Off the Radar Read online

  Dedication

  To my parents, Malcolm and Eileen, who provided me with the skills to live this lifestyle, and for Ruth, without whom this book would not be what it is.

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Dedication

  1 I’ll have the chicken

  2 On the snail trail

  3 Three fat turkeys

  4 The cows come home

  5 Itsy-bitsy spider

  6 The elusive eel

  7 A can of worms

  8 Heard of goats?

  9 Sheep in sheep’s clothing

  10 A giggle of girls

  11 Breeding like rabbits

  12 Pansy acts the goat

  13 A sow’s ear

  14 Busy little bees

  15 The right bait for whitebait?

  Photos

  16 The mice will play

  17 Floundering

  18 The goats are wild

  19 Birds of a feather

  20 Boys will be boys

  21 White butterflies

  22 Making an ass of oneself

  23 Turkling

  24 Roosters have little to crow about

  25 Barry the lamb

  26 Two little pigs

  27 A bull at the gate

  28 Playing possum

  29 Lambs to the slaughter

  30 Christmas the turkey

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  I’ll have the chicken

  Marjorie has kindly offered to lend me her walking stick so that I can prod the chicken away from where it has situated itself in the corner of the cage. Now I have two sources of stress: being defeated by poultry, and the fear that any minute a frail 92-year-old woman may topple over and shatter in front of a mortified nation, and it’ll be entirely my fault.

  The hen, a tiny white bantam, is proving feisty, retreating to the back of the cage, resolutely avoiding my grasping hands and the flailing walking stick, while staring at me with what could be either contempt or total indifference. It’s hard to tell sometimes what dark emotions lie behind the beady eye of the fowl.

  There are more chickens in the world than any other bird—some 24 billion of them. Little wonder it’s a nightmare when they get the flu. I am dealing with three, and I already wonder if that’s more than I can handle.

  I’m also beginning to suspect that I should have paid a little more attention at a lunch meeting I attended a few weeks prior, at SPQR, a fine dining establishment on Auckland’s Ponsonby Road, in August 2007. However, I was a little distracted at the time by the herb-encrusted corn-fed chicken served on a bed of garlic mash and a third glass of a superbly chilled Astrolabe chardonnay.

  Jane Andrews and Melanie Rakena are television producers of some note and the founders of Jam TV, responsible for the popular Intrepid Journeys series along with the acclaimed Off the Rails and

  Ice. Now they are interested in me. I know this because they had offered to pay for the lunch.

  As the fourth glass of the Astrolabe arrived, they asked me what I was doing over the course of the next 10 months. ‘Very little,’ I stated. This was followed shortly thereafter by my announcing that yes, I would love to be the host of a television programme about sustainable living that would require me to live in a field and attempt to survive. I may even have followed up this proclamation with the phrase, ‘After all, how difficult can that be?’ and followed that up with a request for a tiramisu. And an espresso.

  The programme they have wheedled me into doing is to be a study in sustainability, or more precisely a study into whether I can become more sustainable given a paddock, some time and a little gumption.

  Now, when it comes to issues of global warning, carbon neutrality and peak oil, I have to confess that I am something of an agnostic. I am one of those types who prefers to take their own reusable shopping bag to the supermarket, so much so that I now own several of these bags. But as I often fail to remember to put the bags back in the car after taking them into the house, they reside mostly in a drawer in my kitchen. Thus, not only am I using more shopping bags than I should as I never have the reusable bags with me, I am also now hoarding supposedly better bags.

  This show may be a challenge.

  ‘Sustainability’ is very much on the tips of people’s tongues at the present time, or at least it is when they are not blathering on about real estate. In an era when people are terrified that their use of too many supermarket shopping bags will fuel a rise in global temperatures and threaten their beachside holiday homes, ‘sustainability’ has been mooted as the little bit you can do as an individual to help save the entire planet from global catastrophe.

  I’m all for doing a little bit to help. Especially if it gets me out of doing a lot.

  But back to the lunch. It wasn’t until much later (well, the fifth glass of Astrolabe) that I might have begun to question what I had let myself in for.

  Jane and Mel laid the concept out in greater detail. I would be required to move to a bare paddock in the countryside, with limited resources, including a small set-up fee and a $20 weekly stipend to buy essentials such as any food I couldn’t grow. I would then have to attempt to become self-sustaining by hunting and growing my own food over the course of 10 months.

  Of course, they explained, you would be free to leave to complete other work that you already have scheduled. This was fortunate, as I was in the middle of completing another television series, called Homegrown, about produce and the way it has shaped us as a nation, which in many ways was a fitting parallel to the show they were offering. But, they said, if you aren’t away for other work, then it’s life on the farm for you.

  I even had to write and sign a contract:

  ‘I, Te Radar, will attempt to live as sustainably as possible off this bounteous land.’

  They explained that self-sustainability was different to self-sufficiency. ‘Being self-sufficient means taking care of everything yourself,’ said Mel.

  ‘Whereas being self-sustainable means looking at how you can continue to exist while having as little impact on the planet as possible, with what impact you do have being ultimately beneficial for the future,’ Jane added.

  Gosh.

  During the course of the 13-part series we would also look at the wider issues of sustainability. I was particularly looking forward to having to raise and hunt my own food.

  I have long been concerned about where my food comes from and what’s in it. As I’d perused the menu earlier at the Ponsonby eatery and contemplated ordering the chicken, I did wonder where it had come from. At that time, there was a stoush between a discount butcher chain and a supermarket giant over who had the cheapest chicken.

  Preposterous.

  Being able to produce the cheapest chicken is not something, I believe, that could be regarded as a source of pride. However, perhaps my attitude was a little elitist, especially as I wasn’t paying for lunch that day.

  So it was that I found myself, on my birthday, which also happens to be the first day of spring, filming what would constitute the beginning of the series.

  One of the odd things about television is that you are forced to think a lot about the future—or rather, to make wild predictions on camera. This is to provide material for the director to utilise later to deride your naive Utopian dreams, as those dreams become dysfunctional nightmares.

  I’m grilled on what I think may happen (I’ll grow something), what the problems may be (what I grow will die), and what I hope to gain (hopefully not any weight).

  I’d grown up on a farm, and I am keen to return to the land as a small runholder. There is an immense amount of pleasure to be had from toiling on the land.

  Having b
een employed for the last several years to essentially do little other than talk, to suddenly find myself in a position where I can look back at the end of the day and see a physical manifestation of my labours is going to be very fulfilling.

  I mention on camera that I don’t really have a problem with early mornings. It is this comment that will cause my mother to convulse in spontaneous laughter at a screening some months hence.

  It’s late September, just a few short weeks after that fateful lunch, and I find myself bidding farewell to my comfortable house in Henderson, West Auckland, and heading to the wilds of rural New Zealand.

  Well, Kaukapakapa anyway, northwest of Helensville. It isn’t really the wilds of rural New Zealand, as it is only an easy 45-minute drive from my house.

  I had only really been to Helensville twice prior to this, as it had always seemed so far away. It’s a small town snuggled into the nook of a river, at the southernmost end of the Kaipara Harbour. On one visit I had bought a toilet-roll holder shaped like a dragon. The toilet roll is held between the dragon’s outstretched paws. So far I am the only person I have met who finds it adorable.

  I had not seen the farm prior to arriving, so when I finally locate it on a bright spring afternoon, there is a sense of healthy optimism in my step as I walk down the long driveway. The farm, my new home, Te Whenua o Te Radar, is more beautiful than I could have imagined.

  Jane has excelled herself in finding it. Nestled on a north-facing hill, it runs down a slope to a creek at the bottom, and is sheltered by trees. There’s ample barn space, cattle yards and piles of discarded detritus. There’s a ramshackle house, which I will not be living in, but which will make great quarters for the crew and editing suites.

  At some stage there appears to have been a well-cultivated garden, which is now mostly overgrown, although there are still a few silverbeet plants protruding above the weeds. Feijoa bushes line the back of the orchard. There are lemons, limes and ripe grapefruit. They remind me of boarding school, where grapefruit was served in great abundance to us for breakfast, sprinkled liberally with sugar and devoured. I shan’t get scurvy.

  If we had been constructing a set for the show from scratch, we could not have created a better environment. The farm is ideal.

  The previous owners have left a vast treasure trove of scrap. The farm has clearly been used to run horses, and the remnants of this era still litter the place. Lying scattered around the outside of the barn are piles of bounty that include various lengths of alkathene pipe, coils of wire, sheets of tin and corrugated iron, spouting, piles of battens and posts, lengths of wood in various states of decay, rusting 44-gallon drums, two large stacks of concrete fencing posts, and a magpie in a pine tree.

  Elsewhere there are abandoned dog kennels, and piles of firewood lie under a large fibreglass canopy.

  Inside the barn it is all a little bit too much like a land-locked, stable-based Marie Celeste. On one wall are pinned old ribbons and rosettes, celebrating victories and placings at various horse events. No doubt the prizes were once a source of joy for a child, and pride for a parent. Now they are dusty and oddly touching relics.

  Below them is a line of nails that must have once held the harnesses of various horses. The names of these steeds are written on pieces of cardboard stapled above the nails. Whatever happened to Trixie and Bella and Lucky? Did they retire to a green field to live out their days? While I hope that was the case, a little voice keeps whispering ‘glue’. Admittedly that is my voice, but it is quickly silenced by a withering look from Jane.

  In the next room are four non-functioning freezers. Nearby, towering kitset shelves, constructed from bolted-together steel struts that resemble pieces from an adult-sized Meccano set, slump against the wall. In the corner lie parts of a discarded potbelly stove. I am sure that both of these items will form integral parts of my living arrangements in the days to come. It will be my job to recycle a life from these leftovers of a former existence.

  Jane has invested in a farm vehicle, a long-wheelbase Land Rover, which, while roadworthy, has clearly seen better days, most of them some time ago. The Land Rover suffers from what would be described by an expert as ‘a significant amount of play in the steering’. In reality this means that keeping the lumbering vehicle on the road, let alone travelling in a straight line, requires swinging the wheel rhythmically backwards and forwards through an arc of about 180 degrees to stop the wheels from scooting off in their own direction. Some vehicles virtually drive themselves, but others need to be driven. The Land Rover is most assuredly the latter.

  The indicators are activated by a firm steel switch, which makes a reassuring click when turned on, but isn’t technologically advanced enough to turn itself off after cornering. It reminds me of the switches I saw on one of the capsules fired into space during the ‘60s that was preserved in the Smithsonian Institution. It was a tiny cocoon that contained nothing but hundreds of rows of simple on/off switches. It was gloriously mechanical when considered from the point of view of the high-tech age in which we live.

  The Land Rover is the same. It has a GPS system, which in this case stands for Get Past Sixty, that is activated by finding a long downhill slope. Worse, in a fit of practicality triumphing over common sense, the spare tyre is bolted to the bonnet, meaning that whatever field of vision there may have been is now obscured. The only consolation is that if I am to hit someone, then at least I am in a vehicle solid enough to protect me. Maybe they intended the tyre to be a rudimentary airbag?

  Almost as soon as I set foot on the farm, I am off again, guiding the Land Rover deep into the heart of suburban Devonport, peering over the tyre, while double-clutching through the gears, and swinging the steering wheel rhythmically through its broad arc.

  I have been offered some chickens from somewhere in the middle of this neighbourhood. Thus I find myself at Marjorie’s. She has adopted them, or perhaps they have adopted her. No one knows quite where they came from, but they seem relatively tame. They are mine under the proviso that I don’t eat them.

  I have never dealt with live poultry before, and having to wrangle them out of the cage and into the boxes I have brought with me is a little daunting. The first lesson I learn is that one cannot be timid with chickens. While I know they have to be grabbed—and grabbed firmly—I don’t want to break them. Nor do I wish for them to escape and instigate a Benny Hill-esque romp as I chase the flapping birds around Marjorie’s section.

  I ask Marjorie how I should approach them.

  ‘You have to be very cunning. And don’t let them get away—they can run like billy-o,’ she says.

  I’m expecting a fluttering flailing of wings and claws, but all I have to do is reach in and gently lift the first of the chickens up. Black, but with ginger feathers around its face and neck, it looks like a little pheasant. It stares at me as Marjorie says, ‘They’re very lovely, friendly birds.’

  ‘Yes, I can see that. They’re about the friendliest bird I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve encountered a few friendly birds in my time, Marjorie,’ I joke, as I put the chicken in the box that I have brought along.

  ‘Yes,’ she says.

  The procedure is the same with the second hen, which is large and red and totally unfazed by being manhandled. This is all going a little too easily I think.

  Unsurprisingly, things become more difficult at this point, and I find myself hoping not to hurt Marjorie as I try to wrangle another bird. After what seems like an eternity, I’m clutching the chicken to my breast and handing Marjorie back her stick.

  With the chickens collected I am the proud possessor of poultry. Already I feel more rural, and more sustainable. I have chickens, and chickens mean eggs, which clearly these chickens are producing in abundance, as Marjorie kindly offers me several that have been laid over the preceding days.

  Boxed and deposited in the back of the truck, it’s off to the farm to install them in my egg-production facility.

  On the way back I am almost deliri
ous with euphoria. The reality of my reality is sinking in. That I am to front my own primetime television show is exciting enough, but to be given the opportunity to live off the land—to hunt and farm and grow my own crops—is a privilege that not many are offered.

  And perhaps the best thing about the programme’s concept is that while I am being challenged to survive in the harsh environment of a meadow, I am to do so alone. Therefore, no matter how bad at it I am, no one can vote me off.

  With night closing in, it’s time to wrestle a living space from the pasture and construct a habitat. It seems a wonderful parody of the pioneers of old, who came here and had to hack a living space from the rugged bush. No gentle fields of England lay here awaiting them.

  Whereas they had to use axe and fire to clear the land, I merely have to stroll to what seems like a suitable spot in a paddock, stomp around in the knee-length grass to establish I haven’t chosen a hollow, and begin to denude the area in preparation for raising a shelter.

  To my surprise I manage to get the weed-whacker going, and in a cloud of smoke (another homage to the scrub-burning pioneers) I mow an area that I assume is big enough to erect the tent.

  I have never erected this tent by myself before. Purchased by my father at the end of the 1984 Feilding Scout Jamboree for the princely sum of $150, the tent is older than I am. Ex-army, made of canvas, with deceptively heavy poles, it is not the kind of tent one takes hiking. In fact, the entire thing, poles included, weighs in at over 50 kilograms.

  I struggle with the tent. It’s made more difficult by the fact that they are filming me erect it. My efforts are finally rewarded, and the proud khaki galleon sails upon the grassy sea.

  Stepping out of the tent, I experience a moment of pure euphoria. It is quelled only by Jane saying, ‘We’ll have to do it again.’ They forgot to press record.

  Later, lying in my sleeping bag, in the tent, in the paddock that is now my home, I realise there’s no such thing as a free lunch.