It's Yesterday Once More

The Mangamuka would get me every time. Mum would bring the Krispie biscuits which supposedly kept car sickness at bay but the grueling, winding incline would always win over at the top.

We were on our way to Pukepoto, Kaitaia, where we spent most of our school holidays at the family friend’s farm.

As the only girl, I was vastly outnumbered among the five boys. I would rove between trying to fit in with the boys, who couldn’t resist teasing the only girl, and hanging round mum and her friend, who seemed to be having copious amounts of cuppas accompanied with the baking both had made at the kitchen table and catching up on several month’s conversation.

Upon arrival, we would always check out the barn; the three boys had built huts and traps in the new

hay bales. It would always be different. We would play Go Home, Stay Home, climbing and jumping between bales. I was often ‘It’ as they would let my brothers in on where the new nooks were. One time, they made a big hole in between bales and covered the opening with loose hay. I fell down into a deep well. It was a soft landing but I climbed back out and re-joined my mother and her friend for some more baking and eaves-dropping on their chit-chat.

Dad and the boys’ dad would be off down the farm – we wouldn’t see them, except at meal times. Sometimes we’d go find them on the motor bikes. One of the boys would double me and usually drive through mud and, once, cow sh*t, at full speed making it splatter up over me, much to his delight. Despite being petrified, I would always end up laughing too. Another time, one of the boys and I packed a picnic of the baking, took the dog and went to eat it in the paddock. As we climbed over the electric fence, I got a shock and dropped the baking, which was promptly eaten by the dog. Our eight-year-old selves ended up rolling around in hysterics. That was the end of our picnic.

We roamed the paddocks for miles to go eeling, often falling in the creek, having slipped off the rocks and would come back to a good, hearty home-cooked dinner.

They breed them tough up there, those farm boys - and rude. I would usually return to my school in Whangarei with new crass jokes and verses to an ongoing song I had learnt on the farm.

Those were good times.

These school holidays I took the kids up north to a friend’s farm, as I do most holidays. I take them the coast way so there was no vomiting. The kids made huts, rode quad bikes, took the dog on

adventures roaming through the bush and crab hunting at the local beach, fishing off the wharf and eeling in the creek, later returning to cook up the crabs and mussels as a mornay.

My daughter spent her time roving between the four boys and me and my friend, who spent a fair amount of time (but not all!) sitting at the kitchen table drinking cuppas, eating baking and catching up on several month’s chit-chat.