But its strangest feature is the Maromaku Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It may be the loveliest, most bucolic setting for a Mormon temple anywhere in the world. White and gleaming on an immaculate lawn and beside four magnificent California palm trees, the building presented itself as a tribute to the two great forces in the valley: God and the Goings. Percy Going built the first Mormon chapel in Maromaku. His son Cyril had six children with his first wife, but she got breast cancer. A young Māori woman, Mary, nursed her. After his wife died, Cyril married Mary and had another six children, including Sid. Mary is now 103. She doesn’t need glasses to read.
The condensed family history lesson was courtesy of Karen Horsford. Karen and her friend Pauline Pokoina were at the church on Friday afternoon, making props for a music festival that night at the ‘stake’ – Mormon vernacular for church – in nearby Kaikohe.
‘Most of us are related to each other in the valley,’ Pauline said. ‘Karen’s husband is my second cousin. Did you say you met Jacqui? I’m her husband John’s sister.’
‘Then you have situations where two Tucker boys married two Going sisters, and two Rouse brothers married two other Going girls,’ Karen said. ‘A lot of that goes on. I suppose it’s because you always go everywhere with your brothers and sisters when you’re young.’
They talked about their own families. ‘My sweetheart is the stake president,’ Karen said about her husband. ‘His name’s Maxwell but everyone calls him Butch.’
Pauline and her family moved back to Maromaku from Auckland three years ago. ‘My eldest son Quincy, who’s eighteen, was seeing a girl in Auckland whom I wasn’t too happy about. When my brother asked if we’d like to come and work on the farm, I snapped at it. But actually she would’ve been a better influence than the girlfriend he’s got here. That’s the irony of it.’
She sighed. He’d left the church, she said. ‘He’s bucking the system. He says he believes in the church and one day he’ll be back, but right now he’s not comfortable with it.’ She said, ‘It’s very disruptive.’ Then she said, ‘It hurts.’
I changed the subject. Yes, Pauline and Karen said, of course they were both related to the Going family. They merrily explained which cousin was whose sister who had an aunt who married which Going. They could account for everyone in the valley that way, but there was an odd man out: the ghost of Maromaku, who had lived by himself in the valley for about 25 years. ‘His name was Stan Stuart,’ Karen said, ‘and he died in March.’
Pauline said, ‘His cottage was – bizarre’s a good word. He had piles of chocolate biscuit wrappers, margarine containers, Weet-Bix packets, ginger kisses wrappers, boxes of empty beer cans. He’d made tracks between the piles. It was very orderly rubbish. He’d cleared room on his one table for a stack of library receipts going back to the first book he’d ever taken out.’
‘He went to the library in Kawakawa faithfully every Tuesday,’ Karen said. ‘His bed was to the right of the door,’ Pauline said. ‘It was more like a cot than a bed. He’d sit there to do his reading, because that room got the sun. He had a rough old mattress and army blankets.’
‘He kept his lawnmower inside,’ Karen said. ‘It was the best, most modernest thing he owned.’
Underneath one of the two feijoa trees on either side of Stan’s cottage there was an old Masport mower. ‘It wasn’t that one,’ Karen said.
Both of the women were standing up. They had been on their knees, rolling up a backdrop painted with the moon and stars. They used bamboo poles that Pauline had cut down on her brother’s farm. They were the only people in the church that afternoon. Sunday’s congregation would probably number about ninety. An email from Sid Going was printed out and stapled to a noticeboard; with his wife Colleen he was performing missionary work in Sydney. Down the hallway, a door to an office was marked with the number 12 and the word BISHOP.
‘Stan would go to the pub every night for his dinner,’ said Pauline.
‘He wasn’t a hermit. Not really,’ said Karen. ‘He said, “I don’t do the social thing.” But he appreciated everything people did for him. We found a bag in his cottage after he died. We were looking for some form of ID. No one knew anything about him, where he was from, whether he had family somewhere. And we found a bag – you know, like a bowling bag that people keep bowling balls in – and that’s where he kept his treasures. He had kept every Christmas card that people in the valley had given him. The whole lot. And there was a piece of paper with a lady’s name and a telephone number. Beside it, he’d written the word SISTER.’
Moerewa, pop. 1500, almost entirely Māori, is a kind of usual suspect: it’s constantly mentioned whenever the media wish to discuss poverty, unemployment, feral behaviour and ‘Māori initiatives’ in the Far North. But on that Friday afternoon in spring it had the carnival atmosphere that invigorates all small towns when school is over and done with for the week. Teenagers stood on the pavement and leaned against the Food Market scoffing iceblocks and gossiping. There was also a burger bar, a bakery, a butcher: ‘PORK HEADS. MUTTONBIRDS.’
Moerewa’s famous Tuna Café – tuna as
