Winton grew, slowly. Rhubarb grew, quickly, in mounds of fowl manure. Sheep and cattle arrived. The Allen family arrived, including the brother of the last living survivor of the Battle of Waterloo. Tinned meat and tongues were exported to Britain from Winton’s Boiling-down Works. Wells were dug; children were told to beware playing anywhere near them, and given an incentive – the devil, their parents said, lived down the well. It became a local custom for schoolboys to jump on Minnie Dean’s unmarked grave.
One…two…three…four Fonterra tankers drove by Graeme Ingils’ house in less than an hour on a warm Friday afternoon in early autumn, when the town clock, which also gave the temperature, read 26 degrees.
It wasn’t 26 degrees. It was more like 17 or 18. Gillian McFarlane really did grit her teeth. In her Country Manners gift shop on Winton’s main street she sold silver spoons to a customer, and continued expressing her outrage at the incorrect temperature. She said it was a scandal. Last November, when the Tour of Southland cycle race came to Winton, the temperature on the town clock had made the wild claim that it was minus four degrees. ‘TV1 and TV3 were here,’ she said. ‘It’s a very bad look.’ She had agitated for it to be fixed but no one wanted to know, including Rotary, which had donated the digital clock and temperature gauge. ‘Rotary like to donate, then abandon. Bunch of wallies.’
At least it was an improvement on the old town clock. The time on that had been wrong. Actually, it had been right but only twice a day, and just for a minute. Gillian said, ‘It was 20 past ten in Winton for 27 years.’ Permanent morning or everlasting night? Was there a difference in those 27 static years? Winton, going about its sheepy business at the bottom of the South Island, with fat trout jumping in the Oreti River and flat, swamp-drained fields stuffed with New Zealand’s best swedes.
Then came the revolution. Margaret Kane at the Paramount Motel said it happened overnight. That was how it felt when the first wave of North Island farmers arrived in the mid 1990s and began converting sheep farms to dairy. Cheap wool and lamb chops made way for the lucrative swirl of cow milk. Southland was now the fastest-growing region for milk output, with an increase of 50 percent in the past five years.
Old traditions remained. Winton was about to host the Bride of the Year contest. A frost arrived that morning; Margaret Kane said, ‘You don’t have a swede ’til you’ve had a frost.’ I said, ‘What did you say?’ I had heard her the first time but I wanted to hear her say it again, for the sound and the certainty of it. She said, ‘You don’t have a swede ’til you’ve had a frost.’ I asked her about the virtues of swedes. She said, ‘They’re animal feed but kids like ’em raw. They taste like apples. Or turnips.’
As ever, shearing gangs were in town for the season. They included Megan Thomas, 20, from Balclutha, and Debbie Clarke, 45, of Winton. Debbie poured a bottle of Tui into her teacup. We were sitting in the beer garden of Middle Pub at noon. ‘Fonterra have a good thing going, but… nah, sheep’ll come back,’ said Megan. ‘There’s still shearing work around.’
New practices thrived. There was only one empty shop on the main street, which was an elegant destination for Saturday shoppers from Invercargill, Gore and Queenstown. Winton is a pretty town. There are mauve rhododendrons, horse chestnut trees, and sunflowers that grow to terrific heights. Crime is rare and usually petty; there had been a run of diesel thefts, senior sergeant Richard McPhail said, and last year thieves from Christchurch targeted jet skis. They were caught in the cemetery after they’d got stoned and slept it off by the gravestones. You can get a big feed at the burger bar, which does the Winton Stop Over for $9.90 – double beef, double cheese, double pineapple. There are jewellery and fashion stores, beauty treatments, an expensive restaurant.
I asked Gillian McFarlane to name the most popular item in her gift store. She pointed to a pot of Scullys Lavender Sleep Aid. ‘When they asked me to sell it I said, “It’s a load of hogwash.” My father was a doctor, you see. They said, “Well, take a dozen free of charge.” A woman came in the next day and asked about it. I said, “Madam, it’s up to you if you want to buy it, but I’m telling you it’s pure bunkum.” Well, I sold out by the end of the week, re-ordered it, the same thing happened, re-ordered it. I generally sell two or three pots every day.’
I liked the thought of Winton enjoying a sound sleep, and I liked Gillian. I liked her archaic language – ‘hogwash’, ‘bunkum’. I liked her frantic impulsive manner. She said, ‘I was put out on the streets at a very early age by my parents to help save Manapōuri.’ Was it nature or nurture that made her so… loud? She had a kind of American confidence. She had been born in Invercargill, and travelled to London, then New York, where she met her husband Marc. I would have felt disappointed if he was merely a Mark because so much about Gillian’s life spelled the word ‘different’. I heard that word quite a few times in Winton. It was the worst thing they could say about someone.
They grimaced when they named the local arsonist who, they suspected, had burned down the museum last year; he was, they said, ‘a dipstick’. They shrugged when they described the new dairy farmers as ‘North Island knob heads’. But they narrowed their eyes when they said: ‘He’s different.’ They meant Graeme Ingils, the outsider with the signs and the dogs. They also said it of Gavin Bell, proprietor and editor of the town’s excellent newspaper The Winton Record – he was new to Winton, had come from Matamata in the North Island in 1994. Asked about Gillian, they said, ‘She’s different.’
The antagonism was less to do with her agitations about the temperature reading than her famous and quite radical overhaul of Winton’s Open Day. Open Day is held every year on a Sunday and attracts visitors from Southland; there are stalls, music, floral displays. Most amazing of all, the shops are open. According to Gillian, though, ‘It’d waned. I spent my time apologising to people from Queenstown who came expecting an event. I began to think, what do we do here that’s special?’ And then one day last year she had an epiphany. She was driving home on a gravel road when she suddenly braked hard. She’d seen Fonterra’s slogan on a letterbox: IT STARTS HERE. ‘I thought, It’s the grass! It’s always about the grass, and what we turn it into!’
The light bulb in her head illuminated the idea that dairying produces ice cream. She pushed – and pushed and pushed – the Winton Business Association and Winton Area Promotions, and Winton’s Open Day thus became Winton’s Ice-Cream Sunday Festival. There were ice-cream stalls, weird and wonderful ice-cream flavours, ice-cream art. Gillian said, ‘It was terrific. It created a dynamic and was the biggest open day ever. Shopkeepers were rushed off their feet.’ Gavin Bell at The Winton Record said, ‘It was… o-kay.’ And Chub McHugh, chair of Winton District Council, said: ‘It was… good. But there’s room for improvement.’
Only the taxman called him John; everyone else acknowledged Chub as Winton’s unofficial mayor. The wide range of his endeavours – past president of Lions, the rugby club, the bowling club; trustee of this, trustee of that – suggested he performed the work of many men. Chub was also the size of many men. You could say he was Winton’s focal point. More than its politician-in-chief, he was its host, a role he also performed as a publican. Chub had taken over the Middle Pub nineteen years earlier, on May 19. A man wearing a cap walked in. Chub said, ‘Gidday, Jock.’
Everyone knew Chub and spoke of him with respect and affection. He knew everyone, and everything that went on. I mentioned the exotic presence of Filipino men standing around on the main street. He said they started arriving three or four years ago to work on dairy farms; the wives ran a support centre and had set up their own credit union and insurance. ‘I’ve actually got one of them working for me. They’re great employees. You tell them what to do and they’ll do it.’
Other new families from South Africa, England and Zimbabwe had led to a rise in Winton School’s roll from 160 to 241. Gillian said, ‘About three years ago my husband came home and said, “I just saw a black person. Really black!” I said, “So?” He said
, “Isn’t it wonderful.”’
I saw a Frenchman. ‘I milks the cows,’ he said. Not all of them – there were a record 418,337 dairy cows in Southland province last season, outnumbering people four to one. He gave a possibly Gallic sigh when he said he worked 60 hours a week for ten dollars an hour after tax. But wealth was elsewhere. On a recent weekend, Gillian had counted five four-wheel-drive Porsches in Winton.
I was more excited when she said Graeme Ingils had come to see her that day. I said, ‘You know Graeme?’ Yes, she said, they’d met a few times. I received this information as very good news. He’d told me he didn’t talk to anyone in Winton. By the time I’d left his appalling house, shaken at what I had seen inside, I was in despair that his life must be just about entirely insufferable.
The two signs on the side of his house read ACC SUX and REINZ SUX. If these beefs against the Accident Compensation Corporation and the Real Estate Industry of New Zealand were general, then the two signs on the front of the house were specific. They targeted a Labour Party MP and a National Party MP: DAMIEN O’CONNOR IS CORRUPT and PHIL HEATLEY IS A CROOK.
With the dogs in the back seat of a Nissan, a Kingswood, two Subarus and other wrecks in the long grass, a blackberry bush coiled over the back fence, and Fonterra tankers, silver streaks, driving past on a warm Friday afternoon, Graeme had begun his tale.
A tree had fallen on him in the bush. He was living in Nelson. He went on accident compensation. Then he won $50,000 on Instant Kiwi and bought a three-hectare lifestyle block in Motueka. ‘Beautiful it was. Sun in the morning. It looked over d’Urville Island.’
He lived on it with his partner, Christine, in a house bus. He dug a well, made plans to plant olive trees. ‘But I was getting sicker and sicker. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. They said, “Post-concussion syndrome.” They said, “There’s something wrong with you up here.”’ He tapped his head. ‘But it felt like I was wasting away inside. It got to the point where I said to Christine, “I’m no good to you. Let’s just sell up. You need your own life.”’
I had the feeling his narrative was about to hinge on a fatal decision. He duly provided it. He said he couldn’t find a buyer so he called in at the electoral office of Damien O’Connor. The next morning a member of O’Connor’s staff turned up with a buyer ‘but I woke up so ill I could hardly walk. I was having one of my episodes. I said, “I can’t talk to you.” They said, “Is there anything we can do for you?” I said, “You can shoot me.” Okay. Now, what do you think they should have done?’
I said, ‘Told you they’d come back when you were feeling better.’ He looked stunned. It was the wrong answer. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They should have got me some medical help.’
He returned to his story. They – O’Connor and his people – took advantage of a sick man. He sold up. Christine left. ‘Someone said, “You can get a house in Nightcaps for $10,000.” I was so sick I didn’t even think what the hell I’d do when I got there. I just thought, I can afford that.’
Nightcaps is a small coal-mining town near Winton. The real estate salesman, he said, lied to him. ‘I got sucked in. Again.’ Life was dreadful there. He moved to Winton. ‘But I’m not living anywhere,’ he said. ‘I just exist.’
That was the long and the short of it. ‘Imagine how angry I am. I should never have sold in Motueka. I can’t get over losing Christine and losing my property. Look where I am now!’ He waved a hand at the house. It was a dump, a shabby wooden box – if it looked haunted, then Graeme was its ghost. The signs, he said, were ‘my way of poking something back at them’. Why had he also targeted National MP Phil Heatley? ‘Oh well,’ he said. ‘They’re all crooks.’ As for the car wrecks, he used to work as a panel beater and had bought the wrecks with the intention of fixing them up and selling them. ‘But that all turned to custard. My health just got worse.’
In October 2008, though, he discovered the true cause. ‘I was suffering from vitamin D deficiency. I’ve probably had it all my life. If the soil in the garden’s no good, your plant won’t be any good. I was a sick plant. I’ve been taking pills since finding out, and I’m just about back on track. Two weeks ago I started feeling really good.’
Thank god. He frankly admitted he thought of his situation as hopeless – 60 years old, apparently friendless, no prospect of work – but on the plus side his health was returning. He said he’d started taking long walks. I thought, maybe things aren’t so bad for Graeme. But then he invited me inside the house.
The air was fresh and clean at the farm of Todd and Fleur Anderson. The couple ran sheep and cows. Todd’s passion was genetics. ‘I just love breeding animals,’ he said. He had broken the world record three times, paying $13,200, then $15,500, then $16,000 for Southdown rams. He always bought his rams from Chris Medlicott, a legendary stud breeder in Waimate, Canterbury.
Chris and his wife Shelley were visiting the Andersons. Freshly picked roses stood in a vase. The house was tasteful and immaculate, despite the presence of Todd and Fleur’s three young kids. Todd came from Invercargill; Fleur had worked in human relations at TVNZ and Sky City in Auckland. ‘We love Winton,’ she said. She had taken her eldest and youngest children to the town’s maternity centre for five nights of antenatal care. ‘It’s beautiful there. Just beautiful.’ Todd spoke fluently about farming – ‘protein production, you can call it. That’s exactly what it is really’ – but I was dying for him to show me his latest acquisition, a Southdown ram he had bought from Chris Medlicott for $13,000 at the Canterbury A&P Association’s Stud Ram and Ewe Fair in January.
The ram was in a pen with six ewes. Todd grabbed hold of him. ‘He’s just all power,’ he said. ‘Sheer power. He’s exceptionally balanced. Good top line; it flows all the way to the shoulders. He doesn’t look very big. That’s the secret to a good Southdown: they don’t look big, but they weigh… I saw him as a lamb. He was an excellent lamb. All power, early maturing.’
Todd claimed, ‘We’ve had vegetarians eat Southdown meat.’ Well, it was entirely permissible to stare at the ram’s compact, well-muscled hindquarters and imagine the delicious rib-eye cuts he would father. He had a name: Tasvic 308, an abbreviation of Tasmania and Victoria. Friends of Chris Medlicott’s father who lived in those places had given Chris his first Southdown ewe when he was fifteen, a thank-you for his family’s hospitality. The gift led to his Southdown stud farm in the Hook district near Waimate.
In 2005, when he sold Todd Anderson a ram for $16,000 – still the world record – he said in an interview with The Press, ‘I want to breed one better than him. … You always have to aim high. I have yet to breed the perfect sheep.’ And now perhaps he had. I asked Todd which was his best-ever Southdown ram. He grabbed hold of Tasvic 308 again and said, ‘I think this is it. This is the most excited I’ve been in a long time.’
His excitement was contagious. It was a genuinely thrilling experience to witness sheepy perfection in the flesh, but after I left and came back to town to gnaw on a Winton Stop Over, I ran into Graeme Ingils. The joy I’d felt drained away. Every time I saw Graeme, I was reminded of his home and contents.
He had taken to walking, a lot, several times a day. I ran into him every time I returned to my motel. His perambulations were no doubt just something to do, but also for the exhilaration of feeling alive and well. It was the most exercise he’d taken in years.
Well, he needed a good airing. The stench and abominable filth inside his house had hit me like a shock. The sitting room wasn’t a sitting room. There was nowhere to sit. It was piled to the ceiling with axles, fenders, tyres. It didn’t make any sense; it was like a house that had been turned inside-out. A scrap metal yard had become the interior of his home. It wasn’t a home, it was a prolonged nervous breakdown.
The kitchen wasn’t a kitchen. It was a pond of grime. Every room was dark. All the curtains were drawn. The coatings of dust were thick as toast. There was the smell of damp and the stink of dog; the two scents added up a stench that wa
s high and very bad. He searched for a photo of himself before he was sick. I stood in the hallway as he dragged a suitcase out from under his bed. The bedroom was, vaguely, a bedroom. It had a bed, a TV, a closet. It was dark and it stank. There was no way I was going to ask to see the toilet.
I felt dizzy, short of breath, but it was not my own health I was concerned about. I imagined the poor hairy devil living in this foul hovel day after day, obsessing about his vitamin D, bitter and monomaniacal, behind closed doors and shut windows and drawn curtains, moving among the junk and the rust. What was it he’d said on the front steps: ‘I’m not living anywhere. I just exist.’ I couldn’t wait to leave. I’d felt afraid – for him, and of him. Also, I began to hate him. He felt something much worse: he was ashamed.
Well, he had every right to feel ashamed about what he’d allowed himself to sink to in his disgusting house. He refused to shoulder the blame. He saw himself as a victim, pushed around, sucked in, left for dead. But the strangest thing about Graeme – for all his physical weakness, his emotional collapse, his insane decor – was that he was completely sane.
He listened. He had a sense of humour. He was generous. He had good manners. He had friends too, if you counted Gillian McFarlane, and he also referred to a ‘mate’ who visited from nearby Ōtautau. And despite his insistence that he was a kind of hermit, there he was, out and about on the streets of quiet pretty Winton, getting some air and exercise, scarfed up as a cold wind blew in from the south. Maybe the town would reach out and save him. Maybe he would reach out and save himself. He looked good for his age, and he had beautiful blue eyes.
Civilisation Page 15