In Endless Fear: A True Story

By Colin Crump

Autobiography of Colin Crump
To celebrate Colin Crump’s eightieth birthday, and to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his brother Barry Crump’s death, CP Books have re-released In Endless Fear, the story of the Crump siblings’ often-traumatic childhood.
Colin’s autobiography tells of a childhood tainted by a terrifying level of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of a merciless father. But life was not entirely bleak and these pages also attest to days of almost idyllic freedom.
Between the fear and the freedom the Crump siblings grew up to be strong, resiliant and self-reliant, at home in the New Zealand wilderness that, for so many years, provide them respite and refuge.
This book casts the brothers’ story in a powerful light. The author’s experience in particular offers a ray of hope to others in abusive situations.

Cover Image: Barry Crump (Left), and Colin Crump (Right).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Colin Crump
• Release date: May 16, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370101238

Colin Crump

“My earliest memories of my life time of writing was during the polio epidemic around 1949. It was a bit scary, theatres and public meeting places were closed, likewise the Papakura School where I was just twelve years old. We were all put on home correspondence and the papers all came to us via the post. One of our papers asked us to write a short poem. I had no trouble with that and can still remember the verse which at the time drew attention from the teaching staff. It went: The birds and the bees and the murmuring trees Are calling me out to play But I can’t go as well you know For I’ve got to do school work today... Besides writing, the piano is my best friend and the ivories get a tickle most days. I am 80 years old now, but my favourite hobby still is flying small aircraft. My favourite sport is squash, and I really enjoy fishing. As for writing, well this morning I managed 2000 words towards my sixth novel. Most, if not all my writing is done at my home office desk, early mornings – 4-9am seems to be my best time for getting it all done. The best part of writing for me, is coming up with a good story and getting it right, and of course there is the great satisfaction in re-reading the finished manuscript which at times I find hard to believe I wrote. Then once it is out there on the shelves and the readers’ feedback drifts back, that’s the thrill of it all. I’m sure I’ll keep on writing for years to come. I always write with a movie in mind and look forward to seeing some of my books on the big screen and that would be the ultimate prize for me!” Interview with Colin Crump. February 28, 2017

Book preview

In Endless Fear:

A TRUE STORY

Colin Crump

Print Edition: ISBN 978-0-9941324-6-8

eBook Edition: ISBN 978-1-3701012-3-8

eBook edition converted by Intrepid Sparks, 2017

Second print edition published by CopyPress Books, NZ, 2016

First edition published by Penguin Books, NZ, 2002

A catalogue record for this book is available in print from the National Library of New Zealand.

Copyright © Colin Crump, 2002

The right of Colin Crump to be identified as the author of this work in terms of section 96 of the NZ Copyright Act 1994 is herby asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

Thanks to Bruce Foster for permission to use the photo of Barry Crump on p. 149.

Printed in New Zealand & distributed worldwide by Copy Press Nelson

www.copypress.co.nz

eBook edition converted and produced by Intrepid Sparks

www.intrepidsparks.com

Table of Contents

Thanks

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Other books by the Author

Thanks

A warm vote of thanks and appreciation goes to that ever-so-kind, helpful, swift, obliging, caring, willing, smart, experienced, patient, understanding, diligent and totally delightful lady, Judith Olsen, who also put up with the worst handwriting and weirdest spelling that ever dribbled out of a ballpoint pen! Thank you, Judith, for being such a good friend too - without your help this story would never have been told.

To my cousin Eula, who was such a wealth of what scattered information was available. Thanks to Eula for her research and also for sourcing the very widely spread and scarce photos which all helped to pull the story together - not forgetting the hugs along the way. Yes, my dear, thanking you does seem rather short of the degree of appreciation I wish to extend to you.

Thank you to my older brothers, Bill and Barry (both now passed on, and whom we miss profoundly), and a very big thank you to my younger sister Shirley - they also all went down this ever-so-eventful track of what follows in the book. Now it’s done - perhaps it will be a bit easier to put the past to rest. I certainly hope so.

To my younger brother, Peter - so full of blessings and forgiveness - thanks mate. To my youngest sister, Carol, thanks for being you - I have always been so proud of your work efforts and the achievements that have resulted from real hard toil.

A special acknowledgment goes out to Martin Crump, the first son of Barry Crump. Tune in to News Talk I ZB and you’ll hear his particular style of hosting the show. He has a tremendous level of understanding through an equally vast array of topics. You name it - he can pretty much always hold an intelligent discussion on it, as well as put forward a worthwhile point of view of his own. Martin did not need to be the son of a New Zealand icon to find success. He made it on his own - and I, like many others, am very proud of him for his own achievements.

I truly hope, Martin, that after reading this account, you and your brothers will gain a greater understanding of what made your father the man he was - which, of course, is a whole lot better than what my father handed me. But we endured it all, Martin, and without doubt we are wiser, stronger, taller and more deeply experienced in the less-easy side of life. I only hope that your own brothers manage half as well as you - to them go my hopes for understanding, care and some good fortune too. Congratulations, along with my love for you, Martin.

I have a different publisher and editorial team now, but I still remember fondly the help and friendship of Gary Hanam and Mike Wagg, and especially Michael Gifkins who sadly is no longer with us.

For this new edition I extend thanks to Dave McManus and his staff at CopyPress Books, and to Belinda Mellor my friend and editor. Once again, the process has been fun.

Thank you all so much.

Colin G. Crump

No punches have been pulled and every

effort to keep an accurate and balanced

account of these events has been maintained

at all times.

Some names have been altered to protect

the innocent, and torment the dead.

This book is dedicated to a wonderful mother, and the sons

of Barry - who all survived the ordeal. Like trees in the forest

may they always stand tall; and after reading this story, it is

my only wish that Barry’s sons might now truly understand

what helped to make their father the man he was.

What’s that noise within my ears?

It sounds like church bells ringing

Is it joy and happiness

Or a thousand children singing?

Perhaps it’s love from way up there

Is someone hailing me

With loving news of fun and friends

And bonded family?

The doctors say it’s tinnitus

That comes from growing old

Those medics’ words just can’t be wrong

Only they are right I'm told

But as I think back when

That great angry hand

Came crashing down upon my ears

The bells rang back then and

They’re still ringing now

No doubt they’ll ring for years

Somehow with luck and a handful of friends

I can handle the chime and the ring

It’s given me strength and the courage to fight

In time - I just know - that I’ll win

Chapter One

I’d had plenty of hidings from the old man, but this one was a bit hard to live with – ’specially when I went back to school a couple of days later. His best shot was usually a backhand bash across the ear that left bells ringing in your head for the next two days.

The other kids were all gawking at me, and my story of how I fell off the flying fox that we’d built to carry posts across a valley didn’t go down too well. Actually, no one believed it, including one of the teachers whom I think genuinely cared and could tell that there was something pretty wrong – not only with this incident but a number of others from previous occasions that all pointed to the strange goings-on out at the Crumps’ Taupaki farm.

My left ear was still quite black and the pain in my right hand, I learnt later, was actually from a fracture. I couldn’t write properly, which made my schoolwork even worse than it really was. The livid purple mark across my throat drew the most attention and to this day – decades later – I still find it hard to believe that this huge bruise, clearly showing a sock pattern that hung in there for days, was actually made by the old man holding my head down to the floor with his foot across my throat while he laid into me with a broken piece of horse harness. It was a hell of a flogging and the smell of his feet in his stinking socks will haunt me forever. In fact, the ‘foot-on-the-throat-hold’ was one of his preferred methods. Barry, who was just one year older than I, having turned eight only the week before, had also just experienced one of his worst floggings ever and the sock-mark imprinted on his throat was semi-permanent.

Anyway, the teacher who questioned me in the playground was pretty suspicious about the obvious mess I was in and offered to help, but I was too scared to say anything – otherwise, if the old man found out, I’d be in for another one.

When I was home helping with milking that evening, I could see his sideways looks at some of the damage he’d done, and when he saw that I couldn’t put the milking cups on properly because of the pain in my hand, I really thought I was going to get it again. But luckily, just then, an old truck pulled up – it was the man from the pig farm up the road who’d come to pick up a dead calf to salvage the skin (which was quite valuable) and to boil the rest down for his pigs. Dead bobby calves were quite common at our place. Just two weeks previously we’d been trying to wean a young calf from its mother by getting it to suck our fingers, and then lower its head into a bucket of milk. A common method, but this little fellow was a bit slow, and of course the old man was on his usual short fuse, and when the calf wouldn’t respond he gave it such a kick that we actually saw its lower jaw slip out from under its matching top – busted – in agony. He finished it off with a single blow to the back of the head with a hammer and tossed the poor thing out the back of the shed.

If the ‘Pig Man’ didn’t come for these poor creatures, it was our job to bury them after milking. Quite a few bobby calves fell victim to this form of brutality. It was horrible to witness and quite impossible to forget. Anyway, on this occasion the Pig Man’s visit saved my bacon, and with the tactful help of our older brother Bill we got through that milking and the next two or three days were almost normal.

That is, until the following Friday on the way home from school, when I collected the usual delivery of a double chubby loaf of bread from the rural letterbox at our farm gate. I started picking at the crusty edges, and although I knew darn well that there’d be trouble, by the time I got to the house I’d gobbled up half the loaf. I sneaked inside and quickly got the bread knife and made a clean cut where I’d been picking, and slipped what was left into the bread box.

On the way down to the cowshed I invented the story that I’d dropped the bread in a puddle on the way home, and to save what was left I’d cut the wet piece off and fed it to the chooks. I thought this was a pretty good story for a seven-year-old kid, but it wasn’t good enough!

I worked like hell through the milking, doing everything right – cleaned up the yard, fed the pigs and calves, put the cows into their night paddock – ever hopeful that I would get away with it, but I didn’t. The old man spotted the part loaf almost straight away and I just stood there cringing in fear, wetting my pants, knowing full well what was coming. I never even got a chance to tell my story – the old man simply handed me the slasher and told me to get down to the swamp where there was a big patch of kanuka (teatree) growing. ‘Cut one good piece about this long and this thick and don’t be too long about it,’ he growled. Well I did all that and went back up to the house only to see him giving my brother Barry a right good thrashing for not shutting the gate to the night paddock so that all the cows had got out and were scattered all over the place.

Of course it was me – not Barry – who had put the cows away and had forgotten to put the catch on the gate, and Barry was actually taking the blame for me. This was by no means the first time he’d taken one on my behalf. Well, after another round of the usual swearing and blasphemy, Barry and I were sent out into the night to round up the stock.

We hadn’t been given any school lunch that day – as Mum was still sick in bed and there was no such thing as money to buy any – and now we were out barefoot in the middle of winter without any dinner, cold and hungry, hunting down eighty cows. It took us half the night and the cows were so upset from being chased around for hours on end