Wild Pork and Watercress Read online

  Barry Crump

  * * *

  WILD PORK AND WATERCRESS

  The Novel Behind the Feature Film

  Hunt for the Wilderpeople

  When Ricky’s beloved Aunt Bella dies and Social Welfare threatens to put him into care, the overweight Maori boy and cantankerous Uncle Hec flee into the remote and rugged Ureweras. The impassable bush serves up perilous adventures, forcing the pair of misfits to use all their skills to survive hunger, wild pigs and the weather. Worse still are the authorities, determined to bring Ricky and Uncle Hec to justice. But despite the difficulties of life on the run, a bond of trust and love blossoms between the world-weary man and his withdrawn side-kick.

  This rattling good yarn has now been made into a major movie, Hunt for the Wilderpeople, written and directed by Taika Waititi and starring Sam Neill and Julian Dennison.

  Contents

  ABOUT BARRY CRUMP

  DEAR READER

  ONE

  THE WIFE’S SISTER’S BOY

  TWO

  A DOG LIKE ZAG

  THREE

  OTHER PEOPLE

  FOUR

  A TIN OF PEACHES

  FIVE

  BROKEN-FOOT CAMP

  SIX

  A FRIEND

  SEVEN

  SERIOUS TROUBLE

  EIGHT

  ANOTHER NOTCH

  NINE

  SIX MONTHS

  TEN

  OKAY

  ELEVEN

  EPITAPH

  ILLUSTRATIONS

  HUNT FOR THE WILDERPEOPLE CREDITS

  FOLLOW PENGUIN

  ≈ About Barry Crump ≈

  Barry Crump

  Barry Crump (1935–96) wrote over twenty semi-autobiographical books and became a media icon, epitomising the yarning Kiwi bushman. His works sold over a million copies in New Zealand alone, plus several hundred-thousand copies overseas — an astounding number that confirms him as one of New Zealand’s most popular authors. In 1994 he received an MBE for his contribution to the arts.

  John Barrie Crump — known as Barry — was born into a share-milking family in Papatoetoe, South Auckland. He would later describe his upbringing as tough. Crump was one of six children, all of whom were expected to help out with the farm work. Their father was frequently violent towards them and to their mother. From a young age, Crump preferred the outdoors to the classroom, and was shifted around various South Auckland schools before he left Otahuhu College aged fifteen.

  Initially Crump worked as a farm hand and bushworker, moving around the country from the Kaimanawa Forest to South Westland. In 1952, he started work for the Wildlife Branch of the Department of Internal Affairs as a deer-culler in the Urewera region, a job he would eventually embellish into his first and hugely successful book, A Good Keen Man (1960). Set in what was to become trademark Crump country — the rugged, inaccessible New Zealand bush — it is a coming-of-age story of a teenager’s first job reducing the spread of ‘noxious’ deer, which were blamed at the time for causing erosion. Crump’s deadpan style delivered not just a lively story of deer-culling and hunting goats and pigs, but also plenty of humour along with wry observations on human nature.

  The book’s success led to what Crump called his “first venture into proper fiction” with a series of novels that included Hang On a Minute Mate (1961), One of Us (1962) and There and Back (1963). The central character of these three books is the anti-hero Sam Cash, a cynical, yarn-spinning vagabond who takes up all manner of odd jobs — from fencing to farming, from timber-felling to mustering and breaking horses — in an effort to escape suburban monotony and responsibilities.

  It was after two years’ crocodile-hunting and sailing through northern Australia that Crump conceived his next book, Gulf (1964), later re-published under the title Crocodile Country (1990). Gulf achieved broad success, its Russian translation purportedly selling over 100,000 copies.

  From 1960, Crump published a book almost every year until 1972, including collections of short stories such as Warm Beer and Other Stories (1969), A Good Keen Girl (1970) — which was a female spin-off of A Good Keen Man — and Bastards I Have Met (1971). The latter was written after Crump decided that bastards outnumbered heroes by about 15,000 to one, so he set about cataloguing them in an ABC of Bastardry, with such examples as the bad bastard, the clever bastard, the good bastard, the miserable bastard and, one of his favourite targets, the officious bastard.

  Crump underwent a period of disillusionment in the early 1970s and would not write another book until 1980. It was spiritual enlightenment from his 1970s motorcycle ride through the UK, Europe, Turkey, Afghanistan and India that resuscitated Crump from what he identified as boredom with success. In India he had stayed with a Kashmiri family, where what he learnt further reinforced the same anti-materialist principles he embraced as part of his bushman identity. Crump officially joined the Baha’i faith on his return to New Zealand in 1982, though restlessness continued to punctuate his career.

  Crump had acted in a film and worked as a television presenter for Town and Around in the 1960s, performing sketches and hosting interviews. In the early 1980s, he was to become even more recognisable as the advertising face for Toyota’s four-wheel-drive vehicles. These television advertisements capitalised on Crump’s reputation as a laconic bushman, and often featured comedic songs, one of which went on to be Team New Zealand’s theme song in the 1992 America’s Cup. It was around this time that Crump and his then wife, Robin, began ‘Bush Telegraph’, a talkback radio show that soon rose to popularity.

  From the 1980s, Crump returned to writing books, including various reissues and compilations of his previous titles, as well as the new novels Shorty (1980), Puha Road (1982), Wild Pork and Watercress (1986) and Bullock Creek (1989), all of which echo stages and significant places in Crump’s life. Labelled by one reviewer as ‘Crump’s masterpiece’, Wild Pork and Watercress was set in Crump’s beloved Urewera country. It sold out its initial print run of 12,500 copies within three days of publication, and by 1991 had sold 95,000 copies. Like many of his works, it was published in multiple subsequent editions.

  Just as in his early publications, Crump’s later novels continued to offer his simple, direct narrative voice, his humour, his characters that were typically as “sharp as a sack-needle and as tough as a wool-pack”, his descriptions of bushcraft and survival skills, and his depictions of life away from the rat race in a world reminiscent of the 1950s. However, Crump also started writing for a much younger audience: a poem for children was published as Mrs Windyflax and the Pungapeople in 1983 and was followed by several other Pungapeople stories. His adult poetry also appeared for the first time, included alongside stories in Barry Crump’s Bedtime Yarns in 1988, and was the focus of Song of a Drifter and Other Ballads (1996). In the introduction to the latter book, Kevin Ireland commented that ‘Crump’s words belong to an agelong tradition of ballads and songs.’

  Crump released the first of an autobiographical trilogy in 1992. The Life and Times of a Good Keen Man (1992) was followed by Forty Yarns and a Song (1994) and Crumpy’s Campfire Companion (1996). Over his lifetime, Crump was married five times and had nine sons. One marriage was to the poet Fleur Adcock, another to novelist Jean Watson. On being awarded an MBE in 1994 for his services to and achievement in literature, Crump joked it would look a “hard case” pinned to his Swanndri. He died after a heart attack two years later, aged sixty-one. Soon after, family and friends released a selection of his prose and poetry in a memoir, Tribute to Crumpy (1997).

  Crump’s work lives on not just in book form but also in films. His short stories “Lawful excuse”, “Time flies”, “Hokonui Hank” and his novel Hang On a Minute Mate have been ada
pted for the screen. The latter was also adapted into a play by Anthony McCarten in 1992. In a newspaper interview about the play, Crump said, “It’s still a part of the tapestry of New Zealand life. I still live a bit like that.” A film of Wild Pork and Watercress had been planned when Crump was still alive, but he did not like the screenplays and it never eventuated. After Crump’s death, Taika Waititi bought the rights to the book, drafted the screenplay, and became the film’s director as well as one of its producers. As he told The New Zealand Herald, his vision for the film was to “start a resurgence of entertaining New Zealand films — adventure films like Came a Hot Friday and Goodbye Pork Pie, where people are fighting against the system but in a fun way. We’ve lost a bit of that in our filmmaking, we’ve been really dark and arty.” He cast Sam Neill and Julian Dennison in the lead roles, along with an impressive line-up of other actors.

  Of the original novel, The New Zealand Herald quoted Waititi as saying, “It’s a quick read, really engaging, and I recommend it to everyone. It’s so entertaining, quite beautifully written and profound. Everyone thinks Barry Crump was just a hunting man but his writing is very good. It’s simple, and I don’t mean simple as in not having any substance, but a minimalist style, straight to the point. Hemingway also had a minimalist style and that’s the kind of writing I like: not flowery and over the top, but straight up. There’s something for everyone there.”

  The film’s release comes twenty years after Crump’s death and thirty years after the book’s first publication.

  ≈ Dear Reader ≈

  I never lived with my father, but we did catch up several times before he passed away on 3 July 1996, aged sixty-one. One of our catch-ups lasted a year. I was very thankful for that, as we forged a friendship that never left us. The time I’d like to share with you, though, was in the mid-1980s.

  We’d arranged to meet on mutual ground at my brother’s place in Putaruru. Barry had arrived before me, and I was surprised his sidekick this time was not a woman but a nine-year-old Maori boy called Coonch. They were very relaxed and comfortable with each other, which is more than I can say for the old man and me; we were meeting for the first time in years.

  Next morning we drove for several hours to Barry’s place in Opotiki. It wasn’t legal or ethical, but the nine-year-old drove while Barry sat in the passenger seat, telling the rest of us that it was more nerve-racking for him than it was for his young driver, Coonch. There was one brief stop, just before we reached Barry’s, when Coonch ordered the dog up a bank next to the road. A minute or two later, very pleased with himself, the dog emerged with a possum clenched in his jaws: dinner was sorted. Coonch casually drove on down a bank, over a river and onto Barry’s property, where we stayed for four days.

  When Barry started talking — that voice like gravel — we all listened intently as we knew we were in the presence of one of the great storytellers. Coonch was no different from the rest of us — he was mesmerised. But if Barry ever motioned there was something needing attention outside or an adventure around the corner, his sidekick and now best mate was instantly right there by his side.

  It was no surprise to see on TV about a year later that Barry had written a new book, called Wild Pork and Watercress, about a grumpy middle-aged white guy and a young Maori boy who have a wonderful adventure. Many were saying it was Barry’s finest work in years. He gave me a copy, and it’s still my favourite.

  Thirty years after its first publication, we’re very fortunate to have another great storyteller take Barry’s novel and turn it into an epic Kiwi adventure: it’s funny, heart-warming and thrilling. Taika Waititi has written a wonderful screenplay and, combined with his great vision, he has directed what we hope will become a classic. I was lucky enough to see a few minutes of the movie before it went to editing and was left very excited and eager to return to my father’s novel.

  — Martin Crump

  Chapter One

  The Wife’s Sister’s Boy

  My proper name’s Richard Morehu Baker but they always call me Ricky. My mother was quarter-Maori and I was born in 1974, years later and a lot darker-skinned than my brother and sister, and don’t let anyone tell you that doesn’t make a difference. I always had trouble fitting in. People were always getting a surprise to find out I actually belonged in our family. I was also a bit overweight and not much good at sports and stuff like that.

  By the time I’d been at school for a few years I could read miles better than most of the other kids but I wasn’t much good at anything else, and they decided I was a slow learner. They shifted me around from class to class, trying to work out where fat Maori boys who can’t play rugby or learn simple stuff fitted in. I knew they had me all wrong, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

  I’ve always been able to remember just about anything I want to and it’s easy for me to learn things. Too easy. I was worried about all the stuff that was going into my head, and they were shoving more in all the time. The wrong sort of stuff, too. I couldn’t forget a lot of it. I used to be scared my head was going to fill up till it couldn’t take any more and I’d suddenly go mad, or burst or something. So I took time off school, which I usually had to pay for with more trouble. But heads are only so big.

  Anyway, while all this was going on my parents got divorced and my mother took custody of me, mainly because nobody seemed to know exactly where my father was living. He was never allowed in the house when he’d been drinking, and he just did more and more drinking till he didn’t come home at all. Things got worse at home and school until in the end my mother couldn’t handle me. Looking back, I seem to have spent a lot of time standing in various offices while adults sat around deciding what was going to happen to me next. I soon found out that thin white difficult boys are easier to “do something with” than overweight brown ones.

  When I was nine they stuck me in a kind of health camp, but I couldn’t stand it and got out of there as soon as I saw a chance. They caught up with me sneaking onto a bus to Wellington to stow away on a boat or plane to Australia, and I was carted off to a social welfare home for delinquent boys which was worse than the health camp and trickier to get out of. I had to spend three nights there before I could get away, but I made it home and decided to hang on there as long as possible. The social welfare people found out I was there and came round a few times, but they left me there.

  By this time my mother was getting ready to get married again. My stepfather-to-be liked it better when I wasn’t around, but he did his best not to let on about it. My mother used to say that everything was going to be all right and we pretended along like that, but less than a year later I was back in a social welfare home for shoplifting a bag of potato chips. They locked us up in that place and I had a lot of trouble getting away. They found out I was back at home but they left me alone. I think my new stepfather might have stuck up for me that time. He was still trying to like me, and I was getting better at keeping my head down.

  The next time they picked me up I was riding a ten-speed bike I didn’t even know was supposed to be stolen. I ended up in the same place as before but they were watching me this time and it was nearly a month before I got a chance to get away. I was on the loose for seven weeks — joined up with a bunch of kids who were living in a burnt-out bus near Taupo. They didn’t really want me around, either.

  I was too inexperienced, they reckoned, and I might bring attention to them. We were living off what we could steal out of houses and cars and shops, so I don’t suppose I could blame them really.

  It didn’t last long, anyway. They busted in on us in the middle of the night and carted us all off to the police station, then after a long car ride in the early hours to a prison place, where they locked us up in cells. There was no way of getting out of there. Things were getting worse. This was actual prison.

  It turned out that I was too young to stay there, and after four days they got me in this office and told me I was being given one last chance to straighten myself up.
I didn’t deserve it, the social welfare man reckoned, but if I agreed to co-operate my Uncle Hector and Aunt Bella Faulkner had offered to take me into fostership on a trial basis and wasn’t that wonderful of them.

  The bloke was lying. Uncle Hec would never have offered to take anyone like me in. He didn’t even like kids. It was another shove-around without me being consulted about it. But being in jail’s no joke either, so I said all right, and the next day I was delivered to Uncle Hec and Aunty Bella’s farm at the end of a windy stony road, eighty-seven kilometres from Gisborne. At this stage, I was twelve years and three weeks old.

  The Faulkners’ farm was up a valley beside a river called the Apopo, and everything about the place was old and falling to bits. You could tell where their place started by all the thistles and scrub everywhere. Their road fence was all overgrown with briar bushes and long grass and they had a rusty old drum on a post with their name on it near the front gate. Two muddy wheel tracks went curving up the hill to their rusty old blue car parked outside the house, which was surrounded by falling rails and a skimpy hedge, with weeds and long grass growing right up to the window-sills round one side and the back. On the other side was Aunty Bella’s vegetable garden. There was a path trodden in the grass between the gate and the back porch.

  The Apopo river was about a hundred metres from the house, and the old woolshed with its rusty corrugated iron and red-streaked mossy boards was out on the flat between. It was a skin shed, a toolshed, a workshop — it was the only other building on the place apart from the house and everything happened down there. Uncle Hec used to spend a lot of time sitting on a staple-box with a folded sack nailed onto it for padding, tipped back against the wall of the shed, looking up the valley.

  The river was quite a big one, stony and shingly and about twenty metres across at the crossings, with deep pools in between. Upstream Uncle Hec’s 140 acres went steeply up from the river flats, which were covered with clumps of blackberry and other scrub. Patches of grass were still quite numerous around the bottoms of the ridges, but higher up there was just manuka and gorse with streaks of new bush in the gullies. Beyond that dark ridges of native bush went right up to a broken blue range shaped like a train crash. It was real steep. From the shed you could see where little streams came falling down between the ridges to make Rough Creek, which ran into the Apopo up at the end of the “Property”.