In the old days no one was old. ‘Everyone was young,’ said Harry Martin, talking of Wainuiomata’s halcyon time in the ’50s and ’60s. ‘There were no old people here at all.’ A town made up almost exclusively of newlyweds, Wainuiomata was a kind of couples’ resort, Club Med without the Med, or a Club. Romantic love thrived in the brand new houses painted magnolia cream, gleaming in the sun that shone upon the town and made it glow. ‘They say in heaven love comes first,’ sang some Romeo on the intercom playing endless love songs in the Wainuiomata Mall. ‘Oooh we’ll make heaven a place on Earth.’
Heaven, set beneath the bright green ring of gorsey hills. Heaven, with Black Creek running through it. Heaven on Honey Street, Hair Street, Best Street. In the old days, the streets rang with children’s laughter. ‘There were 37 kids in ten houses on my street when I grew up,’ Trevor Mallard said. ‘When we closed the schools, there were only seven.’ But the streets still rang with children’s laughter. Dreadlocked Māori Rastaman Awatere, at 28, was a father of five: Tahlia, Jahkaya, Zahria, Zion and Jamaica.
He was around the corner from the mall on Queen Street, drinking a milkshake from Ziggy’s Dairy. He was a man on the move. ‘Got to go and dig a hāngī for a mate’s fiftieth.’ He’d also contribute a pig. He loved hunting, was always up in the hills with his crossbow. ‘Pigs. Deer. The normal. It’s all food to me. I’ve got a big family.’ His wife Treena had another one on the way.
‘If I have children,’ Jason Burt said, ‘they’ll be brought up in Wainuiomata.’ He was a 22-year-old butcher’s apprentice at New World. ‘My mum, brother and partner all work at New World.’ He said, ‘I’ll always love this place. I love the hills, mate. It’s the best thing about Wainuiomata. Nothing like it. They’re so green! I went down south once, Blenheim and that. The hills were brown, mate. Nah, Wainuiomata’s the place.’
Allison King, 43, worked two days a week in the mall’s other supermarket, Countdown. ‘Fourteen dollars fourteen an hour. Plus I’m on the DPB.’ She was with her older sister Patsy. ‘There’re a lot of solo mums in Wainuiomata,’ she said. ‘We both are.’
Patsy worked part-time for Armourguard. ‘I do the ATM machines. I’m destined to work with money and never have it.’ They were big women, and laughed and joked. They had come to the mall to buy Export Dry and to get their eyebrows done by ‘a lady at the back of the dairy’.
Allison lived with Patsy and their brother and mum. ‘We pool our resources so we have a better life.’ Patsy said, ‘I always say a whānau house isn’t a whānau house if it doesn’t have whānau in it.’ They loved Wainuiomata, had never wanted to leave. ‘We know all the people,’ Patsy said. ‘We lead quite a sheltered life.’
Sheltered from the outside world, sheltered by the hills on three sides – at the entrance to Wainuiomata a sign reads COAST ROAD 22KM. The road shoots through the valley, past swamp and big useless clumps of cabbage trees, past sheep resting on the muddy banks of the thin Wainuiomata River. It turns off one way to the cool shaded beauty of Rimutaka National Park, with its forest canopy and its swimming holes, and ends at Turakirae Head.
Down on the beach the silvery sea collapsed in loud crashes, waves churning up the shingle shore. A seal colony carried on snizzing on rocks at the water’s edge. The tide turned back out to sea; the noise it made running through the shingle sounded like the cracking of bones.
Bush and sea, and back in Wainuiomata Mall kids operated the Kiwicrane fun machine, rotating the metal arm in search of Twix chocolate bars. Children’s entertainment also included a carousel of jackasses with terrifying faces, and a coin-operated police car with sure-grip wheels. ‘When will our hearts be together?’ sang some Romeo on the intercom playing endless love songs.
‘Country music’s the most popular music here, because it’s a country town,’ said Kevin Shaw, manager of Wainuiomata’s amazing second-hand record store Wonderland. His stock contained 10,000 LPs. ‘The tried and true are always going to sell,’ he said, ‘Kenny Rogers, John Denver.’ Treasures included the complete works of Ted Nugent, and a rare copy of The Avengers Live at Ali Baba’s in Wellington on November 19, 1968. Kevin said, ‘I was there!’ A tired man walked in with his frisky skipping daughter and asked, ‘Do you have any Bryan Ferry on vinyl?’ Kevin tested the man’s selection on the shop record player. ‘Slave to love,’ sang the Romeo.
‘Reggae and hip hop are really strong in Wainuiomata,’ said Jason Fox, 30 and funky, the manager of 4 Elements Urban Clothing. He was playing them in his shop. That night he was going to see eight-piece reggae band 1814.
‘It’s a sell-out. That’s the thing about Wainuiomata – bands know to come here because we’re the only small town that consistently sells out.’ Veteran R & B act Ardijah sold out; seven-piece reggae band House of Shem sold out.
Jason said he’d never leave Wainuiomata. He said he knew it was regarded as a hole ‘but there’s way poorer suburbs. It’s just that there’s always been a stigma about Wainuiomata ’cos, you know, it’s separated by the hill. It sets us aside. It’s kind of Wainuiomata versus the world, you know? It’s always been like that.’
The republic of Wainuiomata. Town, suburb, whatever, it was a bright jewel, glowing like the emerald hills that surrounded it, a place of happiness and music. Reggae, endless love songs, country, Pantera – music swirled all around Wainuiomata, over the rooftops, in the whisper of the trees.
Maromaku Valley
The Ballad of Stan
It looked as though long years had passed since anyone had set foot in the abandoned shack on the side of a dusty unsealed road that curled through a valley in the
