In deal extremis

I had forgotten, in these days of texting

A few simple purchases

and emails, that there was such a thing as a registered letter. I’ve always associated such things in the past with formal notifications from Government departments or lawyers or, worse still, a traffic summons.

Equally, I’ve always been cursed with an over-active conscience about some real or imagined failing. This was at its worst when I was at boarding school, and a thundering demand from the headmaster at assembly wanting the perpetrators of some dastardly act to come forward  had me flushed and sweating, in spite of my innocence.

This morning a card was left by the postie (yes, we still have one) advising that a registered item awaited me after midday at the Post Office (yes, we still have one of those, also). We receive courier packs regularly, but this was different, very different.

For the next two hours I pondered over who could need or want to send me a registered letter. It wasn’t long before I remembered the last time I felt like that, when the Chatham island policeman flagged me down out by the tip. My first remark to him as I wound down the window was: “I don’t know why I should feel I have something to feel guilty about.”

His response didn’t help: “Most people I know have something to feel guilty about.” But all he had stopped me for was to see if I had a pair of pliers, as he was checking on a roadside fence that had been damaged the night before by some youngsters who had collided with it.

Midday came and I went to the Post Office. The card was handed over and I was given, not an official envelope but a white bubble-wrapped packet with a Hong Kong postmark.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a few items on the Net from Deal Extreme — that quite incredible source of Chinese-made novelty items and electronic gadgets. I had ordered a cover bag for my new Netbook, a maximum/minimum thermometer and some microfibre cleaning cloths for computer screens.

I knew I had nothing to worry about.

Jak the ratcatcher

 

 

Jack and Finn arrive on the Pitt airstrip

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man

is king.

On an island where the pig dog is valued, the visiting rat dog commands respect.

Pitt Island is rat-free, a status that everyone is determined to maintain. Rats have an unenviable record of decimating and even wiping out totally native bird species.

A piece of garden equipment packed and shipped from Timaru was found on arrival a couple of weeks ago to contain a freshly constructed rat nest. Poison bait stations were immediately laid to encircle the Flower Pot wharf and nearby buildings, and a rat specialist and his dog were flown in from Auckland without delay.

Fin, the Department of Conservation specialist, was a quiet and confident expert with long experience in the ways of the rodent. His dog Jak was unassuming and something of a veteran. His breeding was probably a cross between a Welsh wire-haired terrier and a fox terrier, and on first sighting he gave the impression of a little old man with a bushy beard who had seen it all. Jak seemed to have become accustomed to a constant life of transport in his plastic cage kennel, and I noted Fin had brought with him packs of mince, so he would be assured of familiar food. No gnawing on a couple of sheep bones for Jak!

Fortunately, the rat does not appear to have landed and hopefully it may have met its fate grabbing a quick lunch from a bait station on the ship during the voyage. But it has been a sharp reminder that ship rats are aptly named, and that has been the way in which they have invaded the world over the centuries from their original home in India.

There are rats on Chatham Island, and the risk of them gaining access to Pitt Island by way of shipped cargo or fishing boat is a constant threat. Cargo for Pitt often lies in the Waitangi wharf shed for several weeks, and there is even an element of insecurity in the packages that are sent across in the small plane that flies back the live crayfish.

Biosecurity for both plants and pests depends on community awareness and active support, and it was a happy coincidence that the Pitt Island rat alert coincided with a workshop and public meeting on biosecurity held on the main island last week. Jak’s presence probably had more impact than all the talking.

Although Pitt island is free of rats, it has plenty of smaller creatures. Mice probably came to Pitt Island in the early 1860’s. My great-grandmother Mary Ann Langdale recalled a mouse escaping from a bag of flour during its unloading at Flower Pot, and this is the first reference I am aware of. Earlier than that time, flour was not shipped in bags or sacks, but in barrels which gave protection from mice. Mary Ann was born in 1845 and left Pitt Island in about 1881.

It is, of course, possible that mice could have come earlier, even perhaps from the wreck of the sealing brig Glory in 1827.

Winter morning at North Head looking across to Rangatira and The Pyramid

A time of reality

15 May 2010

On a late Friday afternoon the traffic builds in intensity on our local highway at Kapiti. So it was yesterday. We were sitting yarning outside the kitchen on the Whakarongotai Marae at Waikanae and waiting.

From early morning the word had quickly passed around that a much respected kuia, Maria Grace, had died during the night at Porirua after a month of hospitalisation, and finally a last few days with her family at her home.

We had gathered mid-afternoon to be present when her body was brought back to the marae that she had known from childhood and where, on so many other occasions, she had waited and then be been part of the calling on that begins the ritual of tangihana.

Practically everyone I was with had a cell phone, and the innovation of technology soon took away the uncertainty of the time of Maria’s arrival. A text message reported the hearse and its convoy had passed through Paekakariki, and then another told of passing through the Kapiti traffic lights. So, a few minutes later, we were all assembled in the wharenui, or meeting house.

The hearse backed up to the gateway and a smaller group called the family on to the marae. It was a sad sequence of traditional karanga between the two groups of women. One called from the steps of the wharenui and the other from beside the casket and its bearers. This was no ritual challenge to visiting strangers. Everyone knew the purpose of the group’s arrival, and everyone knew Maria. The sound of a vigorous haka overwhelmed the calling of the women and their open sorrow as the pallbearers paused halfway across the marae atea, or foreground to the wharenui.

Inside, the rest of us had found our places in rows to the right of the door, starting with the speakers on the papepae. Because of the time of day the welcome would take place inside. Behind the front row of men, the women and children found their seats. Opposite us were the empty forms and chairs that would soon be filled. A single family elder, Uncle Peter White from Urenui, sat there to show this was not a welcoming of distant visitors. He was the reminder that the empty seats would soon be filled with relations and friends, and not strangers to be challenged and identified before being given full recognition.

The casket was carried into the wharenui and taken to the end wall to be placed on a mattress and surrounded by family photographs of long gone ancestors, and several of Maria as a younger woman. The rows of seats opposite us filled quickly with those who had brought her. Every space was soon taken with children sitting quietly at the feet of their parents and grandparents. The casket lid was removed and Maria’s husband Hugh and Auntie Kate, her step-mother, took their places on either side. The first prayers of welcome were said.

The first speaker on the paepae was Paora, with a moving and eloquent welcome and then a tribute to Maria’s life and the many areas of Maoridom in which she had worked. Paora broke with tradition at one stage, to switch to the English language and to address her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, to reiterate the thanks of the iwi he had just given that, for one night, she had been brought to Whakarongotai before being taken back to Takapuwahia marae at Porirua for her final farewell and burial there on Monday. That said, it was quickly back to tradition.

A single speaker from the family acknowledged the tributes, and the final speaker was Ake Tiaiki. I have heard Ake many time giving mihi and karakia in the formal atmosphere of meetings. They are always quiet and respectful and in the character of the man. This was a different Ake, strong and authoritative, emphasizing the dignity and importance of the occasion, as well as his own sense of grief.

Then came the individual greetings. The kawa, or custom, of the marae, is that the family must come first. They moved quietly across the room and along the line of men from our side, on to greet the women and children and then at last to come to the casket and finally back to the other side and then out to the door. It took a long time, but they held precedence.

For us, the home team, many of the family members we greeted with a hongi for the men, or a hand clasp and a cheek to cheek touching for the women and girls, were strangers. But there were those who were well known, and the moving line halted while there was that extra hug or kiss and a quick exchange of questions about other family members.

Finally, the line came to an end and we followed our elders to where Maria lay. Unlike many other similar occasions I have faced, it was easy to find the words to say to Hugh, and to remember how he and Maria had been the principal hosts years ago when we held our first family history hui on that marae.

By the time we came out of the wharenui and found our shoes again it was dark, and the cooks were calling us into the wharekai for a meal. The big room was packed with tables and forms. In the background, I could see through the kitchen to where the men who had been preparing and cooking for the last few hours were resting. Inverted plates were already on the tables and in front of them were the bowls and plates of food.

We took our seats and Ake struck a plate with his knife. There was quiet, and his strong voice called out the grace. Plates were turned right side up, and bowls were handed from place to place.

It was not a grand meal. There was no need for that, nor was it appropriate. A simple act of eating together forms much of Maoridom’s social bonding, as well as the more practical recognition that people who have come a long way to be there must be hungry. It is a lot more than just hospitality. It is an obligation.

I took a piece of pumpkin and a boiled potato and then reached for the bowl of “boil-up” — that most traditional item of marae menu. A generous forkful of watercress and a boiled pig’s tail followed. I also reached across to another plate and helped myself to a piece of fried bread — a flattened square of dough, quickly fried in very hot oil that makes it puff up. I rather like it with a filling of plum jam after I’ve finished the “boil-up”.

As the plates emptied the sound of voices intensified. The children and those with bigger appetites made their way to the servery where a large tray of apple crumble fresh from the oven was accompanied by a two-litre container of cream.

It was time for me to slip away quietly, and to think as I drove back to Paraparaumu through the heavy Friday night traffic about other recent funerals and deaths that have been close to me.

There was a quiet sincerity underlying the customs and traditions of the day that reaches back and has evolved through the centuries. Even the texting by cell phone has become part of that evolution. Earlier in the day I had been involved in an intense meeting in Wellington on iwi business at which, during his opening mihi or greeting, Maria’s brother Tony had quietly identified her passing before returning his comments to the matters of those living. The urgency of that meeting had over-ridden what must have been his personal need.

Death is a fact of life, that many find difficult to accept. For Maori it is part of a continuation of life force that is there before birth of an individual and extends past death. What always impresses me at a tangi is the involvement of the children and their understanding of that belief.  Equally, there is the acceptance and complete understanding that a tangihana must take precedence over any other event that could have been planned for that time on a marae. It is the last right (as well as rite) of a Maori to be welcomed back and farewelled on that place.

It was one of those occasions when I remember my mother’s words to me as a young boy: “You have a small amount of Maori ancestry — always be proud of it!”

Sturm und drang

26 May 2010:

At last the storm got tired and left us. Or, so it seemed!

I woke at midnight to the tearing bursts of rain and wind gusts buffeting trees and house. It was quite primeval – this display of raw energy.

The house was still warm from the evening cooking on the wood stove and the residual fire I had banked up with the damper shut down hard. The storm was on the outside: I was on the inside but still feeling indirectly its strength. Sleep was not possible.

We had waited all day for the rain. The wind had built steadily to a gale, and there had been little point to rugging up and going outside to work, even though the front deck and porch was remarkably sheltered and could have been worked on. But, I would still have had to bring up tools and timber from below the house, and that was on the windward side.

Trees and bushes were taking a thrashing, and the flax fences were being whipped into a frenzy.

I can remember a lot of other storms at a time when the section was bare and the house was new. I hated the prospect of a north-east gale. It would sweep across the land towards me and then up the facing slope of the terrace to beat on the house. Rain would come in fire hose bursts, hitting the house wall and driving upwards to seek windows that might be forced to leak back through their drain slots, and on to the bedroom carpet. I could almost tell when a gust would produce a cupful or more of water on the floor, and I would be ready with a towel. It was worse to be away from the house and listen to the forecast of a north-east storm on the Chathams.

Now the flaxes gave grown and the trees are gaining some size, it is different. A judicious planting of a line of akeake has now gained about four metres in height and can absorb some of the storm gusts. The flaxes in the fence are big enough to lean over and their streamers create turbulence that lessens the force of the wind.

This has been a night to sit quietly, eat hot food and read. I deliberately did not start the generator and my only light was the fluorescent lantern on the table, and a hand held LED torch I could use at the stove and kitchen bench.

Why no full lighting? I guess, for some perverse reason I wanted to return to childhood memories of a kerosene lamp on the kitchen table, my mother darning socks(she was always doing that in the evenings) and the rest of the family sitting snug and warm beside the stove. I could have fully lit the room from the 12 volt lights on the ceiling, but I chose not to, and to limit my little island of light.

It hadn’t been a wasted day. There are always things to do inside, and earlier in the day I went out briefly to post some letters, collect my mail from the Post Office and to have a quick chat with several people I hadn’t seen since February.

There was also a dead possum to dispose of — my second so far. I have a trap on the front porch and another on the bottom step below the house. The carcase went quickly on to the compost heap, and I retreated indoors.

The rest of the morning was spent sorting out and tidying the tool cupboard and spare parts drawers. This was forced on me because I couldn’t remember where I had put my several counterpunches. Eventually, I found them, exactly where they should have been, but for some reason it was the last place I searched. The bonus is the cupboard is now very tidy and should remain that way until the next time I am in a hurry for something.

George arrived after lunch and we spent the afternoon fitting a piece of clear acrylic into a rubber surround and then into the kitchen window frame. I guess it could be described as a retrospective double glazing of a window that faces south and through which cold air pours during the winter when the weather comes from that quarter. It’s an experiment that if successful may be extended to the windows on the eastern side of the house.

Our measurements (measured twice and cut once) proved spot on, and the acrylic sheet and its beading squeezed neatly into place. So, this has been the ideal night to evaluate its benefit, and I got up several times to feel the relative warmth of the air against the double glazing, compared with other windows.

The radio has been telling stories of the floods and storms in New Zealand. We are probably still on the edge of that weather system, and so we may have to look forward to another day or so before it clears. Without television, I miss the weather map and I’ve tried to visualize it from the radio forecasts. Strangely, the weather map is the only thing I’ve really missed since a generator malfunction last January spiked my television set, the computer and a battery charger (but that’s another story).

A couple of hours later at 2.30 am I realized that what I had thought was the passing of the storm was only a lull between two fronts. Wind gusts were back in force but without the rain. I made another cup of coffee, noted that the house was still warm and there were no draughts, and decided I would try going back to bed after the 2 am New Zealand National News (we are, of course, 45 minutes ahead of NZ time).

A thought struck me. This north-east gale will have whipped up a decent swell on the northern coast. Out at Tupuangi where we were in January the waves will be tearing the kelp from its holdfasts and the beach will soon be littered with seaweed and bunches on kaeo (sea tulips).

It’s an ill-wind that blows nobody some good! And, of course, one should stay upwind of those who have been eating kaeo the day before. But in this gale it wouldn’t matter.

Loafing around with a breadmaker

Worth waiting the three hours

There is nothing quite so satisfying as the smell of a freshly cooked loaf of bread on a cold, wet night. I used to make my bread by hand, but arthritis has put paid to that and, besides, the advent of the Japanese designed breadmaker ensures a general level of success.

The night I make bread is the night I start the generator and connect up all the other bits of equipment that require charging. Under the house is the bank of heavy duty batteries that give me light and radio, together with the unit that charges the two LED torches. In the house I have a small portable vacuum cleaner, a jump start power unit, an LED lantern, two battery powered drills, small battery charger and the ultimate in irrelevance — an battery powered toothbrush. Most of these have little lights that record their charging progress, so the house starts looking a little like a Christmas tree.

But, of course, the breadmaker takes precedence over all. After all, that was why I started the generator. Those of you with mains power lead a boring existence!

Death of a small motor

The defunct Honda, after a hard life

I’ve always been an admirer of the lasting qualities of small engines, particularly Briggs and Stratton, and Honda. Attached to saw benches, concrete mixers and pumps and operated in all sorts of weather they chug away and, in spite of dust, dirt and little attention, they have a remarkable reliability.

George has a saw bench that he constructed years ago and to which he attached a small Honda. I’ve borrowed it many times and, in fact, we now share the cost of each sharpening of the saw blade. A saw bench motor has a hard time. Saw dust gets into every crevice and from time to time odd pieces of wood fall down a strike the tank and the exhaust. As well, there is the factor that saw benches are not used very often and spend months at a time under cover (if they are lucky) and that doesn’t help in a climate that frequently has long damp periods and, worse, has an atmosphere that carries salt.

George’s Honda was also very tired. In fact, it had virtually no compression left and the motor could be turned over by just twisting the pulley by hand. The way we started it was to take the belt of the drive pulley, get the motor going and warmed up and then to slip the belt back on with the aid of a stick. The exhaust silencer was somewhat corroded by rust and use.

But while it could be started and could drive the saw, it was retained.

Three years ago I recognised its impending demise. There was an identical Honda motor advertised on TradeMe and I bought it. I mounted it on a heavy plank and built a packing case around it before taking it to Napier and shipping it to the island.. I showed it to George and said it was there ready to replace the old one. We agreed there was no need to be hasty, while we could still start the old motor. So, the replacement was put on a shelf under the house to await its need.

The other day I had been cutting gorse with my new chainsaw up in George’s paddock. He has some big bushes there that have stems three or four metres long and up to 120 mm thick. They make excellent firewood when sawn into blocks and dried. But one does need to cut them green before they dry out, because gorse wood is incredibly hard. In the stove they burn like coal with a clean heat and little ash.

I had cut three big trailer loads and brought them back to the house.

When the weather cleared I went down to borrow the saw bench. We wheeled it out from where it had been standing and took the cover off. Then we loaded it on to the trailer behind my quad and took it around to the front of George’s workshop to pump up a tyre on the trailer. At this stage George suggested we give the motor a pull over to make sure it would start. It wouldn’t. After several more tries we went and had a cup of tea. We came back and tried again. The motor coughed. Several more tries after resting intervals produced the same result. We went and sat down and talked for a while.

I said to George that I had an idea. I leant over the motor and whispered to it: “Start this time you little bastard, or you are going to be thrown into the tip.”

I pulled on the cord and it started with a roar and ran perfectly. I nodded to George and we tied the saw bench securely on to the trailer. I adjusted the throttle and the engine increased its speed, ran for a minute and stopped abruptly, never to go again. It had dropped a valve or broken the con rod. Whatever, it was terminal!

So I went back up the hill and got the replacement motor. George dismantled the side frame of the saw bench and I lifted out the old motor. The new one was removed from its case, filled with fuel and it started first pull — which was not bad, considering its three years of inactivity. The motor warmed up, was stopped and I changed the oil.

It was at this stage we realized the old motor had a three and a-half inch pulley on the drive shaft and the replacement motor had a two inch pulley. Neither had been removed for many years.

We commenced a long exercise of cleaning, scraping, heating, boring out corroded grub screws and trying without success to use a wheel puller. Neither would budge.

Finally, we got one off. The other was an impossibility, but it was the small pulley and therefore dispensable. I made three trips back up the hill for various tools.

There is an old saying that success depends on getting a bigger hammer, but on this occasion the answer came in the destruction wrought by an angle grinder that sliced the unwanted pulley into three parts. It was then we discovered the pulley had been mounted on the shaft with a keyway, a grubscrew over the key and a liberal dose of Loctite. No wonder it wouldn’t budge.

Then we found the shafts were not quite the same dimension and the pulley had to be honed out to fit. Meanwhile, I went off to Pitt Island for three days and returned to find George had finally succeeded in fitting the pulley, but had put it on the wrong way round. We decided at that stage to give the saw bench a new belt and to fit that we had to take the top off.

But eventually I trundled my way up the road with the saw bench and four hours later I had the wood cut and stacked under cover, and the saw bench returned to George.

The late David Holmes had a favourite saying that he who cuts wood is warmed three times. In our case I think it was more than that, and certainly there were occasions when the air turned blue. But I will appreciate the fact I have enough firewood cut and stored to meet my needs for another two years.

I do not want anyone to believe that my firewood is free!

Seeing in the dark

I have always been fascinated with the amount of light that is apparent, even on the darkest night, after few minutes and one’s eyes adjust.

We had a meeting the other night at the Pitt island school that ended about 7.30 pm and we set off for our various homes. Three vehicles leapfrogged and shared the gate opening and closing as we progressed across the island. One of our number, Steve, elected to take a short cut with his quad across the hills from the road above Coachee’s Clears back to Rauceby. The rest of us expected him to have been on the road.

As often happens on such dark, wet nights, the person who takes the shortcut finds it the longest route. Steve’s quad ran out of fuel and he was forced to walk. He did not have a torch.

The farm track runs across a couple of hills and along a ridge, but it isn’t well defined. Steve was lucky that as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he recognized a particular dim outline of the hillside ahead of him. From there it was a slow trudge through the darkness for a mile or so to the house. There, in the snug warmth of the kitchen, his father Bill and the area manager of DoC who was staying the night, were talking Rugby and enjoying a second whisky.

Steve’s absence hadn’t been noticed. It had just been assumed he had stayed back to talk with someone.

What happened to the frying pan?

Hopefully, the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch still has a small exhibit that was placed there many years ago. The late Ron Scarlett, as a staff member, had a keen interest in the Chathams, and provided John Langdale with a photograph of this stirrup iron made in about 1851 on Pitt Island from a frying pan handle. The maker was my great-great-grandfather Frederick Hunt.

I was thinking about that stirrup the other day when I was tidying up my tool cupboard. We take a lot of things for granted today on the Chathams, such as skill saws, power drills, angle grinders, chainsaws and welding gear.

Frederick Hunt’s initial prized possessions would have been an axe, knife, hammer, shovel, hoe and possibly a rake (that he probably made himself). Later, he would have acquired a handsaw and possibly a crosscut blade for cutting firewood.

At some stage we know he built a forge and, from his own background in Lincolnshire and from contact with American whaling ships, he would have understood the need for charcoal to fuel that forge, and a bellows to increase the air flow. Wood alone does not give enough heat to soften iron. The bricks for the forge came from the whaling ships’ ballast.

His first house at Flower Pot was partly secured with handmade nails he cut and forged himself from pieces of hoop iron. Nails in those days were all hand forged, square sided and with a sharpened chisel tip. No wonder the old Maori were keen to get nails from the first ships. They could be used as fine chisels for carving and easily resharpened on a piece of sandstone or schist.

But a knife and an axe were certainly the first concern of a colonist settler. It was interesting that when the Chathams had their tsunami warning a few weeks ago, ny cousin George’s first action was to find his sheath knife and a box of matches.

Old Fred did not acquire a horse for quite a number of years. His first mount was a bullock he named Toby, but I doubt whether the stirrup was made for him. I think it was probably some time later when one day he went to saddle his horse and found one of the stirrups missing or (more likely) broken. It was then in a fit of frustration he looked for a substitute. Number 8 wire had obviously not yet arrived on Pitt Island.

What worries me is that over the years I have seen many frying pans of both light and heavy construction. I have yet to see one where the pan has worn out, although I have riveted a loose handle back on to the pan.

Cooking utensils would not have been overly plentiful for Fred’s wife Mary, and I can’t see her readily giving a frying pan away. Equally, a pan without a handle would have been hard to use in her kitchen.

So if Fred made his stirrup from a frying pan handle, what happened to the frying pan?