rushed off their feet.’ Gavin Bell at The Winton Record said, ‘It was… o-kay.’ And Chub McHugh, chair of Winton District Council, said: ‘It was… good. But there’s room for improvement.’
Only the taxman called him John; everyone else acknowledged Chub as Winton’s unofficial mayor. The wide range of his endeavours – past president of Lions, the rugby club, the bowling club; trustee of this, trustee of that – suggested he performed the work of many men. Chub was also the size of many men. You could say he was Winton’s focal point. More than its politician-in-chief, he was its host, a role he also performed as a publican. Chub had taken over the Middle Pub nineteen years earlier, on May 19. A man wearing a cap walked in. Chub said, ‘Gidday, Jock.’
Everyone knew Chub and spoke of him with respect and affection. He knew everyone, and everything that went on. I mentioned the exotic presence of Filipino men standing around on the main street. He said they started arriving three or four years ago to work on dairy farms; the wives ran a support centre and had set up their own credit union and insurance. ‘I’ve actually got one of them working for me. They’re great employees. You tell them what to do and they’ll do it.’
Other new families from South Africa, England and Zimbabwe had led to a rise in Winton School’s roll from 160 to 241. Gillian said, ‘About three years ago my husband came home and said, “I just saw a black person. Really black!” I said, “So?” He said, “Isn’t it wonderful.”’
I saw a Frenchman. ‘I milks the cows,’ he said. Not all of them – there were a record 418,337 dairy cows in Southland province last season, outnumbering people four to one. He gave a possibly Gallic sigh when he said he worked 60 hours a week for ten dollars an hour after tax. But wealth was elsewhere. On a recent weekend, Gillian had counted five four-wheel-drive Porsches in Winton.
I was more excited when she said Graeme Ingils had come to see her that day. I said, ‘You know Graeme?’ Yes, she said, they’d met a few times. I received this information as very good news. He’d told me he didn’t talk to anyone in Winton. By the time I’d left his appalling house, shaken at what I had seen inside, I was in despair that his life must be just about entirely insufferable.
The two signs on the side of his house read ACC SUX and REINZ SUX. If these beefs against the Accident Compensation Corporation and the Real Estate Industry of New Zealand were general, then the two signs on the front of the house were specific. They targeted a Labour Party MP and a National Party MP: DAMIEN O’CONNOR IS CORRUPT and PHIL HEATLEY IS A CROOK.
With the dogs in the back seat of a Nissan, a Kingswood, two Subarus and other wrecks in the long grass, a blackberry bush coiled over the back fence, and Fonterra tankers, silver streaks, driving past on a warm Friday afternoon, Graeme had begun his tale.
A tree had fallen on him in the bush. He was living in Nelson. He went on accident compensation. Then he won $50,000 on Instant Kiwi and bought a three-hectare lifestyle block in Motueka. ‘Beautiful it was. Sun in the morning. It looked over d’Urville Island.’
He lived on it with his partner, Christine, in a house bus. He dug a well, made plans to plant olive trees. ‘But I was getting sicker and sicker. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. They said, “Post-concussion syndrome.” They said, “There’s something wrong with you up here.”’ He tapped his head. ‘But it felt like I was wasting away inside. It got to the point where I said to Christine, “I’m no good to you. Let’s just sell up. You need your own life.”’
I had the feeling his narrative
