She wasn't flash but she was parked at the edge of paradise and she was ours. Scotty Stevenson on the summer memories that sustain him through the rest of the year.
We named her Phoebe, though she was neither bright nor shining. She was a child of the '70s, and by the time we found her she bore the marks and scars of a life spent outdoors. She had blistered and peeled under long months of summer suns, slept under countless luminescent moons. She had sat in solitude for days on end, enduring the winds that whip across the spit to ruffle the rusty feathers on the red knots until they grow tired of Tawhirimatea’s taunts and take off for the yellow sea.
The salt-bleached grasses each year grew tall around her as the days contracted and the ake ake cast off their autumnal sacrifice, spilling great drifts of papery wings. The rains rinsed her clean, drops the size of early season blueberries tumbling down upon her from dark clouds that clung to the hillsides like malevolent candyfloss.
We found her in a field beside the frayed tidal edge of the Parapara Inlet, near the abandoned gold works and iron mines, the industries of another age. There, in Golden Bay, the old endeavours echo still. At one end, the impenetrable Cobb Valley, drenched and dripping beneath the marble mountains, where Henry Chaffey mined asbestos and died beside the track in the winter of ’51. At the other end, the skeletal remains of the Puponga Wharf from which the coal was shipped away on flat bottom boats. Between the extremes, the rivers of Mohua: the rippling Takaka and the dark and brooding Aorere, the pristine Waikoropupu and the frigid Parapara. In the Pariwhakaoho they found blue kyanite crystals. The mystics say they awaken your truth.
She had been loved by others, but all love has its limits. She needed someone new to care for her, to extend her life, to update its meaning. We read about her first and then, while we had not officially met, we decided to take her in, to make her part of our growing family, to nourish her a little through shared experiences and the promise of holiday cheer. We sent our friend Darren to find her and to bring her back to his house, there on a hillside in Upper Takaka, where the scruffy grass paddocks tumbled down to the state highway, and the chooks ran free in the shade of an avocado tree and provided yolks for breakfast.
Phoebe showed signs of her age but her body, dented in places and pock-marked in others, had stood the test of time. Darren looked after her, checked her vital signs, made the necessary arrangements to move her once more, this time to the place we would meet and get to know her.
She was there when we arrived, just a few days before a sweltering Christmas now catalogued in poorly framed photos of unwrapped gifts and happy faces. Phoebe, off-white with an olive-green sash, sat just a handful of metres from the edge of the sea. The tide was in, spent and drowsy, the waters of Mohua having nibbled away at the vast expanse of grey sand that unfurled from a tumble of limestone rocks guarding the grass bank from rougher days. It was love at first sight. After so many pitched tent Pohara holidays, we had moved up in the world. Phoebe was part of the family. The little caravan of our dreams was ours.
Always, the time was too short
E20. That was our site at the Pohara Beach Top 10 Holiday Park. Brent and Del Clarke ran the place, loved it, and nurtured it. Brent and his brother Darren had grown up in Golden Bay, as had their father before them. Their line stretched back through the decades, cross-stitched and crocheted across that north-west corner of Te Wai Pounamu. the mountains and forests, the rivers and the sea sustained them still, as they did their own children. They were raised in a paradise, populated by adventurers and dropouts, grafters and seekers, the disconnected and the vibrationally resonant.
We opened the door and stepped inside Phoebe for the first time, stepped into her world of dark brown wood veneer and faded tan linoleum, velour in a shade of overcooked broccoli, and curtains the colour of ancient beer stains. From the window above the kitchen counter, a view to the horizon where two shades of blue merged in milky haze. Excited seagulls swirled and squawked above a child with an ice cream cone, rivulets of melting confection ran down his outstretched arm.
We sat on the bench seat, the one that became a small double bed at night time, and watched our own children explore the cupboards and the window latches and the mechanics of the small table that folded up and down, the one around which we would sit that summer eating breakfasts and early dinners, adding the extra dimension to the pictures on the tops of Christmas lego boxes, drinking gin and tonic and not worrying about the weather.
Soon Phoebe was filled with us. The pots and pans, the glassware, the extra set of cutleries that would be hers to keep forever. Blankets in the tall cupboard, milk and butter and bacon in the tiny fridge. There were throw pillows with strange patterns on them, the little speaker that plucked songs from the air and played them back to us, boardgames and paperbacks. A vintage kettle.
There was also an awning, folded up with the poles and guys under the seat that would become a bed for the eldest child. We unpacked the canvas to reveal stripes in orange and green and brown, separated the poles, colour coordinated with electric tape in yellow and red and blue. We were piecing together a rainbow, a puzzle of foreign fabrics and aluminium, tightly woven ropes and steel pegs. People came to help. Others came to advise.
It took an hour. The sea had announced a retreat and the sun was advancing west. Shorebirds explored the newly exposed sand, scavenged what they could from the twice daily buffet. On the sites around us the late afternoon rituals had begun. Beer and bubbles, early onset barbecues, baths for the youngest kids, sun-kissed and sandy, families enjoying their time together: sisters, brothers, aunties, uncles, grandparents, and the stories that bound them together.
Phoebe in the sunshine. Phoebe on wild, stormy days. Inside she was cool and inside she was warm, a haven from the elements. There were bumps in the night, usually a small boy, cocooned in his sleeping bag, rolling off the bed and onto the floor. He would be scooped up and soothed, deposited between us. Phoebe filled with snores and the restless breathing that accompanies the dreams of children.
Mornings were for swimming. Early, when the sky was only half lit by a lazy dawn. It is the best time for swimming, when you surprise the sea, catch her still dozing. It is then that she will embrace you without complaint, in that short time between her evening rest and before the sun rises high enough to fully awaken her. The languorous arms of a lover, wanting you for your warmth. These were blissful moments, windless and pacific, moving through untroubled waters, rhythmically hypnotic.
Drying off before the campers awoke, sharing a coffee with Daz and Peeky at the campground shed, it was fun to watch the familiar faces emerging slowly from unzipped canvas, a procession of pyjamas off for morning showers and the promise of breakfast. Children tumbled out of tents, sleep tossed and yawning. Ahead of us all, the usual adventures. Deep water beaches and waterfall walks, Jackie’s pizza cooked in an old sea mine salvaged and repurposed, bone chilling swims in the emerald pools, where the Anatoki bent at the elbow and paused for a rest. Four sisters made dinner plans in the early afternoons, and the rituals of the evenings were repeated under crimson sunsets.
Always, the time was too short. Ten days became seven, became two, became one last night. Phoebe in the rain, fingers crossed for the sun to return so the awning could dry before being packed away under the seat that became a bed. One last hopeless search for the lost wedding band that slipped from a finger somewhere between the boats at Tarakohe and the monument to Tasman’s misadventure. One last bonfire when the breeze travelled back across the bay carrying driftwood sparks and the scent of toasted marshmallows. One last night of stories shared on the grass bank, watching the cousins pose for photos, fending off the anxieties of the real world that were already circling.
Phoebe was always hard to leave. We swept her out, stuffed the cupboards with blankets and pillows and the folded frame for the airbed that never seemed to stay inflated. Beneath the polythene the grass was yellowed and damp. The imprint of the stay, lingering long after we left. Bags loaded into the car, and kids loaded after. The hugs and kisses goodbye and Phoebe’s key left with Brent and Del. Brent would tow her away for us, across the road to her own quarter-acre paradise, where she would sit under a silver cover, seeing out the storms of winter that swelled the rivers and filled the bay with ancient forest.
Phoebe. Waiting for another happy summer. Us, waiting to be with her. We were so glad she was ours.
It will be good to see her again, our little piece of Mohua.
This essay is part of a new series 'This Makes Me Happy' about the things that bring us joy.
SHARE ME