A man parked his van to get a box of Lion Red at the Four Square. His trailer was full of kiwifruit, which he’d bought for $30. A kid with an eager face said, ‘Can I’ve one please mister?’ Another kid rode past on his bike and said, ‘Did you see that bunny hop I done?’
I sat a while outside the bakery. I was happy. I liked Moerewa. But I wondered how long it had been since a tourist or any kind of visitor had lingered in plain view there. It wasn’t that the place was dangerous. There are streets, neighbourhoods, whole towns, entire cities that radiate a distinctive New Zealand nastiness. Moerewa lacked that edge. But the town centre was only just hanging on. Moerewa was at the gateway to the Bay of Islands’ pleasure resorts of Paihia and Russell, but it seemed unlikely that any of the German or American drivers of the passing fleets of campervans would ever stop on Main Street, look around, and buy a box of Lion Red or a pork head.
The campervans took their loot and their bladders five minutes away to Kawakawa, the town that has marketed itself as a urinal, thanks to colourful public toilets designed by Austrian fanatic Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I went to Kawakawa on another pilgrimage. I was on the trail of Stan Stuart.
I liked everything I’d heard about Stan. People we celebrate as larger than life are usually enormous bores, bereft of subtlety or grace; Stan was smaller than life, private and intricate, a loner surrounded by Mormons and biscuit wrappers, a reader.
At the library in Kawakawa, librarian Shakira Pia (‘I think it’s French’) said, ‘He came in every Friday. He liked cowboy books mostly. He was very brief. “Hello, Shakira,” he’d say, and that was it. But he used to give me a gift every Christmas. A bottle of wine once. A box of chocolates last Christmas.
‘He used to park around the back of the shops and he’d take forever to cross the street. I kept thinking he’d be knocked over. He was so creaky. The last time I saw him he was really struggling to walk. His face was all sweaty. I was worried for him. I rang the district nurse the next Friday when he didn’t come in. I knew something must be wrong. Poor old Stan.’
The library was empty. Shakira was about to close it for the weekend. She was in a wistful mood. She was thinking back to the shy customer who came in every Friday to rustle up another cowboy book. ‘He was a nice man,’ she said. ‘He was humble.’
Friday afternoon on the main street of Moerewa was happy with the freedom from school. Friday night at the low, roomy Klondike Tavern was happy with the freedom from work. There were maybe 60 or 70 drinkers, most in their twenties, the girls in ponytails and the guys in laceless slippers, laughing and playing pool and knocking back cans of bourbon and coke.
I spoke with Frankie Owen. ‘You’ve heard of Rena Owen, the actress? She’s my auntie.’ Like the Goings, the Owens were one of the great local dynasties, and unlike the wholesome Goings in pretty much every other respect – drinking, all the rest of it – except that at 23 Frankie was just as much a solid citizen as any Mormon. In fact, he’d settled down with a Mormon when he was sixteen.
They were parents of two girls, newborn Paskelle and seven-year-old Sativa. I said, ‘As in Cannabis sativa?’ ‘Pretty much,’ Frankie said.
He had left school and got a job at the Affco freezing works in Moerewa when Sativa was born. He’d held down the job, and lived with the girls’ mother, Charis, in a rented house on Main Street. They were preparing to make an offer to the landlord. Frankie thought they could buy it for maybe $180,000.
I saw the Owens taking an afternoon stroll on Saturday. The young parents, the sleeping baby tucked up in a pram, Sativa racing ahead on a child’s motorbike: it was a cameo of ordinary happiness and the New Zealand way of life. And it set the theme for everywhere I went that day. The theme was family.
Family, on the bare front porch of a house on the main street, where young mum Aroha Cooper had come outside to cuddle her baby son Paepae. They had recently moved from Porirua. She had come to visit her grandfather, who was sick, and then her partner found a job. She said, ‘We don’t know much people.’ A paddock separated her house from the freezing works. ‘It’s good having cows next to you knowing you’re gonna eat them one day.’
Family, on the crowded front porch of a house around the corner, where Ginger Harris, large and puffing and 75, peeled oranges with a knife. The fruit had fallen from the two trees in his garden. ‘I’m bloody smothered with the things. I pick up three bucketfuls every day. The wind blows them all left, right and sideways. I cut ’em up, juice ’em and stick ’em in the fridge for the grandchildren.’
He’d lived in Moerewa for 46 years. ‘Said I’d never live here. The freezing works bloody stank the whole town. Well, I got a job there and the money never stank. When I got my first pay cheque I’d never seen so much money in my life.’
He opened a dairy, drove a taxi. He also possessed the wit to set up a mobile hāngī food cart. A souvenir from that adventure was among the clutter on the porch: a massive stainless steel chamber. ‘I’d cook 400 meals at a time in it, all done in heavy duty tinfoil, and the food would taste exactly like a hāngī.’
Family on horseback on Main Street, when brothers Gavin and
