By Fionna Hill

Copyright thespinoff

No New Zealander had a ‘holiday cottage’ in the 50s. We had baches. Fishing huts. And ours was very much a hut.

I snuck off down Milford Lagoon Road with a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover jammed up my jumper. Turning right at the stopbank that tracked beside the farmland upstream, I figured I was safe. The fishermen usually went the other way – towards the lagoon, the river mouth and the sea.

The book, which was banned at the time in 1950s New Zealand, had been brought out to our bach by some visiting friends, along with a pavlova and a wooden fruit box of rotten eggs to lure eels from the nearby creek. The book was accidentally left within reach after a bit of adult sniggering. I took the bait. Off I went to furtively discover what made it so scandalous.

In truth, I couldn’t find anything shocking. I was too young to know what to look for, and it didn’t even have pictures. I spent a good hour searching for smut, found none, and later slipped it back to its hiding spot when no grown-ups were around. The pavlova, by then, had curdled in the sun on the parcel shelf. No takers. You couldn’t just pop down to the dairy for an ice cream in those days either – not when you were that far away from shops.

The rotten eggs did their job though. The eels emerged from the dark green depths of the creek, lured close enough for my brother Malcolm and me to spear them with our gaffs – long two-pronged forks on broomstick handles. We didn’t eat them. They were left on the grass. Looking back, I think we considered them “Māori food” and turned up our noses, a reflection of the ignorant snobbery of the times. It wasn’t until much later, in a Sydney food hall, that I discovered smoked eel was actually delicious.

Our bach – though we always called it “The Hut” – stood on the north side of the Ōpihi River, near the river mouth in South Canterbury. Just 24km from our home in Timaru, it sat among a patchwork of weathered fishing huts, some barely upright, clinging to the low coast. I once referred to it in a flower book as “The Hut”, only to have an editor change it to “holiday cottage”. But no New Zealander had a “holiday cottage” in the 50s. We had baches. Fishing huts. And ours was very much a hut.

Some of my fondest childhood memories were made there. My cousin Judy, visiting from Christchurch, still says her best ever holiday was a week at Milford Huts. “We caught the train to Temuka,” she recalls. “I think your dad must have met us and settled us in.”

Dad, a keen fisherman, had bought the place in the 1940s – probably leasehold, from farmer Dave Miller. Dad ran a bicycle business in Timaru, A. Hill & Son, founded by his father Ambrose Zachariah Hill after immigrating to New Zealand in the early 1900s. Dad was the second generation; sadly, it didn’t survive the third.

The hut had clearly evolved in fits and starts, with wonky add-ons and daylight showing through gaps in the woodpile (also a mouse highway). The porch roof was patched with mismatched corrugated iron. I liked lying on the couch, watching sunlight pierce through old nail holes and listening to the rain on the tin. And always, the low thrum of the Pacific Ocean beyond the beach—a thunderous, comforting sound when you were tucked up in bed.

Floodwaters sometimes reached the hut. I remember one trip out with Mum and Dad, the river still in spate, to check the damage. A silt mark on the wall inside showed where the water had come right through every room.

Malcolm and I slept on kapok mattresses on sagging wire-mesh bunks. I loved them. They made you feel like a sandwich filling – and were perfect for poking my brother in the backside from my bunk below.

There was no kitchen and no bathroom. A coal range did all the cooking; water came from a hand pump outside. Mum was a fantastic cook. She had her grandmother’s cast iron frying pan and a huge oval boiler that could hold two whole chooks for soup.

Bathing was in a tin baby bath near the coal range. Enamel potties were warmed in the oven before bed so we didn’t have to brave the long drop, which backed onto a paddock and featured a string of torn newspaper squares.

Lighting came from a Tilley lamp, which hissed and glowed above the big wooden table. We weren’t allowed to touch it – or the matches. Moths and bugs often kamikazed into its glass, adding a faint smell of scorched wings to the night.

There was no better reason to wake at dawn than mushrooms. Armed with baskets and short knives, we’d race across the paddocks trying to beat the neighbours to the best pickings. The slimy, pinkish dew-coated mushrooms were peeled and fried with bacon on the coal range. The smell still transports me.

We played endlessly – building fires on the beach, catching frogs, flying homemade kites using brown paper, flour paste glue and Mum’s old stockings for tails. We rowed our dinghy up the slow-flowing river once, scattering thousands of pale yellow lupin heads just to watch them swirl and drift. Magic.

Once, with Mum, I counted nine white herons on a small island in Milford Lagoon. They seemed like mythical creatures. Today, kōtuku are considered critically endangered. Back then, I didn’t realise how rare they were.

Sadly, I also collected bird eggs. Dotterels, terns, oystercatchers – I’d lie in wait until the parent birds returned to their nests on the shingle, then strike. My father made me a special partitioned box to store them. I kept it into adulthood, before finally donating it to the Canterbury Museum in my 30s.

Fishing was constant. We caught herrings with homemade lines, whitebait with set nets. Dad made the nets himself, kneeling on the dining room floor, with wire and mesh, and a long bamboo handle. Some whitebait runs were so big we used kerosene tins – and even Mum’s nylon stockings – to hold the catch.

Floundering happened at night. Dad would wear chest waders and wade through shallow water, torch and gaff in one hand, and the dinghy rope in the other while we sat idle in the moving dinghy. We couldn’t swim, but we weren’t worried. The fish glowed faintly on the sandy bottom and scattered in a flash of silt if they escaped the spear.

There was no fridge, only a meat safe and a tall outdoor food cupboard Dad built with mesh sides to hang large salmon. Fish didn’t last long. I didn’t like it much anyway – except for flounder tails fried crisp. I notice TV chefs trim them off now. A shame.

One weekend, Dad came home early from the hut. His friend Harvey had drowned. The dinghy had capsized in the lagoon. Dad and another mate made it to shore, but Harvey didn’t. It was the first time I saw my father cry.

Eventually, I became a teenager and preferred staying in town – iced chocolates at the Sea Breeze Coffee Bar on Caroline Bay Hill, rather than driftwood fires and Tilley lamps. Dad grew despondent and sold the hut in the 60s.

Years later, my sister took me back. The sea had reclaimed almost everything. All that remained was a large worn concrete doorstep, leading to and from nowhere.

And yet, even now, one whiff of open fire smoke or damp fresh field mushrooms, one flash of lupin or a bird’s feather, and I’m there again – in the hut, near the river, listening to the rain.