Going up Country
Little Red Hen Blues
I have been hunting high and low for a very old ringbinder that carries a journal of a couple of weeks in the summer of 1974 when I went to a little place in the country, called Wharehine with a group of friends from the Auckland Alternative School. It is stored somewhere so safely that I can’t find it. It’s a shame because a number of us created a bit of a diary of that trip, that I stored in it.
Friends of ours, Clive and Tina, had a farmhouse they lived in during the week, making shoes, belts, wallets and other things out of leather, that they sold at Cook Street Market. They were going to be in Auckland for a couple of weeks and said if anyone wanted to stay at their house while they were away, we were welcome.
I was living at the school in my caravan at the time, and we all packed into a couple of cars, Clive’s car and Simon’s Super Snipe and made our way about an hour and a half from home in Ponsonby. Simon was a protege of Clive’s and was also making and selling leather goods at Cook Street Market. Simon and I were a couple of the few students who were resident at the school. He had a bunk bed high above the floor by the kitchen and was our resident chef, something he wanted to pursue when he finished school. I was out the back in my caravan, although later I would move into the apartment upstairs.
I don’t remember the road, but it was pretty much like the one above. The roads are pretty much in the same condition today as they were on that hot summer, dusty dirt roads connecting potholes. Clive showed us around and then he and Simon, returned to Auckland, leaving us to settle in without a care in the world and without transport.
Unfortunately I don’t have any photos from that trip. I don’t know if anyone took any. It wasn’t something any of us did often, and getting photos printed wasn’t cheap, especially for us, being on the bones of our arses much of the time. This is a picture of me around that time. My hair was growing fast, but still pretty short compared to where it would be a year on, this was growing out the short hair I had to have at the state school.
None of us had given much thought to things like food and cigarettes, which would become a bit of a problem because the walk to Wellsford, the nearest place with shops, was about 3 1/2 hours walk away. There was some food in the house, eggs, rice and some other bits and pieces, mostly vegetables, but not a lot. We figured we’d make do for the best part of a week, until Simon came up in his car to spend the weekend with us.
The first couple of days we lived without a care, just enjoying the quiet and chilling out. I had my guitar of course, I never went anywhere without a guitar. I remember writing a song about our trip, but again without my missing binder of memories, I can’t remember it at all.
The house was a classic old wooden farm house with a big porch and pretty much long grass on both sides of the fences. There were no close neighbours. It had electricity, and there was plenty of water in the tank.
It didn’t take long for me to get the guitar out and play on the porch. I never realised how nosy and interested cows are. Within a few minutes a group of cows came up to the fence and stood there listening to me. Best audience I’d had for a while. Whether they thought they would get milked, or they were just curious, every time I would play the guitar, they would come over.
After a few days food was getting scarce. We had lots of rice, some flour, and not much more. I went for a walk with my Samoan mate, Dave, to see what we could find. We ended up on the mud flats of the tidal Oruawharo River, which feeds into the Kaipara Harbour. We found some healthy oysters in the mud. So we trekked back to the house for a bucket and knife to collect some to have with our rice that night.
We didn’t see anyone, but clearly someone had seen us, and knew we weren’t locals. We had been back in the water with dark mud up to our knees, digging away for oysters, for about half an hour, when a helicopter flew over us. We looked up and carried on with our business. Things got interesting when it was clear they were going to land.
The stopped about the length of a football field away from us, and two guys in green uniform came over to us. They looked us up and down and quickly started telling us that picking oysters there was illegal, and that if we didn’t stop and throw them back we would be in some serious trouble. They were from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries and were enjoying trying to freak us out.
I was really surprised at how quick off the mark Dave was. He told them “I’m Maori, and I have ‘customary rights’ to kai moana” (Maori for seafood). And he was correct in terms of Maori rights, but he wasn’t of maori descent. They asked for ID, but we were in shorts and t-shirts and had nothing else on us. Why would we? They clearly couldn’t tell the difference between Samoan and Maori, and before long they were on their way, reminding us that we were only allowed to take enough to eat, and oysters were not to be sold.
So for the next couple of days, as we laughed over the mistaken racial identity, we ate rice and oysters. After that we were pretty sick of them.
What was more dire was that we had run out of cigarettes and tobacco. With all of us being addicted, after we finished my pack of Port Royal tobacco, we were down to opening cigarette butts and using my Zig Zag papers to roll disgusting tasting smokes out of left overs.
We pooled our money and a couple of guys volunteered to walk or hitch into town for supplies. It took them several hours and they had to walk a fair bit of the way. On their return, they were picked up by a local farmer. He said that they needed help baling hay, and if we were interested we should turn up about 7 AM the following morning.
We did, and it was fun for a day, even with the early start. Once we knew how to swing the bales up to the person on the trailer, so that we weren’t carrying the weight for long, it was pretty easy. They gave us lunch, tea and water and some money so we could buy some more supplies. That was a real win/win and added a country vibe to our holiday.
Clive and Tina had a bunch of records that we had on rotation. There was Moody Blues, Genesis, and one that I really liked, which bugged me for years after because I couldn’t remember the name of the record, or a particular song I really liked. It was by Taj Mahal, who I hadn’t heard of back then. Some 20 years later, I read in a magazine that Taj was quite friendly and so I sent him an email with part of the chorus, which went something like ‘Long gone like a turkey through the corn.’ He never replied which I was a bit miffed about, because I really wanted to find the song. I knew the album had a purple colour, but nothing more.
Eventually, decades later, I found the album and song through Spotify.. It was Little Red Hen Blues with some awesome backing by The Pointer Sisters.
I would fall in love with Taj Mahal again when I saw the awesome, and terribly sad movie Sounder. You can see the whole movie below or on Youtube for free.
I searched for a while to find my favourite song from the movie, because I thought it was called Jesus Won’t You Come By Here, but it is actually called Needed Time and was written by Eric Bibb. Here is Taj, with Eric Bibb and Clive Barns, jamming with it backstage after a gig in France. This is where a lot of the great music happens IMHO, after its all over, in the backroom. I remember many sessions like that at the Poles Apart club in Auckland in the 70s. Sometimes it was during the show and we would be asked to turn the level down.
On the second weekend just as we were about to pack up to go back to Auckland, someone came running up the driveway shouting for help. Fortunately Simon was there with his car, because there was no phone to call an ambulance.
A couple of local teenagers had been racing along the dirt road, doing skids in their car. A wheel got caught in the ditch and the car rolled. The driver had been sitting with his arm out of the window and had punctured his brachial artery when they crashed. There was blood all over the place.
There wasn’t much we could do in the way of first aid. If I remember right, we made a tourniquet out of a t-shirt, twisting it with a piece of wood. The guys were panicking, and rightly so. We got him in the car and drove him to the St Johns Ambulance station in Wellsford. This was a scary ride. I sat in the back of the car, with my thumb in the wound trying to stop the bleeding as we drove along the windy dirt road, full of potholes, to get him help. Keeping my balance and trying to keep my thumb in the same place, without making it hurt more, or losing more blood was one of the scariest things I have ever had to do.
The ambo’s told us that he was lucky to be alive. I don’t know what happened to him after that, but the leather of the back seat held a pool of thick blood, and my clothes weren’t much better. I will never forget that drive, or that holiday.
One day I will try to find the diary, so I can edit this post, and share some of the journal notes my friends wrote on the typewriter we found, which had a two-tone red and black ribbon.