Hunting Role Models

By Brendon Smith

There are more male role models in a boy’s life than a father. Brendon Smith recalls a story from his own childhood and what it meant for him.

The first story I ever told was for news at school, about my Dad’s cousin’s wedding in Huntly when I was five. Dad’s cousin Linda was extremely cool – hip at the time, she looked a bit like Lulu and had lots of groovy records.

It was the late sixties so My Girl Lollipop and What’s New Pussycat were our favourite songs and we played them over and over, dancing up and down just like they did on TV.

Linda’s parents had both sadly passed away before her early teens, so she lived with my Dad who was a few years older and happened to be an only child. As my Dad began to court my Mum, they often included Linda as their pretend chaperone. These outings must have meant a lot to her as Linda later told us kids that she wanted to spoil us just as she had been spoilt by our Mum & Dad. We always had ginger beer and orange chocolate-chip ice-cream at Linda’s place.

The day of Linda’s wedding was my first memory of wearing a suit, my job was to hold the veil, but I thought they had said “tail” and it didn’t sound like a very good job to me. My suit felt hot and stuffy while my sisters were both in glorious light bridesmaid dresses. I remember the rich leather interior in the limousines during the ride to the church, then I followed from a safe distance down the aisle and only held the veil for a brief time near the front.

There were quick vows, a big reception with speeches including my Dad’s, lots of treats and I ended up being sick in the gents from too much lemonade, so that was the end of my news story. However, that was far from the last thing I would learn from my time with my Huntly cousins.

My new cousin in-law Bob was a soccer playing, ‘A’ grade mechanic from a local family. Linda & Bob moved into an old house down a long road, just past a bridge and with no neighbours where they had parties with loud music, lots of people, a piano-accordion and dogs barking in fun.

Bob had a big ‘dunga’ surf board and taught me to caddy for him on golf days. We counted the seconds between lightning and thunder one wet winter day and every year he would go duck shooting at his possie down by the Waikato river. One May school holiday we checked the possie in the afternoon, ate big, slept well and woke early, gathered all our gear and headed off. I carried an air rifle while Bob managed the labrador and the shotguns, but over the course of the morning we only saw a few, seemingly lost ducks. Due to the total lack of targets we decided to board the hidden dinghy and row to the cigar shaped island in the middle of the river.

We parked the dinghy and climbed up to hide in the trees. A pukeko was pointed out to me, blue and black with an unfortunately stylish nose, it was looking straight at me from a clearing twenty-odd metres away. I was told it would fetch a few beers for the soup Bob’s mate brewed, but I felt a moment of sympathy for the ambivalent native, missed and never shot at game again.

As we left the island, Bob asked me to row and we were making slow progress when two big ducks flapped out from the trees on the island. Bob told me to steady the boat as he lifted his gun to his shoulder and let off two quick rounds. One of the shots connected and the duck dropped into the slow moving river just across from us. I rowed to get closer and our trusty labrador was sent into the water to retrieve and clamber back with the catch. We had action, and I was mightily relieved to have been of some use.

After that we packed up and Bob let me drive along the gravel straights back to the main road. Cruising carefully along, all of a sudden Bob saw something over the paddocks beside us, lifted his rifle from between his legs and fired a few shots out the open window. He hit one duck so I quickly stopped the car, Bob opened the rear door and sent the labrador off again, so we had two big ducks after all, and I now had to learn how to pluck feathers in a hurry that night.

Other times were spent gathering mushrooms and painting the soccer club as part of a working bee. The fundraising events and parties made me realise that there was more to the fun than just the music and drinking. It became obvious that people met and would often help each other, new neighbours would be welcomed and real friendships fermented while singing in the sun.

We often saw Linda and Bob when visiting our Nana when she moved up to Manly near Whangaparoa. One summer they held a few parties at a house near the beach, people were hanging off balconies all through the beautiful evenings.

The party music included many great songs, but the lasting tunes of the Beach Boys and Neil Diamond still stick out from those carefree days.

I had enjoyed many times with my Huntly cousins, New Zealand was waking up to pop culture and there was a new, more liberated perspective on life than my slightly older parents had been exposed to. Although I would occasionally visit them over the following years, Linda and Bob’s eventual relocation to Australia meant I would see a lot less of my Huntly cousins in the years to come.

But before they left, my Dad once asked Bob to look after his car, a mint white and black VE Valiant. I distinctly remember how much Bob appreciated the car and how honoured he was for the trust conveyed in the favour. Near the end of my teenage years by now, this helped me to reconnect with my Dad.

He may not have been the outdoor, hunting type, but he was highly respected by one, and as I had already noticed, quite meticulous about looking after big investments.

I began to understand the proverbs about how it can take a whole village to raise a child and how most children will have one mother, but it is OK to have more than one father figure, especially for boys, throughout your life.

Later I realised that it must be OK to learn how not to do certain things by watching your parents. If Adam raised a Cain, it has to be OK for a child to develop their own life or to make changes if needed like breaking the chains.

But the best thing I learned was that it can take another male in a boys life to help him appreciate all of his Dad’s already grown-up values and attributes. I appreciated the honesty, diligence and devotion of my Dad, and I still do.