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It's my habit, when driving up the South Island, to pass by all the houses I've lived in. I'm not sure why I do this. It's got something to do with reminding myself, or placing myself; joining the dots that lead to now. I also just like to see what they're up to these days.
Some time ago I spent a weekend on Banks Peninsula within sight of one of those houses. Andrew Foster, Chris Ward, Martyn Roberts, and I - the creative team behind the play "Peninsula" - stayed in a cottage round the Beach Road in Duvauchelle Bay. From the sea wall I could look across the curve of the mudflats at the windows of my old bedroom.
The four of us spent the weekend collecting sounds and images, trying to capture the ambience of the place, and I tried to convey the connection I felt from having lived some formative years there. Anyone who visits Duvauchelle Bay will come away with a memory of hills and sea and vast low-tide mudflats, and of course I have all of those. I also have the kind of intimate memories that roaming kids collect from their stamping ground. Although the story of "Peninsula" is fictional, the places and some of the incidental anecdotes are real. I showed my friends the places mentioned in the story, places which are still immediately recognisable after forty years, which is somehow reassuring. I've lived in Wellington, then Auckland for most of my life now, and have become so used to change and unfamiliarity that for a moment it surprised me that the rock we used to swim off as kids is still the same shape.
I wrote "Peninsula" because I was lucky enough to be commissioned by the Christchurch Arts Festival, and because it's my strongest association with this area. It's an acknowledgement, a nod to a time and a place that was a step on the way to here and now.
Over in Duvauchelle, my old house is now a holiday home. Its owners were there, so I introduced myself and showed them some old photos I had. The house has been renovated, but they had known it as I remembered it and showed me through. "This used to be a bedroom," they said, as I stared out the window at an incredibly familiar view. "Yep," I said.
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