Terry Dibble in Bayswater, New Zealand

 

'TERRY DIBBLE

May the hungry be fed and the

well fed have a hunger for justice'
 

Relaxing near our hotel in Bayswater on our final day in New Zealand before the long haul flights back to the UK, we were reading books on this bench when it occurred to me that Terry Dibble might be worth Googling. He was.

  

The bench in Quinton Park a short distance from the Baywater–Auckland ferry is relatively new: Father Dibble, a fervent campaigner for social justice, died in Auckland at the age of 78 in 2011. In 1981 he played an active part in the anti-Springbok tour, being one of the invaders of the pitch in Hamilton; he was a staunch supporter of independence in East Timor; and he spent a lifetime working for the recognition of Māori rights.

And this, in the distance, is the view of Auckland Harbour Bridge from Terry Dibble's memorial bench in Quinton Park, Baywater.

Writers' Homes in Devonport and Stanley Bay, New Zealand

'A. R. D. FAIRBURN

 

1904–1957        POET

 

Author, Journalist, Critic, Artist,
University Lecturer.
Arthur Rex Dugard Fairburn
lived here from 1946 to 1957.

 

7 King Edward P[ara]de'

 

The booklet North Shore Literary Walks: North Shore City Heritage Trails notes that Rex Fairburn's house was a 'gathering place for writers, artists [and] musicians', and among those writers were Denis Glover, Sarah Campion, Anthony Alpers, Maurice Duggan and Frank Sargeson. Famously, though, Fairburn fell out with Sargeson: he didn't believe in state grants for writing, and he didn't like gays either.

I took this shot just across the road from the house, and it shows the truth of that line of Fairburn's (punning on Rose Fyleman's line) about his proximity to the Devonport–Auckland boat: 'There are ferries at the bottom of my garden'.

Short story writer and novelist Tina Shaw (1961–) lived at 40 Church Street from 1991 to 1995.

Her second address in Devonport was 4 Kerr Street, where she lived in 1996 and 1997.

'MAURICE DUGGAN

 

1922–1974 SHORT STORY WRITER

 

Burns Fellow and Advertising

Copywriter, Maurice Duggan lived

here 1924 to 1935

 

46 Albert Road'

 

Ian Richards's PhD thesis on Duggan is available online.

'JAMES BERTRAM

 

1910–1993 AUTHOR

 

Academic, Rhodes Scholar, War

Correspondent and Japanese

POW, born and lived in this house,

formerly the Presbyterian Manse,

from 1910 to 1914.

 

47 Vauxhall Road'

8 Domain Street, Devonport. Kevin Ireland (1933–), poet, novelist, and short story writer.

26 William Bond Street, Stanley Bay. John Graham (1922–), playwright, screenwriter and memoirist, now on Great Barrier Island.

98 Calliope Road, Stanley Bay. Dorothy Butler (1925–), educator and children's book writer.

10 Spring Street, Stanley Bay. Shonagh Koea, novelist and short story writer, lived here from 1997 to 2000.

Julia Millen: Ronald Hugh Morrieson: A Biography (1996)

In her biography of the New Zealand writer Ronald Hugh Morrieson (1922–72), Julia Millen mentions that his crime was 'being different', and this comes across strongly in the book. Born in the small, conservative Taranaki town of Hawera to a musical family in a house where he lived all his relatively short life, Morrieson rarely ventured further afield, and even his intended life as a student in Auckland only lasted a day or so before he felt forced to return homesick.

The house he lived in was built by his maternal grandfather Charles Bartley Johnson, who, when Ron was born, lived there with his wife Lucy, Ron's parents Hugh Morrieson and Eunice (née Johnson), and Charles and Lucy's other offspring, his unmarried uncle Roy and aunt Doris Johnson. Ron's father died when Ron was only eight, and in time there were just three in the house: Ron, and his mother and aunt, both of whom spoiled him to an enormous degree, and seemed largely in denial of his many demeanours.

At the age of ten Ron made parsnip wine and got a schoolfriend drunk in the lunch hour, and this was really just a foretaste of a lifelong love affair with drink. At eighteen he drove to a dance with some friends in Stratford, a nearby town, did some drinking, and on the way back knocked a girl over: he failed to stop, she was hospitalised, and he later gave himself up to the police, claiming that he hadn't noticed her: he was put on probation for two years, lost his licence, and was forbidden to be out at night after 8pm.

Morrieson played in bands locally until he was 37 and loved the camaraderie, the drinking lifestyle that was inevitably attached to it, and enjoyed the company of a number of female sexual partners. Horseplay is a drama by Ken Duncum that was first shown in 1994 and imagines James K. Baxter visiting Morrieson in Hawera near the end of their lives. In it, Wilma is Morrieson's girlfriend and complains about having to constantly get in and out of the window: before reading the biography I thought this must be some kind of symbol but it's real: Morrieson actually had a ladder leading up to his bedroom window so that his mother and aunt wouldn't have to see his girlfriends going upstairs with him. It's the kind of bizarre – almost unbelievable – detail that could have come from one of his books.

Maurice Shadbolt said that some of Morrieson's characters might well have come from his drinking friends in Hawera, and Millen greatly extends this observation by pointing out a large number of similarities between people or things in Morrieson's books, and those in his life: for instance, the tower in Predicament (a book that Morrieson once wanted to call 'The Tower') that leans (giving Cedric one of his nicknames – Pisa) recalls the leaning (and useless) water tower in Hawera; Cedric's father's eccentric behaviour is not unlike that of Morrieson's grandfather Charles Johnson's; there is obsessive and reckless gambling in illegal, out-of-town crown and anchor games in Comes a Hot Friday, such as Morrieson used to regularly attend in south Taranaki; Salter the Sensational (aka 'The Scarecrow') initially excited the drunks in the lock-in pub, as the magician Carter the Great excited Hawera schoolchildren; Pallet on the Floor involves events in and around a freezing plant: Morrieson worked in one in nearby Patea; and so on and so on.

At 37, Morrieson decided to devote himself to the world of letters, but kept himself afloat (mainly alcoholically) by giving private music lessons at home. The lessons weren't a great success, but they'd have been far less so (in fact, probably non-existent) if Morrieson's short story 'Cross My Heart and Cut My Throat' – with its hungover music teacher lusting after a thirteen-year-old pupil and (unbidden) sneaking a kiss on her lips and briefly touching her inner thigh – had been published while he was alive.

But then, after two novels Morrieson couldn't get anything published, he continued to drink to wild excess, his mother's death came in 1968 and left him a wreck, and four years later continued drinking led to the death he seemed resigned to. Like Morrieson's novels, this is a humorous book as well as a (quietly) violent one, but of course the protagonist brought the violence on himself. Unlike the novels, though, it is also intensely sad.

My other blog posts on Morrieson's work:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Ronald Hugh Morrieson: Came a Hot Friday (1964)
Ronald Hugh Morrieson: The Scarecrow (1963)
Ronald Hugh Morrieson: Predicament (1974)
Ronald Hugh Morrieson in Hawera, Taranaki, New Zealand

Jennifer Sturm (ed.): Anna Kavan's New Zealand: A Pacific Interlude in a Turbulent Life (2009)

Anna Kavan (1901–1968) spent just twenty-two months in New Zealand, and from what she wrote for Cyril Connolly's Horizon in September 1943, in the first of a series of articles whimsically called 'Where Shall John Go?', readers might get the impression that Kavan viewed the country in a rather negative light. However, Jennifer Sturm's Anna Kavan's New Zealand, the fruit of eight years' work, is very much a revision of that idea.

Kavan lived in New Zealand with the pacifist Ian Hamilton, initially in Takapuna and then in Torbay. She arrived in February 1941 and left in November 1942, when it became clear to her that Hamilton would receive a prison sentence for conscientious objection.

Almost half of Sturm's book contains Kavan's stories, titled 'Five Months further or what I remember ab[out] NZ', in which she begins by saying that she would like to develop the quality of 'non-attachment' that exists in dreams. These stories are obviously richly autobiographical, containing details of characters she would either have known or heard of in Torbay, or 'Waitahanui'. Names and identities are often disguised.

The stories continue into the period when she took a sea journey back to England with an all-male crew via the Panama Canal and New York. Throughout, war is in the background, and it seems clear that Kavan's restless travelling is in part an attempt to escape from the madness of war, and also in part an attempt to escape from the madness inside her. Sturm believes that Kavan experienced a great calm in New Zealand, that she was clear of her heroin habit, and also that after her return to England she came to idealise the country that she unsuccessfully sought to return to.

Sturm makes a convincing case: much of Kavan's work, not only that written in New Zealand, but also much not in theory set in New Zealand, contain the memory of that country, even Ice. Also, as Katherine Mansfield went out of her way to avoid New Zealand-specific expressions, Kavan embraced them: for instance, she uses the word 'bach' instead of 'hut', and 'morepork' instead of 'owl', as if in defiance of the Anglocentric norm. She concludes, in full cogniscance that it might sound 'incongruous' or 'contentious', that there is more New Zealand in Kavan than in Mansfield.

There are some fascinating things in this book, not the least of which is that scholars have blithely ignored the significance of the NZ link. And it is interesting how biographies – Jeremy Reed's A Stranger from Earth (2006) and David Callard's The Case of Anna Kavan (1992) being full-length works – have simply run with generally accepted assumptions, for example that Kavan returned to England because of her son, which in fact is nonsense. Reed even attempts to construct an essentially lesbian Kavan. But it is shameful how insulting and how masculinist some writers could be, such as Denis Glover, who remarked that Kavan was one of those blondes who go round the world with their knees behind their ears. And this was a comment with which Frank Sargeson – that well-known fighter against the status quo – by no means entirely disagreed.

In the 54-minute video below from the Depot's Cultural Icons project, Dr Jennifer Sturm talks to Debbie Knowles about Anna Kavan. Also linked is my comment on Asylum Piece:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Anna Kavan by Jennifer Sturm
Anna Kavan: Asylum Piece (1940)

Frederick Edward Maning in Auckland, New Zealand

In Symonds Street Cemetery:

 

 

'IN MEMORY OF

FREDERICK EDWARD MANING

KNOWN TO COLONIAL FAME

AS THE AUTHOR OF

OLD NEW ZEALAND.

HE CAME TO THIS LAND IN HIS YOUTH

HE LIVED IN IT TO THE VERGE OF OLD AGE

IN NEW ZEALAND'S FIRST NATIVE WAR.

HE SERVED HIS COUNTRY WELL IN THE FIELD.

IN LATER LIFE A JUDGE OF HER LAND COURT

HE DID THE STATE GOOD SERVICE ON THE BENCH'

 

'WHEN FULL OF YEARS YET FULL OF STRENGTH
STRICKEN WITH A PAINFUL MALADY
HE SOUGHT RELIEF IN THE MOTHER COUNTRY
WHERE HE DIED ON THE 25^TH JULY 1883
AGED 72 YEARS.'
–––––––
HIS LAST WORDS WERE
LET ME BE BURIED IN THE FAR OFF LAND
I LOVE SO WELL
–––––––

'HERE THEREFORE LOVING FRIENDS INTERRED HIM
IN HIS LAST RESTING PLACE
IN THE LAND OF HIS ADOPTION
AND HAVE RAISED THIS MEMORIAL
TO ONE OF NEW ZEALAND'S EARLIEST COLONISTS
AND MOST FAITHFUL SONS.'

Frankie McMillan:The Bag Lady's Picnic and Other Stories (2001)

Frankie McMillan is a graduate of Bill Manhire's MA writing course at Victoria University, Wellington, and her first published book was the first serious work of fiction in Shoal Bay Press's eighteen-year history. There are eighteen stories here.

One of them is called 'Truthful Lies'. All stories, of course, even 'truthful' ones, are lies. The narrators of these stories are often first person, and often unreliable, such as the thirty-year-old narrator of 'Swordfish' who is interviewed by her probation officer about an arson attack on her old school and wildly changes her story: the reader has the impression that she might well be guilty.

Unreliability seems to be everywhere. The first story, 'My First Husband', is not about a husband but a young schoolfriend. Irene's mother in 'Ships in the Night' changes her account of the clarinet played by Norman (who turns out to be a psycho) into a fiddle. Harry pretends to be an artist in 'Errant Buttons'. There's an interesting parallax view: in 'Six Snapshots of Rhona', Rhona says that boys use romantic language when they give lovebites, although much later Sara discovers she was 'lying', as they just say they're feeling horny. And it's not clear how seriously the reader is supposed to take Rhona when she speaks of putting her hand on the thighs of old men in a rest home: 'and whoopee, they get a hard on!'.

Owen Marshall (who is a noted short story writer) praises, among a number of other things, McMillan's 'offcentre' world, and inevitably we don't have to look far to find the influence (conscious or otherwise) of another short story writer: for example, the narrator of 'Swordfish' talks about men and watches, and of the power of watches to hypnotise, which recalls Frank Sargeson's 'A Piece of Yellow Soap', an object that the woman in the story uses to hypnotise the mikman.

I think the story I like most is 'Jumping the Broomstick', a highly original, highly amusing – yet oddly disturbing – story about a young female fire-eater which would not be at all out of place as a McSweeney's story.

Robert Sullivan in Auckland, New Zealand

'KAWE REO / VOICES CARRY

 

'VOICE CARRIES US FROM THE FOOT OF RANIPUKE / SKY HILL / ALBERT PARK TO THE WAI HOROTIU STREAM CLUCKING DOWN QUEEN STREET

 

'CARRYING A HII-HAA-HII STORY — FROM PRAMS AND SEATS WITH NAMES AND RHYMES, WORDS FROM BOOKS AND KITCHEN TABLES.

 

'NOW WE LAUGH AGAIN IN THE ST JAMES STALLS, IN THE BOOKSTORES, SEDDON TECH, PATERSON'S STABLES, ODD FELLOWS HALL, ART GALLERIES

 

'AND OUR GREAT LIBRARY GIFTED BY OUR PEOPLE WHO SAVED THE WORDS OF OUR ANCESTORS FOR ONE AND ALL...

'ROBERT SULLIVAN'

 

Poet Robert Sullivan was a librarian at Auckland Central City Library. His poem here on the steps of the library in Lorne Street is designed to 'celebrate[...] the relationship between Auckland Libraries, the city and its people'. Sullivan says 'I wrote the poem with echoes of nursery rhyme and waiata and used historical information about the library’s place near Horotiu Stream and Lorne Street.'

 

There are also three stone seats at the side, each one with a letter spelling out 'R', 'E', and 'O', indicating 'language' and with the translation of the poem in Māori round the seats; unfortunately, people were sitting on them, making it impossible for me to take a good photo.

Rangitoto Island, New Zealand

I don't have a literary example to give here, but then I don't need one as the photo is eloquent enough. All the same, the volcanic island of Rangitoto, in the Hauraki Gulf, forms the backdrop of many New Zealand literary canvases. I took this from Takapuna beach, which looks deserted, although in reality it was lunchtime and there were a number of people sunbathing and eating and drinking around us, but I just found a moment when no one was walking along the sand.

Frank Sargeson in Takapuna, Auckland, New Zealand

'FRANK SARGESON (1903–1982)

lived at this address from

1931 until his death. Here

he wrote all his best

known short stories and

novels, grew vegetables

and entertained friends

and fellow-writers. Here

a truly New Zealand

literature had its

beginnings'

 

The original bach here, at 14 Esmonde Road (now 14A), was bought by Sargeson's (Davy) family in 1923 as a holiday home where they spent their Christmas summers. It was no more than a primitive one-room, creosoted shed. Sargeson came to live permanently here from May 1931, after leaving his uncle Oakley Sargeson's farm.

 

The new fibrolite dwelling above was built in 1948 by George Hadyn – Vernon Brown drew up the original plans, but the construction would have cost too much and Sargeson objected to the idea of a 'boogeois' (as he called it) terrazzo sinkbench. 

 

The home Hadyn built had a living room-cum-kitchen at the front and a bedroom and bathroom with toilet at the back. This photo shows the original entrance, which was at the back and opened onto the bedroom. The wall on the right of the photo is part of the later extension – see below for more details. Bottom right is approximately the site of the destroyed ex-army hut.

 

The later entrance, with deck at the side of the original bedroom and additional bedroom to the back, was built in the late 1960s: Sargeson had inherited some money from his aunt Diana Runciman, who died in November 1966, and Sargeson's partner Harry Doyle – formerly frequently moving around – was living permanently with him now that he was becoming too ill for any more wandering.

 

Nigel Cook, who at one time had worked on Oakley's farm, was a practising architect living in Auckland, and he designed the extension. The top shelf of the bookcase holds numerous issues of the literary magazine Landfall. Sargeson used to have perishable food stored in the Tremains' fridge next door, but his aunt's death meant he could claim her old fridge for his dairy produce and cat food, etc.

 

The living room, with fitted bookcases, desk...

 

 ...and couch bed. Sargeson didn't like all the windows as it meant that he had to supply curtains for them.

 

On the other side of the living room is the kitchen, where Sargeson prepared his home-grown vegetables (although his garden shrank somewhat with the new property.)

 

Bob Gilbert (who as G. R. Gilbert had a brief writing life and was now working as a lighthouse keeper) built Sargeson a radio. He was delighted to listen to classical music on it, although it brought complaints from his neighbours.

 

The famous Lemora, an 18 per cent fortified grapefruit and lemon wine that Sargeson loved, and which he frequently shared with his friends. This was invented by the Russian immigrant Alexis Migounoff on his farm in Matakana and production went on for sixty years. In 2003, however, the government introduced a tax hike which would have meant an untenable increase on a flagon from $12 to $25. The New Zealand Herald (13 June 2003) reported that one angry Lemora drinker imagined Frank Sargeson rolling in his grave: this is doubly impossible, as he was cremated.

 

 

In 1950 Cristina Droescher (daughter of Greville Texidor) and her partner Keith Patterson (also known as Spud) were leaving for England and left Sargeson with Spud's paintings to brighten up his home.

 

Several other images hang on the walls: Sargeson and Harry Doyle.

 

On the porch bench Sargeson's hand rests on the black cat that walked into his life very shortly after Doyle left it, in 1971. With some hyperbole, he compared Robin Morrison's photo to an early Manet.

 

This delightful shot shows Janet Frame (1924–2004) tap-dancing in Sargeson's living room in 2000. It was taken by Michael King (1945–2004), both Sargeson's and Frame's biographer.

 

In 'The House That Jack Built', George Haydn's contribution to An Affair of the Heart: A Celebration of Frank Sargeson's Centenary (Devonport, NZ: Cape Catley, 2003), Hadyn speaks about the brief row he had with Sargeson over the shower room: Sargeson accused him of profiteering by skimping on materials, whereas Hadyn was in fact making a loss. (OK, I should have used flash.)

 

Hadyn also notes that Sargeson had an obsession with toilet pans: he held that high pans are 'completely unsuitable for natural crapping'.

 

 The first bedroom, with the back door that was the entrance.

 

Sargeson's ashes, according to his wishes, were scattered under a loquat tree. Kevin Ireland marked the occasion by reading 'Ash Tuesday'.

 

'FRANK SARGESON

SCULPTURED BY

ANTHONY STONES

PRESENTED BY THE PEOPLE

TO THE

TAKAPUNA LIBRARY'

 

And in Auckland Central City Library is another likeness of Sargeson, this time by Alison Duff, 1965.

 

Many thanks to Vanessa Seymour of Takapuna Library for a very enlightening and fascinating tour of the Frank Sargeson house – and for mentioning this sculpture to us.

 

Link to another Sargeson post:

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Michael King: Frank Sargeson: A Life (1995)

Richard O'Brien in Hamilton, New Zealand

 

'RIFF RAFF

IT'S ASTOUNDING!

WHERE WE STAND IS THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW.

ON THIS SITE STOOD THE EMBASSY THEATRE, THE HOME OF HAMILTON'S
LATE NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE SHOW, AND THE BARBER SHOP WHERE
RICHARD O'BRIEN CUT HAIR AND DAYDREAMED FROM 1959 TO 1964

THE PERRY FOUNDATION HAMILTON CITY COUNCIL

WETA WORKSHOP THE RIFF RAFF PUBLIC ARTS TRUST' 'EMBASSY THEATRE

––––––––––––––

THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW IS AN INTERNATIONAL,
INTERACTIVE PHENOMENON THAT IS TRULY A 'CULT CLASSIC'. SINCE
1975, RICHARD O'BRIEN'S COCKTAIL OF COMEDY, CABARET AND CROSS-
DRESSING HAS SEEN AUDIENCES IN FISHNET TIGHTS DO THE TIME
WARP AGAIN AND AGAIN.

O'BRIEN MOVED TO HAMILTON IN 1957 AND WORKED IN A BARBER-SHOP
IN THE EMBASSY THEATRE WHICH STOOD ON THIS SITE. HE CREDITS
THE MANY B-GRADE, LATE NIGHT DOUBLE FEATURE MOVIES HE
WATCHED HERE AS MUCH OF THE INSPIRATION FOR ROCKY HORROR.

THE EMBASSY THEATRE WAS OPENED IN 1915 AS THE THEATRE ROYAL,
AND WAS USED AS A MAJOR VENUE FOR STAGE SHOWS, CONCERTS AND
POLITICAL RALLIES UNTIL THE 1960'S. THE STAGE THEN CLOSED, BUT
THE EMBASSY REMAINED AS A PICTURE THEATRE,
AFFECTIONATELY KNOWN AS THE "FLEA-PIT" UNTIL
ITS CLOSURE IN 1989. DESPITE PROTEST, THE
THEATRE WAS DEMOLISHED IN 1991.

THIS STATUE CELEBRATES THE INTER-
NATIONAL SUCCESS OF HAMILTONIAN
RICHARD O'BRIEN, AND A PIECE OF
HAMILTON'S CINEMATIC HISTORY.'