The black gold of rugged folk
Ian Wedde’s novella, Dick Seddon’s Great Dive, was first published in Islands in 1976, the stories five years later. This edition forms part of the THW Classics collection, making available their earlier literary heritage to present generations of New Zealanders.
Dick Seddon’s Great Dive relates the stormy relationship of the illfated Kate and Chink, as they hitch rides to and fro from Bethells Beach, near Auckland, to Port Chalmers, near Dunedin; as they party, make love, take drugs, drink alcohol, cling to each other and reject each other: an endless
sturm und drang. The story is told largely by Kate, but other sections are recounted by an impersonal narrator. It takes some time for the patient reader to untangle the tangled events, time sequences, broken colloquial dialogues, that tumble over each other. Two thirds through the novella a chapter clarifies Kate’s backstory. We learn more about her past and suddenly the previous events of the novella fall into place, before plunging once more into the mess of their lives as they hurtle towards a tragic crisis.
Despite the pain they inflict on each other, would Kate and
Chink, the ‘‘undependable’’ dreamer with his ‘‘ferocious vanity’’, have changed anything? ‘‘Choices are for the present, or the future: that now we keep waiting for . . . or hauling in, like kids fishing, too hopeful to sit out the time until the actual tug of the present on the line tells us we’re in luck . . . The past is litter: pure gold. There’s no further reduction to make, except destruction.’’ Such ambivalence.
The tortured fates of the couple, with their alteregos, The Wedding Guest and The Stranger, are played out against a positive background of New Zealand’s landscape, flora and fauna. Kate muses: ‘‘Near Bethells in the north is a place I’ve been back to where pohutukawa, like old elephants, have sunk together to their knees, where in early spring
Ian Wedde the kowhai bend with yellow flowers.’’
The novella is also set against New Zealand’s history — early European settlement, Maori wars, World Wars — seldom dwelt upon, but punctuating the present, producing consequences, giving a context and momentum to Kate and Chink’s restlessness, confusion of identity, histories.
Its significance gains momentum as it progresses, as it clarifies itself.
The short stories included in this volume display Wedde’s literary range, from the fragment of ‘‘The Beacon’’, through ‘‘Snake’’, a Pop musician’s Finnegans Wake, to the romantic mystery of ‘‘Circe and the Animal Trainer’’. ‘‘The Shirt Factory’’ is a fine piece of irony at the expense of both Marxism and men of appetite, and ‘‘The Letter’’ is the shaggiest of dog stories.
This volume well deserves its place in THW’s pantheon.
Peter Stupples, now living in Wellington, used to teach at the University of Otago
CONQUERING CASCADE: AN EPIC SAGA OF DENNISTON COAL
Phil Walsh
By PETER STUPPLES
If you want to read about the real history of New Zealand, then Phil Walsh’s research into the history of this small coalfield will set you right.
The Papahaua Range, which lowers over Westport on the West Coast of the South Island, contains high quality coal deposits in veins breaking near the surface and wedged into the hillsides. However, the landscape is precipitous, cut by creeks, frequently drenched by deluges of rainwater, swept by gales, broken by earthquakes, rock falls and landslides. The coal does not give itself up without an heroic struggle.
Walsh begins his saga with an historical sweep of geological time, placing Westcoast coal into the context of the planet’s story, but, with zoomlens drama, soon takes the reader on to the windswept tops of the Denniston Plateau before dropping us down boggy tracks to the aptly named Cascade Creek, before laying out the story of the mines sitting high above the Buller River that flows through the eponymous gorge to throw its water into the Tasman Sea.
The Cascade Westport Coal Company was formed in 1925 to raise finance for the commercial
I WANT TO DIE BUT I WANT TO EAT TTEOKBOKKI
Baek SeHee
This short account of struggling through hopelessness and lifelong depression is a translation of the 2018 Korean original. It consists of conversations between the subject and her psychiatrist, intermingled with extra personal background information and explanations addressed to the reader. Taxing neither in length nor content, it has proven popular in various countries for its refreshing openness about common disorders.
A coal wagon in Denniston. extraction of coal from the site, already being worked by a cooperative of enterprising miners: Company and the Coal Creek Cooperative Party came together to realise their ambitions, to make money and provide employment.
The new joint enterprise decided that the only way to get the coal to transport was via a wooden flume built from the mine down the face of Cascade Creek to the Buller River, where the WestportInangahua railway was being built — itself a feat of heroic proportions.
Walsh covers all the
Baek SeHee is a young woman in the marketing industry. She is in treatment for dysthymia, a mild but longterm form of depression. Here she describes her mix of personalities, emotions, reactions and anxieties, seeking coping mechanisms and a healthier balance. engineering problems, the ups and down of the market, the politics, strikes and double dealing, but, more rivetingly, the wealth of human stories. The reader may too quickly jump to the conclusion that the conditions of work were so harsh that anyone opting to live in the camp at Cascade Creek, or in the cabins strung along the flume, or by the railway yards, were out of their minds. They would be mistaken. The tough men and women loved the work, the freedom to live rough in rugged country. Children brought up on Cascade Creek, their memoirs recounted by Walsh, write eloquently of near idyllic childhoods.
This is a must read for all those complaining about pandemics, inflation, food chains — get real, get with the rugged West Coasters. They could teach us a lot.
Peter Stupples, now living in Wellington, used to teach at the University of Otago
Though its title tantalisingly hints at late night expeditions to Korean alleyways for spicy street fare, the book does not stray far from the emotional landscape. It has been described as part memoir, yet it is slight, covering sessions over a period of 12 weeks. In this regard it is highly readable.
Baek addresses her perceived weaknesses, especially her ‘‘black and white extremism’’, her obsession with her appearance and her codependence in relationships.
As her therapist notes as an afterword, they are two very ordinary, incomplete people who meet.
Jessie Neilson is a University of Otago library assistant