Being Dutch in New Zealand by Yvonne van Dongen for North and South Magazine.

This is my story too.

Please click on this link to read the full article.

https://www.noted.co.nz/life/life-in-nz/being-dutch-in-nz-character-customs-and-fitting-in/

"The Invisible Immigrants" an article by Yvonne van Dongen for New Zealand Geographic Magazine, May. 1999

Please click on this link to read this thoroughly researched and exceptionally well written article about my people and their connection to New Zealand.

https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-invisible-immigrants/

This article carries my family story further into the time when I was growing up as the son of immigrant's in New Zealand from the late 1950's.

This image of me building an asian elephant for the Auckland Zoo accompanies the article "The Invisible Immigrants"

Photo credit https://www.nzgeo.com/author/arno_gasteiger/

An excerpt pertinent to my family reads...

"Most Dutch migrants’ children, however, would find little to interest them in Club Amsterdam. To all intents and purposes they are indistinguishable from any other New Zealander of northern European extraction. Yet for some, the conflict of cultures has left an indelible impression. The drive to be like New Zealanders, and thus different from their parents, has created a rift in some families, while others have actively rejected their parents’ obsession with work. A few, like Harmen Hielkema, have felt the tug of two cultures strongly in their own life.

Hielkema’s parents are from the Friesian-speaking area of the Netherlands, and so he speaks Friesian, Dutch and English. They were one of the few “foreign” families in Torbay 30 years ago, and this redheaded son has strong memories of feeling different and isolated.

His mother’s yearning for home prompted the family of four children to pack their bags and leave New Zealand for good in 1971. Harmen was 13, just the right age to explore the emerging youth culture of Holland at the time. He soon fell in with a group of friends, whipping around the narrow streets on mopeds, all wearing corduroy jackets and trousers, enraptured by rock music.

But even here Harmen was a curiosity. He was handier than most children his age, and good on a bike and a boat. Yet he spoke an old-fashioned form of Friesian which had changed during his parents’ time away. When he spoke in shops, the person behind the counter would invariably eye him askance and ask where he came from. Given the strange ring to his Dutch, they assumed New Zealand must be somewhere in Holland.

15_Dutch_12

For Harmen it was the visual difference he remembers most vividly, even now. The skinny fillets of houses hard up against one another, the multi-level perspective, seeing a train running across the top of a dyke with a ship at eye level, all viewed from your car.

Lacking qualifications, his parents found it harder to get work than they expected, and three months later they returned to New Zealand. Back home again, the newly sophisticated Harmen felt more isolated than ever, and though the feeling wore off, the experience left its mark.

Dr Robert Leek, a Dutch lecturer in English at Auckland University, agrees that many Dutch New Zealanders would no longer feel at home in the Netherlands. “The Dutch of the 1990s are very different people from those who emigrated in the 1950s,” he says. “They are less traditional in their culture, and more international in their outlook. After seeing the Netherlands today, visiting Ons Dorp is like stepping into a time warp.”

While Harmen Hielkema feels somehow “between cultures”, he says his own children love their Dutch background. New Zealand has changed too. “They’re not having as much trouble with our surname as I did.”

For the Dutch, 1992 has been a year of "coming out". Whether that means attaching cotton braids to your hair or cycling in clogs and full costume, the country has enjoyed the spectacle. Geweldig!
For the Dutch, 1992 has been a year of “coming out”. Whether that means attaching cotton braids to your hair or cycling in clogs and full costume, the country has enjoyed the spectacle. Geweldig!
ARNO GASTEIGER
Hielkema may have put his finger on the true inheritors of the Dutch tradition: the third generation. Thriving folk-dancing groups in Hamilton and keen interest shown in the new Dutch course at Auckland University indicate that the third generation may be more interested in their grandparents’ origins than their parents were.

That’s often the way. The further you are from the Dutch, the more interested you are in them. Dutch husbands notice their New Zealand-born spouses are often more enthusiastic about their heritage than they are.

Since the Dutch wave of immigration, a multitude of newcomers, mainly from nearby Pacific Islands, but also from, South Africa, England and Asia, have arrived in New Zealand to change things once again, bringing the same hopes, arousing the same prejudices, and settling into the nation’s microcosm just as naturally in the end.

Mind you, any self-respecting Dutchman reading this is bound to add the rider, “Yes, but we make the best immigrants.”

"They were New Zealanders" continued

Trevor Bayliss started this whole project off when he wrote his book "They Were New Zealanders"  about the Kelly family of Waima into which he married.

The title he chose is entirely suitable for a continuation of my family story, the story of Dutch immigrants, pioneers in their own way, to this new nation.

My father Roelof Hielkema of Auckland wrote about his early life growing up in the Netherlands during World War II.

From the world that I grew up in Roelof's story is of an alien world and a life far removed from that of my reality. It is the exceptionally courageous step that my father and mother took to emigrate that I owe and attribute my very nature.

Roelof writes...

"My Father (Harmen Hielkema) worked for a road construction firm. He drove a road roller. Although steamrollers were in common use till well into the 1950’s, my father drove a diesel powered one.

The road roller of my grand father Harmen Hielkema, my Omke Foppe, Tante Aali and my father Roelof at the outbreak of war, summer 1939.

Our family lived in a wooden caravan with big wooden spoke wheels. It had a wrought iron tow bar so that it could be towed behind the roller when we shifted. The caravan had a kitchen cum living room with a coal range in it. There was also a small bedroom with bunks; a double bunk for our parents and a double and single bunk for my eldest brother, my sister and myself. Plumbing unknown to us then, we had a portable loo with a bucket in it and a bundle of neatly torn newspapers for the wiping. Our water supply came from a 1000 Litre tank on wheels, which was part of our cavalcade when we moved.

I was born in 1933 so my earliest recollections are of the late 1930’s when the world was just emerging from the great economic depression, poverty was endemic although my father had a job and we were therefore better off than many other people, we could only live soberly. Even a one-cent ice cream was a rare and special treat to us!

My father Roelof, His mother Feikje, my uncle Foppe and my aunt Aali. In the back groung the road roller, the water tank and the family home, a gypsy wagon.

I was the youngest for a long time. We traveled all over the country wherever my father’s work took him. Three weeks in one place, two months in another and so on.

In most of the towns and villages that we came to we were made to park in the gypsy camp, because the local policemen always thought that we must be gypsies because we lived in a caravan. A lot of villages had a designated gypsy camp. Sometimes we lived by the side of the road, or on an industrial site like a brick factory or something like that.

When traveling from job to job we used to trundle noisily along the road at walking pace.. The ten-ton roller towing the caravan, towing the water tank, with the dunny lashed on top.

We children used to ride on the roller with dad, mum used to be in the caravan. We would stop for meals and travel in this way till our destination was reached and the curious villagers would cluster around to see us set up our home. The caravan just so, nice and level, the water-tank close by and the loo.

Sometimes on bigger jobs there were other road workers with their families, also in caravans of course and we would be a little community.

In the summer of 1939, we and five other families were encamped on the outskirts of Utrecht, where a new suburb was being built. It was there that I first went to school. I must have been a difficult pupil at first. I remember that I could not sit still and kept wandering away by myself. I had always had the freedom to come and go school discipline was not for me.

My Father was very proud of the new radio receiver that he bought that year and it was always switched on. These were stirring times with frightening news bulletins. Germany has annexed Austria; Germany has invaded Czechoslovakia! Hitler is a threat to world peace! In September Germany has invaded Poland! England and France declare war!

For a long time our life went on as before. I December 1939 my brother Willem was born. I remember the snow was deep all around. I remember I used to love to pee in it because it made yellow holes and interesting patterns if you really tried!

On the tenth day of May 1940 the radio announced that the Germans had invaded our country. People stood around in groups passing on rumours and what they had heard and seen.

The next day there was shooting, paratroopers and aeroplanes.One evening while we were having our meal outside a large bomber came flaming out of the sky and crashed about a kilometer away from us. The southwestern sky was full of smoke and at night there was a red glow in that direction. Rotterdam burned for many days and nights.

Then just as suddenly our war was over. The Dutch had surrendered. Life went back to being normal, or so it seemed. German soldiers were everywhere but proved to be friendly and did us no harm. For the next five years our lives were dominated by the war and the German occupation.

Us kids, we did not know that there was anything wrong with life. The austerity we experienced then was only an extension of the austerity before the war. Most working people had more money than before, wages were higher, unemployment was less, child benefits were introduced, free medical services for children, etc.

There was not much that you could spend money on, travel was curtailed, things like tyres for bicycles were unobtainable, shoe leather was scarce and food became rationed. All the country’s resources were taken for the German war effort.

Our family moved again, on a freight train this time. We went to the south of the country to a province called Noord Brabant, to a village called Gilze Ryen, where the Germans established an airfield. My father and many others worked there for about eighteen months making roads and runways. For us children it meant yet another school, this one was run by a religious order. We, as outsiders, had a hard time of it at first, because we were not Catholics. The other children thought that the devil must be in us. I was bullied a lot and got a lot of hidings on the sly because I did not have a guardian angel.

Eventually we became more accepted and had a good time, roaming the woods and fields. The winters of 1941-1942 were very severe. The snow lay deep and all was frozen for months on end. Every day my brother Foppe and I took our sled into the forest to gather dead branches for the cooking range. In those woods was an old field kitchen and other military equipment. Many of the trees were blasted and damaged by shell fire, the remnants of a battle between a French brigade and some German units.

Our school was held in the attic of an old leather tannery because the school itself had been destroyed during the fighting.

In the middle of 1943 we moved again, this time to a permanent depot that the road-making firm had established a few kilometers out of Utrecht, alongside of the Amsterdam-Rhine canal. This was another paradise for children, because of the swimming in the canal, the fishing in some smaller waterways in the neighbourhood, the orchards, cherries and apples that could be raided by us and also the rabbits and hares that we could catch in our snares. We had a vegetable plot and an air raid shelter. The shelter always frightened me because it was deep under ground and very dark and damp. There were five caravans and ten children all together, so we had a lively community. We had to walk about an hour to get to school in Utrecht, along a narrow brick road on top of the dyke alongside the canal, then across a large steel arched bridge, through an avenue with large oak trees, a park and across two more canals.

Our fathers came home for a weekend every fortnight, because their work was a long way from where we lived. We were no longer allowed to live near where the work was as we had done in the past.

I remember playing by myself a lot. I realize now that I was the only boy among eight girls. My eldest brother Foppe had been sent to Oldeboorn in Friesland to live with our grandparents so that he could attend the secondary school there.

Foppe was five years older than me and always teased and bullied so I really did not miss him at all! My brother Willem was six years younger than I.

Willem and Roelof at a local fair in the 1940s

I made friends with the German Soldiers manning the anti aircraft battery near us and learned to speak their language somewhat.

There was always something interesting happening, about a mile away there was a big factory, where it was said, parts were made for the German V1. Rocket propelled weapons. This factory was often the target of attack by the allied forces dive-bombers and missile carrying aircraft, such as Typhoons, Mosquito’s, etc. There were aerial battles between the German and allied fighter air-craft that escorted the bomber squadrons on the way to Germany.

During the day American squadrons came over in great masses and during the night the R.A.F was on the job. The noise was deafening at times when the ack-ack guns around us stared up. As a boy I thought it very exciting although ever since I grew up I have marveled at the folly of it all.

In May 1944 it was decided that it had become too dangerous for us to go to school because of the air raids so we spent the summer helping out in the vegetable garden, fishing for eels and swimming in the canal. We used to love the German torpedo boats that came past in the late afternoon on their way to the sea. These boats went very fast and caused a tremendous wake. We used to surf on the waves that they made!

How our Mother coped with all this I don’t know. At the time I was an unthinking boy and only since I grew up have I wondered how she managed during those crazy years. Virtually the only food we had came from our garden plot. Everything was rationed, like the small piece of green bread that was our weekly ration and the small amount of blue milk. I cannot remember that there was anything to eat other than what we could scrounge for ourselves. In the spring we collected the eggs of the wild birds, lapwings, snipe and ducks that inhabited the countryside around us. We set long lines for eels and snares for rabbits. Sometimes I was able to score a loaf of bread from the German supply truck. We had no salt, no butter, no electricity, very little fuel, and soap was a luxury.

By this time the men of our five caravan families stayed home. The trains no longer ran, there was no traffic on the roads, except women and children and of course military traffic. The Germans kept rounding up the men in the towns and put them to work in German factories so any men that remained stayed out of sight. We faced another bitter winter with little food or fuel. Somehow my father had organized a two tonne truck to take us to Friesland. It was early January 1945, Mum, Dad, my sister Alie and my younger brother Willem who had just turned 6. We sat on the back of this flat deck truck, huddling under a piece of tarpaulin, blankets and clothes and what food we had left. It was mostly kale boiled in water, no salt or anything. It was difficult to force down our throat.

Most of the space on this small truck was taken up by a wood burning furnace and a kind of gas-bag. The engine ran on wood gas, not very well, and our progress was slow and noisy. It snowed constantly. We were stopped many times during our two day journey by German soldiers but all they saw was a skinny woman, some skinny kids and an old man with a grey beard. My father was only 38 at the time but his identity papers had been falsified to show him as 10 years older so that he would not be taken to Germany for slave labour.

We finally arrived at my aunt and uncle’s farm in a village called Olderkoop. There we saw some wonderful things on the dinner table; potatoes, ham, fresh vegetables, milk, butter and bread, simple things to you now, but to us then, a miracle from heaven. Our parents rented an empty house on the edge of the woods. The previous occupant had died a short while before, the name on the front door? H. Hielkema!

We lived in that house for eight months and to me it seemed like paradise. Looking back fifty years, today, I am sure that it was. If you walked out of the back door and through the garden gate you entered a real forest, a long way through the forest led to open Friesian moorland. There were wonderful birds and hares, rabbits, foxes, snakes, deer, salamanders and woodcutters with a team of oxen.

Aaltsje and Roelof Hielkema

My sister Alie and I went to the village primary school. There were children from all over the country, displaced by the war and unable to go home to the south of the country where many of them came from. The snow disappeared in early March. The middle of April brought beautiful, warm weather and also an American armored column that set up camp in the churchyard, right in the middle of the village.

To us these people looked like aliens from outer-space, they were well fed, beautifully dressed in their Khaki uniforms, fine boots and all! Their field kitchen and supply tent had something that I had never seen, white bread! They gave us chocolate and oranges and joked amongst themselves. They really seemed strange to us, we were a people who had forgotten how to laugh.

There was some minor shelling and skirmishing, then all went peaceful again in our bit of countryside. Then on the 5^th Of May came the wonderful news, the Germans had surrendered. Our war was over.

August 1945 our family went back to Utrecht. I can’t remember how, it must have been on the back of a truck, I have a vague recollection that it was a closed in one. The railways and bridges had been largely destroyed.

Due to the influence of my father’s employers and because we had lost everything during the last winter, we were given a rental house in the centre of Utrecht. This house was one of a block built just prior to the war. The surrounding area had been mostly obliterated in some bombardment, but our house and the school next door had survived intact, as had the 13^th century church across the street.

In this wasteland, a large area had been cleared of rubble and became the site of the biggest fairground I have ever seen. The amazing bustle of it went on for months. Great steam driven fairground organs made the air vibrate with their noise till the early hours of the morning.

There were merry-go-rounds and swings and cakewalks, shooting galleries, several horror rides, ferris-wheels, the electric lady, the fat lady, the young lady that turned into a skeleton, fire eaters, knife throwers, escape artists and hustlers of every kind. There were soldiers and their girlfriends, fights and police, such an amazing show. I spent all my spare time there; the edge of it was only 30 meters from our front door! We also had parades, brass bands, dancing in the streets, the war was over and the future looked wonderful. It was great to be young., when I was thirteen, I felt convinced that the earthly paradise had come. From now on all would be perfect, no more war, no more hunger, no more oppression, After all, we were told that was what the war had been about.

I am afraid that the dream was gradually broken; at first the Dutch sent troops to Indonesia, to prevent the people there from becoming independent. This shameful episode went on for about two years.

Eventually, pressured by the United Nations the Dutch allowed Indonesia to become an independent republic.

The Iron curtain came down across Europe and the dream of peace and plenty seemed more unlikely all the time.

In 1946 I went to a technical school and followed a course in carpentry. I got my diploma in 1948 and found a job with a building contractor. I did not like the work. I had to fetch timber from miles away out of town with a handcart. I had to sweep chimneys and unblock drains, etc.

At last I was assigned to a gang that started to build a villa in a town called Zeist, right in the middle of the woods. I used to leave home at six a.m. and cycled to Zeist to be at work at seven. Every part of the job was still done by hand, from digging the foundations to mixing the mortar for the bricklayers. We cut the timber, planed the profiles and made the window frames, sashes, doors, kitchen cupboards, staircases, the lot! I was only the boy, the tradesmen were all elderly and very skilled, this whole villa, a big place with a thatched roof, only took about seven months to build. I don’t think that it could be built in that time today, to the same high standard, in spite of all the modern machinery available.

My father talked me into taking a job with the Post Office as a trainee draughtsman. I really wanted to go to sea but I was not allowed. 

I joined a military band and learned to play the oboe, the uniform was a great hit with the girls. I spent eighteen months high under the roof of the Chief Post Office in Utrecht. The building itself is a major work of art by a famous architect called Berlage; early art deco. Every time I go to Utrecht I go back to admire it. However I did not like to be cooped up inside, so I became an apprentice dragline operator. Having done the night school exams for the Post Office I started night school again and took the course in engine technology. This was quite a feat when I think back on it because I left home at six a.m. each morning and cycled the 15 km to Soosterberg, got the machines ready for the days work, greasing the tracks, filling the tanks, cleaning everything in sight, etc. I used to arrive back home at six thirty at night, quickly eat something, and off to night school four nights a week. Yes I did get the diploma!

Roelof in 1951

My father Roelof in his first ever sail boat an olympic class international sailing canoe. I believe from what he told me that this boat was rotten and sank not long after this picture was taken. Roelof went on to build a number of excellent small sail boats for his children in New Zealand.

Life is strange at times. I met the brother of Minke De Boer (the attractive blond talking to my father Roelof far right) recently where I now live in Hokianga New Zealand nearly 56 years later! My father introduced us in Utrecht in 1971 and whispered to me " That woman very nearly became your mother"

Roelof and friend Sake in Paris 1951. Together the cycled all the way from Holland and back.

Re reading what I have written so far, it occurs to me that most of the detail is missing, the smells, the tastes, the feelings, the incidents that are so vivid in youth.

All my life, I have had the feeling that the world is a fascinating place, in spite of its many horrors. This feeling is still strong in me now and is becoming stronger, possibly because as one gets older there is more time to reflect on what has passed. There is also the tendency to make comparisons between then and now. Older people tend to think that things were better when they were young. What we reflect on is our feelings and how things were perceived to be, not how they really were….

Roelof Hielkema.

41 Deep Creek Rd.

Torbay, Auckland.

1999

“If these walls could talk”
THE STORY OF WAIMA LODGE

Perhaps this is what they might say…

“I am a dream house. My name is Waima Lodge, I was built in 1920 by my first owners, Maurice and Sarah Kelly. They were inspired to live at the foot of the Waima Tuhirangi range, my owner wanted my roofline to reflect those lofty, beautiful, multi pitched ridges that preside over the valley where I stand. I believe that I was designed by the famous colonial architects, Cresswell and Trewithic, in Auckland city. My heart is made of kauri and Totara from that same ancient forest. No house was made from finer materials. I know this because Maurice was the son and grandson of timber merchants. As a merchant himself he could afford to lavish the best on his beautiful Sarah (of whom he was very proud). Sarah was a real Ariki, the Great Grand daughter of Eru Patuone who signed
the Treaty.

I have many stories to tell and I have seen many changes in my 90 years.
I am now a grand old lady with strong bones and elegant features.

I was very happy in my early years providing comfort and shelter both physical and spiritual to my lovely family. There was Maurice and Sarah, their children (though adults) were Arthur, Paikea, Inez, Marjory, and Audrey. I presided over all their weddings standing proudly behind many family portraits.
Many important people, leaders, chiefs, politicians, artists and musicians from all parts of the world came to eat in my formal dining room the sumptuous meals that Sarah prepared for them with produce from her famously diverse garden.

The 1930’s were a wonderful time for us all, the adults and their spouses lived in my 4 bedrooms. The cook and the gardener lived in my little cottage and helped Sarah with all her activities.

During the summer all my windows were opened to let the cool breeze waft through my rooms, the front door held open by the large greenstone adze that Mr. J Webster gave me. In the winter my beautiful brick fire places crackled with the heat of the fires that warmed my heart.

Every Sunday a gentleman dressed in black with a white collar came to minister his faith with the local people who would congregate in my lounge hopefully hanging on his every word. Afterwards the children who came eagerly ate the delicious smelling baking that Sarah offered them.

Once I remember an airplane flew low and loudly overhead. Several weeks later a photograph came with the postman, it was a picture of me taken from high above where the hawks fly! That picture still hangs in my lobby today.

Through all this time the Waima River flowed past my garden toward the Hokianga Harbour and the Tasman Sea, such a constant and interesting companion to me, whispering stories of where she came from and where she was going.

Time wore on and my beloved Maurice and Sarah, Geoff and Inez, passed away and other people came to me for shelter, they worked in my garden and lived in my rooms, unaware of my proud beginnings. I began to show my age and I began to worry that the rain and the rats that gnawed away would get the better of me.

In 2005 when Julie & Harmen first met me I was feeling very depressed and I was terribly shocked when they started to pull out my windows and doors. When they replaced them I began to feel a great deal better and after a coat of my original colour I began to look like my old self again. All my interiors were redecorated, my bathrooms and kitchen were modernized and I felt positively grand once more. What it is to be loved!

I have rewarded their family, friends and their many local and international guests with the level of comfort and security that I once did for my first family and to a level that Julie and Harmen had never experienced before.

Unfortunately the time came for Harmen and Julie to move on, they told me that they are seeking a new family to live with me.
I hope that my new owners will care for me as Julie and Harmen have done and enjoy the life that I know I can provide for them. The air that wafts through my rooms in the summer, the water that runs so plentifully is still as clear and pure as it was all those years ago.

One year ago my new owners came to live with me.
How fortunate can an old house be? Patu and Erina Hohepa have returned to their turangawaiwai, Dr. Patu, Jimmy Hop’s younger brother was born in the house that I can see just over the next paddock next door. He even wrote a book in which he mentions me with my old family in its pages.
Patu and Erina have an extended whanau in the Waima Valley so at last my rooms are again reverberating with the happy activity of my new family. Erina bought me a brand new roof which Harmen and Julie could not afford so now I will be able to keep dry and secure for a further century or so.

I believe that I am now in the hands of those who truly belong here, who’s children will continue to appreciate and care for me.


Harmen Hielkema & Julie Holton, June 2011

Old survey maps of the Whakatere Manawakaiaia Block featuring the Waima house and Kellys'old store

 

1939 survey map featuring house and out buildings.

Below map of Kelly Store site drawn earlier in 1924

.

The Waima House & Garden

Maurice Claude Kelly 1872-1962

The Waima House (built 1920)

“The house, although he would never admit, even to himself, was the realisation of his dreams. With the drain on his pocket of putting his children through school and university, although they lived comfortably, Maurice had no chance to build up a cash reserve. Now with the children’s schooling completed, Maurice was going to build the house which would state to all Hokianga, his financial soundness and his rightful place in the community.
It would state to all his cousins and inlaws in the south that he was not just “poor Mossie” who had made an unfortunate marriage, but Maurice who with Sarah had produced a family accepted and respected in the county, and now they would be installed in a house superior to the ones possessed by those he would have called “The Auckland Gang.”

It would have a large, a very large sitting room, richly furnished, it would have a large and comfortable kitchen, with all the gadgets and fittings that Sarah could desire, it would have at least four bedrooms. It would have a dining room where he could display to his friends Sarah’s cooking talents and would have an entrance, imposing and spacious…….It had all those things! It also had large lawns, surrounding flower gardens, ample vegetable gardens and orchards stocked with apples, pears plums, peaches and quinces, subtropical fruits, citrus of all kinds, grape vines, and a host of small fruits. It must be emphasised that every plant and tree was the result of Sarah’s work alone, as Maurice was completely useless as a gardener.

Above all, this house would be made of the most superior materials, Kauri for the framing & floors, Rimu for the joinery and trims, Totara for the cladding, and all the plumbing and kitchen fittings would be of the finest quality…..And they were !”



Sarah Kelly 1884-1967 (Great grand daughter of Eru Patuone)

“Her housekeeping skills were legendary. She made all the clothes for her children and herself, her baking of all pastries, cakes, pies, puddings and all things good to eat, was beyond compare, although it is recorded by her daughters that her own high standards did not extend to passing on her knowledge, impatience at their incompetence and stupidity would usually end with her snatching away the task involved and doing it herself. Sometimes when her impatience with Maurice was stretched a little too far she would proceed to address him by his second name Claude, which she knew he hated and was secretly ashamed of, because he thought it was “sissy”

She also, when I knew her, had gardens of about an acre. The vegetable garden took up the major part, and in full summer at the house in Waima, one descended the back steps, down the path between the grapevines dripping with fruit, through the back gate and into the vegetable garden proper. with row upon row of head high corn, with melons twining in and out of the stems, then, a half dozen rows of potatoes, a patch of kumera, odd rows of cabbage, beet, and carrots……in a damp corner a patch of Taro and in this mid summer, the rows of strawberries only hinting at their earlier abundance.

And in all sorts of corners were small fruits, and in every vacant fence line you would find a peach tree, not one of these tasteless highly coloured peaches of today, but a white peach, or a white fleshed nectarine, an odd fig, two or three plums, half a dozen apples, a little grove of tree tomatoes. Past the tank stands clothed in purple passion fruit and onto the lawns surrounding the house with every few yards an orange tree, a grapefruit, a mandarin, lemon trees….. I have not invented any of the plantings, I have missed out dozens.

Of course we have overlooked the flower gardens. Every boundary and house wall had its borders planted with whatever had taken Sarah’s fancy…..for all this was the result of her planning, her planting, her cultivation and her harvesting…..”

Excerpt quoted verbatim from “ They Were New Zealanders” A history of the Kellys of Waima, Hokianga written by Trevor Bayliss, ( Son in law of Maurice and Sarah Kelly ) for the Kelly family. Self published,
Auckland 2001.

The Big House at Waima, for most of the locals now, Waima Lodge, has remained a symbol of European influence in the South Hokianga district.
P.W. Hohepa obliquely refers to it as one of the “superior houses” the unfurnished valuation of which in 1955 was ten thousand pounds (and connected to the electrical grid!) in his 1961 thesis “A Maori Community in Northland” on the social structure of Waima in the 1950’s.

“The House” is also the realization of my dreams.
I feel as if some of the design and location ideals and values that I hold were shared by Maurice Claude. We were also in similar stages of life, Maurice was 48 years old when he had the house built by McMillan in 1920. I was 48 when I bought the house with Julie in 2005.
Although I am clearly a more practical person than Mossie (as he was affectionately known) Maurice loved and demanded quality. I’m glad he did.
I have now completed the restoration of 3 villas. Of the two previous, one was in Helensville and the other in Grey Lynn, both were box villas of the type sold in kit set form by the Kauri Timber Company prior to the First World War.

Harmen R Hielkema.

Julie and I write ourselves into the history of Waima Lodge

SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW


By Julie Holton & Harmen Hielkema

Ka riro he au heke, e kore e hoki ki tóna mátápuna anó.
The flowing current moves on and will never again return to its source.
(We will not get a second chance)

Kura-pae a Máhina.
The red ornament of Mahina.
(One man’s rubbish may be another’s treasure)

Are our current lifestyles really achieving our long-term expectations of wellbeing, health, wealth and prosperity?

Lifestyle seems to be a much overused and sometimes misused term, implying much more than it really means and perceived by many to be the indulgence of a privileged middle class rather than a birthright for all. Julie and I are of that age group and educational level where we, as with many of our contemporaries, are seeking to live closer to our personal truth.

As a lecturer in design at the Auckland University of Technology I tended to lace my design teaching with an emphasis on ecological sustainability in the timeless way. As time went by I felt more and more hypocritical of our theoretical approach to teaching and learning, particularly in regard to the way in which we were living from day to day in Auckland City. Eventually a day came when our discontent and inner tension became too strong to ignore.

Health may well be one of our greatest assets. Without a fully functioning immune system, wracked with doubt & anxiety, stress, sleeplessness, chronic pain and illness, low resistance to viral and bacterial infection, life can be difficult and joyless. Long term depression and low-grade performance are a vicious, negative spiral from which it can be difficult to extricate one’s self.

Julie and I were aware of what was happening to us. We had been suffering the effects of chronic illness and the conventional medical prognosis for both of us was very poor. It was this more than anything that decided us on a drastic course of action to change our lives before the opportunity (and our energy) passed us by.

We visualized our new lifestyle and chose our new property using a mixture of logical analysis by way of a long list of criteria (which the property met by over 90 %) and intuition. We responded strongly to our feelings of “rightness” as I maneuvered the curser with growing excitement over the web page featuring our home to be. My arm and right shoulder prickled with goose flesh as we read the land agent’s description, which on reflection feels more as though the house chose us.

Our criteria comprised of a list that Julie & I agreed to compile independently. We merged the two lists and found that we valued similar things. Our criteria included things like:

Our next property had to be fertile, well-drained and north facing, preferably coastal, with a view (or at least near mountains) and/or a river. The property needed to be in an area where we had access to our families and guests without having to fly, preferably within half a day’s drive of Auckland. We wanted an established garden with fruiting trees, a good quality dwelling suitable for our business plan (operating a hosted luxury lodge) and it had to have a workshop. The house needed to be in sound condition with plenty of character. Bonus criteria included open fires x 2 a wetback fire, solar water heating, a bore, roof and river water, an ancient water pump and reticulation system and a generator house plus proximity to broadband connection.

We used all the research tools available to us to find what we were looking for. Internet, real estate catalogues and tips from friends and family. Our year long search lead us to a property in the South Hokianga district of Northland in a small rural Maori community called Waima where we purchased an old kauri and totara villa on 2.25 hectares of rural land with a river boundary. We put our Auckland home on the Market and, after a successful sale we resigned our jobs and moved north.

The winding down of our Auckland existence was quite a wrench with unexpected resistance from surprising quarters, the shock news of our resignation was met with cheers from our colleagues as if we had somehow made a great escape from a concentration camp. They remarked on how brave they thought we were. Our families took some time to adjust to the idea however, they could see that the change was well considered so they trusted our decision to make that change. To be truthful we were suffering from anxiety for all the reasons that people have experienced when they let go of their safety lines and plunge into the unknown.

Packing up our belongings and loading them on a truck takes no time to describe and words simply cannot convey how we felt as we creaked and groaned our way northward in the teeth of a June gale laced with driving rain in our overloaded vehicles. We arrived in the dark and bogged the van on the lawn. My first step onto our new property was into a cowpat, one of many of the infamous free-range and feral animals we were to encounter in Waima.

Julie and I have both come from diverse working backgrounds both finally settling in careers that suited our natures by trial and error, see our website for more of that story www,waima_lodge.co.nz. This random and varied career path had given us skills and insights that have proven very useful in our lives together today. Cues and clues to the story of our journey describing the steps we took to where we are today are scrawled on the pages of several journals full of lists and drawings of things to buy and projects to complete. Writing lists with clear achievable goals and checking them off after completion is both rewarding and essential to our getting this far together.

We had written a detailed business plan relying heavily on the knowledge we gained from learned theory and bitterly bought from our successes and failures in our previous endevours. We sought expert advice from our accountant and bank manager. We thoroughly researched the history and geography of our chosen area and its suitability to our new lives.

The restoration and refurbishment of Waima Lodge took careful planning, patience, skill, hard work and determination to reach this stage. Among the challenges was the modification of the old building to suit a modern way of life. The house had been built to the highest possible standards of design, workmanship and materials and as a result was sound and perfectly suited to its location and the needs of its first owners in 1920. The passage of time and the neglect of subsequent owners had taken its toll. We replaced all the plumbing & wiring, refitted all 4 bathrooms, the kitchen & redecorated the entire interior. We installed insulation in the ceiling and under the floor, redesigned & rebuilt the solar water heating system and redesigned & installed a wood fired wetback radiator, heating system. Most of these were features that were in the house when we bought it though they were under performing or not working at all. An H.R.V. ventilation system provides low cost dehumidified ventilation and has transformed the atmosphere of the house.

We have relied heavily on sourcing recycled materials in order to maintain the integrity & quality of the build and keep costs as low as possible, for this reason we have undertaken most of the work ourselves though we have brought in outside specialist help in the form of electricians, plumbers and painters when the need arose.

During the course of this 3-year project, I have come to realise that the house and garden in its present form at Waima was the result of people whose lifestyle was ideally suited to their needs at the time. It afforded them and their extended family the necessaries of life throughout the great depression and the Second World War. On the site were two large diesel DC generators, a ground water bore, a river fed water source and an efficient roof water collection and reticulation system. The garden was planted extensively in fruiting and nut bearing trees, grapes & passion fruit. They kept chickens for eggs and meat and cultivated a large kitchen garden of vegetables and herbs.

There was abundant wildlife in the surrounding area including fish, fowl, hares, rabbits, pigs & goats. There was some reliance on trade, goods and services from the local town of Kaikohe, which at first, was met with the use of a horse and buggy and later replaced with a motorcar. No provision was ever made on site for a crossing or facility for a car in the form of driveway or garage, which says something of their attitude and relationship to the car! We benefit from the foresight of Maurice and Sarah Kelly and pay them the respect they deserve by collecting, recording and telling their story, which is a very important one in the history of the Hokianga.

Over the past 3 years we have partially tamed an enormous Capability Brown style garden, re-established the vegetable gardens, we have a flock of chickens, we preserve spray-free orchard produce and Waima Lodge (now the home of Harmen and Julie) is up to a standard that Maurice and Sarah would be proud and pleased to see, right down to the original colour scheme. Coincidently Maurice was the same age as I am now (50 years) when he completed the Waima house project in 1920. As a result of our hard work, clean water, air & organic home grown produce, our health has been restored to a very high level, which allows us to feel and fully appreciate the quality of life that we knew we were entitled to.

We have replaced our petrol line trimmer with a scythe, a tool that is more efficient than its modern counterpart and is proving to be better for our selves and the environment in which we live. We use our car as little as possible and carefully plan outings to coincide with as many errands as we can fit into a day. Further initiatives relating to the creation of our own energy and further refining our systems continue as time and money allow.

We over ran our budget for this project by a factor of 10 with unforeseen expenses and problems with electrics and plumbing. Also our expectations and fortunes have changed with the ups and downs of the local and global economy with the consequential slowdown in the tourism industry. We have adapted by continuing to search for alternative sources of income including hosting special dinners for the local community, art, music (we both play music for our guests and neighbours) and other creative projects, which continue to grow apace.

On a positive note we now have the opportunity to share our lifestyle with our local and international guests for our mutual benefits. Where pale exhausted visitors arrive they leave us revitalised from their stay with us, enthused that they too can choose to make the changes necessary to their lives. Several of our friends and colleagues were inspired by our move and made similar changes themselves. Perhaps change only occurs once we have made the decision to apply what we (and our ancestors) have learned over many lifetimes to our attitudes, behaviour & actions.

Whilst after three and a half years we still cannot say with any certainty that our activities will sustain us in the long term we continue to strive to that end. Would we recommend that others do what we have done? Of course, yes! Only be sure that you do this for the right reasons for you. Choose carefully, you may just get what you really want.

"The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." Marcel Proust.

It has been slowly dawning on me that the story of the Kelly family and their way of life in Waima is a blueprint for our own lives, a step back… to the future.
(For more of the Kelly story go to; http://waimalodgekellys.blogspot.com/)

Harmen Hielkema

Harmen Hielkema and Julie Holton on the sun porch at Waima 2009

Editor’s Note:
The extraordinary growth of “Lifestyle Blocks” over the last decade has spawned a supporting system of magazines and books extolling a kiwi version of The Good Life. In that time more than 60,000 lifestyle blocks have been developed, mostly around the urban fringes with many of their budding Richard Briers and Felicity Kendals seeking a more sustainable life, free from the stresses of the corporate world.

The 1975 British sitcom followed on from the (first) 1974 oil crisis, and marked a kind of watershed for many viewers reaching their midlife and concerned for the first time about living “outside the system”. In their home in Surbiton, Tom and Barbara Good pursue a sustainable life, digging up their front and back gardens and turning them into allotments, growing and bottling their own fruit and vegetables, raising chickens, a goat and a rooster. They generated their own electricity, using methane from animal waste, and they even attempted to make their own clothes. They also worked at selling or bartering surplus crops for essentials which they could not make themselves as they tried to cut their monetary requirements to the minimum with varying success.

Part of the reason for the show’s success lay in the fact that even then, significant numbers of the viewing audience could see the sense and need to reduce consumption and to conserve fragile and finite resources, to live more holistically. That awareness is now even more widespread and has partly fuelled the dramatic shift to the country. Here, Julie Holton and Harmen Hielkema share their own experiences of that shift from an inner city professional life to an old totara and kauri villa on two and a quarter hectares with a dream of turning it into the sustainable B&B now known as Waima Lodge..

Tony Ward

"Organic Explorer"