New Zealand Listener – June 01, 2019

JUNE 1 2019 LISTENER 33

one to talk to so you may as well work from

five to eight. In a family, you never work in

that time because everyone needs to talk

to you and you’re in the kitchen rattling

the pots.“ Usefully for a work that is part

memoir, there was time for reflection. “You

confront stuff about yourself, like

stop being such a misery bags. Of

course, I had these five ghosts

with me all the time.” She got a

first draft done.

T

he project brought other wor-

ries. “To have a book where

everybody is white ... .” Eve-

rybody is also straight. “Except for

the Witch of Kings Cross. She was

very keen on the old tongue and

groove,” muses Johnson, in spade/

shovel mode. These are sensitive

times. “I said to a Māori friend the

other night I’m worried I’m going

to be called a white supremacist

or some stupid bloody thing. But

the point of the book is they are

Pākehā and yet they still feel that

they have this sense of a national

identity.” As Johnson writes, “all

first-generation Pākehā and none

of them forgetting where they

came from”.

As a sixth-generation Pākehā

herself, Johnson was interested

in how that sense of identity

expressed itself. An undertow to

the book is their mostly imper-

fect, sometimes awful attempts

to grapple in their art with their

place in a colonial enterprise.

West Island looks to Australia, but it has

much to say about life back home. Eltham-

born poet Douglas Stewart wrote in an early

short story about an elderly Māori couple

who took him in when he was once again

between jobs. “What went on in those secre-

tive Māori minds,” he wrote. “They weren’t

animals. They had their own thoughts ...”

Johnson, good at following the threads

that run between there and here, then and

now, writes of how this story, “full of the

prejudices of the time”, would later “incense

and inspire” Witi Ihimaera after he read it

at school in the early 50s. “I found the story

poisonous,” said Ihimaera. “I was incensed

enough to ask Mrs Bradley, ‘Why have you

made us read this story?’ ... I threw the book

out the window.” That day he decided he

would write his own stories.

As for Johnson’s own relationship with the

Lucky Country, it seems more complicated

now than when she began the book. West

Island ends with a possibly symbolic disaster

involving Johnson, a vehicle and an emu her

husband has to dispatch in a mercy killing.

“That was just terrible,” says Johnson. “It

could have been so much worse. The truckie

said, ‘Those things will rip your guts out’,

and that was when I had the vision – there’s

my husband disembowelled. We got off

lightly. Well, the emu didn’t. It was dead.”

The book also ends with a declaration:

“I love you, Australia. You’re like nowhere

else,” she writes. “And I do love Australia,”

she says now. “It’s like a sneaky love. But

then, what they’ve done to us since ... I’ve

got young New Zealand relatives who can’t

afford ever to become Australian citizens.

They’ve made it so hard for us over there.”

In a chilly afterword, she

writes about the “so-called ‘bad

character law’” that gives officials

the power to cancel visas of sus-

pected or convicted criminals.

“It’s so ignominious,” she says.

“These ‘bad’ boys have Australian

accents. They don’t know any-

body here. It’s appalling. We’ve

also had suicides of these young

men.”

There’s anger in the afterword.

“The New York Times reported that

more than 60% of those deported

are Māori or Pacific Islanders ...

Despite decades – centuries – of

immigration from all over the

world, Australia is racist.” There’s

sadness, as if someone she loves

let her down: “they’re behaving

as if they hate us”.

She understands the pull to cross

the Tasman. “If you’re a painter or

a writer or anything, you’re in a

bigger market. In New Zealand, to

survive in the arts is hard.”

But you get the feeling writing

about Australia has made her even

more a New Zealander. “In fact,

at the end of this month we’ve

got to go to the Town Hall. Tim

is a Kiwi on May 27.” Wonderful.

“It is wonderful. I feel quite emo-

tional about it. He’s very committed to New

Zealand and I’m very patriotic.”

When they first came back to New Zea-

land, Johnson didn’t imagine it would be

forever. Now it’s home. She’s started on

another work of non-fiction and a new

novel. Her experiment with what she calls

high-end commercial fiction – the Lily

Woodhouse novels – is finished. “Lily is now

a dead duck,” she sighs. But don’t expect

high literary fiction. “I can’t be bothered.

I want the writer to get out of my way. It’s

like you’re turning handsprings, and I’m

very impressed with all things you can do

hanging upside down, but actually, I want

a story, beautifully told.” Well, she’s always

been good at that. i

TO

N

Y

N

YB

ER

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WEST ISLAND: FIVE 20TH-CENTURY NEW

ZEALANDERS IN AUSTRALIA, by Stephanie

Johnson (Otago University Press, $39.95).

“I do love Australia.

It’s like a sneaky love.

But then, what they’ve

done to us since ... I’ve

got young New Zealand

relatives who can’t afford

ever to become Australian

citizens. They’ve made it

so hard for us over there.”