Finding a father

by ABC broadcast journalist Nicole Chvastek

BEAMING with pride my brother proudly showed me the most lurid tie I’d ever seen – all colour and movement. It had been a treasured Father’s Day gift and while I saw lurid – he saw beautiful because the giver was a beloved son.

It is a magical relationship, that bond between parent and child. As a kid growing up in New Zealand I’d never known who my biological father was. That meant I never quite knew who I was either, although fate sprinkled us in chances we passed by each other unknown.

My adopted family and I holidayed in Keri Keri, a stone’s throw from his village. Everyone in the district knew him. My holiday snaps show me as a grinning teenager casually draping my arms around family friends who lived near the town. They knew him well. But no-one knew he was the father of a white girl who visited from Auckland.

When I moved to Melbourne as a teenager he moved to Sydney to perform in a band called The Polynesians. I later saw publicity shots of him – four boys, all white smiles and brown skins draped in Hawaiian leis. I guess it didn’t matter that the publicity shots got the Polynesian origins wrong. Apparently you’ve seen one native you’ve seen em all.

The patronising ‘happy natives sing us a song’ stereotype really grated. Why was his worth diminished because he had brown skin? So he battled bigotry while I grew up in my white bread world. But he got through. He was handsome and charismatic and boy could he sing. No-one knew his pitch-perfect English was the result of white teachers who beat him as a six-year-old in the 1930s as punishment for daring to speak in his native Maori tongue. Dishing it out to the local little barbarians was de rigueur in those days.

I was a city-dwelling broadcast journalist, chasing newsmakers and deadlines in a daily frenetic blur, when I was given the information I needed to make contact.

I could not have imagined the story that emerged. He’d been born on a sandy white beach into the Nga Puhi tribe. His mother – my grandmother – was a fisherwoman whose husband drowned in a violent storm at sea while trying to reach a boat which had sent out a distress signal. Suddenly a single mother but determined her bright young boy would get his education, she caught fish every day from her ocean backyard, loaded it into saddle bags and then walked beside her pony for miles into the nearest town to sell it.

It was a tough way to make a living, but, when it was time the money was there and my father was dispatched to a nice white private boarding school in Auckland.

Life in New Zealand’s biggest city was alien for a Maori boy from the Bay of Islands. His wild environment taught him all he’d needed to know and his bay’s sapphire seas and ancient Kauri forests were his instructors. So, as he’d done in his small village primary school, he showed up at his first city high school class in bare feet. The teacher was outraged and ordered him to stand.

“Look at the savage!” she announced to his guffawing classmates.

He quickly learned about the humiliation and antipathy you can generate just by looking different. He’d already learned how to attract a belting by speaking another language. He learned how to fight. And he got his education.

Our first conversation was on the phone. It was painfully stilted. How do you talk to the man who is your father? Do you make nervous jokes? Do you adopt the reserve you would keep for a stranger? Or do you relax into the loving but manufactured banter of family conversation with someone you’ve never met?

The compromise was polite warmth.

He said it was lovely to hear my voice.

I could hear the exhaustion in his. My father had joined the Labour Party. By the time I’d found him he was a member of the New Zealand government.

In fact the Parliament was sitting and having a new daughter sprung on him while juggling the issues of state was the last thing he needed.

He apologised for the rushed call with a fatigued graciousness.

But we agreed that we should meet. And so I packed my best tourist t-shirts and flew over to Matauri Bay, the breathtakingly beautiful seaside village where he lived.

Getting there is a five hour trek north from Auckland. But the effort is rewarded. As you make your way to the top of the last hill at the end of a winding road, the landscape drops away dramatically to reveal the sparkling expanse of the Bay of Islands, its sea framed by a soaring blue sky and lush endless hills. Little picture postcard islands lie dotted off the coast where volcanic fury hurled them millions of years ago.

I drove down into the valley towards the sea at a crawl (my father warned me that tourists have been known to crash off the edge of the hill after being stunned like rabbits in headlights by the view). I stopped only briefly at a tiny white wooden church.

In its grounds were crumbling headstones with names and messages etched in the rock in that mystical Maori language. I tried to imagine the lives of the people who had lived in this beautiful but remote place. Who were they? In the silence I thought I felt wives, husbands, brothers, sisters. I also thought I’d never get this done if I didn’t snap out of it.

I continued on to find my father’s house. It wasn’t far away from where I’d stopped at the church, around a small headland and tucked into a cove overlooking the sea. On one side a line of giant grey rocks reached up from the waves and then tumbled down again into the next bay. In front me was the stretch of white beach where his mother had given birth in her rudimentary hut made of New Zealand fern. At the end of his driveway was a modern cottage he’d built for her when he decided she was too old to live in her tribal hut. Word was his mother never did like the shmick running water and the new-fangled electric light.

I pulled my standard issue hire car into a park and drew breath. He’d given me life but owed me zero. Who was I kidding? A couple of random genes entitled me to nothing. Here stands a white girl with a journalism degree from Australia.

A muscular Maori man appeared on the verandah and strode down the stairs towards me. His dark eyes were glowing and his face creased into a wide smile.

“Hello” he said and pulled me into a hug.

I stood uncomfortably in my silly tourist clothes with my silly suitcase on wheels behind me. But I recognised the line of this man’s jaw. Something about the timbre of his voice was profoundly familiar. So I hugged him back. And while it is true I remained a ring-in in that village, I was, in that moment, no longer a stranger.

Finding my own father has changed the way I see other people’s fathers. I’m endlessly in awe of how many people have ‘normal’ relationships with their dads. They see each other all the time. They get picked up from school. Their dads make speeches at their weddings. They play backyard cricket. They front up at Christmas in a red suit and a white beard.

I watch in delight as my adopted brothers here in Australia – now fathers themselves – receive their gifts of love from their own children. The rapturous celebrations over an ‘A’ plus for an essay written in that cute kiddie lettering. The gentle goodnights. I see that these are the greatest of stories.

And me? I’m happy with just a quiet nod in the direction of a little village in the north of New Zealand to the Maori bloke with the big smile who lives by the sea.

Keeping the Families of

Proud Supporters of the

Happy ChillOut!

Hepburn House residents are already getting into the celebration of all things ChillOut and LGBTI. As usual, they will be a welcome addition to the Grand Parade on Sunday and they are also celebrating the building of the new LGBTI and friends wing - which is really taking shape.

Manager Dianne Jones said the first step had been getting the Rainbow Tick, followed by the building of a wing which "ensures everybody in that wing, whether they are LGBTI or friends, are accepting of people’s choices". For information head to www.hepburnhouse.com.au, phone 5348 8100 or email reception@hepburnhouse.com.au

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