Ao Toa

by Cathie Dunsford

  Although some of the peninsula is used for farmland, many farmers want to return to organic methods of farming used by their ancestors. The end of the peninsula is a marine park, and fishing and the gathering of shellfish is forbidden. This allows more fish species to breed and multiply. We walked down into a beautiful bay, treeferns to our left and an enticing glimpse of the sea between their waving fronds. To our right, alas, was an ugly set of buildings and a huge tract of land concreted over as a tarmac for helicopters. The bush and grass had been heavily sprayed and the buildings housed a company whose business is spraying the land with pesticides, herbicides and poisons. Kaka told us they’d only applied for a licence to run one helicopter, as most farmers can do, and then secretly built up the company so the local council would find it hard to refuse them a resource consent once they were successfully established and the farmers, police, and even the council were dependent upon them. She said the small beach communities include many organic gardeners, like the two we were about to meet, and that the community had once been supportive and happy. That the helicopter eco-vandals have destroyed all that, and now the bay is divided into those supporting the poisoners and those against the devastation of the land.

  She handed around photographs of the company burying toxic waste and pointed to clearly visible burial mounds on the land leading down to the beach estuary. We asked how they could get away with this on land that was, we understood, zoned as a pristine and protected coastal area, home to many rare native bird species. She laughed, saying that money could buy votes and that the owners were related to some of the richest investors in the country. Everyone sighed, knowing the game. The Poisoners, the locals call them. You reckon they are cuzzie bros of Raymond Dioxin at Flyworks? We wouldn’t be at all surprised. Who needs International Seed Corporation to fight when we have mini International Seed Corporation clones dusting the earth with their poisons and making a living from devastating the land. When will people wake up to the fact that we cannot keep doing this and survive on this earth? Kaka said that a survey had been done and one-third of the people in the bay had been hospitalised or suffered from some form of cancer or poison-related disease in the past decade. Pretty telling really. One employee there even thought she had multiple sclerosis from the muscle spasms she experienced, typical of toxic chemical poisoning. But she stayed on for years out of honour and loyalty to her employers, until she was finally offered a position with another company. Her health improved after that. Surprise, surprise! The best thing was, she started smiling again and acting like her real self.

  We’ve heard so many similar stories on this hikoi and know this is a battle being fought all over Aotearoa at present. Land zoned as protected for its unique native vegetation and bird life is slowly being turned over to commercial use, as more and more people want to shift into the country and bring their businesses with them. So many rural areas need the money and thus are easily exploited. Local councils are begging for more business, so they are easily bought off by unethical operators. It’s time the people of this land woke and realised that the clean, green image of this country is just that – an image, that needs to be fought for and protected and truly cherished if we are to become a rich source of organic food for Kiwis, and for the world in the future. We need to do our bit too and make sure Raymond Dioxin does not blight our sacred Hokianga with his toxic choppers. I hope Maata is safe working there. Maybe we’ll invest in a gas mask for her. He’d get the picture if his receptionist wore protective gear, and so would his clients! Kuini and I like the image! But seriously, Mere, do keep an eye on Maata for us, eh?

  After a while, we rounded the bend of the bay and walked into a beach paradise. A sleepy inlet nudged by gentle waters, an estuary full of matuku moana. We’ve never seen so many sea herons at once. They nest in the mangroves and a stand of ti palms beside the sea and share their salty homes with pied oystercatchers, sooty shearwaters, swallows and red-billed aki aki. In the trees surrounding the bay – kahikatea, kauri, rimu, puriri, manuka, kanuka, giant mamaku and a range of treeferns, as well as large yellow-flowered kowhai hanging out over the water – are rare native birds. Flying above us as we walked along beside the bay were large white-breasted green-coated kukupa, swooping up on currents of air and diving back down again, white-throated tui with their coats the colour of paua-shell flying swiftly through the trees. Dancing piwakawaka greeted us as we entered Mohala Gardens, flicking their tails in delight, and one of the women played her sacred pumoana, the sounds of the seashell resounding out over the waves below and back into the forest above. I felt the voice of the sea in her playing, smelt the salt air as vibrations surfed through me.

  The women of Mohala have about half an acre of land, most of which is mature native bush with the same trees as when we entered the bay. They cleared a small patch to build their own settlers’ cottage from cedar, lined with recycled rimu dug from the Dome Valley swamps when the land was being reclaimed. The house sits on stilts amidst towering black mamaku and silver treeferns, and you walk up wooden steps to enter it. It is truly like living in a tree house. You can touch the ferns from their hot tub on the deck. We never found out their given names as they call themselves Turtle and Selkie. Very cute. The Turtle is short and round and dark and called herself a “literary activist” and gardener. Her Selkie is tall and svelte and blonde and is a writer, translator and eco-activist. Both write on ecology issues and are devoted to organic gardens here in Aotearoa and in the Orkney Islands off Scotland, where they also have a seaside cottage and garden, gifted to them from the fruits of their hard work. We liked them and their vision and they were amazed I’d been to Orkney so recently with the storytellers from the Edinburgh Festival. We shared some wonderful korero.

  They showed us pictures of the land before they began their work. Apart from the native bush covering the top part of the land, the rest was clay, thick with kikuyu grass. By luck, some neighbours were building and dumped a huge pile of trees and clay onto their yard. They mounded the clay as a barrier to the roadside and planted it in bananas, feijoas and guavas, with flowering shrubs and lilies and native grasses beneath. The kikuyu was harvested, year after year, as mulch and gradually they covered the remaining ground in recycled cardboard from the local supermarket. They had also used shredded paper from The Poisoners, donated by a local employee, until they found out it was covered in toxic ink. Then they discovered an alternative supply via TEPS, the Takatu Environmental Protection Society, formed to fight The Poisoners and to challenge all kinds of commercial development on the Takatu Peninsula that was harmful to the bird life or the environment in any way. The group comprised the more enlightened members of the bay community, many of them long-time environmentalists and working as scientists, academics, writers, eco-tourist operators and local residents, who had bothered to read the Resource Consent Act and think about the future of their bay for their descendants as well as themselves.

  We were fascinated by the way the women developed the land using their instinct rather than from any strict plan. They said that Fukuoka, author of One Straw Revolution, also did this, and that many modern forms of Permaculture were too rule-bound. We were encouraged to trust our inner sense of design and let the landscape talk to us, rather than us imposing our will onto the land. We felt this really accorded with our vision of how we have developed Te Kotuku nursery. They had a small orchard on land sloping toward the stream with old heirloom varieties of grapefruit, tangelo, mandarin and even a pippin apple, which tasted delicious, just like when we were kids. Yum! Under other fruit trees like Meyer lemon, Tahitian lime and Ethiopian bananas (from Rainbow Valley seeds which Jo gave them!) they planted herbs which thrived in the semi-shade. Mint, peppermint, lemon balm and tea herbs were allowed to roam wild over their mounds, nudging up to the luscious leaves of the wild Vietnamese mint which loved the shade by the stream. Thyme, oregano and massive bronze and green fennel sprouted from every crevice, and lush pregnant leaves of comfrey filled every available hole �
�� they steam the comfrey and eat it like spinach, or use it for mulching or add it to their compost.

  No fancy compost bins for Turtles and Selkies! Each compost mound was turned every time new vegetables were layered onto the clay, sand, green mulch, and the worms were like snakes! After three months, the compost mounds were covered with more sand and seaweed from cleaning the local beach and ready to be planted in rua and Maori potatoes, purple urenika yams, golden, red and violet kumara and anything from their local organic supplier that looked as if it might sprout. Their vegetable garden boasted the largest spinach leaves we have ever seen, fed by seaweed mulch and gigantic flowering artichokes, their leaves sheltering smaller baby spinach. They’d recycled old wooden trellises from Mr Warehouse, who lives in the same bay, generously donated by his builders when they did renovations, and up these wooden arms grew asparagus beans and scarlet runners with their bright red flowers waving in the sea breeze. Next to them, cherry tomatoes, tied with flax to the trellis but hovering near enough to be supported by the same structure. Great use of space. The entire garden is surrounded by a canopy of banana palms which provide much-needed shelter in the hot Northland sun in midsummer, and whose leaves form watery nutritious mulch for all the plants.

  Where old pongas had fallen, they’d planted bright red, yellow and pink-green bromeliads into the ponga logs, too heavy to move, and an entire community of bromeliads poked their tropical noses out from their ferny homes with glee. A recycled loo building, now used as a garden shed, provided rainwater from its roof to fill the garden tank when the stream was low. A narrow path took us into the rear of the garden where huge native puriri, kahikatea, mamaku, kauri and smaller kawakawa plants presided over a nursery of nikau palms and ferns, leading to a waterfall which fed a pond full of native fish and trickled down towards the sea below. We walked through their native bush, noting medicinal herbs which they make into remedies for themselves and their friends, including much use of the kawakawa which Turtle uses as a tea. She swears it has the same properties as tropical kava, used as a relaxant in Fiji and many Pacific islands. She made a tea from the plant and I went to sleep immediately – which Kuini reckoned was a miracle!

  We had the best night’s sleep ever, out under the stars in their garden, and Turtle let me use her email. I told her I was also called Turtle by my family in Hawai'i and it turns out we both share Nga Puhi, Hawai'ian and Pakeha ancestry. Amazing. I think we’ll stay in touch. Tomorrow, we head off to the Tawharanui Marine Reserve and one of the local Kawerau iwi who once lived on this peninsula will take us to their burial caves and on a day-long coastal walk around Takatu. We’re relaxed and ready for it. This hikoi has made us aware that so many Aotearoans are really looking after their land, from large projects like Koanga Gardens and Rainbow Valley Organic Farm to small plot holders like Turtle and Selkie at Mohala Gardens. Nice redemption for The Poisoners of this country, eh? I knew mahalo meant “thanks” but mohala means “gently unfolding creativity” in Hawai'ian. How appropriate for their work – and ours. We need to keep unfolding, trusting our instincts and our inner vision, to ensure the land remains sustainable and bring others on board our organic waka.

  It’s been great to find email almost everywhere we go – another key to our survival, with the GE-free coalition, the Greens and almost all activist and ecological groups on-line. This is incredibly encouraging to us. For so many isolated organic growers, the net provides support, information and a way to protest on ecology causes while not entering the cities to get nuked by their fumes as we used to have to do. Nobody can sit back and say the issues are too huge and we cannot be effective any more. We’ve heard on line that Helen Clark and the Labour Government have been bombarded by more emails protesting the GE issue than ever received before. Right on – keep it up, Te Kotuku – and others!

  In farewell, Turtle shared this saying with us all:

  Te toto o te tangata, he kai;

  te oranga o te tangata, he whenua

  Food supplies the blood of our people;

  our welfare depends on the land.

  Kia ora!

  We don’t know when we’ll next be in touch –

  but take care of yourselves – all of you – and stay strong.

  Kia kaha – arohanui

  Cowrie and Kuini xx.

  “Yo, Koa! Meriel Watts, Director of Soil and Health, has sent us an advance copy of Jeanette’s speech to be delivered in parliament within the hour, via Sue Bradford. Here’s a copy fresh off the net!” Irihapeti hands over the pages to Koa, who settles down in an overstuffed armchair, bought cheap from Rawene secondhand shop, and reads:

  From: “suebradford.warkworth”

  “Meriel Watts”

 

  Date: Wed, Sep 6, 2000, 4:54 pm

  JEANETTE ABOUT TO SPEAK ON SPRAY DRIFT

  IN PARLIAMENT – WITHIN THE HOUR –

  HERE’S SPEECH

  Embargoed until delivery

  (please also check against delivered speech)

  Jeanette Fitzsimons

  I want to speak today about a Member’s bill which is not on the Order Paper. It was on the Order Paper last Member’s day, having just been drawn from the ballot, and it would have come up for debate today, but today it has gone. That bill is the Agricultural Chemical Trespass Bill, first introduced to the ballot by Jill White some five years ago and finally drawn in the name of Nanaia Mahuta last month. And now it has gone because the Government didn’t want it debated.

  There is a perception in this country that agri-chemical spraying is a relatively harmless practice vital to the rural economy. This is a myth, which has led to an acceptance of breaches of individual rights that are unacceptable in any civilised society.

  The number and variety of cases coming across my desk convince me that there is a growing underclass in NZ of chemically damaged people who, after exposure to toxic substances from their neighbours, are never the same again. I want to mention just two.

  First, the family who set up a motor camp in a quiet rural area surrounded by paddocks, then found those paddocks converted to grape growing and were subjected to intensive spraying with herbicides and insecticides. The child was eventually confined to a wheelchair. The parents suffered a wide range of debilitating symptoms that required them to give up their business, go on sickness benefits, lose their livelihood and capital investment, and eventually separate under the strain. I eventually pursued their ACC claim to appeal and lost.

  In a notorious incident, a Northland farmer, Lawrie Newman, along with his home, property and drinking water, was sprayed with 2,4-D herbicide from a helicopter. He became extremely ill with skin rashes, blinding headaches, racing heart episodes, muscle cramps, emotional instability and night sweats. Occupational Health and Saftey experts found that these illnesses were the result of 2,4-D poisoning, but did not express a view on whether this also caused his later heart attack, weakened immune system, weight loss and lack of energy. Mr Newman is now suffering from the early stages of Parkinson’s disease due to his exposure in 1995. Prior to then he was in excellent health.

  He has no legal redress.

  It is a dysfunctional society that can allow this to happen to an innocent person on his own property.

  There is also, of course, the effect on the livelihoods of other farmers. Anyone who had organic certification and suffered this level of trespass would lose that certification and with it much of their income.

  The Minister for the Environment has offered to form a working group of stakeholders to consider the issue. But her faith that the Hazardous Substances and New Organisms Regulations soon to be announced will address the problem is misplaced. Those regulations will in fact legalise spray drift below a certain threshold based on what officials will decide is an “acceptable daily limit” of exposure. Too bad if several different neighbours spray on the same day and you get several times the acceptable daily limit. Each of them will be legally pr
otected, but you won’t be.

  The Chemical Trespass bill is back in the ballot in the name of Ian Ewan-Street. We will drop it if the Minister’s working group comes up with actual legislation to protect the chemically sensitive and their children from chemical trespass. But so far we’re not holding our breath.

  Koa looks up from the pages, tears in her eyes. “I sure wish Jeanette and the Greens had been about when I got poisoned by toxic sprays and herbicides. Nobody believed us back then. They thought it was me being over-sensitive.”

  “Yeah, well, many still think this – and people like The Poisoners that Cowrie mentioned in her last email have supporters who still collude with their lies and covering up. It’s not as if these fellas don’t know the story. I recall when Meriel Watts’ book, The Poisoning of New Zealand, was first published. There was a huge outcry from farmers, helicopter companies and multinationals and they even tried to shut her publishers down. Said it was all ‘conspiracy theory stuff’. She was personally threatened and there were even death threats. That’s how serious these guys are. They know their livelihood is at stake and they will stop at nothing to bribe people to follow their cause or tar and feather their opponents. Look at the whole ForestsFirst debacle. Nicky Hagar’s book shows the black and white evidence of their campaign to devastate anybody opposing the logging of native timber. Anyone who dares speak out on such issues faces death threats – and they will not be the first or the last ones in history to be obliterated at the hands of The Poisoners and the multinationals who benefit from selling and distributing their poisons.” Irihapeti bangs down her cup on the table in defiance. “This is why so many are joining the fight against GM and globalisation. Both go hand in hand and both are engineered by the multinationals, whose raison d’être is greed, not sustainable living.”