Golden Bay #3

After we come down off the hill and come around that final sharp horse shoe bend at the bottom of the hill, you know the one where you change down for the second time going up the uphill on the Takaka side, followed by e few more bends with the bank on your left and the creak on your right, then we are out on to the straight and there on the left is first big paddock, then the big car park with the kids' play ground at the back of it, and there are the fuel pumps standing there on their own, then the pub itself. It is followed by the woolshed and cattle/sheep yards, all on the left, as you make the big sweep right hand bent with the turn off to the left that leads of up to the Cobb valley and the Dam on the left, as we run on to the straight that takes you into Upper Takaka with the NZED sub station on your right and a few minutes later the school on your left by the big tree, then the Tennis court, the bus shed.

Then the road rising up with a few small bents and onto another straight down towards a sweep left hand bent, where my mother and father used to live in the house on the right, many years before I was born, but I think my sister may have been born there. The start of the bent, which is shaded by big trees on the left, and the hill on the right, which always made it interesting in the winter for driving, as ice settled there and out the other side and on the right, was old Steve Hearts place and the piggery on over the bridge there, where Sowmen used to live out n the left and then there was a saw mill round to the right. We went down a bit of a straight then around to left. Just here there was a road/track on the left, easily missed, that runs up through the scrub; this is where some hippies had grown some happy backy plants and had them hanging in buckets up in the pine trees, that grow there, which the local copper thought quite funny at their sneakiness of hiding it. This part of the road had a lot of scrub on either side of it, then there was a bit of hump and hollow road then, then a bit of a hill, in which you went down, from memory had silver birch trees, growing on the left hand side, up on the bank, as the road swung around to the left and followed the bank around, where there was a big stand of pine trees, where Bill and Coral Gilbert lived.

To be continued.

Golden Bay #2

To say I have not sat in some strange part of the world lonely, scared and afraid with tears in my eyes and ask god give me strength to face the crap and then within a flash my mind is filled of the view of the Bay, warm, sunny and green as I had so often viewed it over the many years as a child and young man and wished I was back home, is so unbelievable, it is beyond belief for anyone to imagine. Those thoughts and dreams have given me strength to go on when all has seemed to be lost. Then gritted my teeth and gone on and persevered with the pains of loneliness and fear.

Let's see how good my memory is after all these years, remember it is now some twenty years since I last drove the road home and then it was my brother who was driving and the last time he saw the valley and on the way out we stopped at the rock for one last view of the valley together. I think in all honesty he knew then he did not have many good years left. It was the last time he was to see the valley of our home and we shared that moment. Sadly, he died in a foreign land that had become his home. In not so many words, I think, he wished he could go home from the way he was talking that day on the rock but I can never be sure other than to say his memories of the Bay had been long lasting like mine, even though he had some nasty memories of things that had happened to him there. A place that god had truly blessed with such beauty and gave so much peace to us both.

To be continued.

Golden Bay

Where ever I have been in the world during my travel whether it was in the USSR or the Antarctica, I could always bring myself to see the valley below me in my mind as I stood up on Rocky point on that hill that gave the greatest view and look out across and down the valley.

In the early day the first thing you would notice was the big red roof with the words Rat Trap painted on it. Of course, it was the Upper Takaka hotel, which no longer exists as it burnt down many years ago. Many a story would have been told there by the boys from the rugby club on their way home as they would stop and celebrate their glorious victory or to drown their sorrows from a crushing defeat at the hands of the teams from over the hill. Like Mot United, Rivals, Celtic, Stoke, Upper Motere, Rewaka, Golden Downs and Nelson to name just a few. Of course, there was always a good rivalry between the clubs in those days and the games were hard and sometimes dirty, but none the less great times.

The valley always looked gren and clean, and as your eyes either follow the river as I wandered its way down the valley or one would follow the road. Either way, the view was fantastic and I always used to say I was never ever home until I stood on that rock and say there was my alley and home.

Even upon returning to my place of residence where ever it was in New Zealand at the time after I had been overseas I still was not home until I had stood on the hill and that rock and looked down the valley.

Perhaps, it's because my father and I had stood there so many times during my childhood and looked out over and down the valley with my father and he had pointed out things to me that were of interest to him as my family had lived in the Bay since 1875. With time they had become to mean so much to me also, perhaps, that's why to me it will always be home and pray to god I get to see it one more time.

To say I still love the Bay would be an understatement: it is home and will forever be my home.

To be continued.