Garpar Siffix

SS Orontes

“So, you’re selling your house, then?” I’m filling up at the local BP and Nathan’s come to take over. They still do that, here in Martinborough. “Yes,” I say, trying to figure out how the hell he knows. I mean, the only reason I can report with confidence this was Nathan is it said so on his name badge. But I didn’t have a name badge... and nor was I brandishing a real estate flyer. Still puzzling, I’m answering the next question (“Where are you off to?”). Small towns, eh.

There’s a trickier question, though, that Nathan didn’t ask. Not, “where”, but “why?”. “Why leave?” There’s a lot to like about Martinborough. Seems a nice house. “Why move?” “What’s wrong with you?” Good question.

Turns out I’m a statistic. According to the Migration Museum¹ , more than two million people emigrated from the United Kingdom in the years after the Second World War. “The costs of fighting the most expensive war in history had plunged the country into a series of economic crises. Cities were bomb-scarred, and housing shortages were critical. There were food and fuel shortages, and an austerity regime rationing food, fuel, furniture and clothing continued until 1954. Newly married couples were often forced to share with parents or to live in cold, inadequate homes.”

My parents were newly married and sharing a house. I arrived in 1952 and my brother Andy three years later and so they decided we would all follow Mum’s brother to New Zealand. But they didn’t have any money. And so they signed up for an Australian Government scheme: ten pounds each for the fare; so long as you stay at least two years. We were Ten Pound Poms and for five years we lived on a dusty street in the new suburbs of Adelaide. Part of me still is Australian: I feel it when I’m there. Love pelicans. But my most vivid memory is huddling with my friend in the back porch of their house while his Dad shot their dog he’d tied to the fence. Don’t know why he did.

When I was seven (but nearly eight) we loaded up the Vauxhall Wyvern and drove away from S.A., through Victoria, past the dog on the tucker box at Gundagai, and on to Sydney, where we boarded another ship and came to New Zealand, to Kaikoura. I remember standing to attention—assembly on the asphalt—at Kaikoura Primary, mumbling along to a new national anthem, trying to figure out what the other kids were singing:

“...Garpar Siffix Dribble Czar...”

Even if I’d seen the words written down I doubt I’d have understood them.

By the age of eight, I’d lived in at least five houses in three different countries. You know that game where you have to get all the ball-bearings in the holes? I think I became the ball-bearing that never would; that just kept rolling. When I was newly-married, in Palmerston North, we lived in five places in a year. As my children will grimly attest, it never stopped. “And I really have enjoyed my stay, But I must be moving on”.²

Part of me envies people like Nathan: he and his brother took over the business from their parents, and I imagine he’ll happily live the rest of his life in Martinborough. Hawke’s Bay artist Ema Scott lives in a beautiful house designed by her father on family land at Haumoana. I expect that’s her ‘forever’ home and I have no doubt there is rich reward in that.

I understand, however, that I’m in a subset of people like Nicole de Vésian, the French designer, who, in Louisa Jones’ words³, ‘...lived intensely several lives in succession...’ At seventy, she took up gardening and created La Louvre, her famous garden in Provence. At eighty, she realised that garden no longer held her interest and sold up, to start a completely new garden somewhere else.

C’est moi. Marchons!

1. https://www.migrationmuseum.org/

2. Supertramp. Goodbye Stranger

3. Author of Nicole de Vésian – Gardens Modern Design in Provence