Fathering In The Sounds

Being a solo parent in one of the more majestic locations in New Zealand has its pitfalls and its pleasures. Richard King tells his very personal story.

There is a new hole in the door where the rats have eaten through. When opening the door there’s that old familiar musty smell of a room being closed up for some time. The rats and mice have been busy.

There could be a possum or two in the roof as well. This is The Bach. A real bach, not a modern palace with electricity and running hot water. We do have a flush toilet we are just not sure where it ends up! We boil water for a shower in an old aluminum preserving pan – just enough for one person.

This is done by standing in all weathers outside on the front wooden steps and pouring water from the pan over ones self after first soaping down.

The water, which is piped directly from a creek, is boiled on a ships gas cooker, which has replaced the old coal range, rusted by years of salty air. For light we use candles and kero lamps. These are quite bright but not enough to read by. The bach has been built from bits and pieces added on year after year.

It has a new roof of iron after the last roof disappeared into the surrounding forest after a particularly violent old man southerly storm.

The builders never used a level and every wall or panel is off square, and we love it that way! A fireplace serves quite well for heating. Unless there’s a strong wind blowing and we end up being smoked out.

Our one concession to the modern world, a black and white TV and radio hooked to a 12-volt battery. It only has one channel but it was all we had ten years ago when my son and I left the world we knew to spend some time out here together.

It was supposed to be for a couple of weeks. We didn’t know it or plan it then but we were to spend 18 months at the bach living, as the correspondence school inspector later reported, in “abject poverty”.

I can still recall how my son, Doug, and I laughed and laughed at this man’s clouded view of our little world.

He did not see the home smoked salmon we had for breakfast that very morning caught by my son off the jetty just 20 meters from the front door.

Nor did he see the home-prepared pork, smoked by us using manuka cuttings, hanging in the back shed – a gift from a local pig hunter in return for a feed of black gold (paua) fresh watercress and spuds.

He had stumbled from the bush late one night, cold and hungry, having got a little temporarily confused (lost) whilst on his hunting trip.

The inspector didn’t get to taste the fresh eggs and home baked bread, a gift from the caretaker of a millionaire’s property a few bays away that in his isolation had become our friend not just a neigbour.

If the inspector had known what we had been through in years previous and how that had influenced our choice to live in what we thought of as paradise, he may have changed his tune.

I was training as a social worker on my final year to graduating. My son was 13 at the time. Although this was only ten years ago, people’s attitudes to a solo father bringing up his son were quite different.

We were constantly harassed by official and non-official do gooders who never seemed to understand that I was the custodial father, not the one who paid child support and liable parent contributions but to whom the payments were to be made. And that I was not a child abuser, women hater or mentally deranged.

Many times we would be visited by those who had to investigate the malicious comments made to the authorities. Presumably by those who could not tolerate that a father can raise a child and do it with as much love and guidance as a mother.

Each and every time, as soon as a complaint was made, my benefit would be cancelled and so would begin a tiring battle often taking months to get it restored

There were many small incidents but one that still haunts me is when I was given the chance to go to Australia for a week to visit friends and to attend a job interview.

My son was aged about 12 at this time. I made an arrangement with my neigbours and friends next door that he would be looked after by them for the week I was away.

He could go to my house after school to use the computer for his homework etc but at night he would stay with the neigbours, eat with them and sleep over.

Well I had no sooner arrived in Australia when I get a phone call from my very distraught neigbours. My son had disappeared with no word or trace and they had called the police.

It wasn’t till the next day that I found out what had happened to him. Doug had been taken from the house by social workers and put into a foster home. Someone had reported him abandoned.

The neighbours tried to explain what was arranged and I’m sure my son tried as well but they wouldn’t listen. Well of course I was home on the next flight but when I went to see CYPS I was given the run around. They would not release him. They wouldn’t tell me where he was. Three days later, after repeated approaches by my self, the neigbours and my lawyer I was still no better off.

Then late at night on the third day my son knocks on the door, crying and very shaken He told me what had happened. He was playing on the computer after school when big women just walked right into the house and started chasing him.

He ran to my bedroom. One woman said he had to go with her. He refused but then two other women arrived and he was physically forced to go with them. He kept telling them that the neigbours were looking after him but to no avail

They took him to stay with a family who were kind but insisted that he call them mum and dad. They told him that he was a member of their family now and that I was not coming back. They had let him go to school that day and he had slipped away and hid after school, returning home when it was dark.

I was so angry at CYPS. I complained to every one I could get to listen but all I got was my benefit cancelled, as per usual, and a note that I was in arrears for non-payment of liable parent contribution for the period that he was not with me! They didn’t come to get him again and they never apologized for what they did.

It took several months to get the benefit restored, and much longer to change the order of liable parent contribution back to me. For over a year I received a bill for arrears of liable parent contributions that I wasn’t liable for in the first place.

However these constant interruptions to our lives did have their effects At 13-14 years old, Doug was having some problems of his own making and was going off the rails. He was hanging out with friends who were a bad influence, smoking, wagging school etc.

What parents/parent have not seen a youngster go through this time and wonder what they can do?

He got it into his head that the grass would be greener with his mother who lived some distance away. After a heated argument in which he swore at me for the first time ever he decided he was off and packed his bags. I knew that I had to let him go as hard as this was for me.

I remember being at the bus stop like it was yesterday; me waving goodbye fighting off the tears. He in the bus, at the window, not smiling. Trying hard, I think, not to cry but determined in his endeavour. I hope we both never have to experience that gut wrenching feeling again

Just a few months later he came back. He had had a rough time facing the realities of life. We never spoke much about what happened. We just moved on, but I could see that we needed time out together for his sake and mine.

I realized that here I was pouring my energy into being a good social worker and yet my son, my own flesh and blood, needed me. The best thing I could give him was my time.

The idea of us staying at the bach came to me whilst we were there for a two week holiday. On returning home I suggested it to my son who jumped at the chance. Within a short while I had swapped my car for a boat and motor, and we both dropped out of school and life as we knew it.

Then suddenly we were at the isolated bach, 14 miles by boat from Picton and no road access. A life with just the basics, our lives controlled by weather and tide.

We have discussed those days many times. We both now realize that they were the best of days. I saw a boy who wanted to be a man develop into an honest trustworthy loving teenager. He in turn saw his father’s strengths and weaknesses, becoming his good friend and buddy in the process. We both grew up a lot.

It’s autumn now at the bach and the krill are in the bay turning the water red. There are a million memories of the times we spent together.

Of giant king fish playing in the clear shallow water near to shore.

My son’s first solo sail to visit a girl he met in town that was staying at a resort.

Sailing our little 16-foot yacht through storms and high winds, living on board and arriving at a port 50 odd miles away from home.

Winter storms that shook our bach and had us thinking that any minute the whole place would take off.

Magic nights when the fish flashed brilliant phosphorescence in the bay looking like liquid jet trails

Trips to town, struggling to carry the huge battery to recharge for another month, and returning loaded with fresh supplies.

The taste of the first scallops caught in a drag net that we made ourselves.

Possums dancing on the roof at night sounding like a man in hobnail boots.

Catching, preparing and smoking all types of fish.

My son being towed along the bay by a giant barracuda he had hooked on his line.

The day he leaped up from his schoolwork and ran outside,jumping off the wharf to swim out to play with a school of dolphins.

I remember the time we were invited to join the yacht race and we won a bottle of rum in our 16-foot live-aboard. My son sailed homewards in high winds with me shouting rum-soaked orders in the black of night. And later, after trying to start a fuel-less motor in high seas, we were rescued by our sailing friends who took our soaking bodies to the local hotel to dry in front of a roaring fire. And more rum to warm the insides. You should have seen the look on the tourists’ faces.

We had frequent encounters with a lone dolphin that adopted our boat. She slept next to it at night and played with it by day, pushing at our hull with its back as if to help us along. The locals called it Woody because it stuck around and when it had a baby they called the baby Chip! She loved showing off her baby to us.

Swimming upside down with the baby on her belly, gently pushing it to the surface, and all this right next to us whilst we were under sail. Later we saw her with a school. She had made friends at last. We were so happy for her that we both had tears in our eyes. She had touched my son and I deeply.

I recall the awe-inspiring beauty of a pod of orcas on a perfectly still morning, their fine misty spouts of water making rainbows in the air. A rare and welcome sight in our bay but rather scary at close quarters.

They were bigger than our boat and swum straight at us, diving under it at what seemed the last second. We heard their whistles coming through the boat’s hull, as if laughing at us, as their huge bodies glided past.

For these and the countless other memories I thank God for giving me the wisdom to do what I thought was right when many were telling me otherwise.

I owe a dept of gratitude to my friend who let us use the bach back then and now, and to all those we met during those times There were so many good hearted people who saw what we were doing and gave us the courage and practical assistance to carry on.

My son today is working and visits me often. We still spend time together and we talk often of those days He will never forget those times and I will never regret spending them with him He is a loving and caring young man who I am very proud to call my son.

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