Jeremy Corbett
In a new book, more than 50 notable Kiwis open up about the places close to their hearts. In these two extracts, Jeremy Corbett writes about growing up in Kokanga and Jodi Brown reveals the only place she’ll spend her summer holidays.
Comedian and TV personality Kokonga As the self- confessed chairman of the shallow club, I’m as surprised as you are that there is a place close to my heart. Though great places are easy, locating my heart can prove difficult.
But the place is there. Has been for years, sitting tucked under my right ventricle. The publisher of this book stirred it from its rest and brought its memories pumping back through my arteries.
A magical place from my childhood, probably at the peak of its powers for me when I was 11 or 12, back in the 20th century.
Kokonga. Central Otago. Circa 1970- mumble.
It was where my mum grew up, where Grandma still lived, but most importantly it was Uncle David’s farm.
Although I remember experiencing the brilliant stillness of the hoar frost, the fascination at standing on a frozen pond and ice skating/ faceplanting at nearby Naseby, normally our family would visit during the summer school holidays. It was a long trip and perhaps part of Kokonga’s magic to me was the other- worldliness of the place, given the tortuous journey to get there.
We lived in Palmerston North, which I guess may also have contributed to the wonderment at anywhere else. Our family of six would squeeze into a Morris 1800 and spend days making the drive/ ferry/ drive/ drive/ drive via Christchurch and, crazily now that I look at a map, Dunedin to finally arrive at the best place on Earth: Uncle David’s farm.
My perception of time and distance was not well developed back then, but I knew when we left Dunedin it would be mere hours before we got there. Slowly the landscape would change and as the hills browned and rounded off I would stir from my travel slumber. The last few corners I knew, and like a dog sniffing home after a long drive I would have my head out the window: alert, excited and animated.
Familiar landmarks, Uncle Ian’s postbox, the haystack! Grandma’s house, then the driveway, tall trees, rat- a- tat over the cow stop, curving upward past the lip we used for motorbike jumps then turning and pulling to a stop outside the farmhouse, the engine noise replaced by a chorus of cicadas.
My brothers and I would attempt to spring from the car but would instead stumble out in the way a body does after being cramped in a cocoon for two hours. Then we’d dutifully conduct the hellos and pleasantries before racing out to explore our favourite haunts: the outside room, the lead- lined coloured glass on the outside toilet ( I knowww), the tractor shed, the chooks and that other building that had fallen into disrepair. All touchstones that we were truly there. Over the glorious, sun- filled days that followed, we would tick off all the major attractions and rides: the 125cc Honda motorbike, smoko, rounding up the sheep, smoko and the real favourite: feeding out the hay from the flatbed truck before smoko. We’d take turns “driving”, as uncle David stood on the back throwing the bales to the sheep wobbling and jogging up behind.
I asked him one day what he did when we were not there to steer for him. To my horror he told me that he let the truck drive itself while he humour. Oh the fits of suppressed giggles as he allowed our older brother, Greg, a puff on a cigarette. Unbeknownst to my brother, we had replaced all of the nicotine with hay. I’m not sure what reaction we were expecting, but not being overly familiar with real cigarettes, Greg merely accepted that this was how they must taste.
We all laughed. An adult condoning the forbidden! Such naughtiness.
The haystack! Always a highlight: It was a lengthy run through a large paddock to get to it, but we’d spend hours in that massive open shed with our cousins; running, laughing, climbing, building forts from bales, endlessly talking nonsense and never, in spite of accepted wisdom, having it end in tears.
Of course it is people that make any place special, and that was true of Kokonga, but when the people weren’t around, it still had some sort of hold on me. Out in a paddock alone, leaning on a fence among the brilliantly sunny stillness, gazing at Young Jeremy ( right) with family members, in mostly matching jumpers. Main picture / katyia75@ xtra. co. nz dispensed the food. The potential disastrous outcomes for my uncle caused me undue worry for months.
He was a favoured uncle, not only because of his carefree, swashfarming ways, but also because he extended the same loose boundaries to us kids, always with a sense of those golden hills bubbling out of the plains in the distance. I‘ m not equipped to explain it, but all of my senses were engaged and there was a real feeling of connecting. That’s a pathetic attempt.
The paintings of Grahame Sydney come closest to capturing it for me. An isolation, but a nourishing one. Whatever it’s called, I found it special. I tried to hold onto that feeling by taking a photo. The lens caught just enough to trigger the feeling in someone who had also stood there. I showed it to my mother months later and I could tell that she was transported back. Felt the emotion. She had been chopping onions, so I concede my photo may not have been wholly responsible.
I have not since experienced a sadness over departing like I did when we left that place. The days we spent there evaporated in that hot Central Otago summer. It was definitely my fondness for my Uncle, but also a fondness for the place and a heartbreaking knowledge that it would take so much travel and be so long before I would return.
I cried when we drove away. The melancholy so deep that it would last way beyond the first ice cream.
A week after we had visited I wrote my Uncle a letter in which I said I wished I was there to steer the truck and pleaded for him to be safe and not fall off the back.
This brought much good natured laughter from my parents and I’m sure my uncle.
But God, I meant it.