The Whitehouse Bach

First published in the Kawau Island Kookaburra Magazine in 2023.

In 1972, after three years of hard slog running a corner dairy in Potter Avenue, Mt Roskill, our parents, Dave and Hazel Whitehouse, sold the shop. They banked the profits and as the summer holidays approached shipped us off to Kawau Island for an extended stay.

The Archer’s ‘A Frame’ in Little Vivian Bay was to be our home for several weeks. Mark and I, with Mum, flew up to Kawau in Captain Kidd’s Grumman flying boat – an amazing experience. Landing in Vivian Bay we stepped onto that blinding white sand looking splendid in our matching outfits complete with brown cardigans and sandals.

That summer changed Mark and I. The sandals and cardigans were soon gone. With our gang of the four Archers kids we roamed the island and became feral. The Archers had a dog, a horse and a pet wallaby. We fished, trapped, built huts, ate like champs (thanks Mrs Archer) and life couldn’t be better. We left the island in tears with hard feet, brown skin, bleached hair and a love for the place that would never diminish.

Mum was smitten too. Dad always loved the sea and messing about in boats. They saw a future there for us. Ron Archer recommended a bach for sale up in the tidal zone of Starboard Arm, North Harbour. He had built it for Ted Partridge. One bedroom, a long-drop, a tiny fridge and outdoor wood cooker. But it sat on two acres of near pristine native bush. They snapped it up; $7,500. We hadn’t even brought a house back in Auckland. Our grandparents were mortified.

We commissioned a boat, ‘Pape’ (Potter Ave Profits E) from Roy Parise of Westhaven. A kauri clinker 17ft runabout with a 25 horse Evinrude. She was a looker. On her we brought everything across to the island. Timber. Concrete. Beds. Sherry. With the help of family and friends we soon had an extra bedroom and a proper bathroom. We built sheds, dug a new loo, and eventually installed a water tank; previously all our water came from the creek.

Those old friends soon became Kawau owners too. The Freemans purchased around in Moana Cove. Their kids still own it. The Bridges purchased just south of Sharp Point, and their kids still own that.

We were there whenever we could. In the May and August holidays Dad would leave the three of us to return to work. Mark and I would be gone all day returning only for food and to pick up spears, fishing lines or whatever we needed to aid our adventures.

Mrs Tanner lived permanently opposite us in what is now the Stephenson property. Mid-winter in a blowing gale the power had been off for more than two days. Food was low. But there was this fit 70 something year old rowing across in a three-foot chop to deliver hot soup and fresh baked bread from her coal range. A finer meal, I cannot recall.

Sandy Bay was always a prime destination. After an easterly gale we would wake to the sound of the breakers cracking and set off for some ‘surfing’. “Don’t climb the cliffs!” We did. Never broke a bone there though. Adventures made us money too. With Peter Freeman we dived for scallops in North Harbour and then sold them to boaties. All funds raised were spent at the shop and café in North Harbour run by the truly wonderful Wally and Marjorie Holmes. Crisps and peanut slabs our reward for bursting lungs.

Access was never easy. Our first trip included disembarking at Max Rolfe’s wharf (now Lin Pardy’s) and walking along the northern foreshore – no easy task. An encounter with Athol Wilson’s dog “Brown” left Dad with a nasty bite on his chest. The ferry trips, sometimes quick and smooth, were often long and downright dangerous. Three hours in the ‘Tiderider’, in huge seas on an Easter weekend, with most passengers filling the fire buckets with their lunch, was one standout. There were trips in our own boat that should never have been attempted, but we had to get there. The North Harbour Starboard Wharf, of which Mum and Dad were founding shareholders, helped, and that asset serves us all admirably to this day. Dad always said that the difficult access kept the ‘hanger-on-ers’ away – no drop-in guests except those who had dropped anchor in North Harbour and went in search of our island lair.

As we became teenagers and young adults we returned without Mum and Dad, but with our “ratbag” mates. Marcus Bossert was one. He’s still on the island. Different adventures were had; Cards, tequila, midnight swims. We even planted a ‘garden’. We met our partners, and they fell in love with us and the island. Or maybe it was with the island they fell in love and we were the key?

Mark and Linda married and moved to Canada. Tacia and I moved to Sydney. Mum and Dad enjoyed time there alone. They regenerated the bush, tinkered around in the shed, had drinkies with Rob and Raewyn Wilson, Wally and Sue Simpson, the McKenzies, the Petitts, Ross West and the rest of the Starboard Arm crew.

The section next door came on the market suddenly. We had never known who owned it, but there was the for-sale sign. It was a disaster as it really felt like part of our place. Mum and Dad grabbed it, but Tacia and I had to pay. Before we ever purchased a house in Sydney (sound familiar?) we owned 2 acres of bush in New Zealand with nothing on it but a pile of old building materials.

Mark and Linda picked up the next property along from Rob Wilson’s brother. Again, before they owned a house of their own, and while living in Canada, they had 2 acres on Kawau. This time the now grandparents were proud and chipped in to make it a real bach.

We returned for trips and always made time to get to the island. Mark and Linda and their two boys Daniel and Luc, returned from Canada in 1993, The boys, like Mark and I, found their whenua. They replayed our childhoods there. Daniel and Luc and their partners are regular visitors – Daniel sometimes daily, skippering for Kawau Cruises.

When Mum died in 2001, aged just 63, it felt unfair. She deserved more time there. A memorable ‘Hazel Day’ was held at the bach with over 40 visitors attending to celebrate Mum’s life and legacy.

Dad continued to visit but his heart wasn’t really in it. He remarried the wonderful Anna and they enjoyed many stays. Dad passed away in 2013. Some of his ashes are up in the shed. Mums are all around the property. The first time we were all together there after Mum had passed, a dolphin appeared out the front. First and only time. It felt meaningful.

Mark and Linda sold their place and threw the money into a brilliant rebuild of the bach. Tacia and I returned in 2015 and joined in the effort. The place now reflects us as two couples, our lives entwined by a place that to us is magic.

Our bach is not easy to access. Without the boat we need to walk 700m from Starboard Wharf to opposite, and then wade, swim or row across, humping everything on shoulders, ankle deep in mud. We have a sea view, but only twice a day at most. It is not for everyone.

But once you have experienced the magic of up ‘the Arm’ it never leaves you. A morning high tide, so calm in the dawn light that the real and reflected cannot be determined. Stingray gliding past your feet as you wade out to the boat, where you played petanque the evening before. Kiwi poking around in the garden. The kingfisher darting, the heron stalking. The drunk Kereru, their wing sound only interrupted by the mullet jumping high avoiding kingfish. Stillness that makes you aware of your own brain-hum.

And the community. Christmas parties at the yacht club. Scraping oysters off the wharf. Helping fix a neighbour’s reluctant outboard. Sharing tools and timber. Chairing the wharf AGM sitting under the shade of Puriri. Setting traps. Planting for the future. Reminiscing over the past, stories embellished by cask wine.

And the kids. Kids in, under and around boats, in this shallow, sheltered arm. Free to do everything and nothing on the tide, or in the bush. Then resting, reading comics, wrapped in the smell of baking, waiting for the next tide, the next adventure. And never, ever, wanting to think, or talk of, the day you must leave.

48 years. A million memories. That is our Kawau Island.