Mary's Place

My first year of secondary school was difficult for lots of reasons, many of them I realise now reading about and hearing many women my age discussing their childhoods, are not unique to me. I was a smallish pretty naive Catholic girl attending a large state secondary school for girls. I think looking back I probably coped pretty well given how little support I got but I do recall never really being confident that I was doing well or that I would do well. I can't recall either liking any teachers or really engaging with any learning. I liked strange things. Singing at assembly, singing in the choir, playing the cello in the school orchestra. I liked the woman who ran these. It turned out, I found out later, she knew my mother and also I guess expected that I would be musical. I realise now she liked me. She was always pleased to see me and would ask me to do things, things I enjoyed doing, such as taking a leading a part in the choir, or demonstrating how a song went. I can't believe I liked being asked to stand out from the crowd, but I did.
I was good at Phys Ed too, hurdles, gym, swimming, and most team sports. I played netball for the school and in 1969 I remember being on the netball court at school when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon, and we all had to stop playing while the event was played over the school loudspeaker system. I enjoyed sports days, because I enjoyed competing. As I write this I can't believe it, I don't consider myself at all competitive but I was then and I used to enjoy winning or being placed which did happen.

At the beginning of my third form year I met Mary. She became very important in my life, as a good friend and also as the person who introduced me to the world of horses and country living. Even now forty five years later the memories of the holidays I had at her family farm in Parakao are so strong that they're almost overpowering. I loved going to her place, I was passionate about it. I wanted to be Mary, to have her life. She had five brothers and sisters. Her parents Beryl and Bill were Irish, both had strong accents and I remember the feeling of being almost inside their family. My own family were fantastic in a chaotic, glamorous, unpredictable way. I felt pretty connected to my brothers, we shared a lot and even though we were always involved in our own separate activities I felt as though I knew them well. Mary's family though was like a family out of a book. They read a lot and hung around the house together, something we never did. We ate as a family, everybody did in those days, but in our family evening meals were sometimes tense and scary depending on where Dad was at with a business deal or a case or how he and Mum were getting on. Mary's family meals were a place where they talked and joked, and even though I was nervous of saying the wrong thing or making a fool of myself somehow, they were kind and generous. I think my own family would have been too but because of the complexities of my parents relationship I couldn't rely on their cooperation, on them being there for me, to me at the time we didn't seem to have the rituals and traditions that helped make family life easy.
I started going out to stay with her in the school holidays almost immediately and it's these memories that are the strongest from this period. I think over the three years we were in the same class I probably stayed at her place for most of the school holidays, apart from the long Christmas break.
Their farm was at Parakao about four or five miles off the main road, perhaps thirty miles from Whangarei. It was a dairy farm, maybe about 300 acres. There was a big bush covered hill a couple of paddocks away from the house on the north west side, and lots of paddocks on the roadside which ran along the bottom of the hill, leading to the cowshed, and then on over the river. Their house was an L shaped 1950s weatherboard, large and sort of sprawling, with French doors opening out onto a concrete terrace. I can't remember why but I slept on a divan bed in the kitchen that during the day was a couch. It was always warm in there because they had a chip heater, and there was a fantastic cuckoo clock with long chains on the wall above me that tick tocked through the night. In the morning Mary's father would get up in the dark and I remember him putting on his socks and gumboots and leaving to go and do the milking. Often we wouldn't be far behind him, in the early days we would run over the paddocks but later we'd take the horses.

At first I rode a little black part shetland pony called Bambi who would regularly dump me, Mary's father in the early days often used to rescue me as Bambi high tailed it to the furthest end of the paddock. It wasn't long before we started riding up the hill, along narrow tracks, and through the bush. I still came off regularly as Bambi worked out the limitations of my skills and would swipe me off under a tree or tangle me in the supple jack vines leaving me sitting on the ground as he trotted off. Every day we would go down to the main road to get the mail. Getting the mail on horseback, even then I knew how special this was. The ritual of it, the way it was part of their family culture. I remember on some days we had to take the little kids, sometimes on little ponies but sometimes doubling. On those days we were slower but often even though it was about a half hour ride away we would canter and trot all the way there and back. Mary used to ride a hot little chestnut pony called Jenny and strangely they also had a bigger horse called Mary. There were times when we went out riding on Jenny and Mary and I don't remember joking about this yet we must have.

There were so many things we did that in my memory it's like a blur. Writing this makes me feel nostalgic, not sad but overwhelmed with the shear bulk of the experience. I don't think there was any other period in my teenage years that was so defining. It was this period that laid down for me the things I've kept constant all my life. I can smell the food in the kitchen at breakfast when we all came in from the shed. I can see Mary's parents very clearly. Her mother was quite tall and had a lovely voice and a soft Irish accent, and her father had a black beard, and laughed a lot. He made fun of things and sometimes I couldn't understand him because of his accent.
I can see the greenness of the paddocks and the horses tied to the fences waiting for us to come out after breakfast, and all of us riding along the roads, sometimes galloping, flying along on little horses. And I think we really did gallop, fast and recklessly. Mary's pony had a blonde mane and tail and was high spirited. It wasn't for a couple of years that I was allowed to ride her, and I remember how exciting it was to finally ride her and to be able to control her.

Every day we would gallop down the road to the cowshed, then often after milking we'd go on an adventure on the horses. Up the hill, or along the road then over the river and across a neighbours farm to the school; along the road the other way to the neighbours who also had horses; and always out to get the mail. We used to help milk the cows, and feed the calves, then often take the milk back to the house for breakfast. Breakfast was a meal too when everybody sat around the table. Mary's brothers and sisters all had nicknames. Her sister Sally was Lally and her sister Rachel was Skek ( for scarecrow because she was skinny).
One holiday, we rode from Mary's place over the hills for hours, I remember it was something like twenty five miles away, to the Pipiwai Gymkhana. Then we competed and rode home. There was a big group of us and most of us were riding one pony and leading another. I rode a pony that I liked a lot called Patsy and lead Bambi. We went with Mary's neighbours, most of them were boys and they had lots of horses and Patsy belonged to them. Mary and me and Sally and Rachel all went and I think maybe an adult from their family. Up hills, along long river flats, and roads and more hills and through paddocks, one that had two stallions in it that we had to hurry through before they got wind of the mares we were all riding and then along the main road for a while to Pipiwai. The gymkhana was popular. There were lots of people there and I remember Bambi not wanting to jump. By then I was too big for him so the whole exercise was pretty embarrassing, then we sat around in the sun, and hopped back on and rode twenty five miles or so home again.

I'm not keen on winding this up because in writing it I'm sort of reliving the feelings and experiencing it again. It did wind up though, Mary and I were in different classes after three years of being together and formed different friendships. I remember trying to figure out ways of still going out to her place but it didn't happen through my last two years at school. I started a new affair with the Biddles and spent time out on their farm. I knew one of the Biddle's from Kamo High but there were lots of other kids who lived out there who I didn't know. This was a farm for kids from Auckland who were in care, foster kids, kids who had lots of problems I think although I don't really remember being clear about what anyone had done or if anyone was in real trouble. There were always undercurrents of trouble and people talking as though things might go wrong, or as though someone might be in trouble. The energy and dynamic here was different than anything I'd ever experienced. God knows why my parents let me stay here. The interesting thing is even though I must have been sixteen and would probably have been into anything if someone had talked me into it, I think now the most danger I was in was the way we rode around that farm. By now I'd learnt to jump, and to stay on. We used to gallop bareback up and down hills in a large group, with no real control. Down to the cowshed here too, and back, jumping logs and sometimes small fences. In that situation I don't really recall having much of a choice. I don't think we do as kids we just do it, even if it is scary and new. I sometimes rode big horses here, one a big mare called Scratch and later a mare I bought called Maria. There was also a jumping alley, with a row of jumps set up each one higher than the last.
Night times we slept in large bedrooms on bunks. The conversations lying in our bunks was fantastic. I wasn't really part of these conversations, they would all talk about each other and what they were doing, and I remember listening and feeling safe, that I didn't have to do anything, it was ok just to be there and be part of the group. I loved getting to know all the different kids there, many of them older and much more wordly than me, I remember being sort of afraid that something might happen, but excited and thrilled by the anticipation as well.  Lots of boys again, some big and I guess now when I think about them probably quite hard. They were different than me. Not from the same sort of families. Just hanging around with these older kids was affirming for me. Meal times especially breakfast was like something out of a movie with all of them in the kitchen or sitting at the table or leaning somewhere, against a bench or doorjamb. Lots of them were smokers, the parents too. I think I was starting to know myself and to feel a sense of what might be possible for me and being around boys and girls who were already exploring this in themselves helped me to see that I was ok in the world and that I could survive. I still hadn't found a voice though, that came later.