Best-selling author Catherine Robertson leaves civilisation for that province with lots of grapes in it
Things I’d never planned to do: build a house, own a ride-on mower, grow guavas and move from Wellington to Hawkes Bay. I’d always planned to move from Wellington because when you’ve lived in a place 52 out of 55 years, the prospect of another 10-month winter calcifies your soul. But the place I thought we’d move to – that’s the husband and me now our sons are grown up – was Britain. My brother and his family are in London, my husband has a British passport, and we’d spent a year happily living in the Buckinghamshire countryside. Coming back after a Christmas visit, we decided it was too cold, too far, too expensive and too full of people. Our friend was living in a development behind Haumoana. There were sections still available. We bought one, built a house and in March, we moved here full time. I am now entitled to correct people who call it "the" Hawkes Bay.
For me, living here is an exercise in ambivalence. Aspects I love, I cannot love unconditionally. Our house is semi-rural, and we look down rows of grapevines to the sea. There’s a poplar tree to the left and to the right, an old white farmhouse flanked by a giant pineapple palm. This is typical of the landscape all around here – tidy and prosperous, rolling pasture, serried orchards and vineyards, picturesque vistas of winding rivers accented with Lombardy poplar, oak and elm. It is beautiful. It is entirely imposed. At one of the grand Hawkes Bay homesteads there remains the largest stand of lowland native podocarp forest in the North Island. It measures 132 hectares. Land dedicated to agriculture here covers almost 18,000 hectares. There are regeneration projects all over the province but if I want native trees near me, I’ll have to plant them.
Planting natives is against the covenants all us residents signed and immediately flouted. We’re supposed to keep the place looking like an English parkland but there’s quite enough of that already. The neighbours in front, fellow Wellington escapees, have several lovely groupings of harakeke and tarata. We’re not supposed to grow fruit trees as they attract birds to the surrounding vines. We all have fruit trees. I have assorted citrus, plums, apricots and guavas. I’d never eaten a guava before and now I have hundreds of them. You can tell what season it is by what fruit everyone is desperately trying to get rid of. Right now, it’s feijoas, quinces and limes. Some people are asking five bucks a bag, targeting gullible out-of-towners. Although I love Te Mata Figs, I can tell you that Louis down the road, aged six, is undercutting them by 300 per cent.
The covenants also forbid commercial animal husbandry on our properties. I thought this meant no Old McDonald-type animals at all, but the neighbours behind have just got chickens. I’d like a goat, but my husband thinks they’re creepy. I want to turn our lawn into a meadow but currently it is mowed and watered by Les, who is in his 70s but still working every hour God gave because the moment he stops, he’ll drop dead. A meadow is more water efficient and bio-diverse than a lawn, but it will deprive Les of needed income. What to do, what to do…
I can enjoy the wildlife. We’re near the coast, so our birds are mainly pūkeko, matuku moana (grey heron) and Shrieky McShriekface aka the spur-winged plover. Hawks drift over the vines until they are chased off by a murmuration of starlings that lifts from the poplar. Kōtare flash between the lawn and our roof, where they are nesting, and piwakawaka pick bugs off our window frames. Mammal-wise, it’s rabbits all the way down, but fewer since the residents organised a regular twilight shoot. I can’t shoot but I did trap a field mouse under our kitchen sink. It was perfectly fine, just caught by the tip of one paw. I toted it dangling from the trap out onto the lawn and let it go. It ran back under the house. Lucky for me that the covenants prevent us from farming. I lack practical instincts.
Our closest settlement is Haumoana, in particular the group of shops at Cape View. There’s a well-stocked Four Square, a coffee cart, fish and chip shop, and Gannets pub. Think of a swanky wine bar with minimalist décor and dim lighting and you don’t have Gannets. But they will do you a pizza when the takeaway is closed.
Havelock North is the closest town. It is full of shops selling pricy homewares. I fucking love browsing these shops. I’m an introvert, my house is my safe place, and I find it comforting to be surrounded by domestic items with highly specific purposes. Egg coddlers. Bean slicers. Woollen dryer balls. I will never buy any of these, but there is a serenity in knowing that someone somewhere is pulling naturally softened clothes out of their dryer.
The front neighbours taught us to play ‘white pants bingo’ whenever we go into town. Our record is twelve pairs in twenty minutes. The men favour chinos with polo shirts, collar up, and in winter checked shirts and a quilted vest. Older men walk with a hitch because one hip is buggered. A local woman at my book launch noted my husband’s “Wellington look”. He was wearing mustard-coloured sneakers.
Havelock North is also full of well-off white people. I went to Rick Gekoski’s book launch at Duart House. He’s American but his wife is from one of the big colonial families that acquired vast tracts of land in the mid-1800s. (Ngāti Kahungunu are tangata whenua of Hawkes Bay, and for a fascinating insight into their history, read an article by Havelock North local, the brilliant Rose Mohi, co-authored with Amber Aranui, Te Whare o Heretaunga: A Journey of Rediscovery.) Rick remarked that everyone he knows here is related, by birth or marriage. The woman next to me, a Woodford House old girl, nudged my arm and said, “Except you.”
In short, there are sound reasons why Shit Towns of New Zealand called Havelock North a “gated wanker camp”. But then, it also has Wardini’s bookshop, an open-air community pool and Namaskar Indian restaurant and takeaway. And within a short driving distance there’s Ocean Beach, Red Bridge coffee cart and the Hawke’s Bay Farmer’s Market, where my friend Kaye makes the best cupcakes. Plus bags of free feijoas by the roadside in case I run out. Which I won’t.
Wardini’s is my second-favourite bookshop after my own. All that money I save on fruit has to go somewhere, so I’m happy to spread the love. I’ve launched two Gabriel’s Bay books in Hawkes Bay but the one before Easter for number three, Spellbound, was my first as a resident. I held it at a swanky wine bar with minimalist décor and dim lighting. My friend, Judy, brought coloured ribbon to match the three covers and wrapped up sets for sale. For my first launch, she arranged my cheese platter and for this and many more kind gestures, I dedicated Spellbound to her. Peering around in the dim lighting, I realised just how many successful writers live here – romance, YA, crime, historical, memoir and Amanda Palmer, who came for drinks afterwards. I’m chairing a session with her at Auckland Writers Festival. I had coffee last weekend with Rick Gekoski. He’s never been able to stay longer than six weeks but London’s not looking so flash right now, so who knows? At the market, I also saw the big Scottish guy from Outlander, who wrote a book with the red-haired guy from Outlander, but I think he’s gone home now.
My husband hates it when I point out retired couples walking or cycling together and tell him “That’s us in a few years”, which I have opportunity to do ten times a day. There’s an enormous retirement village under construction on the outskirts of Havelock North. There are at least four other retirement villages nearby, but this will be the biggest. It’s named after James Wattie and there’s some joke involving preserving that I can’t be bothered to work up. I stood behind an older woman in the supermarket who could not remember her PIN or indeed which card to use. I offered to pay for her, it wasn’t much, but the checkout operator told me quietly that it happens every time the woman comes in. She’d call the manager to sort it out.
We designed the house to be manageable when we’re old, even if our hips are buggered, and I’ve suggested to the neighbours that we pool our resources for a shared in-home care service and drones that deliver gin and surplus feijoas between our houses. Whether we’ll be here that long, I can’t say. It’s a good place to write, a good place to live. For now.
Spellbound, the latest best-selling novel and the final in the Gabriels Bay trilogy by Catherine Robertson (Penguin Random House, $36), is available in bookstores nationwide - including Good Books in Jessie St, Wellington, co-owned by the author. She will chair Amanda Palmer at the Auckland Writers Festival on May 16 at the Aotea Centre.
