Skip to main content

Country Garage


Just South of Ashburton there is a dog leg turn in State Highway 1, where the road passes through Hinds. Right on the corner is a garage, which has a yard full of knackered old British cars behind it, and always a few rusting hulks out the front where folks can see them. At the moment, there's a Triumph Mayflower, which used to be known as the panelbeater's nightmare because its arrogantly presumptuous coachlines made it difficult to repair and its dreadful handling made it likely to need  it. There's a Hillman Minx, like the one my father once owned, and Standard Vanguard, like the one in which I sat my driver's license.


They were appalling cars, all of them: slow, cumbersome, ugly little things, but they were all that were available to us because of the special trading relationship we had with Britain. We bought British, even though they were ridiculously expensive and hideously iunreliable. American and European cars were even more expensive, and cheap, reliable Japanese ones weren't around then.

These were our status symbols and markers of our social progress.We pined after them. Lusted after them. There is a Phase III Vanguard (a 1957 Australian made one, as you can tell from the mesh grille. Obviously.) of the sort my father always wanted but could never afford. Now it's just a piece of junk, not worth worrying over. But actually, that's all it ever was. As are most of the objects of our desire.

Labels:

Comments

Brian R said…
I first visited New Zealand in December 1966, at the end of my first year of high school teaching. I was with a group of students (16-17), so not a lot older and some are still good friends. However we were very amused at the English cars everywhere. In Australia we mainly had American cars and, of course, the Holden. Actually, when learning to drive, my father had a Hillman Husky (4 on the floor) while my driving instructor had a Holden (3 on the wheel). No wonder I took a while but I am fairly flexible now and actually hate driving an automatic. When I moved to NZ, I bought a Ford Fiesta. My 20 something year old Holden owner would have been horrified. However I had moved through VW Kombis and Suzuki Sierras in between.
6 January 2019 at 08:45
Kelvin Wright said…
For a long time there were heavy import duties on all cars but especially on non English ones. As well, they could only be paid for in overseas funds, which not everyone had access to. So sometimes second hand cars were more expensive than new ones. And they were kept alive for years. My early cars - Morris 8, Austin 8, Austin 10 - all needed weekly repair which I had to do myself, using used parts and improvising where necessary. I too had a Kombi and Clemency had a Vauxhall Viva - a truly dreadful car whose gearbox failed at 27k miles ie about average for Vivas and whose plastics all cracked in the sun. But then again, Britain did make some remarkable cars - the Jaguars, Aston Martins, Alvis, Bristols, Bentleys and Daimlers which were beautiful and fast and handled well. And could be obtained if you were courageous enough and were a good enough mechanic.
6 January 2019 at 08:56
Alden Smith said…
The photo of the Hillman Minx sparked some memories for me. When I was living in Christchurch many years ago, a good mate of mine always insisted on delivering me home by car after a night on the town. At around 2am in the morning he would sneak into his parents bedroom and remove his fathers car keys. We would then release the handbrake on his fathers Hillman Minx and roll it silently out onto the road, assisted by a downward sloping driveway, push it forward on the road a distance and then start her up. The return journey (which I sadly never witnessed otherwise I would have taken a photograph) was completed by turning the engine off a distance from the cars garage and gliding silently up the road and into the sloping driveway. It was a clandestine adventure that my good friend relished - I sometimes think he missed his calling and should have worked for MI5. I can remember his name but my lips are sealed.
6 January 2019 at 09:07
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How To Walk 800 km

John is just walking the 80 metres back to his bike here, but you get the general drift.  The question I get asked more than any other at the end of the Hikoi is "how are your feet?" It's nice that people care, but my feet have never been an issue on long walks. Good shoes and socks prevent blisters and cushion the effects of long distances on hard surfaces, but I have had other issues. When walking the Camino Santiago knees, Achilles tendons and shin splints have all at one time or another given me trouble. This time round, these have all been fine and I finished feeling as though I could just keep on going indefinitely; to Cape Reinga if needs be. Over the last couple of years I have learned 6 things that have made all the difference. Namely: 1. Footwear. On the Camino I wore walking shoes - Salomon in 2009 and Asics in 2012. A year ago I changed to full walking boots - Salomon Cosmic 2 - and the difference was instant and major. When walking more than 15 minutes...
1 comment
Read more

Why I Hold the Views I Do

St. Hilda's Collegiate School, taken with my phone after a recent meeting. This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with what follows, but I like the interplay of shapes and particularly the shadow on the wall. My mother is a Methodist, liberal in her theological and social opinions. My father was a socialist, just slightly to the left, in his politics, of Karl Marx. My siblings -there are 5 of us- are all bright, eloquent and omnivorous in their consumption of books and other intellectual fodder.  One of my most cherished childhood memories is of mealtimes in our little state house. The food was ingested with copious amounts of spirited, opinionated, clever and sometimes informed debate on whatever subject happened to catch the attention of one of the family that day. Or whatever one of us thought might get a rise out of someone else. So, sex, politics and religion it was then - oh and motorbikes, economics, international relations, demographics, cricket, company ownersh...
47 comments
Read more

I See Satan Fall Like Lightning

It happens sometimes. I have a question or am pondering some conundrum or other and the right book arrives at pretty much the right time. In a session with my supervisor a few months back Paul mentioned an article by Rene Girard, whom I had never heard of. I read the article and over the past month have read two of his books, The Scapegoat and this one. I have another couple sitting on my shelf and they have elbowed all others in my to be read pile out of the way and sit firmly on the top. Girard has pulled a number of threads together for me: he has enabled me to rethink the atonement in a way which is consistent with an evolving Universe: he presents a view of scripture which is again consistent with what I know of science but is also faithful to the Bible as the Word of God; he has given me, for the first time in my life a theology (if that is the right word) of Satan which makes sense to me. Most importantly for me, he is consistent with my own lived experience of God's s...
2 comments
Read more

2 More Years

An autumn leaf, the evidence of the death whereby the grapevine lives and bears fruit There are 31,102 verses in the Bible, or at least in the Protestant version of it which the conservative section of our church recognises. Of these, there are 6 verses which explicitly condemn homosexual practice. The best scholars in the Christian world have pointed out the ambiguity of even these scraps of scripture, but this does not prevent their becoming the basis of an antipathy to contemporary same gender sexuality which I was repeatedly told, during General Synod, was "First Order". I'm not sure what "First Order" means exactly, but I was told that this is a "Salvation Matter". So, presumably, holding a proper view on homosexuality is right up there in importance with belief in the doctrines I would consider foundational for the Christian faith: namely the Holy Trinity, Incarnation and Resurrection. In any event, antipathy to homosexuality has already ...
25 comments
Read more

Wood Pigeon

On the front lawn There is a bundle of green and white feathers. A woodpigeon. A dead one. We have a lot of trees in our neighbourhood and a very busy road, which is not a good combination for wood pigeons. They are great big ungainly birds and before they have acquired a sense of self preservation the young ones are inclined to accidental jousts with cars. The cars seldom lose. This bird has just won the silver medal in a bout with a Toyota Camry and has retired as far as our front lawn before becoming considerably short of breath. I go out with a shovel and dig a hole in the flower garden, and go a pick up the carcase. I love these birds. Their feathers have a rich metallic sheen, and the green and white of their plumage reflects back every shade of red - but just in suggestion, depending on how the sunlight catches them. They are preposterous in their clumsiness. They fly overhead with no pretense at stealth, making a sound like a pair of old fashioned manual hedge cutters with eac...
25 comments
Read more