Revealing Judith and Jacinda’s roots
The party leaders vying to be the next prime minister grew up down the road from each other but Sue Hoffart discovers that, much like Judith and Jacinda, their home towns are chalk and cheese.
While Jacinda Ardern may hold New Zealand’s top job, cows are undoubtedly the queens of her hometown of Morrinsville. The rural service town has embraced its eastern Waikato pedigree by commissioning a multi-hued herd of life-sized painted cows to stand guard on street corners and outside businesses; 42 bovines and counting.
On a sunny Tuesday lunchtime, it is tough to find a parking spot on the busy main drag where the prime minister once walked to her after-school job at Golden Kiwi fish and chip shop.
Nowadays, a nearby gift store window display includes two kinds of dairy-themed clocks and a black and white butter dish sporting a cow. Down the street, Loxy & Co Eatery promises ‘‘a little bit of New York chic’’ but presumably utilises New Zealand beef in their delicious Rendang dish, topped with rolled ribbons of cucumber and ruby red slivers of pickled onion.
Fashion entrepreneur Annah Stretton has jumped on the bovine bandwagon, too. Her Morrinsville-based clothing factory and outlet store is a short walk from the spot where Mabel the 6.5m fibreglass mega cow overlooks SH26 and the resident cafe´ has switched from a frock-themed eating place to one focused on dairy products. Most Wanted Cheese offers cheese – or a vegan facsimile – in everything from sandwiches to soup, with cheesecake for dessert. Even the swish Wallace Gallery can trace its roots to cows. In these parts, the Wallace name is synonymous with the animal rendering plant at nearby Waitoa.
The gallery owes its remarkable revolving collection of New Zealand art to Waikato-born philanthropist Sir James Wallace. The arts patron and businessman is behind Australasia’s richest annual art awards and a trust that holds more than 9000 works. Every three months, a curated selection is transported from Auckland to a dedicated Wallace Collection exhibition inside Morrinsville’s converted post office building.
‘‘It’s an incredible thing we’ve got here,’’ says Wallace Gallery director Tonia Geddes. ‘‘The quality of the art, this is the best of New Zealand art we’ve got on the walls in Morrinsville, by all the different people who are excelling in their fields.
‘‘But I feel like a lot of people don’t know we’re here and I’m not sure why.’’
Geddes shifted to Waikato in February to take up the gallery reins, be closer to family and delve more deeply into her own painting and printmaking practice. She and her potter partner live half an hour’s drive south in Cambridge.
‘‘It’s quite different here,’’ the former visual art teacher says of her move from Wellington. ‘‘It’s quiet and it’s lovely pastoral scenery. In Wellington I was living on SH1, in that really busy urban environment, with sirens at night.’’
Her new role involves overseeing fundraising, volunteers and three exhibition galleries – one will show art by school students for the rest of this year – as well as a shop which stocks homegrown ceramics, bags, cast glass, fabric art, and calendars featuring locally photographed images.
In October, Wallace Gallery will celebrate its 10th anniversary with a series of workshops including one by Te Aroha sculptor Adrian Worsley who specialises in metal art using recycled material. He is responsible for the Udderly Hot sculpture of a cow, perched on a metal suitcase outside the travel agency two blocks east.
Tonia recommends a visit to Morrinsville Museum further down the street. The museum’s very existence is impressive given the size of the population – about 7800 – and it offers proof that the town’s roots extend well beyond cows. That said, a used book sale in the museum lobby is helping the historical society fundraise for a planned exhibition to showcase the area’s dairying history.
Museum manager Barbara Dalziel proudly points out a treasured portrait collection that introduces key players in the kingitanga movement. Most of these men are buried at nearby Rukumoana marae, home to Nga¯ti Haua¯ and the first Ma¯ori Parliament.
The town takes its current name from Canadian brothers Samuel and Thomas Morrin, who settled in the 1870s and are presumably also responsible for Canada St. The most impressive relic from this era is an entire furnished cottage, built from heart kauri in 1873 and preserved and restored within the museum walls.
Those wanting to buy a little history should visit Hidden Treasures, which sells everything from retro glass milk bottles and vinyl records to concrete troughs and aerial photographs. Coowner Dean Keogh also brews locally roasted Essenzo coffee when he’s not moonlighting as a driving instructor or security guard.
Long-time business owners Grant and Carol Covich, on the other hand, have found their niche and stuck to it like good batter on a fresh piece of fish. The Morrinsville-born couple were teenagers when they started work in his family business and they have been working seven days a week for the ensuing four decades, raising five children and hiring one future prime minister along the way.
It’s almost 25 years since a teenage Jacinda Ardern helped catch the thief who plundered the Golden Kiwi shop till one Friday night. They still relish the tale.
Grant had stepped out the back to use the toilet when he heard Ardern hollering ‘‘someone’s robbing the till’’.
By the time he reached the front of the shop, his wife had chased the thief to the getaway vehicle and snatched up a fist full of money from inside it before he drove away. ‘‘I thought, he’s not taking all our bloody hard work,’’ Carol remembers, while dishing up coleslaw for a waiting customer.
But it was their young employee who had the last word. At a high school party that same night, Ardern spotted the culprit – someone’s visiting cousin – in a corner of the room. So the quickthinking policeman’s daughter asked a girlfriend to approach the young man for his phone number, which she promptly handed over to her dad. The thief was consequently nabbed, charged and ordered to repay the money.
The couple speak affectionately of their bright, friendly ex-staffer despite the trouble their alliance occasionally causes in a National stronghold. Not to mention the resulting unwanted press attention; when a CNN reporter called from Hong Kong, they refused to speak with him, but he showed up anyway with a camera.
They are fond of their town, too.
‘‘If you want to see a really vibrant farming town, Morrinsville is definitely one of them,’’ Grant says. ‘‘You go to Auckland, come back here and it’s beautiful. No traffic.’’
Ardern’s recommendations for visitors:
‘‘ I think my list of suggestions for Morrinsville hasn’t changed too much over the years, with the exception of the Wallace Gallery and the cows which dot the main street (all new additions!). I’d add to that, ice creams from the Wagon Wheel (they were always enormous when I was a kid) and fish and chips from the Golden Kiwi.’’