Up Awakau Road

Living in a remote area you need to be resourceful. Our nearest neighbours were a fifteen-minute drive away; the closest supermarket two hours’ drive away. There were seven children at my school, including my two sisters, and my mother as teacher, principal and administrator.

Decades before sustainability became fashionable we lived off the land out of sheer necessity. My mother, Kaye, grew our vegetables and fruit and, as her mother Lois had done, preserved the excess for the winter months. Our top cupboards were always filled with chutneys and jams as well as jars of apples, quinces, cucumbers, tamarillos and gnarly organic pears, from a fifty-year-old tree, picked ripe and fragrant and bottled the same day.