By Alan Deans - November 30, 2004
It is a natural enough conversation starter, but is one from which I often recoil. After all, I had been happy to leave those wet, cold shores and my memories quickly dimmed. I told Col that I was from Wellington. So, he said, was he. Whereabouts in Wellington, was the natural follow on? A lot of places, I said, but I first lived in Naenae before moving to Upper Hutt. That’s funny, says Col, he too came from Naenae.
There’s nothing remarkable about this small slice of suburbia. I moved out at age five, but I remember it having a modest shopping centre and being inhabited with tile-roofed housing commission homes. One highlight that sticks in my mind is the biscuit factory from which every year my mum would buy large tins of broken biscuits - parcels of rejects that sometimes would be chocker with chocolate treats.
I was warming up to the conversation by now, and asked Col about his time there. We chatted about schools and then came down to where we actually lived. Hewer Crescent, Col said. Astounded, I said that I too came from there. Number 81, in fact. Col was further along, around the bend. What were the chances, I asked, of two journos working at the same Sydney-based paper coming from the one street in suburban Wellington? Pretty long, Col admitted, but not as long as there being three. What? That’s right, he said, three. He pointed across the floor to our chief sub, Ray Odlum - another who to me had no trace of an accent.
I have worked with Col since then, except for the time that he went to Singapore and later moved to the Bulletin. He became a good mate, loved for his quick sense of humour, calm manner under fire, frequent and useful suggestions and fine company over a bottle of wine.
I keep wondering if there was anything unusual about the street in which we lived. We didn’t know each other then, but we sometimes talked about what it was like. We both agreed that life seemed easy going. I remember, for instance, going to school aged five and being able to walk both ways without adult supervision. The only rule mum insisted upon was that I didn’t take the road home beside the hill, below the cemetery. Of course, I sometimes did.
Across the street from us, along a far bit from Col, was an oval and on the other side lived some boisterous teenagers. They drove down the street too fast in a dark, 1930’s Chevy coupe that often had people sitting in the rumble seat. We called them bodgies, and were too scared to walk past their house. Col, too, had trepidation when he recalled them.
Perhaps it was the comparative freedom of Naenae’s streets that gave us both the confidence to expand our horizons. Col pushed the boundaries, and found that there was plenty to offer everywhere in the world that he went. I will miss him greatly, but will always feel warm because he was a character who gave so much to this world.
Alan Deans
