Living the dream

Twenty years ago Simon Burt swapped urban Auckland for rural Gladstone. He hasn’t looked back.

By Simon Burt. Photo by Esther Bunning.

It was a typical Wairarapa March morning when we went to meet the Gladstone school bus for the first time – crisp, foggy, full of expectation. For months afterwards I broke into a broad grin driving back home – it all seemed so romantic, so perfect. 

Our boys were eight and three when I dragged my wife Pip down here from Auckland almost twenty years ago. I needed to get out. Pip said she’d give it a year. We’d bought the old Ponatahi school, with its bare-floored classroom and boys' and girls' toilets. We all slept in the workshop, surrounded by our belongings. The shower was across the playground. We got goats and a dog. The boys and I loved it. 

Gladstone was the name given to a planned township of 150 sections subdivided from the 6,000 acre Tupurupuru Estate in 1870. By 1873 only 23 plots had sold and the promised railway line hadn’t eventuated, but Gladstone School was established in 1876 as planned. In 1968, Gladstone School assimilated the schools from Te Whiti, Maungaraki and Longbush, and as a result Gladstone became the catch-all name for the wider rural district. The Māori name for the place is still Tupurupuru, after a young warrior who slayed a taniwha that had been devouring locals in the hills behind the school.

When I was at teacher’s college in Wellington in the 1970s, friends and I often rode over the Remutakas to pilot our motorcycles through the region’s curvy back roads. We’d stop at the Gladstone pub or grab a pie from the Post Office and Store. Gladstone School had a warm, inviting look, and I remember wondering if I could get a job there someday.

Twenty five years later, living in Auckland with my young family, battered and bruised from working in advertising, I again thought of Gladstone School. I imagined the boys having woodburners in their classrooms, climbing trees, bringing lambs to pet days, going to bus-stop parties and to school “camps” in the city. Rugby in the mud, motorbikes on farms, eels in the creek ... everything a townie dad could dream of for his sons. And dreams they would have remained had Pip not agreed to at least give my crazy lifestyle scheme a go.

The Post Office and Store stopped selling pies in 1997 when it became home to wheelwright (and Carterton’s current mayor) Greg Lang and his wife Ali, a coach painter. Together they make traditional wooden wheels and restore carriages in The Wheelwright Shop next door. Greg and Ali are like the cornerstone of Gladstone. They instigated the annual Scarecrow Festival, during which residents create straw men, sometimes making a social or political point, and display them in a paddock. The School’s roadside scarecrow line-up causes traffic jams, and the Scarecrows’ Big Day Out is its major fundraiser.

Next door to the Langs, the pretty Gladstone Church stands elevated behind a white picket fence. In a nearby paddock, a tumbledown weatherboard cottage is a constant source of speculation about when it will totally succumb to nature.

As you head south along Longbush Road, manicured lifestyle blocks with exotic sheep and solar-panelled roofs seem somewhat incongruous with the muddy utes of passing farmers, dogs barking at the wind. The real cockies of Gladstone are entertained by us lifestylers, but while they laugh at our townie mistakes, they are always quick to help.

Opposite The Wheelwright Shop, Gladstone Road heads west to the Sports Complex, a multi-use function venue and home of the all-conquering Gladstone Rugby Club. I fondly recall junior post-match speeches, little boots caked in mud and frost clattering on the concrete path. Boiled saveloys, ginger slice and orange cordial; mugs of tea for the parents from the serving hatch outside. Later in the day, grown up players and supporters gather inside at the bar for their rituals.

In front of the Complex is the Gladstone Inn, simply The Gladdy to locals. Built in 1870 as a landing house for the ferry that used to carry people here from across the river, the building became a hostelry after a wooden bridge was built. The current, recently-upgraded pub replaced the original, which burned to the ground in 1934. On fine weekends you’ll see leather-clad riders out on the veranda enjoying a beverage, as my biking friends and I used to, chrome handlebars and mufflers glinting in the sun.

Across the bridge – now a more sturdy concrete – is the Hurunui-o-Rangi Marae, spiritual home to Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa. Like the pub, the Marae’s wharenui is a replacement, the original having burned down in 1955. The community is currently undertaking a major revitalisation, including a papakāinga (social housing) project echoing the traditional village structure.

Marae spokesperson Ra Smith says the new facility will be a meeting place for all of Gladstone. He says they are thankful to the Carterton District Council for erecting a road sign – Te Ara Takapau (The Takapau Pathway) – pointing to the Marae. Takapau references the name of the original wharenui and is the area in Hawke’s Bay from where many Gladstone Māori descend. Ra says the Council's gesture is a bit of “cultural redress” for when, in 1948, the Marae was severed as the new Gladstone Road was built right through the middle.

If you were at Hurunui-o-Rangi in 1913, you may have witnessed the first successful flight by a New Zealand-made aircraft, the Fisher Monoplane, which took off and landed at Middle Run farm next door. A half-scale replica of the plane is displayed over the road from the Marae.

In 1889, daffodil breeder Alfred Booth bought Middle Run from Charles Rooking Carter – after whom Carterton was named – and planted exotic bulbs from Holland around the magnificent homestead, Harwarden. Later, Alfred's son Henry planted a farm paddock in different daffodil varieties, which his wife Alice and some local ladies picked to earn money for the Plunket Society. Since the 1950s the paddock has opened once a year for the public to pick their own.

Carterton itself has piggy-backed on the Gladstone daffodil concept. In 1996 the Council declared Carterton the “daffodil capital” and began using the flower in its branding. The town hosts an annual street market to coincide with daffodil picking – a steam train brings families from Wellington, and there are shuttle buses to and from Middle Run.

Opposite Middle Run is Gladstone Vineyard, known as much locally for its musical and theatrical events as for its highly-regarded wine.

Pip’s grandmother Grace Booth grew up at Middle Run, although I didn’t learn this until we moved to a house with a view of the farm. I did know that three Booths have been mayor of the district, and that Pip’s father was born and raised in Carterton. Over the years, I’ve discovered that my wife actually has family connections all over the place. 

In the early days, whenever I thought things were getting a bit tough for city-girl Pip, I’d suggest we head back to the big smoke. But the offer was never accepted, and with every bus stop party, house project, pet day, new job and victory speech in the frost, I could sense a further embracing of our country life.

It’s taken her a while to admit it, but I know now that Pip is very happy to call Gladstone home too.