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. # Your flight crew this afternoon is Captain Darron Kyle and first officer Inia Damon. I'm Rae, and we have Christine. Our flight time today to the Chathams is one hour and 55 minutes, so you can all sit back and relax, and enjoy this journey to the island with us. 'I'm the chief pilot, amongst other things, for Air Chathams. 'Originally it was a two-year stint. I'm 18 years into that now. 'I felt at home pretty much straight away. I just thought I'd enjoy the challenge of living out here. 'Aviation is more important in the Chathams than other places because of the remoteness. 'It is your only option in case of an emergency, or if they need to go see loved ones in a hurry. 'From the age of 5 I knew I was going to be a pilot. 'I was really interested in flying right from then. 'When I was a kid, we were right on the extended flight path for the airport. 'Planes were always flying over, and I was always racing outside to look at them. 'I'm in charge of most of the flight training involved in Air Chathams. Under the civil aviation rules, 'it's a requirement that you use flight simulators for training because of safety.' You can do manoeuvres in the simulator that if you tried in the aeroplane would be dangerous. I'll flame that engine out. 'So, this simulator was designed back in the '50s for the Convair 580.' If that light is on, it's telling us that this pump has failed. 'There were only two of them operational in the world. 'One was in Canada, and this one ` originally this one was in Alaska. 'If you have a look at the serial number on the back of this one, its serial number is one.' It takes up probably the size of a house. 'Pretty much it's a 1950s computer. It's all driven by valves. Remember the old valve radio days? 'And mechanical surveys, so it's a very retro mechanical machine, 'a bit like a 1950s telephone exchange in a lot of respects. 'I enjoy it because of my background in radio and electronics. Before I became a pilot, 'it was a bit of a hobby sideline for me. 'It was built when things were built to be fixed. You can get in there and fix most things.' We end up getting people from the South Pacific coming down here to train on it. It's coming up to 60 years old. A lot of the old components are just, sort of, drying out, breaking down, and the valves we can still get new, normally from Russia, funnily enough, they're still making them there. 'It's a neat machine to work on. It has got a bit of a personality. It can be cantankerous. 'The guy that used to run it called it Christine after that movie Christine 'with the car that had a mind of its own.' I don't use Christine. I use another word, but... (LAUGHS) 'It throws all sorts of weird faults at you until it gets warmed up and then it just hums.' Yeah, it's neat. It's different. Hello. Hello. I missed you. Hello. I missed you. Come on. 'I'm the owner of Waitangi Seafoods. It's a small fish factory, operates out of Te One. 'Born and bred on the Chatham Islands. Went to school, high school in Christchurch, 'went to St Bede's, actually, for three years. 'Coming back here, obviously you can either go farming or fishing. 'For me, farming and sheep, um, I couldn't quite get into that. Watching the shearers work,' that looked like hard work, so I decided to go deckhanding and then ended up in a dive suit, 'and did a bit of diving myself and decided that I should, you know, 'process my own fish rather than just drop it off to the factories that were operating here.' He's pretty cruisy, does a lot of work for himself, really. Shouldn't be diving, but he enjoys it, so he just does it all the time. He likes being under the water; he says it's relaxing. Diving here, and at 52, I can see the size of the fish that we used to process and see the size of the fish that we are processing now, and I can tell that we are not in good stead, and we have to really start looking to ourselves. Fish is pretty much 70% of income for Chathams. It's frightening if we're not doing something about it, we're in big trouble. I have to do this, you see. I've got a friend in Hawke's Bay ` he really hates kinas. (CHUCKLES) Yeah, right. So I have to eat one for him. It's for all those people who can't get them. (LAUGHS) 'I've eaten fish in different places in the last few years. 'I've been to China three few times and found that very interesting.' Great. Good stuff. 'But, yeah, no, we've got the best, there's no two ways about that. 'This is my 6-year-old son. His name is Ariki. 'I'd like to leave something for my kids and for other people's kids as well,' and that's doing something with fishery ` rebuilding, sustainability, aquaculture. That's my game at the present. Yeah, no, just` just enjoying life as well. That's the future, believe it or not. Mean. Mean. That's right. Mean, all right. Living here has been a dream, really. I mean, it's... You can still catch some of the past here. The kids can still go out and get a bucket of pauas in their bare feet. Those things are still here. I live in Owenga. I was born here on the Chatham Islands. 'I left the island when I was 5. I came back for a brief visit with my dad when I was 18. 'I loved the place that much I wanted to come back and live. That was where I was gonna be. 'I was going to come back and do my art. 'Went back out to NZ and started a, um, career in the fishing industry off-island. 'I spent 10 years trying to get back here. Came back for the millennium and, um, stayed. People come here to the island and they either love it or hate it. The ones that love it end up staying for a very long time, and ones that don't necessarily love it so much just sort of, you know, try to leave quite quickly. Yeah, it's not a easy place to live. Just with the environment. Yeah, it's quite windblown here. You live with mud in the winter, and you live with dust in the summer. Yeah, we are in the elements. It can drag you down, especially being a woman. It's really hard to look nice and feel nice when there's mud all over the bottom of your pants or skirt. I try to be feminine. I try to keep human, but then, too, we do have our nice days. Sometimes it's quite tropical. It's the place that just gets to you and, um, you just love it or hate it. Yeah. (LAUGHS) I always liked colouring in and drawing things, but I went to work out my subjects for School C year and my art teacher said to me, 'Don't you dare take art. You're absolutely hopeless.' 'Because of my pig-headedness I took art because I didn't like him, 'and I wanted to annoy him for a whole year being a hopeless artist. 'When someone sort of tells me, no, I can't do something, and then it's like, well, yes, I can. 'You can do anything you want if you set your mind to it. 'That sort of carried on right through my life with the fishing as well. It was quite macho. 'There were other women fishing, but it was still very new ` women on the boats. 'You had to have an element of toughness. 'I met my partner, Phil. We used to play together when we were little kids. 'His family left the island and my family left the island. He came back, and we met up again. 'When I came home, I drew seabirds ` um, the mollymawk and the albatross, 'because I saw a lot of them out at sea when I was fishing,' and I affiliated myself with them because, you know, I was watching them all day. 'The bird has koru patterns on its wings that represent the generations that live here. The expression on the mollymawk, as well, is the determination to get home and be home. I always knew I'd come home. Yeah. My friends were really shocked that I was having children, yeah. I didn't really like children. They are the best thing that's happened to me. They are balls of energy. 'They're adorable. They're really lovely.' We're doing things together all the time. We're always down the beach. They're the talk of the island. Phoenix and Delta and their little mates Gabriel and Cassidy are always swimming down the beach. Doesn't matter if it's the middle of winter and if it's blowing 40 knots sou'west, they're always swimming. 'We visit NZ maybe once a year. We all love visiting the place, 'but always love coming home. I really just want to be here with my family and do my art. 'That's when I'm in the best place.' LAIDBACK COUNTRY MUSIC The best thing about living here is not a lot of people. Peaceful. You've got freedom. You've got fishing. I like the ocean too, surrounded by the ocean. 'Every day is a different day on the Chathams, and, um, yeah, 'and it depends on the weather as to what they're having ` lunch. Fishermen come in for fish.' Farmers come for steak. But it seems ridiculous. I'm dying to wait till the All Black selection. George might get in. We hope so. 'I do a lot of catering for people to take away.' See ya, Clory. 'Like for afternoon teas, morning teas. 'Air Chathams do the sandwiches for their flights every day for the passengers both ways.' Cheese and pineapple, egg and lettuce, which is the favourite of all, and ham and tomato. I usually have chicken, but I've run out of chicken. I have to wait for the ship to come, so... We're used to going without so you just make do. All the coffee comes from Wellington ` Caffe L'affare. Visitors ask for it. I don't get too fancy. Just the normal cappuccino, flat whites. I haven't been trained in that barista thing, and it's quite nice having a coffee machine like this because you can take it home for Easter. < $7.40, please, Jenna. Ta. So, what are you killing? Gorse, or...? Ta. So, what are you killing? Gorse, or...? Uh, no. Cotoneaster. Brush-cutting? Brush-cutting? Yeah. All right, we'll see you later. All right, we'll see you later. OK, mate. $11.60, please, Jase. Ta. Ta. You're taking a risk with Kerry and Jenna, aren't you? > I tell ya. I tell ya. (LAUGHS) Got some earmuffs? > I tell ya. (LAUGHS) Got some earmuffs? > Earmuffs, yeah. I might just wear them. I might just wear them. (LAUGHS) Just start the chainsaw and leave it idling. < Cool, thank you. < Cool, thank you. See ya. See ya, Jase. You're a brave boy. 'Willy Fleming used to come in here, 'and he would make up this burger cos he didn't want anything green. 'He wanted pork riblet, two lots of bacon, a double lot of cheese and a double lot of onion. 'So that was called a Willy Burger. So, it's a very popular burger, very popular.' That goes on like that. One Willy Burger. 'January of 1973, I came to live.' Yeah, it's been a wee while, nearly 40 years. I'm still a visitor. Oh, it's just the best. I've come here from South Westland, Whataroa. A lot of people think that was the back of beyond. Chatham Islands came up as a job. Yeah, I was elated. It was a job I suppose I really wanted to get, and I managed to get it. 'I'm the sole-charge policeman on the Chatham Islands, coming up nine months through. 'I've come here because I think this would have to be the ultimate one-man station for the police. 'It's so far away. You don't have access to certain things out here that you normally have in NZ. 'The main one being someone else in a blue uniform. 'Here on the island where you're totally isolated, you're it. Sort of like that in a way. 'You know, you're it. I thought this would be the ultimate test really, to come out here and try it out.' I do a bit of everything. I mean, it's not just police work we do here, but we've got justice department, internal affairs, a bit of the corrections work, land transport, immigration, customs, births, deaths and marriages. We can marry people because we don't have a marriage celebrant here at the moment. 'Hopefully we will do soon, and you want to help as best you can.' This is Chatham Islands Court. Every three months we get a judge, prosecutor, duty solicitor, a registrar. Sometimes it seems like more court staff in here than actual people in trouble. Yeah, so it's a unique situation. The thing is your family gets involved as well. Rachel, my partner, is a lot more involved now in my job, taking phone calls or talking to people at the front door. She got interviewed as well, and she got interviewed more than me actually. As a police family you'd get quickly found out if there was something wrong with your relationship out here, I'd say, so luckily we're doing all right. We are certainly a police family out here. This is Rachel's garden. I hauled all the dirt, but she's growing in it. I don't know about hauling the dirt either. 'Veggies can be expensive here.' Don't come out, little lambie. 'Rachel's growing some good veggies for tea now.' How's lambie today? 'I've got a paddock out the back for sheep and chickens.' You giving lambie a pat? Oh yeah. Who are your friends in here? > Who are your friends in here? > Oh, Candyfloss. Who are your friends in here? > Oh, Candyfloss. Candyfloss? Candyfloss the sheep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the chickens? Do you like the chickens? 'Being here for the kids at their age, 6 and 3, it's a great experience for them. 'I was living on an island when I was their age. 'Any one-man station, especially where the station's connected to the house, 'I have to be careful in that regard. 'It certainly weighs in the back of your mind when your family's involved. 'If I take someone back to the cells,' I'll most probably be passing by my kids bouncing around on the trampoline while I'm dealing with my lock-up, taking it back there, and if it's a nasty one with all the abuse and all that, there's not much I can do. We've got two cells and a search-and-rescue room and radios in here. Generally try not to put anyone in cells, cos you got to babysit the person that's in here till they are released or are taken back to NZ under escort. As with any cellblock, they're never comfortable. They say there's ghosts in these ones. There is a bit of a ghostish noise that comes out of this place. I wouldn't want to be here by myself. There it is there. HOWLING NOISE I am on call all the time. 24-7. You've got days off in your roster, but it always works out that someone's going to ring up or something's going to happen. 'There is still crime here. We have drugs, we have domestics, we have things stolen and places burgled. 'Yeah, they get policed. The island is bigger than what most people think. It's quite large.' It takes a while to drive around. People think when they come here it's quite a small island, but it's not. 'There are no warnings with drink-driving, and shouldn't be.' Hello, mate. 'When you're alone, you need to think differently, 'and there's no getting on the radio to find someone to help you if you get into trouble.' You're all good. You have a good night. 'So that's always in the back of your mind. You don't have any backup. 'If I ever got into trouble, I'd be relying on whoever drives past to stop 'and lend a hand ` if there's someone driving past, that is.' I thought it would be good to have a disco under the blue light banner, which is the police youth service, I suppose. We wanted to have the kids have a dance, basically ` Halloween theme, so, yeah, the hall's decked out with balloons and about 50 kids there. I remember back from my childhood going to blue light discos. They all had a good time. Parents had a good time. I had a good time. Yeah, I'm sure we'll do that again. I rely on my community. It'd be the same in any small station. More so in the small station where you're the only policeman, and I've got people like that here now that I can rely on, and the longer I'm here, the more people I'll get to know. Enjoying it at the moment. There's some good people here. We'll hold it in our memories, I suppose, when it's time to go back to NZ. Family's enjoying it. I'd say at the end of our term here, Rachel won't want to leave, and I'm sure when we do leave there will be a tear in our eye when it's time to go back to NZ. Yeah. 1 'My favourite flying would be the Pitt Island run, 'flying between Chatham Island and Pitt. Nice short sectors. 'Takes you longer to do the paperwork than it actually does to do the flying' but the flying is really good ` hands on, neat scenery. Anybody could really become a Chatham Islander if they were to become involved in the community. 'Put up with the isolation and make do with what they've got.' Couldn't think of a better place to live, myself. Pitt Island has a really small community. I think there's about 36 or 37 people normally living here. I've lived on Pitt Island for just over four years now. Winning the job here was like winning Lotto. I couldn't believe the opportunities that it was gonna bring and the adventure for the family, coming to the most isolated school in all of NZ. READS: Oliver reached out with his paw and he patted it very carefully just to see what would happen. There is seven people at Pitt Island School. Tane, Douglas, Reuben, Meddie, Mark. I am the youngest. I am 5. Stella. And me. 'Three of them are mine. Uh, I have 7-year-old twins and an 11-year-old girl.' Mr Graden's my teacher here. He's my dad as well. Yeah, and it's real cool. 'Katrina and I have six children who range from 15 down to a newborn baby and we really do love it here.' It's so different from the mainland and the mainland schools. 'I like that I can spend so much time with my own children, um, and want to do that intentionally. 'We had a couple of people who identify new plant species, from Wellington, 'and they said that the Chatham Island toetoe, from memory it was 146 plants left, 'and we had one of them up our driveway at school.' I went with the children, and we gathered up the seeds from it and managed to get 70 new Chatham Island toetoe plants. 'It's a lovely thing to be able to go out with the children and do some planting out some afternoons.' It's just the wind. 'Living in an environment like this, it certainly has its practical challenges. 'There's no shop here at all. We get our food supplies from the ships from Timaru. 'They come to Pitt Island maybe every two or three months, 'so we tend to buy about six months' worth of groceries at a time. 'If we run out of peanut butter or something like that, 'then the kids just have to do without peanut butter until the ship comes with more supplies. 'You just can't get it. 'There's no mains power here. Every morning I have to start the diesel generators. 'That's when we have heaters and things on. After lunch, we turn them off and have inverter batteries. 'We can still have power as long as it's only light usage.' Some people here do have 24-hour power like the school, except we don't. 'A number of houses on the island, they just have no electricity, sort of, during the day.' We only normally have it at the night. Round about 6 o'clock we turn it on. 'You're surprised with what you can do without.' We do writing, silent reading, music in the afternoons. UKULELES PLAY My favourite subject is maths. 'Pitt Island School, um, have won the NZ maths challenge. 'Several of our children have been the top students in the World Maths Day. 'We're right up there beating a lot of the mainland schools.' Douglas and Archie probably being the best in the school, except for Thomas. He used to be here, but he went to high school. 'When students finish year eight here, they usually go to boarding schools on the mainland. 'Often they find that difficult, but it's just necessary. There's no high school here.' I've had two of my own children leave to go to high school since we've been here. 'It's a hard thing. It has some sadness to it for myself as a father. 'Students find it quite daunting, but I guess that's all they have anticipated for all of their life.' When they turn 12, they'll leave and go to boarding school. I might go to Christchurch Boys. And I'll probably live with my auntie and go to Oxford Area School. 'That's what I've been building them up for, is preparing them, um, as have the community, 'to do well and to see the world.' CHILDREN SING 'OMA RAPETI' 'My daughter went to boarding school. There was 32 people in her class. 'You know, that's about our whole entire population on the island. 'The Ministry of Education fly them home each holidays.' It's always wonderful to see them back, and you've seen them grow so much during the term, 'and certainly they got some interesting stories to tell. 'Pitt Island, it's certainly a different sort of place to live. 'A lot of my friends go, 'What are you thinking taking your children to an island where there's no shop?' 'But, yeah, the adventure of the island, experiences that they've had ` 'I think that they'll be with them for all of their life. They're so privileged to be here. 'I've enjoyed it immensely.' WOMAN: Well done. > 'When people come to live here, they tend to stay, 'and the farms are handed on from generation to generation.' The first white settler here was Frederick Hunt. Frederick Hunt's descendants still live here ` the Gregory-Hunts. 'Frederick Hunt came here in 1843. Our children will be the seventh generation from Frederick Hunt. 'My husband, Bill, was where the connection comes from.' I grew up in South Canterbury where I met my husband's younger sister and we became friends, and she invited me back to Pitt Island for a holiday and met up with Bill. We married, and 51 years later I'm still here. We've been farming most of those years. Unfortunately Bill had a stroke in 1991, um... Yeah, so that changed everything for our whole family. Bill and I have 11 children ` six daughters and five sons. 23 or 24 grandchildren, 23 or 24, probably lost count a little bit, and two` three great-grandchildren, and we were at James' wedding. 'Bernard, our youngest child, is looking after the farm with me, 'and, yeah, I like to take part in that if I can because it's the land I have always loved. 'I feel very privileged to be living in such a place. It's a special place. 'I've always been very much part of the land and thoroughly loved having anything to do with it. 'You know, land doesn't go up for sale. 'It's passed down from generation to generation, which is wonderful. 'Originally, of course, having a big family, I was mostly involved in running my house.' It didn't bother me having 11 children. I just went up another gear when another baby came along. I don't think it was too big a problem. It was busy, but I'm kind of a person that likes to be busy. Yeah, no, I was very organised. You learnt to order food supplies for, say, four or five months at a time or longer. We only got our stores very irregularly. I make my own bread. I make pickle out of my vegetable garden. I still do that, and you just get into the habit of it. Our children were of that generation where they went outside. They built punga huts, they chased wild sheep out the back, they climbed trees, they probably did lots of things that I didn't actually know about. But living in a place like this, the island was your playground, the whole island, you could go anywhere you liked if you wanted to. CHILD: Oh, look at Bernie. By the time Bernard and the younger ones were born, some of them were at boarding school. CHILDREN: Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blast off. So I don't really know how many we actually had at a time to be honest. I guess there were always seven or eight of us. We'd get together when the kids came home from school. The young people growing up need to go away. It's lovely to be in a family community, but you need to develop socially in the big wide world as well, cos we do live in a very tiny world here. It's Bernard. Oh my God, look at him. Hello. Not everybody could live here, but it suits me wonderfully. 'And now that my children have grown up and gone, 'I have more time and opportunity to get out and enjoy just being around on the land. 'Simple things make me happy. To me, I've got everything I require around about me. 'I wasn't born here, but after 51 years, I'm very passionate about the place. I absolutely love it. 'Perhaps the people that were born here have a little bit more footage in the ground than me,' but I certainly would like to think I'm a true-blue Pitt Islander.' GENTLE MUSIC I've been back here since 2000. Previous to that I was here as a child and then left to go to NZ. Unfortunately it was many many years, but started to come back more and more, and my heart's always been here anyway. I consider that I am one of the kaitiaki of our culture, Moriori culture. Probably 500 to 700 years ago our people established a covenant of peace, and we endeavour to maintain those values today. My father used to talk to us about being Moriori. My mother said to him, 'Why are you filling those children's heads with rubbish?' cos she could see no future in encouraging anything to do with the culture, but obviously it was ingrained deep enough in me. As a child, she thought she was the only Moriori in the world, and she was called a dirty Moriori, therefore she didn't want us to be associated. Hapupu, which is this side, the southern side of Kaingaroa, is one of the last remaining stands of kopi trees, carved kopi trees. They were first introduced here by Moriori when they first arrived. We call them rakau momori, which is 'memories in wood'. That's a rough translation, very rough. 'This, to me, is the equivalent to a cathedral. 'It's very sacred, and these areas were sacred and are still sacred to us. 'This is where our people gathered, and when you pass from this world into the next world, 'your image and the things you were noted for were beaten into the tree and the bark was indented, 'and your image or what you were known for, sometimes your status, was impressed in the bark, 'and they were treated as living entities, and to me they still are living entities. 'We're guesstimating they're between 350-450 years old, these ones. 'I see joy, I see happiness, I see ancient wisdoms 'and things that I'd like to travel back in a time machine and observe. 'I see joy and people that were totally at one with their surroundings. 'I feel first I'm a Moriori and secondly I am a Chatham Islander, 'and to be both of those things is a privilege, and it's also a responsibility.' 'Grew up on the north end of the island and went to school from up there, 'had to walk to school there for a while too 'because the bus couldn't get up there, the old roads were that rough. 'Born and bred here. Yeah, born and bred. 'I spent about 10 years in NZ in shearing for a while. 'It's like anywhere, eh, where you grow up, I suppose, 'you always go back to it, sort of, like, come home.' You get a bit older, eh, sort of, like, quieter and it's a lot more easier going and everything, yeah. 'More my style now.' 'There's normally three of us most of the time travelling around together. 'Gazza, who's our top shearer.' 'I first learnt to shear when I was 11. 'My dad showed me the first steps, and I used to help shear his sheep on his farm, 'and then I went away to high school, Palmerston North, and when I did come back when I was 15 or 16, 'Johnny Rotten's dad, he gave me my first break shearing, yeah. I've known Johnny 40 years, easy.' He's probably booted my backside when I was a tiny bugger. (CHUCKLES) These here are Romney, some of the better sheep to shear, actually, are Romney, more placid. You know, they'll sit there for you. 'Gazza's boy, Josh, he's only just come on board in this year. In January he started off, 'and he's going pretty good.' Pretty proud of him. He's only been shearing eight months. 'Johnny Rotten was the first person that ever gave me a chance on a handpiece, apart from my old man.' I seem to have got the knack for it straight away. I only got shown one sheep and I was away since then. Sometimes it's pretty hard going, but you still get it done. 'Here with our youngest shearers, we've got young Kerri. 'Trying to get them going, eh? You know, just us in the shed, like Gazza and I. 'Josh might take off to NZ and get in those big gangs and get a lot more experience. 'It's like any job ` the more you do it, the better you get.' There's only about 30,000 or 40,000 sheep on the island so it's basically a part-time job, 'so you're probably going to have to find other ways of making money.' 'NZ especially, they've perfected that much. 'You know, it probably takes about, sort of, like, five years to get up there with the hot boys.' Used to be able to do 300 a day and that. Well, the fast days are over for me. That's for those young fellas down there. They're the gun boys now. 'I'll probably stay here for another year, then head out, see what happens from there.' 'And, uh, with a bit of luck, I hope Josh will come back again, yeah, cos that's what Gazza's done.' 'It's sort of a pretty good, sort of, a way of life here. It's home. 'My dad's family came here in the 1800s, German missionaries. We've, sort of, been here ever since.' 'It's pretty cruisy, and you can do whatever you want, basically.' 'A pretty good life, you know?' You don't have to buy a $100 mutton; you can get one out of the paddock. Out of your own paddock. (LAUGHS) Definitely takes a certain kind of person to live down here. This is the first touch game of the season. I've came from Kaingaroa for the game, and my mum, my dad and my brother are playing, and the people from Kaingaroa, our team, but most of them are lazy. But my dad isn't because we were having a touch practice on Wednesday and Davan and Regan were hiding under Mahara's table. I don't know, they just don't want to play touch. Hey, Manaia. My dad said if they don't do it he'll boot their butts, mm-hm. Because, um, last year everyone had a ball. But I'm not actually into rugby. 1 I first came here in 1973. My husband came for work and told me he'd bring me here for one year, 'and I'm still here today, 39 years. 'I love the people, and I like the Chathams itself ` the rawness. 'I love the ocean. I love looking at the ocean.' I've met the odd city person that reckons they could survive here, but, yeah, I mean, there's no shops. You've got to be into this type of lifestyle to be able to live here. Tonight we are having a seafood buffet at our sports and social club. All the community is involved. Each one has their speciality dish. I am cooking mutton birds. My husband and I go south every year, and we bring quite a few of our buckets of mutton birds back to here to contribute. 'Tonight we have about 51 tourists. Everybody's happy to give of their time. 'Shorty, the local school teacher's husband, will be smoking moki. Sally Muirson is making smoked fish pie. 'Local dishes. Marinated blue cod. Curried crayfish. Paua and egg pie. Mutton birds, of course. 'There'll be some roast mutton from the local farm. It brings our whole community together. 'It's a very close-knit community. I am looking forward to a good night.' We've come to do pig on a spit. 'I was born in New Brighton. Arrived on the Chatham Islands for a bit of a look, 'making crayfish pots up for a start. The crayfish boom started in the Chathams in the 1960s,' but anyway, we made a lot of money diving for pauas and crayfish. There's plenty of them around. 55-60 boats in Kaingaroa, which is hard to imagine today. We've got seven fishing boats out there. In the boom days there was boats banging into one another all night and up the beaches, but there was always plenty of activity in the boom days of crayfish here. I bought this farm a few years later. My great-grandfather got shipwrecked here in 1860. My grandfather had the Heathcote Arms Hotel for bloody 45 years, but my mother has never been here, so I was really coming back here for a look and I sort of stayed here ever since. Well, the Chatham Islands is neat because it's the first place to see the sun rise. And the year 2000 ` or coming up to the year 2000 ` anyway, we decided to get some money printed. We got permission from the Reserve Bank. The idea was if there was business, someone comes in and you give them change in Chatham Island currency. All these notes are made to show history of the island, and people hopefully take them as souvenirs. Yeah, it came out quite good. I think we turned over about $35,000 in the first 12 months and everybody got a share in the profits. Yeah, it was a bit of a laugh. On the last lot we put an $8 note in there. People want to collect odd` oddball notes. They are worth about US$120. In America, they're flogging them off. (CHUCKLES) And, of course, we've got the old` on the $15 note, we've got the old Sunderland that crashed here years ago, ended up here anyway, on the farm, so that's part of the history of the island as well. I've lived in the Chathams now for six years. I live on Jim Muirson's farm. We first came to the Chathams for six months, and there's a lot of people in that situation that have come to the Chathams for six months and are still here 30 years later. We do enjoy it. We've got four children, and they can roam all over the place with their bikes and animals, and they have a lot of freedom, and they get to have a farm childhood. I contract to Air Chathams for 10 days a month. I fly for Air Chathams. The rest of the time I donate my time to what we're doing here with the aviation museum. This plane belonged to the Royal NZ Air Force. It was a flying boat. The Sunderlands were used during the war to hunt submarines and drop depth chargers, that's what it was designed to do. Our air force got 16 of them after the war, and they used to operate these Sunderlands to the Chathams carrying passengers. They didn't have runways, so they used the flying boats and especially in the Chathams, it was a great aeroplane because they could easily land it in the lake. And this particular one in November, 1959, it hit a rock when it was taxiing out which damaged the hull, and the air force deemed it to be uneconomic to repair it, and it was gifted to the Chatham Island people on the proviso that it could be removed from the lagoon. Some people called the Wiesners, who used to live here prior to the Muirsons, they were engineers, and they were clever enough to disassemble it, cut it up, and they brought it back to their farm, and they just used to inherit things, take them to pieces, including the aeroplane, and used whatever to keep different parts of machinery going. The components were used for all different things. They were used for repairing tractors, building sheds, even the cockpit section was a greenhouse at one stage. The rear fuselage was a shed. It was all lying in the trees and it was all over the farm, all overgrown with weeds. I pulled them all out, cleaned them up, and then put them together so that it's one aeroplane again. I think the Sunderland's not a particularly attractive aeroplane. I think it's pretty ugly, but as time goes on, as we work on it more and more, you sort of start to enjoy it a bit. But for me, the-the thing about the Sunderland that's interesting is the stories behind it, it's listening to people's stories. We've spoken to people on the Chathams to get their memories of what it was like in the flying boat. The idea is to use the fuselage as a gallery, and that will be the place where we display all the stories. Young Chatham Island kids coming through can read about what it was like for grandad or grandma and realize what a different world it was. What it meant back in the '60s and the '50s when air transport was fairly new, and it wasn't that common. And also, I got interested in aeroplanes when I was very young due to the fact that we went to museums and we saw them. So if there's one or two kids that get excited about aeroplanes or think about a career in aviation, then that would have been a great thing too. We've found it great that our children are accepted here and we've been accepted here too, and we thoroughly enjoy living in this place. It's a great bunch of people, and it's a great community. Every Saturday night in the summer, come out for a good feed and that, eh? Crayfish and pauas and kinas, and throw in a bit of a do for people and that. All our food tonight is prepared by the community themselves. So it's all a community effort around here. Just enjoy your night tonight and behave. Thank you. This is pure paua. This is pure paua. This is pure paua. Do you know how much paua costs today? About 180-200 bucks a kilo. Do you know how much paua costs today? About 180-200 bucks a kilo. Well, we use 14 pauas to a pie. There's gotta be a kilo there. We're getting it for free. 'We get to meet our visitors, 'which we all enjoy, because there's only about 43 people living in our community. We all love it here.' Do you slice your paua or do you mince it? I mince it. I mince it. Do you add garlic? No. No. No? No. No? No. You're not gonna tell me the recipe, are you? You're not gonna tell me the recipe, are you? No, I'm not. OK. 'I was born in Bluff. I know where my roots are, but we choose to live on the Chatham Islands.' 'I've just come here from NZ, and I've only been here for nearly a year. 'I love it, and I'm proud to be a Kaingaroain now, I suppose.' PEOPLE SING SONG IN MAORI 'I never knew about this island. I never been taught about it. For me, it's a big eye-opener, yeah. We're little people in the middle of the sea. We're surrounded by sea. We're a little paua on a rock. Occasionally you'll find, like, a world map where Chathams and Pitt don't exist on it. There's people who don't know where we are. Some think it's Hawaii, like there with hula girls and palm trees, but it's a bit different from that. This is the furthest east you can go in NZ, because the Date Line goes right around. So, we're a wee bit out to the left field. Winter's a bit harsh, but harden up, it's part of the Chathams. The people are pretty easy to get on with, eh? Yeah.