Donovan’s World

Akaroa’s Frenchness was then, I fancy, seen as little more than the mildly interesting result of an historical quirk, but at some point it seems to have been re-discovered, identified as a ‘unique selling proposition’ and marketed so successfully that Akaroa, today, is in danger of becoming cute.

One of the positive benefits of the town’s renaissance has been the rescue and restoration of so many of its early cottages and villas, and Rue Jolie (once called Jolie Street), especially between the fine 1875 Coronation Library and Selwyn Avenue, contains more than its fair share of them. I think that one of the best is No. 115; what sets it apart from the others is the glorious range of ochreous tints and shades slowly acquired during years of weathering of its totara timbers.

Doctor Daniel Watkins, who became Akaroa’s first doctor, arrived in Christchurch in 1850 followed by his son Henry in 1857. His older son, Stephen (who must have been an artist of some repute for he was an Associate of the Royal Academy) arrived in 1860 and also made his home in Akaroa. The villa at 115 was built for Stephen and his wife who shared it with the doctor until he died in 1882 aged ninety-one. With fifteen acres it was sold to François Narbey, an early French settler, in 1884. He had a family of nineteen and his descendants owned ‘Narbey House’ until 1973 when it was bought, having lain empty for ten years, by Dick and Barbara Allison.

© DON DONOVAN

I wonder whether the builder of Riverlands cob cottage ever contemplated the possibility that State Highway One would run within a metre or so of its front door? Indeed, I wonder who the builder was - Charles Redwood or John Emmett? The record seems unclear.

Henry Redwood, Charles’s father, had arrived in Nelson in 1842 from Staffordshire. He soon took up land on the lower Wairau Plain, and by 1870 the Redwood family owned tracts that extended from the secluded inland Taylor Valley to the sea at Cloudy Bay, and included blocks in the Wairau and Awatere Valleys. Charles, one of Henry’s nine children, established the Riverlands Run of 5600 acres (2270ha): the cob cottage stands on Section 32 of that run. He had bought the plot from John Emmett in 1865 and it’s possible that Emmett had had the cottage built.

© DON DONOVAN

It’s the oldest surviving building in Amuri County and is astonishingly good to look at; as picturesque as The Cuddy at Waimate but without the prettiness. No tended gardens surround it, just a carpet of wanton periwinkle and a backdrop of sheltering trees. It demands to be sketched and painted.

The hut was home to its builders, George and Roderick McRae,whose father William bought the 22,500 acres and leased a further 85,000 acres (43,500ha in all) which, by 1864, comprised Glens of Tekoa. William, a Scot, had arrived from Ireland in 1849 to make his permanent home at ‘Bonovoree’, near Richmond, while his sons became managers of the North Canterbury estate.

The layout of the hut is slightly more complex than was usual in pioneer days, with each of the main rooms having a separate front door and fireplace; probably to allow for the possibility that if one or both of the brothers married some privacy might have been necessary.

The brothers lived there until their new, brick house was built in 1865 just a few metres away. Since then, the sod cottage has continued in use, as overflow accommodation for visitors, as a schoolroom, and latterly as a museum, housing sundry maps, plans, photographs, letters, accounts and artefacts gathered over the years and relating to the McRae family and Glens of Tekoa.

© DON DONOVAN

Anyway, I thought I’d publish the inside story on the arterial blockage that I had fixed on Wednesday 23 July 2008. It was necessary because I found that after a little effort my left calf started to become painful because it was being starved of oxygenated blood.

The scan is taken from above so my left leg is on the right of the image. The picture is from mid-thigh at the top to just above the ankle. The wiggly bit in the middle is above the knee area (I can’t imagine why it’s all wiggly like that but we do eat a lot of spaghetti). Just at the knee is the pinch point where the artery was almost completely blocked. That’s where the arterial probe-thing was pushed to and where the doctor blew up a small balloon at its end to clear the blockage. All pretty straight forward; let’s hope it lasts.

Pity they couldn’t have used a plunger as we do to unblock the kitchen sink!

Up to about twenty or thirty years ago most of the ordinary New Zealand houses and cottages whose origins could be traced to the earliest days of European settlement were allowed to rot once their families had no more use for them. It was common to see dilapidated houses used as storage: in the towns you might see what had once been a proud family villa now the tottering ‘office’ of a demolition yard; and in the country it was common to see the old farmhouse stuffed full of hay a couple of hundred metres away from the new house with its mod cons.

Tylee House went through a dangerous phase when, quietly crumbling in commercial ownership, it was used as a tyre storage depot. Fortunately it was rescued and restored and moved in 1984 from its place of origin in Wilson Street to the corner of Bell Street and Cameron Terrace where it sits now, so scrubbed up that it almost looks like a replica.

© DON DONOVAN

I wouldn’t describe Isel House as handsome but it does have the merit of being architecturally unusual. It is invariably shown from the front as I have drawn it, but that’s a misleading aspect especially when it’s described as being ‘Thomas Marsden’s house of 1848′

In actual fact, if Thomas Marsden were to be resurrected it is unlikely he would even recognize the place since it was not he, but his son James who designed the brick and stone front and had it built four years after his father’s death.

Behind the masonry lies the original farm house, built by Thomas who arrived in Nelson from Cumberland with his wife, Mary, on 31 December 1842. After a few false starts they settled at Stoke, in Poorman’s Valley (named after emigrants who first settled the area but couldn’t make a go of it: it’s now called Marsden Valley) eventually acquiring 960 acres (390 ha) which surrounded his ‘Isel Cottage’. Marsden lived near Isel Castle in England and adopted its name as a reminder of home. It was said that he inherited most of his wealth, and over almost three decades he was able to devote himself to his gardens, much of them planted with trees raised from seeds brought to him by travellers from all over the world.

Thomas died in 1876 after his carriage overturned when its horse was frightened by a train. Isel House then passed to his son, James, who, by all accounts, became more eccentric over the years, living as a feudal lord in the big house, attended by numerous servants, and given to taking pot-shots at blackbirds to stop them disturbing his seedlings.

© DON DONOVAN

If only we could realize how unimportant we are in the scheme of things our lives might be happier. After all, we do have clean air, we have abundant food, we have energy resources far in excess of the needs of our four million people: wind power, solar power, hydro power, oil and gas deposits. We are a favoured nation. But our government and our media seem intent upon making us dissatisfied.

Because of that dissatisfaction - you might even call it a huge inferiority complex - we are at odds with ourselves. We struggle. Our unnecessary pain results in community strife which we consider to be appalling (and it is) but which pales beside that of the United Kingdom, the nation against which, for historical, political, demographic and colonial reasons, we measure ourselves.

We have big crime in South Auckland; it is nothing compared with knife crime in Britain. We have ethnic tension, too, but nothing like that associated with immigrant blacks, middle Europeans and Moslems of Britain. We have gangs of mindless, strutting hooligans living on illicit earnings and unemployment benefits! And we have a new crime: kidnapping, almost unheard of until our Chinese population started to expand in recent years. A case being investigated right now is of a five year old girl from a rich Chinese family that lives on a select Albany community; she was abducted in daylight on Monday 14 July by ‘a man in a silver car’, he was hooded but suspected of being Chinese. Speculation is that it might be a revenge kidnapping or perhaps based upon a business deal gone wrong. Whatever, it’s ten to one that it is Chinese preying on Chinese.

Another interesting case is that of Mr Tony Veitch, a sports commentator for TVNZ and radio stations who has just admitted (because somebody blew a whistle) that he assaulted his ‘partner’ in 2006, threw her downstairs, kicked her, broke her back and left her lying at the bottom of the stairs for six hours before getting medical help. I’ve never liked the man, I’ve invariably switched him off whenever he appeared on TV because of his aggressive, frantic, loud-mouthed attack. Now he has been suspended by his media masters while the world (our small, blinkered world) decides what to do with him. He should, of course, be in prison but in a small nation that misguidedly reveres its media and sporting ‘icons’ there are many among us who would wish to forgive him, not because they feel sorry for him but because there are precious few ‘icons’. (In fact, the only one of genuine merit in our modern era was Sir Edmund Hillary - the absolute opposite of Veitch - whose greatest achievement was not the first ascent of Mt. Everest but the tapestry of good works he did thereafter.)

Those blots of nastiness can be put aside and treated like pesky boils on the skin of the nation. Unlike some other countries in the world where dysfunction is endemic we, in New Zealand, have a body corporate that is healthy, positive and well set up to be a minor paradise.

I met a Yorkshirewoman the other day who is married to a technician in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Her husband and she (and their children) were lured to New Zealand from the Royal Air Force in England with promises of a wonderful life. She says they were sold a pup. The air force, she said, hardly exists - a few transports and helicopters - morale is non-existent, they never go anywhere, they never do anything! True, our Labour government disbanded an elite fighter arm years ago (putting the aircraft in mothballs where they remain). But for a country that would be overwhelmed on the first day of a war, a country that allowed our defence treaties with the USA to disintegrate, who needs an air force, a navy or an army?

That woman herself said that despite their disappointment, she and her husband would rather be in New Zealand. ‘The air’s so clean,’ she said.

Yes, ask yourself where you’d rather be: Auckland? London? Pasadena? Beijing? Maybe we do lead the world in something - clean air; that’ll do me.

‘The cottage was built in 1862 by the Sillifant Bros (Frenchmen) for the Butler brothers (Irish). My grandfather, George Dudley, purchased the cottage from the Butlers … There have always been Dudleys in residence since then.

‘Grandma and grandad were the buffer between the Chinese and miners in Arrowtown. Neither group mixed with the other and if the Chinese needed either the doctor or the police or even groceries from the township grandma would always see that they got help. The Chinese were always very appreciative of anything done for them and were very good to my grandparents . . .’

I’ve drawn and painted lots of cottages in Arrowtown, some of them long before it became the tourist trap it is today. The best known are in Buckingham Street which so far survives creeping commercialism as a pretty, tree-lined road. Somehow, though, despite the hoards of visitors that pass its doors and trespass in its little garden, Dudley’s Cottage gives me a more genuine feel for the old goldmining town than most. Perhaps it’s because the river is close by and if you listen carefully you can hear, through the golden dapple of autumn sunlight, the shuffle of gravel in riffle boxes and the sounds of miners cursing and laughing…

© DON DONOVAN

The construction, typical of the period, is of the original vertical totara slab plugged with wattle and daub, but its brick chimney superseded one of clay and stake, and its roof, when I called at the end of 1996, had just been re-thatched in English style with rushes from a local swamp (in Maori, Waimate means ’stagnant water’) and was expected to last another thirty years.* Its first thatch was of snowgrass which was later replaced by others of corn straw.

The cottage was built in 1854 by the Studholme brothers, Michael, John and Paul who had arrived in Lyttelton from Cumberland three years before. It gets its name from a small cabin on a ship and probably reminded them of their voyage. Paul soon returned to England but his brothers lived in the Cuddy for six years while they developed the 98,000 acres (40,000ha) of Te Waimate Station.

When Michael first brought his wife, Effie, home she was dismayed by the accommodation and wrote:

‘We inspected the Cuddy…The floor was of beaten clay, which was worn into depressions here and there, so that in setting a chair there was trouble in arranging the legs so as to stand firmly… There were two small windows and one large sod fireplace: above the latter M’s guns, stockwhips etc. were arranged. A couple of stools cut from the round of a tree completed the furniture. Certainly there was no room for me there…’

Effie had brought a rose from Christchurch in her saddle bag and it was planted in the garden beside the Cuddy where its scions grow to this day: her side-saddle is still in the cottage in company with some contemporary pots, pans and furniture.

© DON DONOVAN

One such family was the Kerr-Taylors, better known for their house, Alberton, at Mt. Albert. Allan Kerr-Taylor prospered handsomely. Among his many investments in mining, banking and other commercial enterprises he bought 6000 acres (2428 ha) of forest at Waimauku for timber milling purposes. Nearby, in 1868, he built ‘Glendale’, a ‘hunting lodge’ in the Waikoukou Valley wherein he and his family no doubt took their ease, and business associates were tactically entertained.

Kerr-Taylor was noted for the ‘at homes’, balls, and elaborate archery parties that were regular features of life at Alberton. He was also on the Provincial Council, chairman of the Mt. Albert Highway Board and President of the Auckland Racing Club. Having lived a full life he dropped dead suddenly in 1890 whereupon it was discovered that his finances were not quite commensurate with his lifestyle.

As a consequence his wife was forced to economise at Mt Albert, while his sons took to the Waimauku slopes. The eldest, Vincent, became the first full-time
resident of ‘Glendale’ when he married at the turn of the century. At that time the Bay Room and Drawing Room were added. The house stayed in the Kerr-Taylor family until 1929 when it was sold to the McLennans. During their tenure a bay window and cast gable were added. The house was sold again in 1939.