Life, sometime after the horse was harnessed
First Melody ( Just like ) Starting Over
Wire bowl. Market purchase. $10. 2024
2026
2025
1964
1969
1970
1965
A film by Richard Linklater. 2025. Nouvelle Vague. Scene. Truffaut is applauded at the Cannes Film Festival. 1959. Photograph by Stephanie Beth. 2026 0
Image of string game being demonstrated to Eldson Best, early amateur Anthropologist. New Zealand. c 1821. Te Papa. 2025. Photograph by Stephanie Beth. 2026 00
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Heading into our Wedding Breakfast. Ruakaka. 1969
David and I married on Ruakaka Beach, south of Whangarei, on Labour weekend in 1969. We had a brilliant year: cultural diversity abounding.
An American had come to live in an old sugar barge that used the trade route between Fiji, Sydney and Auckland. Emory Jones was a potter. Another potter Peter Yates, lived in a tree for several months before he purchased a second barge. Whangarei attracted an interesting range of individuals, many of whom were in the Arts and Crafts. Clive Williams was a sculptor who taught Art at Kamo High School where David had taken a position. He was Welsh born, trained in London, lived periodically in Spain before emigrating with wife Neen and two sons, Rhys and Grant. Dave Monro, a science teacher, expounded on the wonders of the scientific world and with his wife Pat and their three beautiful daughters (Toni, Briar and Catherine ) formed the base of our social group that year. Two other couples, Martine and Chris Busck and the Hills, Michael and Chris rounded out our crew who became known as the ' late diners club' Lots of music, good food, great wine and stimulating conversation. We lived in a small house in the village of Hikurangi a few miles north of Whangarei. We hung bolts of hessian cloth to cover unattractive walls and set up a flat that was very 1970’s. Chic ugly. We set off travelling after saying goodbye to dad and walking over the bridge in the Manawatu, just before the gorge south of Woodville. We waved to him there, stayed first night with a friend and headed to to Australia.
For me, it was an utter treat to go forth into the world as a young couple. Between 1970 and 1975, we had no task harder than slipping into English speaking schools to do a few months of cheerful teaching from time to time, he at the high school strata, me with six year olds. They were the times for earning money to live off, bell hopping and waiting tables. We were living in the heart of the Western educated ‘living at large in the present '. We went to Australia, England and Canada for income. The rest of the time we crossed over seas, the continents of the ‘ old silk road’, listening, smelling, cautioning and conversing with fellow travellers, reading, looking, wondering about civilizations, the ‘melting pot’, biases, similarities and differences.
David had in 1965 taken a crowded van trip from England to the Dutch shore, the German interior and to Hydra, followed by massive skiing activity in Austria, before I met him in Whangarei. I had dabbled in the country here with what my mum best taught me, to make, do, sing, play and dance. Outside I did the other lovely things: ride, play, work, do sport, swim in the sea. I took up a Certificate out of Ardmore Teachers College in 1967. I escalated myself into an Art Teaching job at Whangarei Girls High school. This is how David and I met. I met Clive at a February Art Teacher’s cocktail party. He hoisted me into view for David. David picked me up as a blind date. We were up and running, got married and were off in late December 1969. Sojourning overseas young, we were those who didn’t take the route of starting a pregnancy. Travel was a fluid process then, by air, train, shared driving and hitchhiking. Ours was a young Westerner’s utopian time. David, being Canadian and not American, meant that he had not had to take up a military direction with Vietnam. His primary pursuit of interest was history.
AUSTRALIAAustralia was that cultural shock it always is. Bright lights. More pluralism, raw edges. Not only did I see my first ever public conflict in action - we arrived to Sydney in 1970 when a huge waterfront strike was going on - we also had hitchhiked with a mad ass freight truck driver who had been 36 hours high on drugs, on the road delivering frozen peas back and forth between Brisbane and Sydney. I got bitten by a large insect the first time I sat in the dust on the roadside. I read my great grandfather’s diary in my twenties, started in 1910, about how he had only lasted living over there in Oz for a few months in 1856 as he couldn’t stand the flies. However, I went to to Art Galleries, in Sydney and Melbourne. We were part of a Geelong Folk club and we took the memorable step of riding on the Ghan train. After first briefly working in Geelong , me in a cafe and David teaching a term of school, later, assembling cattle pens in Northern Territory for six weeks , hitchhiking to see bugs, beetles and desert flora and fauna with a ' gypsy family' of two diesel driven caravan families who zig zagged the continent to mining work, we tucked into a tent in Darwin and planned first departure. This was to Timor.
In Timor, before travelling through Malaysia, a study of Colonialism stratified into tiers was visible It was gorgeous lingering in the Tropics. Daytime was a chance to see betel nuts used and spat, hear cock fight gambling without getting too close. I was introduced to green tomato salads, and afternoon rain as a daily cycle. We walked through early evening puddles to exquisite dinners in restaurants perched up on stilts. Our conversations there occurred within a diaspora of Internationals abroad. Our crowd in those weeks extended to French, English, Finnish, Australian, German and Cockney characters.
We got to be privy to the vibration that was political ferment in the air. Portuguese society was stratified. There were official men in white tropical suits and naval hats, none of their spouses ever in sight. The next tier was the business class, predominantly Chinese merchants. Under this strata were the Timorese indigenous ( Malayo-Polynesian and Papuan origin), who we saw in labour, laying in stones by hand for cobbled roads. We noticed that the locals we spoke to were having conversations that felt clandestine. We deduced there was political tension and that actual political action was jelling. We were European travellers that the authorities marshalled into a fenced camp site that had old 1940’s Pacific Wartime concrete battlements protruding towards the Timor Sea. >>
An American had come to live in an old sugar barge that used the trade route between Fiji, Sydney and Auckland. Emory Jones was a potter. Another potter Peter Yates, lived in a tree for several months before he purchased a second barge. Whangarei attracted an interesting range of individuals, many of whom were in the Arts and Crafts. Clive Williams was a sculptor who taught Art at Kamo High School where David had taken a position. He was Welsh born, trained in London, lived periodically in Spain before emigrating with wife Neen and two sons, Rhys and Grant. Dave Monro, a science teacher, expounded on the wonders of the scientific world and with his wife Pat and their three beautiful daughters (Toni, Briar and Catherine ) formed the base of our social group that year. Two other couples, Martine and Chris Busck and the Hills, Michael and Chris rounded out our crew who became known as the ' late diners club' Lots of music, good food, great wine and stimulating conversation. We lived in a small house in the village of Hikurangi a few miles north of Whangarei. We hung bolts of hessian cloth to cover unattractive walls and set up a flat that was very 1970’s. Chic ugly. We set off travelling after saying goodbye to dad and walking over the bridge in the Manawatu, just before the gorge south of Woodville. We waved to him there, stayed first night with a friend and headed to to Australia.
For me, it was an utter treat to go forth into the world as a young couple. Between 1970 and 1975, we had no task harder than slipping into English speaking schools to do a few months of cheerful teaching from time to time, he at the high school strata, me with six year olds. They were the times for earning money to live off, bell hopping and waiting tables. We were living in the heart of the Western educated ‘living at large in the present '. We went to Australia, England and Canada for income. The rest of the time we crossed over seas, the continents of the ‘ old silk road’, listening, smelling, cautioning and conversing with fellow travellers, reading, looking, wondering about civilizations, the ‘melting pot’, biases, similarities and differences.
David had in 1965 taken a crowded van trip from England to the Dutch shore, the German interior and to Hydra, followed by massive skiing activity in Austria, before I met him in Whangarei. I had dabbled in the country here with what my mum best taught me, to make, do, sing, play and dance. Outside I did the other lovely things: ride, play, work, do sport, swim in the sea. I took up a Certificate out of Ardmore Teachers College in 1967. I escalated myself into an Art Teaching job at Whangarei Girls High school. This is how David and I met. I met Clive at a February Art Teacher’s cocktail party. He hoisted me into view for David. David picked me up as a blind date. We were up and running, got married and were off in late December 1969. Sojourning overseas young, we were those who didn’t take the route of starting a pregnancy. Travel was a fluid process then, by air, train, shared driving and hitchhiking. Ours was a young Westerner’s utopian time. David, being Canadian and not American, meant that he had not had to take up a military direction with Vietnam. His primary pursuit of interest was history.
AUSTRALIAAustralia was that cultural shock it always is. Bright lights. More pluralism, raw edges. Not only did I see my first ever public conflict in action - we arrived to Sydney in 1970 when a huge waterfront strike was going on - we also had hitchhiked with a mad ass freight truck driver who had been 36 hours high on drugs, on the road delivering frozen peas back and forth between Brisbane and Sydney. I got bitten by a large insect the first time I sat in the dust on the roadside. I read my great grandfather’s diary in my twenties, started in 1910, about how he had only lasted living over there in Oz for a few months in 1856 as he couldn’t stand the flies. However, I went to to Art Galleries, in Sydney and Melbourne. We were part of a Geelong Folk club and we took the memorable step of riding on the Ghan train. After first briefly working in Geelong , me in a cafe and David teaching a term of school, later, assembling cattle pens in Northern Territory for six weeks , hitchhiking to see bugs, beetles and desert flora and fauna with a ' gypsy family' of two diesel driven caravan families who zig zagged the continent to mining work, we tucked into a tent in Darwin and planned first departure. This was to Timor.
In Timor, before travelling through Malaysia, a study of Colonialism stratified into tiers was visible It was gorgeous lingering in the Tropics. Daytime was a chance to see betel nuts used and spat, hear cock fight gambling without getting too close. I was introduced to green tomato salads, and afternoon rain as a daily cycle. We walked through early evening puddles to exquisite dinners in restaurants perched up on stilts. Our conversations there occurred within a diaspora of Internationals abroad. Our crowd in those weeks extended to French, English, Finnish, Australian, German and Cockney characters.
We got to be privy to the vibration that was political ferment in the air. Portuguese society was stratified. There were official men in white tropical suits and naval hats, none of their spouses ever in sight. The next tier was the business class, predominantly Chinese merchants. Under this strata were the Timorese indigenous ( Malayo-Polynesian and Papuan origin), who we saw in labour, laying in stones by hand for cobbled roads. We noticed that the locals we spoke to were having conversations that felt clandestine. We deduced there was political tension and that actual political action was jelling. We were European travellers that the authorities marshalled into a fenced camp site that had old 1940’s Pacific Wartime concrete battlements protruding towards the Timor Sea. >>
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