DAVE DOBBYN'S 'THIS TOWN' # Look how long it's taken you # to arrive in this town. # From the dawn into the dark, # I will hold you deep in my heart. # Look how long it's taken you # to arrive in this town. # UPBEAT JAZZ MUSIC I was born in London and I moved here when I was 7 years old. And now I live in the beautiful, sunny Gisborne. Uh, three good things about Gisborne would be, um, beaches, the people and the downhills. I'd like to say I've become a Kiwi. The two orange pinstripes on the bottom ` um, orange is my favourite colour. My scooter's orange, these bushings are orange, the original wheels were orange. I got a thing for it. So, um, kinda gives it a retro feel to the whole board itself. The symbol is higashi, which is east in Japanese. East cos it's the East Coast, so what better one to put on there. And that's now become a symbol of my longboarding. This wasn't my idea. It was a friend's idea, who, um, I think he got it off the internet. So if you have a look, it's a garden glove ` Gardwell ` to be the barrier between your hands and the road. Some chopping board ` cheap stuff from The Warehouse ` get a saw, cut it right out, and I have a hot glue gun. They do sell these, but they're, like, 50 bucks, 60 bucks, so, like, 10 bucks, I've made my own ones. So why not? It's kinda nice, when you're surfing or snowboarding, you touch the ground, and I tend to do that a lot ` that's kinda like a nice swiping motion. Yeah, skating through the suburbs is like going for a nice bike in the park. No one's kind of in your face. It's peaceful, and it's relaxing. Sometimes I miss the city. It's nice to go to there every so often. But after maybe a week in Auckland or Wellington, it's special what you have here ` a nice little beautiful city. I'm having fun. And we're outside in the sun. What more could I ask for, really? Whoo! I live at Waikereru, at the end of Riverside Rd, and I've been writing children's books for 11 years. I write the books to promote the acceptance of diversity. Milly and Molly was a topsy-turvy doll ` Milly one end, Molly the other, with a skirt that flipped in the middle. One of them's dark-skinned and the other's fair. I created them in my head. It was suggested I write a book to promote this doll, and with that, a dam burst, really. I wrote 80 stories in quite a short time. I went to a primary school in the country that was half and half, probably, Maori, Pakeha. You know, we all played together. One of my best friends ` Maori girl ` she said to me, 'Gill, you smell like milk puddings', and I said to her, 'Well, you smell like smoked fish'. We laughed about it. But, you know, there's a truth in there. I loved our differences. We are all different. And we're all just lovely. The most important thing you can give a child is a healthy self-esteem. Guinea. Guinea thinks we're her flock and she's one of us, and we love her dearly. She's a lovely pet. Sharp as a tack, is Guins. I catch spiders and pop them into a jar. And the minute she hears the screwing of a jar, she ` I mean, marvellous little ears ` Guins comes running. She lives for 25 years, so I'm deciding which of my children I'm going to give her to when I'm dead. Someone else is gonna have to bring up Guins in old age. I'm not living beyond 90. Best of all, I love to write with a pencil. I love pencils. A pencil on a great big pad of paper. And all sorts of stuff can come out of your head. The Milly Molly books are in 111 countries and 34 different languages. John's been wonderful. I mean, all the contractual side of it ` it's huge. Primarily, I just do what I'm told. (CHUCKLES) He never does what he's told. (LAUGHS) We've survived our ups and downs for 43 years. Obviously, we're a good team. We met at dancing class. I was a boarder at Dio and John was a boarder at King's, and at 14 and 15 they threw us together with these wretched King's boys. He said, 'I'm going to marry Gill Fisher one day'. So I made quite an impression. He had big ears. I couldn't run fast enough to get away from him. (LAUGHS) We have six lovely grandchildren. And being a grandparent ` it is just divine. And it's hopeless saying that to anyone who isn't a grandparent. Grandparents know. It's unconditional love, really, I think. You fall in love with this little thing, and you take it just as it is. They love you to bits. That's quite nice too ` it's nice to be loved to bits. Those little fat arms of a grandchild round your neck, little smell of their hair. Just family and all that lovely family things. We may be able to squeeze one more out of our youngest daughter, Kate, and that'll be it. I'm just 4 so I don't know how to read books. My sister can read chapters. > I can do little wheelies on my bike. Can you, darling? That's important too. (LAUGHS) I think the characters I try to just make as good, ordinary characters. I mean, there are enough Barbie dolls out there, aren't there? I think the Milly, Molly characters you'll find round any corner. I live near Gisborne, and I'm a schoolteacher. I was in Gisborne, then I moved to the countryside to get under dark skies ` get away from the light pollution. At night I do astronomy ` looking through telescopes. Out in the paddocks, I've got three observatories ` Possum observatory, Cockroach observatory and Tui observatory. It's named after my wife, who passed away 19 years ago ` she had cancer ` so pretty nice to name an observatory after her. Possum observatory rotates. It was actually built by a friend of mine. He's a genius. Sits on a pea combine harvester ring. The whole observatory is rolling around on that ring, so it's pretty cool. The other two observatories, I built, and they're just roll-off-roof observatories. I've often wondered why I like astronomy the way I do, why I've got such a burning passion for astronomy. I started astronomy when I was about 10 years old. My mother one night looked up at the sky, and she said, 'Hey, look, John, there's the Pot.' And the Pot's in Orion, the constellation of Orion, and she pointed out the three stars at the base of the Pot, and the handle, and the other star on the other side, and that was it. Something just went off in my head, and, bang, I was just absolutely fixated with the stars, and I've been that way ever since. So you can thank my mother for getting me into astronomy. The stars are so beautiful. And it goes back to when people used to sit around campfires and look up in wonder. Out in the hills, there's a spot where the local Maori people used to go and look for the rising Matariki, also known as Pleiades. When they saw it rising just before dawn, then they knew it was time to actually start planting the kumara and so on. Every June we have Matariki celebrations. Some of the local Maori people will actually talk and sing songs. And it's a real cool celebration time. My photos have appeared in books around the world, magazines, calendars. They were put on a NZ stamp. There was five photos in the series, and I had two stamps at Southern Skies series. So literally, our photos went around the world on letters, you know. I live out in the country because it's a very` very much a lifestyle place to live. So much beauty around you. And the aesthetics, the beauty of looking up and seeing the Milky Way and the stars and the moon, or sitting on a hill and enjoying a sunset. It certainly is a great place to live. Some people call me an activist. Participation in democracy and so on are things that I'm passionate about. Organising in the community's something I've done since I've been in Gisborne, certainly, and now I'm a politician. The issues that I'm most interested in, I guess, have been around community development, and so I've got a lot more involved in those things. I live in a suburb called Kaiti. Kaiti community was, um, largely developed in the '50s and '60s as a result of urbanisation ` Maori, particularly, moving from the coast to work in the, uh, freezing works and the Wattie's cannery in Gisborne. And then those two major employers closed down in the '80s and '90s, which resulted in Kaiti developing some unhealthy behaviours and more gangs and violence and so on, which, um, Kaiti became a bit stigmatised for. At the same time, some really positive things in Kaiti as well ` people who wanna make Kaiti a better place to live. Manu, he's eked out a name within the community as a champion of causes, of the plight of our poor. Causes that I, you know, I really believe in too. A lot of these families are on really low income, earning around 15,000 a year. We do see burglaries and, you know, just stuff like that. That's a stigma that we have here. The fact that Captain Cook, you know, first came here and decided to call our place this really great name ` Poverty Bay (!) He bestowed on us this real horrendous name, when it's such a beautiful place. I'm employed by an organisation called Te Ora Hou, which is a national youth working agency across NZ that's been around since the '70s, actually. I'm currently employed by them as a community animator, building cohesion in a neighbourhood. The kids in Kaiti are so much fun. Like, I mean, with all they have to deal with, really, on a day to day basis and what they don't have, they have so much more in other ways. Full of, uh, more energy and life stuff, when you give them that chance to express themselves. Cos I grew up in this neighbourhood as a child. Do you think people should live here? Is this a cool place to live? Do you think people should live here? Is this a cool place to live? ALL: Yep. Down Belfast I think is a good place, eh, Auntie? Down Belfast I think is a good place, eh, Auntie? Why's that? Cos I live down there, Auntie. Cos I live down there, Auntie. ALL LAUGH Who here plays softball for a team? Who here plays softball for a team? ALL: Me! Cos Kaiti's the best. 'I want them to know that they have every potential and to not let anybody take that from them. 'And you get glimpses of that leadership in them. 'I've just delighted, really, in getting to know them.' These aren't just houses any more. That's Mrs Such-and-such, and you've got this street that goes right up the top here, you've got affluent families who live up in the top of it, you know, who drive through, probably quite quickly... (CHUCKLES) to get to their space. So, this is my little house in York St. Number 2. Yeah. Took me a while to go back to there, but now I'm in there practically every week. The time I grew up there, I knew everybody in every single house. And you knew the dairy owner, fish and chip owner, butcher. Engaging with each other was constant. We've gone to individualistic, you know, that's kinda broken down natural neighbourliness. When I left, I just thought, 'I will never want to go back.' About probably 10 or so years, I didn't want to even know about Kaiti. And then, as I started to work more and more in the community, I'm visiting, I'm back in the neighbourhood, and I'm, you know, I'm laughing, cos I feel pretty much at home. One of the kind of long-standing residents of this area's, um, Rawinia Te Kani. She, um` She remembers me as a child. She's lived here over 50 years. Fostering community ` I guess that's in essence what I'm all about. Through conversations, cups of coffee, cups of tea, and before you know it, chutneys and pickles are being made. I'd hate to move away from here. Yeah, well, you've been here a long time. Yeah, well, you've been here a long time. < Yeah. I really like it here. < The kids wanna sell the house, but I don't wanna sell. Yeah. Yeah. But somebody said they wouldn't like to live over here. They said, 'You got the Mongrel Mob there,' but all the time I've been here, I've had no problems with them. I've had no problems with them. Mm. They were living across the road, there. I went over and knocked on the door, and I said to them, 'You fellas are making too much noise. Can you turn your music down,' I said, 'because Papa Toko is sick.' And they said, 'Yeah, OK.' So they turned down. I got to their letter box, and they ran out. They said 'Oh, Nan, we turned it off. Is that all right?' I said, 'No, that's good.' I might be a bit grumpy. (LAUGHS) (LAUGHS) Well, it's good for them. > (LAUGHS) Well, it's good for them. > Yeah, yeah. You keep them in line. No, I reckon there's a bit of respect still in the neighbourhood. No, I reckon there's a bit of respect still in the neighbourhood. Yeah. 'What I've just been starting to do is just beginning conversations. 'If you wanna initiate change, change the conversations.' I see the tiredness, the frustrations. But beneath that is, you know, real hope. I get this amazing opportunity to give back to a community that I grew up in. It's the best thing. I love it. I was born in the Gisborne Maternity Hospital, and we moved into this house when I was 4. I left home after I finished high school and studied at Elam, and I'm an artist. I paint, I draw. I always seem to be in a constant making-stuff process throughout the day. From my own personal perspective, I think Kaiti is a great place to live. Yeah. I wouldn't have brought my son home if I didn't think it was a good place to grow up in. My son, Tawhai, he's just awesome. He's Batman-mad at the moment. Like every kid, he wants to grow up to be Batman. And, uh, who can blame him, really? It'd be pretty cool to be Batman. (LAUGHS) When I was a kid, I wanted to be a professor of Greek mythology. Yeah. That's what I wanted to be. Living back in my childhood home, it can be weird. Um, just because there's everything still here, you know, there's a lot of memories and all these photographs and stuff. They all belong to my parents ` family photos that we've all taken over the years. And we'd often, um, have portraits taken. And in a lot of those, I'm the goth in the family photo ` the grumpy goth, at that, because I wasn't terribly into having my portrait taken. I have six cats at the moment. Everybody should have a cat. There's Sarg, Fatty Catty, Chubachi, Miss Beyonce, Mr Sad Eyes. There's Lemi ` he's the king of the house. The real Lemi is the bass player in Motorhead. My Lemi likes listening to Motorhead a lot. It's our special bonding music time. His brother used to pop up whenever I played Abba. I'm involved with the Ka Pai Kaiti Trust, and I help print all the T-shirts. Kaiti is... it's an awesome place. I like putting that pride out there, you know, on people's shirts and... Yeah. It's a way to sort of counterbalance some of the negative things that are said about Kaiti. You know, cos it's Kaiti ` the name of the suburb ` and aki, which means to encourage. And then, of course, the word kaitiaki is like guardianship. And the idea is that everyone can wear one and be a little kaitiaki for where we live. Anyone can just bring in any T-shirt. OK, let's go. One, two, three... MEREDITH: I think that's the key of neighbourliness, is about sharing. So it's small, small steps, but I think they're great steps. This is where I grew up. I used to come from across the road there, that school, and my mum worked in that fish and chip shop for a time. It's just like... yesterday. In the end, I feel like my whole life story really is I get to give back. That's that redemptive stuff I get to do, cos I know it. I get so much joy out of it too. It's a place that has, I guess, to me, amazing endeavours and potentials and, like any place that you just have decided, 'It's mine,' I'm at home. I live right on the seashore at Mahia Beach. I've been coming to Mahia ever since I was a little fella. My wife's family were here in the early '30s, so we decided when we retired, we'd like to live here full-time, so we've been here about seven-odd years and intend staying for a while yet. I can't stand cities, so Auckland, Wellington ` not for me. Yep, this is the place for me, so that's how we ended up here. Relaxation, beachcombing ` I enjoy that type of thing. My grandmother had a place here in the late '40s, early '50s. I can remember as a kid, you're always looking for fan shells. And I suppose that sort of started me off. And in the early 1970s, I found my first paper nautilus shell. Now, there's two types of nautiluses in NZ. This one here is the Argonauta nodosa, and this one here is the Argonauta argo. Believe it or not, you clean shells, um, to get the shine on, with, um, Johnson's Baby Oil, that normally you'd put on a baby's bottom. But it makes a beautiful job of shells, cleaning them up. Well, Moko turned up on the Easter Monday 2007, off the Mokotahi headland. I try to fish at least twice a week. Fishing's still reasonably good ` it's not like it was, say, 30 years ago. But I just happened to be in the right place at the right time when Moko turned up. I was actually laying a setline and up pops this dolphin. Oh, there was just something about him which was different, and, um, well, as time went on we got to know one another pretty well, and, um, yeah, sort of followed me everywhere, like my late Jack Russell dog. Oh yeah, he was a lovely creature. The name Moko came from what's known as the Mokotahi headland. A friend of mine, as quick as lightning, said they had Opo of Opononi; now we've got Moko of Mahia. So it stuck to him. A lot of people got presents from him in the way of fish. I never got any fish given to me. He had great delight in ripping kahawai off my setlines and then, sort of, appearing alongside the boat with them in his mouth and saying, 'If you don't wanna play with me, you don't get any fish, mate.' He loved his throat being patted. And he disappeared, and he came back with what I thought was a hunk of seaweed in his mouth, but it was a live, large seahorse, just curled on the side of his mouth. I dried it and put it in my shell collection. Some of the things that dolphin did are just unbelievable. I said to my wife, 'What about, next time you go to town, get a couple of, um, balls.' Wife came back with a green ball and a red ball. He caught on with the red ball. Just couldn't get him to take the green ball. There again, red ` just loved it. There's another red crayfish buoy that he's playing with. Right from day one, red or orange. Particularly women with bikinis that were red or orange. 'Course, he was a male, you can't blame him for that. He used to, um, you know, he even gave a lady here a snapper, you know, about 9kg, whopping big thing. Some of the best entertainment I ever had in my life. I used to laugh at the people in kayaks. They'd have their cameras up, wanting to take photographs, and Moko'd roar along and grab the paddle. There's many a maiden that have, um, dragged in and then gone back and got their paddle off Moko. Beach balls, rugby balls, boogie boards. He had his fair slice of life while he was at Mahia ` guaranteed. Not many like him. Never likely to be another one like this around this area. Yeah, we do miss him. He was actually here for 29 months. I can remember the day quite well, when he followed a brightly coloured trawler to Gisborne that was operating off the coast here. And, of course, the rest is history. He ended up on Matakana Island, found by surfies, um, dead. That was a sad end. They say that a dolphin's brain is similar to ours, but... (LAUGHS) I think in some cases, they could be far more cleverer than what we are. A shame, but, um, yeah, Moko was Moko. True friendship. Um, that's really it in a nutshell. (CHUCKLES) I was born at Mahanga, which is across the way from where we're living now, on a farm. We're third-generation farmers in the area. Went away to work, as does every young person here, to get employment. Came back here, and I was too young to retire, so we decided we'd do something to fill in the time. We had a lot of fruit trees here. And we've got guava trees at Mahanga, where the family farm is. And we started off just picking the fruit, and put up a very crude sign at the bottom of the hill. My partner, Roger, spent hours cutting up quinces, pears, crab apples. He doesn't like the way the processors bruise the fruit. This is ready to go, Rog. We move about 5000 jars a year. A lot of these things are really old school. Fig and ginger jam. I can't do enough fig. I like to give people a cup of tea and let them taste the products, and, um, I've ended up with a full-size caff and a big commercial kitchen. Traditionally, there's a community day for elderly people in the area. We did a tally-up and found a large number of people on their own that don't get out to socialise very often. A flat white? In a cup or a trough? Big one? 'And decided that we'd open up and make it affordable and available for people to come and gather here. 'The challenges for the elderly people here are, um, isolation. 'It's very easy for people to be forgotten, unless somebody's keeping a wary eye on them'. Just squawk if you want anything. Hello, Dawn. > It's like a local menu and then there's what we call the touro menu ` your feta and blue cheese quiche. The locals are pies, chips, fish and chips, or fettuccine and chips, which is a very unusual combination, but it's not a meal unless it's got some fries on it. Fish and fries. Fish and fries. Yep, that'll do us. We're running short of jars at the moment, with all the produce that's around. A challenge I put out to our community participants was to bring in some jars and I'd give them quince jelly. They're really happy to do a swap. And I don't accept things without somebody taking some sauce or relish or lemon honey. You don't always put on something to get pecuniary gain out of it. Thank you very much for the jars, and that's your quince jelly. And you brought jars last week? Oh, I'll get you some more. A lot of feijoa coming through, and a lot of guava soon, so... A lot of feijoa coming through, and a lot of guava soon, so... Yes, yes, yep. Let me know if the fish buggers off on you. Winters here can be very harsh. We can have power off for up to four days at a time. That, for older people that are on their own, brings a sense of panic. A lot of the older people out here don't drive, and dare I say, those that do drive shouldn't be driving. I don't enjoy not doing something. During the winter months you can get out and be innovative and think, 'Now, what sort of job could I do that no one else is doing or wants to do?' I go out into the community and I do foot care for people who are unable to cut their own toenails. 'Something that I had always seen ` horrendous toenails. And I often wondered whether it was by choice, 'or whether they just couldn't deal to them.' You been taking to them with the penknife again, have you? Sheep... shear, you know. Sheep shearers? Sheep shearers? No. Sheep foot rot. I whipped a lump off that one, see? We'll give them a soak and let them soften, cos they're most probably hard as hell. They're not as soft as my heart. Is he sweet-talking me, Marg? One at a time, sweetie. 'When you tell people that you cut people's toenails, 'you can see them physically start to twitch and pull faces.' You've had a bit of a fun time, haven't you? 'But for many people it's a relief, because they're quite embarrassed about getting new shoes, 'or their toenails have grown through their slippers. 'And many of them will say, "My family won't touch my feet."' It's a wonder you could walk on that toe, there. That looks a bit better, Mason. These nails here, um, are quite tame to what I deal with. Let your feet go, please, or I'll be forced to tickle you. Got one pig in the butcher's at the moment. First fine day, he'll go up the hook. Tina kills our pigs, Mason. She can dress a pig like no one. Oops. Don't open your mouth ` you might get afternoon tea. 'It's a community that has some really old values in terms of friendliness and openness. I guess it's a bit about us being Mahicians. I was born on a farm about half an hour's drive out of town and then moved to Wellington. And moved back here, um, about 18 years ago. So I guess I'm living where I wanna live. It's got a realness to it, I guess, is one of the things I like about it. And I guess I like the honesty of the place and its people. I kinda fancied living in a slightly different sort of a place than a house in a street. I like a project. The local land agent put us in his car and he drove past this building, and he said, 'It's the old Gaiety Theatre.' And I looked at it, and I thought, 'God, that's a project and a half. I'm not sure I'm ready for that.' But I could kinda see what it could be. Ali wasn't keen on it at all, really. Ali and I have been married for 38 years or something like that. I didn't like that. Well, I didn't consider that as an idea at all and just ignored that one. I could only see it as what I called at the time 'dog shit city'. (LAUGHS) I do enjoy, I guess, working with old buildings and breathing new life into them. I've done a lot of other projects like that in my time as well. We had already had a house that we bought that had been condemned as unfit for human habitation. I guess it's just a project that caught my imagination, really. That, um, I could see a theatre and a cafe and the whole thing in it. I couldn't get it out of my head. The thing wouldn't go away. So then he was offered it again. I just thought, 'I really really don't want to do this at all.' I felt that the town needed these things, that you've gotta put some positive stuff into your town. It came up the third time. Geoff just bought it anyway and told me later. Was, um... 'Course, did cause a bit of strife between us, I must admit. Now, you see what it was gonna be, though, couldn't you? Now, you see what it was gonna be, though, couldn't you? No. That was the problem. I could never see what it was going to be. That's you walking down the street, there, Ali. He has vision that I certainly don't have. I can't veto it, because he has that particular thing about him, and it's something worth supporting. I'm very proud of Geoff. I'm very very proud of him. Well, I started just, um, on my own, and I sort of wandered in with my carpentry tools, and sort of realised the enormity of it. I've never been trained in any particular field of work, so I guess I've just learnt on the job as I've gone along. Geoff is one of those people who doesn't know that there are things you can't do. But he'll still find a way to do it ` after a little panic. Yeah. I often just do see the positive part of it. I don't see the pitfalls in the job until I'm probably too far into it to pull out. (LAUGHS) You know, you're just into it so deep that you've got to carry on, so you do. When the theatre closed down in the late '60s, they turned it into a supermarket for a while. I think that was through the '70s. Then it became a basketball court for another decade or two. It had been sitting there for 20 years on the market, and it was totally derelict. And I've enjoyed building and designing everything in here. And then we started work on the cafe downstairs and built that. The cafe was a milk bar, which was probably the cafe of the time, really. The building was built in, I think, around about the first part of the 20th century. The Hawke's Bay earthquake knocked the back half of the theatre down. It was rebuilt in 1932, and it's very very strong, well-built structure. My uncle Jim actually wired it up when it was rebuilt. He did all the wiring in it and was a projectionist here for a while as well. There was two theatres in the town at that stage, and this was the older one. Once The Regent was built, the Gaiety, then nicknamed The Bug House, became, well, a theatre where they put perhaps more, perhaps, second-rate films on. They were still good films. Cowboy pictures, mostly. And that type of picture was always on, and Friday night, we would, as teenagers, we would come and go to The Bug House on the Friday night to the pictures, and did that for many years, because my family were avid movie-goers. They used to have a lot of balls and plays. There was a strong, uh, repertory group and that sorta thing here in the town. Just about as the war finished, they formed the Wairoa Theatrical Society, and I was the star of the first production that they put on in the Theatrical Society. I came here as a child, and I watched my first movie in here, and then I saw pantomimes and live shows and Selwyn Toogood and those sorta things in here. My memories of Wairoa as a child ` the place was a pretty dynamic little town, and the theatre was pretty central to it. A theatre is an important part of a town, really. People need places where they can go together and do things together. And as a kid, I remember coming in here. The whole place was just chock-a-block. Yeah, buildings like this come to life when they're full of people ` they need people in them. They're a little sad when they're empty, really. We ran films here when we first opened. We'd typically have about eight different movies on the programme every week, and it worked very well. Um, it takes a certain amount of passion and quite a lot of skill, really ` more than I thought it would ` to run it. And, um, and it's sort of petered out, really. Movies are now being shown mainly digitally, which is beyond my financial means, really. And it needs now to be reborn, I believe. It needs a, um` somebody to pick it up. We're just keeping the building alive in the meantime. We've ended up with about 60m of the main street, here. I'm working mainly now on my saloon bar. It was originally a billiard saloon, a barber shop, about 100 years ago. I really like the feel of it. I suppose there's a sense of history in it too, I guess. It predates the theatre. And it's really just open on Friday nights, and we have live music out in the back room now and again. The hats are there for people to use, and, yeah. Hats are sort of a metaphor for, you know, different roles that we have in life, you know. And the hat sorta symbolises that sorta thing, doesn't it? UPBEAT MUSIC I guess I get a big buzz out of creating a space, building something, and seeing people have a good time. Yeah. I've tried to make the environs that I live in a better place. Yeah. This building was something that was in me, that I couldn't really escape from, like a fated thing, in a way. I was driven to it, really. And, um, I think with a building like this, they last so much longer than people do, and we only pass through them. I'm only the custodian of it at the moment. It's bigger than me. You know, it has taken all our money, all our energy. But I can't for one moment say that it's not worth it. This is the place where you go if you want music, if you want great food, if you want to party, and it's not a horrible dead end of town as it was. I live in Napier because I was born here. All my friends are here, my family's here, and it's a nice pace of life. The Bay City Rollers are Hawke's Bay's roller derby league. Some of the names of the members are Angel Rage, Priti Manek, Annie Von Carnage. The girls make them up themselves, but they have to be unique internationally ` you have to register it. A roller derby girl needs to have courage, to be fearless. The girls can take on their alter egos and be Porterhouse Skate or Annie Von Carnage. ALTERNATIVE MUSIC Ow. It's my broken foot. I broke my ankle really bad. I've got a plate and seven screws in there, so I'm just easing my way back into it. I've broken my rib, my tailbone, and I've fractured my wrist. If I heard anyone else tell me this story, I would think they were absolute lunatic, but I just can't turn my back on something I love so much. SKATES WHOOSH I'm attracted to roller derby because I've got 50 instant sisters. I'll never meet these girls in my normal life, and I get to, uh, hang out with some really cool chicks I usually have nothing to do with. (BLOWS WHISTLE) SEAGULLS CRY RELAXED MUSIC I was born in Hastings, but, uh, I've always lived in Hawke's Bay somewhere. I think Hawke's Bay is one of the nicest places in the world to live. Bakery business is BJ's Bakery. It was originally started by my father, which is Barry, and obviously James is myself ` that's where the BJ's come from. He was originally farming in the early '90s, and he said he wanted to make pies ` he reckoned he could make a decent pie. We laughed at him originally, but, um, obviously he succeeded in what he wanted to do. Dave's my manager. He's been with me 14 years. He was training to be a chef before he become a baker, so he brought some skills to the table that I didn't have. Together we seem to really gel. He's my right hand. Well, the pie competition, it's a bit of an event on the calendar each year. Just about every bakery in NZ contests it. In the past Pie Awards, we've done very well ` nine gold medals. '98 we actually won three gold medals out of the six and also won the supreme NZ pie maker of the year. We've done very well at winning awards over the years. JUDY BAILEY: Local baker James Buckrell is puffed with pride. His pies have been judged the best in the country, beating 2000 entries at the annual Supreme Pie Awards. A couple of months out, we test a few pies and we come up with a couple of different flavours. A lot of the first run of pies is just a dummy run to make sure you're on the right track, where you're heading with it. It could do with a little bit more salt. But the colour's and the texture's perfect. Definitely not happy with that pastry, though. Definitely not happy with that pastry, though. No. Some work, some absolute shockers end up in the bin. But, uh, I mean, that's part of it; you got to, sort of, experiment. Just a matter of coming together with flavours that you think are gonna be right. Um, I was thinking of a, yeah, a slow-roasted winter veg, just to put in with a nice braised steak, so... Gourmet meats, go ahead with that pork belly. We're covered for that. Gourmet meats, go ahead with that pork belly. We're covered for that. Yeah, we got that one. A lot of people do spend a lot of time doing similar to what we do. A lot of the award-winning bakeries are from Hawke's Bay. You'll be pretty, um` pretty secretive. They all seem to ask you, 'What are you doing, what ideas?' So you say you're doing something completely different. Can't tell 'em too much, otherwise it won't be you on the podium. Uh, no real secret. Just keep making until you get a perfect pie. Yeah, the longest day's probably been 36, 37 hours. It's all about in search of the perfection, really, and you just keep going until you can't go any more. Um, they seem to be coming up all right. Uh, I'll drive them up to Auckland this year. I don't trust anyone else to do it. You do it yourself, you know it's got there in one piece and it's not damaged. If you can manage to win something within the competition, it really improves your business, but it's just such a feat to get any award. It's the awards to win. Hopefully we do well. We're standing here outside the Hawke's Bay Hospital with signs just to change people's minds about abortion. And so we're here on a Thursday each week. We've now been here for about 14 months, in all weathers. Yeah, whatever the weather's like, we'll be here. My mum and I are both Christians; that's probably part of the reason why we do this. Yeah. In the last couple of years, I dunno, it was just on my mind more. There's a lot of abuse, and we're up against a lot of opposition. HORN BLARES Sometimes the abuse can be quite out there. People swear at us, yell at us, pull the fingers. Most commonly eggs have been thrown at us. We've had chocolate milk thrown at us, condoms, um... < James has been nearly run over. We've been pushed, told to get a job, get a life ` that's a common one. Personally, I do find it tough. Sometimes the night before I've had trouble sleeping, just with the thought of coming here. At times we have felt like almost giving up, or how long are we going to do this for, but we feel you can't stop. It's very important to stand up for your beliefs. Sometimes it's not easy, but for now we continue to stand there. HORN TOOTS FUNKY MUSIC I'm not a big fan of Auckland city itself. It's the traffic I don't like. But the awards are always a good night up there. It's good to come up here and represent Hawke's Bay. I think we've got a good shot. Yeah, we did the, uh, pork belly and, uh, caramelised apple pie with figs. Be interesting to see if it gets anywhere. You send your pies up to be judged on the Wednesday or the Thursday. You can enter one section or the whole lot. We always try to do the whole lot. It's the gourmet section we always try to do well in, and the vegetarian. First thing you do is weigh them, then you go through and look at them all. The ones that, you know, really look the part, that stood out from the rest, those ones will be reheated. So the first part of the business, really, is to make sure the pie looks like a nice pie. See that? Bit of an air pocket there. They have to look good first. I mean, if the pie doesn't look good, it's not gonna get through to the tasting round. There were some really nice pies that come through in that competition. Uh, the awards night, that happens the following week. It's always a good event. They have a different theme every year. It's quite neat how they come up with it. Indian theme, so that's a bit different. Bollywood, is it? Last year we had, um, James Bond 007. APPLAUSE INDIAN MUSIC DAI HENWOOD: The first category ` mince and gravy. Hong Khen Huor from Whenuapai Bakehouse & Cafe. APPLAUSE AUDIENCE CHEERS Yeah, it's exciting, but nerve-racking at the same time. Ian Holloway ` Hollie's Bakery, Hastings. You need to win a gold medal to be in the running to win pie maker of the year. And the winner of the Gourmet Meat Award is Jason Hay. Ultimate goal is to get a gold medal. Once you got a gold medal, then you can go for the Supreme Pie Award. For the Gourmet Fruit category the bronze goes to James Buckrell ` BJ's Bakery and Cafe, Hastings. Ladies and gentlemen, the overall winner is... DRUM ROLL ...Shane Kearns from Viands Bakery for his gourmet fruit pie ` gingered peach and pear. APPLAUSE We're a little bit disappointed. We really thought the pork belly was gonna get an award. It would've been nice to get more, but Dave and I are happy with two bronzes. It's very hard to get any award in this competition. A lot of the Hawke's Bay bakers are winning. Hopefully, next year we might get another gold again to add to the collection, so, um, up and up. My husband says he jokes often, 'You can take the girl out of Kaiti, but you can't take the Kaiti out of the girl.' Things that are worth doing often are hard, I guess. That's the nature of life, isn't it? We keep it neutral ` no religion, no politics and no sex. There's never been anything like Moko. His spirit is back here at Mahia. Those childhood memories ` I think you carry them with you always.