Book Review: The Urban Village: Ponsonby, Freemans Bay and St Mary's Bay (2008) Random House New Zealand

Auckland, New Zealand: A History Lost and Found

Now Belgo Geordie was fifteen when his rubbery shoes hit Auckland and just sixteen when he went to live in Freeman's Bay. In a rickety one bedroomed flat at the top of an even ricketier three storied house close to the pub The Sussex (on College Hill) described in this book as "a mess, fights, beer thrown around".

(Left is an image from the book taken from Auckland City Archives-Freemans Bay as it was). Now for goodness sake all the houses were made of wood-to eyes fresh from England, like a stage set for a spaghetti or Saturday morning western. And even up on the third floor, there were rats, and rat sized holes gnawed through the kitchen cupboards. Cupboards that had seen better days back in the Second World War years. Not to mention the small holes made by borer (a small beetle that could reduce wooden furniture to dust). The bath, brown stained enamel was fed by a contraception (an empire era caliphont) like a metal melted tea pot that spewed more steam than water and dripped when not in use. 
At least it wasn't winter and cost the sum of NZ $15 (at that stage half my wages) but it was home, mine and safe, or so I thought. Putting Groundhogs "Split" on the single unit record player (speaker in the lid-needle able to darn socks if required). Putting my few clothes including bri-nylon moss green y-fronts, diamond patterned blue socks and dark blue jeans, chunky and rolled up at the ends. Setting out my bag of books-Bobby Seale's "Seize the Time", next to "Cider with Rosie". Settling into the sagging single bed and its crust hard, kapok mattress setting an alarm to make a 6am shift at the central post office I fell into sleep with the stale smell of cooked lamb and root vegetables, the murmurs and crashes of languages that were not my own. Maori I thought, Samoan I learned later. It was after midnight when I heard heavy steps pounding up the stairs, past the first floor, not pausing on the second but growing louder as they raced up the narrow staircase and with barely a pause my front door crashed open, splintering the entire frame. I am not sure who was the most shocked. Me or the Samoan man with a huge Afro, who stood breathing through his nose, fists clenched by his side, stinking of beer, cigarettes and angry sweat.

Now I should explain Belgo Geordie was not then the fat balding oldie he is now. He was a skinny white boy with shoulder length brown curls, with white legs like pipe cleaners. A bit like the chap in this picture but far more handsome. But then already in me short stay in New Zealand, I'd been mistaken a number of times for a girl. Which was why Belgo junior was given the job of sorting mail with the wahines and a few alcoholic men with the shakes, rather than working unloading the large mail bags from the back of the cavernous white framed Bedford trucks with big strapping Maori men-who kept asking me for a date and laughing hysterically. 

So, I thought I was in for a hiding and without knowing why. But, in the moonlight on my side of the door and a bare electric bulb providing a backdrop to his Afro, the man decided I was obviously not the one he was looking for. He turned and as quickly clattered off down the stairs. I comforted myself with a small observation-he was wearing steel toe capped boots. He satisfied his frustration with being thwarted by slamming the front door so hard the handle fell off and rattled down onto the wooden porch like a poorer cousin to a church bell. I was left to climb out of my bed, shaking like a new born colt and leaning the door up into some sort of order against the shattered frame. 
I moved out the next morning and was docked a days pay as I went looking for somewhere else to live and found it six streets away, in Ponsonby. It was suburb love at first sight and lasted me until it was no longer practical or affordable to live in the area.

Georgina Street 1971 by Mike Pritchard

So picking up this book of the photographic history of the area and plenty of images from those heady seventies days is a great reminder for someone who came to adulthood in the streets around and surrounding Ponsonby and rubbed shoulders with many of the characters captured in this book. It is almost 450 pages of photographs, stories and personalities. An urban history, a shrine to my era, an area which was run down, poor, full of amazing houses and a mix of people that made it exciting to live amongst and be part of. 

Such as the great waterside union man Jock Barnes and his communist mates-always good for a bit of crack. The fiery but big hearted and unpredictable Betty Wark and her docile almost Buddha like side kick-Fred Ellis.

Betty Wark by Gary Wark

Anyone needing a meal Betty would feed and anyone stepping out of line Betty would belt. The great parties held by the Polynesian Panthers and Nga Tamatoa where the trotskyists from Resistance Bookshop inevitably took a hiding for telling Will and co how to radicalise and organise. And Roger Fowler, People's Union stalwart, peering through his John Lennon glasses, butter wouldn't melt expression belying a blow torch political mind. He almost caused me to be arrested in the Gluepot for underage drinking (I was 17) by the police task force or Dawn Raid squad-Fowler pointing at me across the crowded pub telling them I was only 15. A diversion to let some of the Polynesian boys make their escape before they were asked to produce identification.

Image: John Miller

Filling paper rubbish sacks with fruit and veg and coming across fruits never seen before and veggies with no idea how to boil, roast or use as cricket balls. The veggie/fruit co-op hippies sharing bottles of beer with the Ponsonby Rugby Club players in the big dirt floored, tin shed off John Street-all joined by a love and passion for rugby and as long as there was no talk around religion or politics both sides rubbed along fine. The fences in their seedy cluttered shops along Ponsonby Road dealing in stolen goods and charging an students an arm and a leg for junk and then buying it back for tuppence!. Warrick Broadhead turning up wild man and bearded deported from Canada and then in full drag at the University and his colourful asexual sister Mary dressed as a boy, knowing all the lyrics to "Hunky Dory".

From Inner City News

I tell people of Belgo Geordie's arrest for obstructing the footpath outside Osborne House-(in the picture on the left) and there is a photograph in this book of the demo-we picketed it for weeks to try and keep it as a hostel for old men who had nowhere else they could afford to live-rather than flattening it and turning it into an agricultural goods warehouse.  Then on the one night/early morning we had a minimal picket the demolition team moved in and it was all on. Five of us were arrested for sitting in the driveway including Mr Fowler. But it is a Maori boy Tony Ormsby who put a brick through a truck window who did prison time at Mt Eden. We were not charged for putting sugar in petrol tanks and although  we were threatened with a beating from the arresting cop nothing eventuated. But it made the early evening news in glorious black and white. The rest of the day in the Auckland watch house with the drunks before a brief court appearance the following morning. In that time while locked up, the house was flattened to kindling and dirt. At court, watching a rotund and perspiring David Lange, with a cow lick, schoolboy hairstyle, beaming like a lighthouse representing someone else while our People's Union lawyer Barry Littlewood told the judge how sorry I was to have got myself arrested-so remorseful and slapped a hand over my mouth when I went to say "Like fuck!" Roger Fowler, as always got to make a political speech and was reminded by the judge, the judge knew his parents. I forgave Mr Littlewood a year later when he paid my then $31 fine (it was $15 but as I turned outlaw and refused to pay money to the capitalist state-the state repaid the compliment and added interest). That is I was on the run for two years until the police picked me up early one morning in an Auckland park. I was off my nut enjoying the stars but the two cops thought I was planning a burglary. Bless those more innocent times. Another year they would have looked into my eyeballs and arrested me for being under the influence. As it was they checked on their new data base and found I had an unpaid fine. Mr Littlewood rolling his eyes when I approached him for representation and sent me down to the court to pay it.I think he gave me advice along the lines of "Don't be a tit all your life!"

So this large book certainly stirred up the memories and reminded me I haven't quite lost the plot yet. Some of the stories I have relayed over the years are found amongst these pages. Some parts important to me are not there like Billy TK-incendary Maori guitarist, along with the Alternative School in Richmond Road and as for the Hostel for Maori Virgins on Shelley Beach Road, zealously guarded by an order of nuns trained to protect virginity like a sacrament. Anita Peters photographs. Or Jimmy Baxter roaming the streets, a mournful, mumbling or was it praying? Large wooden cross around his neck, a prophet in search of a drink, a smoke or a feed to keep the string tight around his over large trousers.

A Belgo Geordie original circa 1974 worth squillions! Any offers like?

In 1977, I left New Zealand and when I came back in 1981 to live in Lincoln Street (off Ponsonby Road but at the Grey Lynn end) the guts had been ripped out of a multi-cultural mainly poor suburb and gentrification started. Other than a brothel on the top of Franklin Road, and Mrs Ivan with her beehive hair do and killer fish and chip meals with six slices of white bread troweled over with yellow, full cream butter. Tea you could stand a spoon up in, served dark brown, piping hot, in large white cups and saucers with dollies and plastic table mats. There was also the post hippy food eatery Fed Up.  But a lot of the spark had gone. I missed the Polynesian flavour, the street life and the chaos of the shops but was glad to see the slum landlords also gone. Sadly they had just moved their business further out and were still preying on people's poverty and causing misery. Of course a new life was creeping around, slightly edgy. The Gluepot had just hosted the last Toy Love gig and Chris Knox was still prowling around the streets of Grey Lynn. Grey Lynn festivals were starting, Kohanga and other language nests were still operating out of Richmond Road School. And on a Sunday you could still hear Polynesian choirs in the small Tongan church in Sackville Street and performer impressario/living art work Warrick Broadhead still turned up in unexpected places in full costume performing epics in ways they were never intended - little liberal parented kids scared shitless by magnificently cruel over blown red queens and poisonous yellow dwarves. And Limbs, modern dance, still gathered blisters dancing the wooden floors of Brown Street. There were still artists (Tony Fomison in his e-lavalavas, his new tattoo and little else) and Warren Tippett throwing beautifully coloured pots and plates from his kiln at the back of his house just off Richmond Road.But I had left the New Zealand of Rob Muldoon and returned to the New Zealand to the 1981 Springbok Tour and the subsequent rise of Jim Bolger. Nothing after that was the same.

I thank the two women who put this together. It is a book of memories.