Continue reading »]]>

Scalloping on the Kaipara Harbour – taking scallops from the dredge while Richard Williams films us for Country Calendar.

The Country Calendar camera was rolling when the farmer flung himself off the couch and started crawling towards the kitchen. He’d been quietly reading the newspaper while producer/director Kerryanne Evans interviewed me.

Before filming started, we’d gone all out to ensure silence because the smallest sound gets picked up by the high-tech equipment. The fridge and water pump were off, an errant fly had been swatted and I’d glanced at the dishwasher and decided it had finished its cycle.

Being a professional, Kerryanne merely blinked and continued our interview while the farmer continued his stealthy, silent and sneaky crawl. Not being a professional, I lost my focus. Rex’s distracting journey finished at the dishwasher when he snaked out his arm and made a wild stab at a button.

All of us, Kerryanne, soundman, cameraman, Rex and me, dissolved into helpless giggles. Turns out, Rex could hear the dishwasher humming on its drying cycle and had turned it off.

Actually it was a change to have him trying to play by the rules as his tendency during interviews to slip in what he calls his ‘one liners’ must have landed the end of a few sequences on the virtual cutting room floor. Unfortunately, we were not like the Queen whose performance with James Bond for the Olympic Games opening ceremony was filmed in one take.

On one occasion we were being filmed walking on the beach and talking about fencing and planting the land on the edge the Kaipara Harbour. We’d nattered on about how we’d dug up and split massive flaxes and had planted the cuttings, then I started on about how I’d dealt with flax seeds.

Preparing to act as a ‘gate’ while Rex drive bulls along the farm road. A few seconds later Richard filmed me waving a cattle stick like a demented windmill as I directed the bulls into the paddock at the left of the shot.

After making a concoction of compost and, um, cattle doings, I’d added flax seeds and enough water to make soggy yet solid balls. Having carried buckets of the cocktail to the beach by quad, I’d wandered along the waterfront, throwing the balls up banks in the hope the seeds would take and flax would grow.

“So you walked around throwing s**t everywhere,” said the farmer.

At which point the soundman, who is trained to be silent, burst out laughing.

The farmer delivered another one liner at the tail end of an interview about his new sheep handling device.

For years he’s farmed bulls, which can be contained by two-wire electric fences, while the few hundred sheep he keeps to remind himself not to farm sheep, have the run of the place. Insulated by their wool, they merrily slip through these fences.

These days, however, prices are good (or were), he’s got a sheep-friendly manager and so many sheep he needs to keep them organised.

“As you’re increasing your flock,” said Kerryanne, “you’ve got a lot of fencing to do, haven’t you?”

“I do,” replied the farmer. “Perhaps I’ll have to teach my wife to fence.”

This was a cue for more laughter – and a fencing lesson for me the next day atop a blustery hill. As I was a contrary student, that footage did make the show.

If you didn’t catch our episode of Country Calendar on TV1, you can watch it by clicking here.

Continue reading »]]>

Country Calendar sound recordist Don Anderson (standing) and cameraman Richard Williams wasted no time feasting on the oyster farm.

“I’ve got eagle eyes,” trilled the farmer in a most unfarmerly fashion while strolling down the hall and waving something small and shiny.

“My watch!” I’d spent ages scouring the gravel road several kilometres from home where I was sure I’d lost it months earlier while moving bulls.

Remarkably, it was in perfect condition which was odd after weeks of weathering rain and vehicles.

I was having this thought when I noticed the farmer’s sheepish smile. Turns out he’d found it in his ute which he was cleaning, an event as rare as the times he arrives home after a hard day on the farm and says, “Don’t move a muscle. I’ll cook dinner. White wine or red?”

His domesticity was inspired by the impending arrival of a crew from Country Calendar, the television show that’s central to our Kiwi culture. It’s the country’s longest-running TV series, and is probably only pipped as the world’s longest-running show by Coronation Street which started in 1960, six years before Country Calendar.

Anyway, we were all of a dither, mowing, weeding, dusting and cleaning. And when you’re going to be on television and you’re female, you realise you own no suitable clothing and, in my case, hats.

After rushing out and buying a merino top, two friends immediately said it didn’t suit me and I returned it. I know my hats didn’t pass muster because I was wearing my favourite when the farmer said, “You look dorky in that hat.”

Fair enough. I’d told him he looked dorky in a particular pair of shorts the day before. These frank exchanges surely stemmed from pre-Country Calendar angst.

Some months earlier Kerryanne Evans, a director and reporter for the show, visited and we’d had another frank exchange while enjoying the farmer’s oyster fritters, answering more curly and personal, but gently put, questions than anyone else had ever asked.

She’d become interested in life at Batley after reading Love at the End of the Road about life on the shores of the Kaipara Harbour with the aforementioned not-so-eagle-eyed farmer.

Kerryanne visited when the harbour was bleak and wind ruffled. The next day was so glorious I took photographs of the bright blue harbour reflecting puffy cottonwool clouds and surrounded by electric green hills.

Soon after the filming dates were confirmed, things fell magically into line. The Mangawhai Garden Club planned to visit and agreed to do so while the crew was here, an Ohope Beach oyster farmer serendipitously timed his arrival to coincide, and some Otamatea High School students were to have a shearing lesson at the Country Club where Rex often helps at shearing time.

We located accommodation for Kerryanne, a cameraman and a soundman who’d spend five days here, then got busy tidying and straightening the house, farm and ourselves as much as we could, which in some respects, wasn’t much at all.

When Kerryanne asked if the Kaipara Harbour was always so grey and windswept, I emailed my blue-sky photos and she was most heartened. Then the week of filming turned out to be grey and windswept, perfect moody Kaipara Harbour weather.

Country Calendar, Saturday 11 August, 7.00pm, TV1.