A tough old loner forced to start again

For years he was known by his family and a scattering of radio hams as "the man in the cupboard". He now knows himself as the man whose only possessions are the clothes he stands up in.

A fire deep in isolated bush country cost Ernie Matthews, 78, everything.

If qualifications were required to be a hermit, Ernie would have been capped in the university of life with double first-class honours. He has lived in monastic isolation for half a century in the remote Moeawatea Valley, 40km northeast of Waverley in south Taranaki.

Apart from a small, tight circle of three brothers in Wanganui and occasional acquaintances, he has only birds and beasts for company.

It was just another day in the routine life of a serious recluse last month when he rose early to cook breakfast on an open fire. As the wood cracked into energy, he left the house briefly to retrieve a tool.

When he turned to go back inside it was ablaze. He could only stand and stare as explosions reverberated around the valley. The struts snapped like matchwood and toppled to the ground, a spiral of smoke shooting past the bush canopy.

The fire is believed to have started when a piece of burning wood rolled out of the fireplace on to the kitchen floor.

There's a draining helplessness in such a man-alone emergency. You cannot call on neighbours for help. There aren't any. He bought into that when he systematically acquired the houses of neighbours when they moved out so as he wouldn't have any new ones.

Bizarre though it seems, Ernie's modest abode was but 100m down the track from a house that enjoys Category 2 status in its listing with the Historic Places Trust. It's the house that Rewi built.

When the legendary Sinophile Rewi Alley returned home from World War I, he and a friend used loan money to buy land in Moeawatea and build a small house. It's still there, owned by Ernie, restored and under listed protection.

Author and conservationist Geoff Chapple of Auckland met Ernie when he tramped into the valley to do research for the book he wrote on Alley. Knowing nothing of Ernie's hermetic disposition, Chapple found him working outside.

"We chatted briefly on his verandah, then he pointed me in the direction of Rewi's place."

Retired Heritage champion David Harre of Oratia has also met Ernie in circumstances that intrigued the hermit.

In 1988 when he learned that Alley's house would not survive another winter - a wall had collapsed - Harre, with Chapple, made a film on Alley's life. They called it Second Blade of Grass. David Lange provided the voiceover.

In search of money to restore the property, Harre approached Lange. He was rebuffed. "The Prime Minister told me Rewi didn't believe in monuments."

But Harre was undaunted. Instead, he approached Phil Goff, then in the Cabinet. He got the money with the proviso that he took 10 young people into the bush with him as a character-building exercise.

"We bought and demolished an old house in Patea and used the material to rebuild. Phil Goff flew in by helicopter for the opening ceremony."

The house had been in decline for years. Alley saw that the land wasn't going to support two families and left in 1927. Harre easily recalls the six months' bushwhacking in Moeawatea.

"Ernie was curious about what we were up to. He joined us for the occasional meal and even helped string No 8 wire ... as a makeshift phone system to amuse the kids."

Ernie stopped the world and stepped off when he returned from World War II, having been trained as a pilot. He went bush. The iron that entered his soul then never left. He developed his own routines, a modern Robinson Crusoe whose idea of speed was the earth's rotation.

Tough as teak though he be, Ernie faced hardship practically unknown to modern man.

Because of a lack of vitamin C in his diet - mainly goat liver and tinned food - he contracted scurvy, a rarity in developed countries, and needed urgent treatment. He was a lifelong sheep and cattle farmer but inevitably the chores became too demanding in his advancing years and the remaining stock are wild in the bush.

The fire consumed everything, even the medication he needed to treat an ailment. This necessitated a course of action which caused more angst than the loss of property. He had to go into town for a replacement prescription.

But Wanganui's tarmac strips, its traffic and neon nocturne saw him quickly back in the bush.

Down the years the necessities of life were sporadically delivered by one of his brothers or the four-wheel-drive enthusiasts he occasionally allowed on to the property and who topped up his canned stock in return.

In the early days, Ernie paid lip service to communicating with the outside world. He used a two-way radio located in a walk-in cupboard to talk to family and radio hams every few months. But he got rid of it 20 years ago. Too intrusive. Too much talk.

Rumour has it Ernie might rebuild. He could, of course, move into Rewi's old house, which he owns. But don't open a book. That was somebody else's place.