My Kotuku of the South Seas: Living and Loving in Rarotonga - a Memoir

By Helen Henry

My Kotuku of the South Seas depicts a simple life in a much simpler time. Helens memoir is rich in her descriptions of friendship, harmony and love. She weaves a simple tapestry of the life of her family as they follow their dreams and aspirations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris NZ
• Release date: Mar 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9781479787999

Helen Henry

We are registered nurses who have been in this profession for over fifteen years. We honestly have seen it all and at times wish we hadn’t. The vast majority of our lives is spent multitasking our careers and raising our children while bringing to light our passion for writing. Through our combined experience, we have worked in the emergency room, intensive care unit, medical surgical floor, transplant unit, home care, corrections, psychiatric, nursing home, and have cared for pediatric patients as well. Our varied clinical experiences give us the impetus to shed a little light on what we do as nurses. The ability to participate in healing and to witness the difference we make in many lives is what drives us. Our shared passion for nursing deepens each day as we join forces with our fellow nurses in com batting emerging diseases with sacrifice and grace.

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Copyright © 2013 by Helen Henry.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 03/05/2013

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0800-891-366

www.xlibris.co.nz

[e-mail]

700482

Contents

Prologue      Kia Orana—May You Live On

Chapter 1:    Childhood

Chapter 2:    Dad’s Letter to My Mother

Chapter 3:    Grandma

Chapter 4:    Quinton Villa

Chapter 5:    Best Friends

Chapter 6:    Summers at Manly

Chapter 7:    Choices

Chapter 8:    Dad the Assassin

Chapter 9:    Dad the Exterminator

Chapter 10:  Dad the Fisherman

Chapter 11:  The Kotuku

Chapter 12:  Dad Passes Away

Chapter 13:  Mother

Chapter 14:  Letter from Bryce

Chapter 15:  Girl Meets Boy

Chapter 16:  It’s All in the Name

Chapter 17:  Our Family Tree

Chapter 18:  Our Wedding

Chapter 19:  A Young Family

Chapter 20:  Call of the Islands

Chapter 21:  Decisions

Chapter 22:  Departure Day

Chapter 23:  En Route to Rarotonga

Chapter 24:  An Island Welcome

Chapter 25:  Early Impressions

Chapter 26:  The Town I Love

Chapter 27:  Boat Day

Chapter 28:  Aitutaki and My Kotuku

Chapter 29:  Back to the ‘Real World’

Chapter 30:  Four Sons, and Now a Daughter

Chapter 31:  Dad’s Home

Chapter 32:  Escapades

Chapter 33:  Making Ends Meet

Chapter 34:  Entertainment, Island Style

Chapter 35:  An Investiture and an Official Opening

Chapter 36:  The Full Moon

Chapter 37:  Another Royal Visit

Chapter 38:  A Charlatan, or a Doctor?

Chapter 39:  Elections and Court Cases

Chapter 40:  Farewell, Sir Albert

Chapter 41:  Fun on Aitutaki

Chapter 42:  A Storm Becomes a Cyclone

Chapter 43:  Hugh Henry and Associates

Chapter 44:  The Outrigger Restaurant

Chapter 45:  A Cruise Ship Calls

Chapter 46:  The End of an Era

Chapter 47:  The Depths of Despair

Chapter 48:  The Funeral

Chapter 49:  Memories

Chapter 50:  Vai-A-Kura

Chapter 51:  Topaz

Chapter 52:  Family Affairs

Chapter 53:  Manihiki Adventures

Chapter 54:  The Olympic Torch Relay

Chapter 55:  Are Tamanu and My Kotuku

Chapter 56:  A Weekend to Remember

Chapter 57:  My Kotuku Visit Me Again

Chapter 58:  Finding Mary

Chapter 59:  The Perfectionist

Chapter 60:  Helen, The Organiser

Chapter 61:  One More Passionate Kiss

Chapter 62:  From Longing to Ecstasy

Chapter 63:  A Dilemma

Chapter 64:  Konnichiwa

Chapter 65:  Manuae Island

Chapter 66:  Living a Dream, or a Nightmare?

Chapter 67:  To Teal Bay

Chapter 68:  Cyclone Pat

Chapter 69:  The Grand Party

Dedications

In Memory of Hugh

Together we danced, we laughed, we flew, we grew, we dared.

We cared more than any soul could know or reason

For a hundred precious seasons.

To My Children

Michael, Paul, Stuart, Nicholas, and Katherine.

You are my inspiration and my pride.

And

To My Mokopuna

You will continue the threads of our family tivaevae

and create your own amazing designs.

Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge;

Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.

Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried:

The Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me.

(Ruth 1: 16-17)

Meitaki Maata

To Johno, who helped me to dot the i’s and cross the t’s.

You make my heart sing.

To my dearest friend, Sue Carruthers Brown,

who has also loved and lived in the Cook Islands.

Thank you for critiquing each chapter and for encouraging me all along the way.

I am grateful to Emily Rapp, my teacher for two courses at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, for her excellent advice and encouragement.

Thanks also to Thea Pypers, Joan Gragg, and Howard Henry.

If Ever You Lived on an Island

Adapted from the poem by J. Earnhart, 1992

If ever you lived on an island

If ever you lived by the sea

You’ll never return to the mainland

Once your spirit has been set free.

If you ever smelled the ocean

Or tasted the salt in the air

You’ll know you’ve discovered a haven

That is uncommon, precious and rare.

If ever you’ve seen the whales play

Or watched white terns in flight

You’ll remember again why you live here

And why it feels so right.

If ever you’ve seen the sunset

Or the green flash disappear

You’ve seen the beauty of the island

That will be with you forever more

If ever you’ve heard the call of the conch shell

The waves, the winds in the palms

Then you’ve heard the song of the island

And the peaceful message it sends.

Indeed if you live on an island

If you are lucky to live by the sea

You’ll never return to the mainland

As your spirit has been set free.

Prologue

Kia Orana—May You Live On

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There are no windows in this air force plane. We can’t see anything!

The Hercules has slowly rumbled its way across the Pacific Ocean. We have flown for seven hours from the Whenuapai Air Force Base in Auckland, New Zealand, to Rarotonga, the most populous island of the Cook Islands. I am excited yet apprehensive as with a jolt, a couple of bumps, and engines and brakes screaming, we roar along the coral airstrip and come to a shuddering stop. It is a strange sensation to know we have landed. But where have we landed? What will be my first impressions?

My husband Hugh and I gather our bags and, together with our four small sons, wait impatiently to disembark. My hair is getting wet. ‘What is going on? Is it raining? Is the roof leaking?’ No, the condensation that built up during the flight is now dripping down on everyone.

It is a rather damp, bedraggled family that climb down the steps into the warm, balmy air.

Sheer majestic peaks rise out of the lush tropical forest, their pinnacles standing in sharp relief against the cloudless blue sky. Coconut palm fronds wave gently in the breeze while banana plantations stretch alongside the runway. Bright green taro plots merge into the background, and for an instant, I see the silhouette of a silver bird standing in the marshes.

‘Oh,’ I sigh, as I blissfully inhale the heady perfume of flowers. The exotic smell of gardenias, jasmine, and frangipani overwhelm my senses. Garlands of pink and white flowers, called eis in the Cook Islands Maori language, are draped around our necks. I can barely see Hugh’s laughing eyes as his face and head disappear under the blossoms. Over the chatter and shouts of the crowd, I hear the vibrant beat of the drums as well as the softer, sensuous melody of guitars and ukuleles. In true Cook Islands custom, the band is enthusiastically welcoming home familiar faces and greeting newcomers.

‘Kia Orana!’ (‘May you live on!’) What a beautiful sentiment and warm welcome! Oh, how I have indeed ‘lived on’ here in this tropical island of Rarotonga! What amazing adventures I have experienced! What exciting people I have met as our family helped the Cook Islands develop as a newly independent nation! I have so many stories, so much happiness but also personal dramas, sadness, and a heartbreaking tragedy to share with you.

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Rarotonga, 1972

Chapter One

Childhood

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An air of secrecy pervaded the house. Over the last few weeks there had been mysterious phone calls, furtive whisperings in the corners, and surreptitious looks passing between my parents, Mary and John. Auntie Annie knew something was up when she spotted a tiny lacy pink shawl tucked away in Mary’s bag. But she said nothing.

After seven years of a harmonious and loving marriage, John and Mary decided to adopt a child. Dr Roy Lange, a close family friend, and the father of David Lange, who was later to become the Prime Minister of New Zealand, suggested they contact his friend who owned a nursing home in Papanui, a suburb of Christchurch, in the South Island of New Zealand.

In 1940, unmarried girls were sent to the opposite end of the country to have their children and then give them up for adoption. There was a definite social stigma attached to both the unmarried mother and the child. Would it fit into the society? All the ‘what ifs’ and ‘what abouts’?

Mary and John flew to Christchurch, where Sister Duncan gave them their precious gift. How nervous and apprehensive they were! But they were also excited. In a small wicker basket, they lovingly carried their tiny ten-day-old daughter back home. Auntie Dot and Uncle Allan picked up the three of us from the Otahuhu Railway Station after the long, arduous train journey. Uncle Allan bathed me and cut my fingernails and toenails. How do I know this? Well, twenty years later, he announced this fact with great glee when making a speech at my wedding.

Two weeks later, when Grandma, Auntie Annie, and Cousin Thelma were sitting around the dining room table, the phone rang.

Smiling broadly, Auntie Annie announced, ‘You have a new baby granddaughter. Mary and John have just brought her home. Thelma, you have a tiny cousin.’

‘When can I see her? How did she come? Uncle Jack didn’t tell me they were getting a baby,’ said Thelma.

Grandma, Auntie Annie, and Thelma drove out to our house in Otahuhu to see the new addition to the family.

‘What is her name?’ Thelma asked.

‘We have named her Helen Katherine,’ Mary replied.

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Helen Katherine Nicholls on her first birthday, 1941

Everyone was delighted they chose family names. Thelma, who had always been Auntie Mary and Uncle John’s ‘girl’, was happy to have a sister. To this day I look up to and love her dearly.

On my second birthday, 11 September 1942, a baby boy was born in Christchurch. The adoption of my brother, whom my parents named Arnold John, completed our family. Or so we thought.

Towards the end of 1945, Mary and John received a letter from Sister Duncan, who was still in charge of the nursing home in Christchurch. She wrote to ask if they would consider the addition of a baby boy into their family. ‘I feel this little baby will complete your family. I know your home will be a loving and safe environment for him,’ she wrote.

John was sometimes away on manoeuvres with the Home Guard or touring the North Island, inspecting ammunition stores. Arnold was a frail child and was often not well. ‘I don’t think I can manage a new baby at this time,’ Mary replied.

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Dad home on leave with Mary and Helen

‘Mary, I just know this little baby is perfect for you. I will keep him here until you are ready,’ Sister Duncan persevered. She was very confident they should adopt another child.

Suddenly, Mum realised that yes, it would be all right. Of course, she could manage. She and Dad would love to have another child. Helen and Arnold would welcome a sibling and playmate. They had enough love in their hearts to envelope a small baby.

Bryce Walton was born on 12 October 1945. I remember a long narrow grassy airstrip at Mangere Airport. I watched in amazement as a fragile-looking plane touched down and wobbled to a stop in front of the hangar. The door opened, and out stepped a nurse wearing a starched white cap and bright scarlet cape. She was holding a cuddly blue blanket. As I peered in, I saw a rosy round chubby face topped with golden curls.

Bryce! Oh, so cute and cuddly!

The war ended. But ration cards were still used for basic food items. Mum sewed my dresses from cut-down trousers and skirts. The US Army boys lived at the end of our road. Often they marched from their barracks into the township. As a treat for the young soldiers, my Dad sometimes left outside the gate a large sack of apples or pears from our orchard.

I must have been almost five years old when, one day, as I swung from the gate, the soldiers marched past. I had been given strict instructions—it was not polite to ask them for candies. Mum was surprised when I returned to the house with bags of sweets. ‘How did you get these? Don’t you remember what Dad told you?’ she asked.

‘I didn’t ask for them. I only said I love candy,’ I replied indignantly.

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At home in Amesbury, 1947

Dad was born and bred in Thames and met Mum at a family get-together when his elder brother, Uncle Harold, married my mother’s eldest sister, Auntie Ruby. What a coincidence! This meant that when I was born, I had three, especially close, cousins: George, Viv, and John! I loved them very much, and they were always kind to a small girl who followed them around incessantly.

Mum was twenty-one years old when, in 1933, she married my father, following a few years of courtship. At only twenty-eight years of age, Dad was in partnership with his cousin, Harry. They owned a building business. He had purchased a section of land from his father and built a lovely home, which they called Amesbury. 109 Mangere Road was a long main street that ran from the boundary of Mangere East to the Great South Road in the sprawling suburb of Otahuhu in South Auckland. Of course, I was not there, but I can still recall being told that, after their wedding, Mary and John’s friends gave them a ‘tin canning’. In those far-off days, after the ‘honeymoon couple’ had gone to bed, their friends came around to the house and banged and clattered on old kerosene tin drums to wake them up and embarrass the newly weds. Mum sleepily came out on to the veranda, dressed in her nightie and dressing gown. But where was Dad? The noisy revellers called and called for him to come out. Mum could hardly stifle her mirth. Imagine their laughter when they eventually saw him wearing a long black raincoat over his pyjamas and they realised he was ‘tin canning’ along with the crowd!

‘Amesbury’ was a substantial, four-bedroom, white weatherboard house. Brick steps curved up to the old-fashioned portico, which opened into a large entrance hall. The sitting room had huge comfortable sofas and chairs set in front of the open fireplace. An upright Broadwood piano stood in the corner flanked by another sofa, which looked out into rose gardens and a fishpond. We only used this special room for visitors or Sunday high tea. Mum would set the dinner trolley with her pretty floral cups and saucers. A three-tiered cake stand which took the pride of place in the centre was filled with hot buttered scones, tiny cucumber triangle sandwiches, and stuffed savoury eggs.

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Helen at Amesbury

The house stood at the end of a long right of way set well back from the main road. A large native bush planted by Dad sheltered the house on one side. Auntie Aida and Uncle Oscar lived on the other side of the driveway, fenced with a low box hedge.

One day Dad was mowing the narrow lawn between the two concrete strips of the driveway. Uncle Oscar was in his garden. He could hear Dad tinkering with the mower and muttering furiously to himself about the state it was in. As Uncle Oscar raised his head to listen more carefully, there was a loud shout of disgust as Dad threw the dysfunctional mower over the hedge.

‘You’re welcome to the flaming thing!’ said Dad as he stormed back to his shed.

Uncle Oscar laughed, took the mower to his workshop, and got it going after a little oil and fixing. For years he used it without a problem.

A few years later, soon after Dad purchased a brand-new silver grey Wolseley sedan car, it stalled as he drove down the drive.

‘You can heave that over if you like,’ chortled Uncle Oscar.

Needless to say, Dad managed to start the new car.

We helped dig potatoes and carrots from the garden. We picked green and purple juicy grapes grown in the glasshouse. Mum looked after her ‘girls’—twenty or so chickens. It was my job to feed them and then hunt for the eggs.

Arnold, Bryce, and I built huts and forts under the arched branches of the shady twin persimmon trees. We could walk around the brick-walled fishpond, which was rich with gold fish and carp swimming under the rock fountain and amongst violet water lilies.

Mum loved baking. Her specialty was light fluffy sponge cakes. She decorated these with whipped cream and sliced Chinese gooseberries. Today this fruit is called Kiwi Fruit. We had the first vines to be grown in our small town. Now the fuzzy brown-skinned oval fruit is exported throughout the world.

‘Helen, make sure the boys have their caps on,’ Mum instructed me.

Arnold and Bryce were wearing white cotton skullcaps to cover their pink bald heads. There had been an outbreak of ringworm. Mum shaved their heads and painted them with her tried-and-tested old-fashioned remedy. So far, the rough round rings had not spread to anywhere else on their bodies. I found one on my chest, but Mum dealt to that with iodine. Arnold and Bryce looked like little war orphans, but Mum said the hair would grow back.

From day one, I was the bossy elder sister. As they grew up, I dressed Bryce and Arnold in Mum’s long ball gowns and fur capes. I insisted they play make-believe and ‘sissy’ games. However, I also joined them as they played Cowboys and Indians, cricket, or climbed trees. In fact, I constantly ‘brought them up’.

My brothers didn’t need a mother. They had me!

Chapter Two

Dad’s Letter to My Mother

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HQ Coy.

35th Battalion NZEF

Dear Mary Girl and Little Sweetheart

I wrote to you last night but feel so lonely tonight that I find myself writing again.

It is very quiet in the tent tonight, all are on leave, save one, and he is playing chess with a boy from next door. It has been another beautiful day, and my arms are just a bit sunburnt. We are still carpentering, but these boys don’t work so hard as we did up on the hill, and I find myself slowing up quite a bit. There is no encouragement to get on with a job and have it done with. So different from what I have been used to all my life, and it seems to have broken my spirit to work. No doubt that when the whole thing is over, there will be a new joy in making our home beautiful again.

Rumours are rife in camp again, but it seems fairly sure that on Wednesday, next we go out on a tramp for something like ten days.

Tomorrow, Saturday, I get my first injection TABI, which I should have had when in the 5th Battalion. In all, I am due for five injections of different kinds. So I see on the noticeboard, these only make one feel a bit off colour for a day or two, especially if one can rest for a few hours after.

I just heard one of the chess players say ‘Check’, the first word spoken for about an hour.

I have been thinking of our sweetheart as I see her photo here and thinking how I’d love to see her again and wondering how long it will be before she loses her cot to Arnold and sleeps in a big bed.

How is the sunflower growing in the back flower bed? Has it reached the window sill yet? Probably, the blue clematis is in flower by this time and the fish swimming on the surface of the pond in the sunlight.

The prisoner for whom I was a witness was sentenced to twenty-eight days’ detention in Ardmore military prison camp. He has been in our prison section for some four weeks, and a different type from the other boys. It is only recently that I have come to understand his nature more, and regret very much that I didn’t understand him earlier, and I feel to save him from this trouble. He appears to have had little home life but was very generous and easily led. I’m sorry to say that through lack of interest in him, we (I and the other boys could have kept him interested and in bounds) failed to do so, and he associated himself with a doubtful character who led him crook.

Well, Love, I’m longing to see you all again so much that I can hardly wait.

But in the meantime, hope for the best and look forward to your letter.

Yours with Love,

John XXX

Chapter Three

Grandma

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Grandma’s name was Sarah Ada. She lived in Northcote Point, overlooking Auckland’s Waitemata Harbour. ‘Quinton Villa’ was a rambling five-bedroom colonial house with a spooky dusty attic. Old steamer trunks were filled to the brim with clothes and bric-a-brac. I would brush aside the fairy cobwebs and spend magical hours playing up there. Wide shady verandas overlooked gardens and the Northcote wharf.

In 1950, I was almost ten years old, and the family gathered to celebrate Grandma’s eightieth birthday.

Happy peals of laughter spilled out from the wide-open bifold windows of the dining room into the courtyard. Mum called out to us, ‘How is the polishing going?’

The oak dining table and heavy dining chairs were pushed to the sides of the long room, and we had rolled up the carpet square. The volume on the old-fashioned gramophone was turned up as high as possible, and the seventy-eight records belted out the strains of Tanner Hauser’s march. Arnold and Bryce slipped and slid over the linoleum squares. I had tied dusters on to their feet. The polishing was going very well indeed. As the music became louder and louder, so did our shouts of laughter.

I loved these family parties. My three uncles filled the house with their booming voices as they all talked at once. They were farmers and lived way up in the north of New Zealand. They didn’t often come to town, so this was a special time. Mum’s three sisters and their families were also there. Grandma sat with a big smile on her face. She was the centre of attention. Soft, white hair framed her face, and I noticed she was wearing her favourite gold-and-amethyst brooch at the high neckline of her dark navy dress. She had her small black leather handbag beside her. Grandma was seventy when I was born. She guessed I was soon to arrive when she saw a pink blanket in Mum’s bag. She said I was special, but so were my brothers, Arnold and Bryce.

My Uncle Viv was lots of fun, and he called his youngest daughter, Blossom! Uncle Edgar taught me to ride a pony and help muster the sheep. I hoped the lamb roast we were eating for lunch was not the pet lamb I bottle-fed last holidays. Uncle Arthur was always quiet. I guessed he was thinking about who was milking his cows while he was away.

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Grandma with her seven children, including my mother, second from left

Auntie Annie and Auntie Doris set the table, using the best china and knives and forks. It looked pretty when Auntie Ruby added two crystal stands filled with plump green and purple grapes from our own vines.

We were called to lunch, and gradually, the grown-ups seated themselves around the long tables in the dining room. My cousins joined us at a table in the outdoor courtyard. Mum and Dad could still keep an eye on our high jinks, thanks to the open windows!

The birthday cake was brought in, and we all sang lustily as Grandma blew out all the candles and sliced into the moist chocolate cake.

My most enjoyable holidays were spent with Grandma at Northcote Point. In the winter, when it was raining and gloomy outside, Grandma lit the fire in the dining room. We heaped coal briquettes in the black grate and warmed ourselves in front of the open fire. The fire crackled, and sparks glowed hot and red. I watched as they formed pictures before floating up the chimney. Grandma helped me toast marshmallows on a long-handled, three-pronged copper fork.

I would curl up on the deep-seated plush sofa and bury my head in my favourite book, Anne of Green Gables.

After each meal, I helped Grandma transfer all the jams, jellies, and butter on to clean plates and returned them to the pantry. They were then ready for the next meal. I often scrubbed the wooden bench with sand soap until it glowed a beautiful golden colour. The bench was smooth, like satin.

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Grandma, with Thelma on her wedding day, 1951

Auntie Kate lived