Going home: Back to Gisborne, the land of endless summer

Once upon a time Gisborne meant surf beaches, the Watties plant and mighty Gisborne City the soccer kings. In the first of an eight-part summer series GRAHAM HEPBURN* returns to find more than a few changes.

An invitation to my high school's 40th birthday reunion came through the post several months ago, stirring up memories of ill-fitting clothes, slouching off to class and skiving off to smoke cigarettes down by the creek. Yep, teachers had a pretty bad attitude back then.

I'll be in Gisborne for Christmas, but I won't be there for the Lytton High School reunion a couple of days later. So, apologies to Mr Reynolds, one of my old teachers, who is organising the event. I can just imagine him shaking his head and saying in his sometimes exasperated sing-song voice: "Student Hepburn, absent again!"

But I will catch up with a couple of old school friends still in the city - probably at one of the bars which kick into life over summer, especially after everyone's had a day on the beach, feeling gently sunburned and a little light-headed.

We might even talk about our old schooldays and whatever happened to whatshisname with the pet rat or thingummy who always sat out PE.

Going to Lytton truly introduced me to Gisborne - our family lived in a village about 15km away where I went to school until form two.

Before high school, trips to Gisborne were made on blazing hot, windless days when we'd play on the seemingly endless beaches. Or we'd go into town with Mum when she went shopping.

And, if we were lucky, after the shopping was done on Friday, we'd have dinner at the Lyric Cafe. It was a swanky joint where you could eat fish and chips off plates, with cutlery, and its culinary delights knew no bounds - from sausages and chips all the way to steak, eggs and chips.

Going to high school in the city was a wake-up call. Footwear was compulsory and class streaming divided you from your old mates and set you on different paths. You knew things in your life had changed fundamentally but couldn't quite put your finger on it.

Lytton was, and still is, a largish co-ed school and very egalitarian, where rugby was king and the principal turned a blind eye to those of us who were subversive soccer-playing fruits.

We cheerfully tolerated our teachers' efforts to educate us, but bunking classes was a rite of passage. Like POWs, we felt it was our duty to try to escape.

Sometimes we would sneak off to watch Days of Our Lives on the telly at a mate's place while trying to impress his older sisters by smoking cigarettes without coughing.

But mostly we'd hide in the bike racks before darting over the fence and on to the bus that would take us downtown to the snooker rooms, where no one batted an eyelid at a group of skinny kids in uniform potting balls during school hours.

My biology marks may have suffered, but I was studying the physics of putting side and stop on a cue ball. It meant that later in life I could always hold my own on a pub pool table. Now those are what I call life skills.

Weekends with schoolmates were spent riding recklessly around the city on our bikes. We would hang around the houses of girls in our class, making idle conversation, until their fathers ran us off for doing wheelies on their clean concrete driveways.

After those unsuccessful mating rituals, we would head up to Kaiti Hill, which, with the surf beaches, is one of Gisborne's icons.

But for us it was the home of a treacherous and fearsome racetrack. We would scream downhill on our rattly old bikes, scattering startled strollers as we tore to the bottom, chasing legendary daredevil status.

In those days, Gisborne was thriving, with the Watties processing plant and the freezing works providing jobs and bringing immigrants to the city.

Some of those immigrants were semi-professional footballers from Britain, lured with the promise of work and a place in the city's national league soccer side.

Gisborne City played the best football, got the biggest crowds and always had the worst refs. In those glory days, Football Kingz coach Kevin Fallon was at the centre of our defence, playing with deadly purpose, like a nightclub bouncer in football boots.

Since then, the city and the football team have shared similar fates: Watties has moved out, the freezing works has closed and unemployment is a constant problem. Once-proud Gisborne City now languishes in the lower divisions.

In my last year in Gisborne, before I headed off to university in 1982, City had built a formidable side which formed the backbone of the All Whites great World Cup campaign.

The last summer in my hometown was spent leaning on a shovel with a Ministry of Works road gang as part of a student job scheme.

For one wonderful summer, a group of us would-be scarfies drove around the district in trucks, spreading gravel on the roads - occasionally in the right places.

We were earning what seemed like big bucks but we missed out on what was rumoured to be the cushiest number - apparently two students spent the entire summer on Kaiti Beach trying to establish exactly where Captain Cook first came ashore in New Zealand.

I think there was a vague plan to place a commemorative marker there but, as far as I know, nothing came of it. Maybe they are still looking.

T HESE days, when I return to Gisborne I find it quietly comforting, though I don't feel as if I belong any more. The pace of life is as gentle as the flow of the two muddy green rivers - the Taruheru and Waimata - that wind sluggishly through the city and join to become the Turanganui before emptying to sea past the harbour.

You're constantly reminded of being an outsider when you go into the shops where they seem to know everyone's first name - but not yours.

The city has, over the years, been trying to shrug off the tag of rural service centre and transform itself into a tourist mecca. But the hill ranges that help to provide Poverty Bay's beautiful climate also isolate it from its holidaymaker market.

Along with agriculture and forestry, Gisborne has been building a reputation for its wines, but without managing to capture the imagination of wine tourists to the extent of Martinborough, Hawkes Bay and Blenheim.

There are some great wineries, notably Millton vineyard, just down the road from our old house in Manutuke, where you can relax in the shade of tranquil gardens sampling organic wines.

Gisborne's vineyards, though, haven't cottoned on to providing a total package, and it's rare to find a winery where you can also sit down to a meal.

A recent initiative, the Sunflower Trail (subtitled A Tour of Taste and Texture), tries to address that problem with a brochure guiding you around attractions including vineyards, restaurants and arts and crafts outlets.

The beaches, while still dragging in carloads of surfers in summer, aren't the drawcards they once were in these sun-conscious times.

Vacationers who make the journey - and there are some for whom it's their summer pilgrimage - are now well catered for by the city's previously one-dimensional restaurants.

The development of the harbour precinct as a place to wine and dine has been a blessing, and it is a favourite haunt of yachties passing through. Here, with a little local knowledge, you'll enjoy fine food and good coffee while you watch fishing boats butt the wharf as the sun sets.

Long marketed as the first city to see the light, Gisborne wasn't able to turn the Millennium celebrations into the goldmine everyone hoped.

Before the Millennium, some grandiose schemes were doing the rounds - such as lengthening the airport runway to cater for the jetloads of rich tourists who were supposed to be landing nonstop for days beforehand. And there was talk of digging a canal looping to and from the sea through an outdoor concert venue. This canal would have been filled with frolicking dolphins.

But no runway extension, no jets, no canal, no dolphins. The city did get a $100,000 Millennium Clock that it is trying to offload; last I heard, someone was prepared to pay $1500.

As it happens, the central area did get a much-needed tarting up for the Millennium, though the paving and palm trees give it the look of an open-air shopping mall, a look that is out of character with the rest of the city. Which is a shame, as Gisbornites are mostly proud gardeners. The best street award is keenly contested, and that honour rests with Haronga Rd (take that, Fergusson Drive).

As they have done for years, the city councillors are agonising about attracting industry or developments to counteract unemployment and bring in more residents. New mayor Meng Foon plans to attract wealthy lifestylers - preferably cashed-up Aucklanders - to the bay.

The line you will hear most often from Gisborne's 45,000 inhabitants is that it is a great place to bring up kids. This is often said about insufferably dull places - and often said about New Zealand - but around Poverty Bay it is a mantra.

Family and community values are at the heart of Gisborne, as evidenced by the endless pictures in the Gisborne Herald of groups of people with fixed smiles, standing or sitting together at some community initiative or other, sometimes with the dynamic addition of a plaque being presented or a cheque passed on with a handshake.

As if to illustrate this point, on my most recent visit I was press-ganged into driving up the coast to Anaura Bay with my sister to help put up her son's tent at his school camp. I had brushed my teeth especially for the occasion, but there's never a Gisborne Herald photographer around when you need one.

Still, there's a lot to be said for family values. You won't see locals sitting at cafes, supping lattes, moaning about the long hours they work while idly playing with their cellphones. They'll be spending time with family, friends or - something unheard of in bigger cities - their neighbours.

So, Gisborne, don't go changing. You've got it made in your own way; it's just some of you may not know it.

* Graham Hepburn is a Herald features subeditor.

* Tomorrow: Daniel Riordan in Kaikoura.