Maddy Spurling is breaking news on the other main news channel and the perplexed frontperson asks: ‘What on earth is all this argybargy between a government department and local iwi about rights to exploit access to the geyser? Is this some creek bed claim exploding at a time when the government has been receiving criticism for merging departments and riding roughshod over local Maori interests?’
This is a passage from Geyser in the Creek, the second of the three comic novels that make up The Kotuku Creek Chronicles, which has just been revised and re-edited and published in e-book and print. Kindle calls the package a bundle, and this collection aims to offer a bundle of laughs at a satirical depiction of a Bay of Plenty coastal village subjected to bureaucratic, political and physical onslaughts.
When a geyser suddenly appears after a massive earthquake in the Kotuku creek, both the recent mega merger, the Department of Conservation, Tourism and Environment, and local iwi who so successfully managed the Tarawera tourism boom of the latter 19th century aim to exploit the tourist potential of the geyser. The conflict between department and iwi and the spin attempted by a government coming up for re-election in the early 2000s would be satirical history if we were not seeing such conflict and spin active right now.
The Kotuku ex-postmaster Jack Cavanagh running the post shop is dragged into the conflict when his grandson and best friend Rangi Rangihau, former station master, goes missing, along with drug pusher Bob Rogers corrupting village youth. Jack and Rangi feature prominently in the other two Kotuku stories. In the first, Gold in the Creek, the late-1980s anti-public service government has closed the Kotuku post office and railway station and Jack and Rangi fight to save the last vestige of village solidarity, the bowling green, from the same free market forces that are selling their public service homes, which drug tsar Bob Rogers aims to snap up with his ill-gotten gains from his local drug pushing. The final story Stamp in the Creek is set in 1949 when Jack and Rangi are among returned servicemen trying to rebuild their lives when a valuable stamp is stolen from Jack’s post office, with young Bob Rogers among the criminal elements involved.
The three stories involve outside exploiters threatening the village literally, as invasions descend on this sleepy coastal community. In Gold it is radio that spreads the word of the gold strike and attracts riffraff from all over the country. In Geyser television exponentially attracts hordes of tourists and bad eggs from the dodgy side of Auckland. In Stamp the behaviour of rare stamp collectors is up there with the criminal fraternity.
The stories demonstrate the resolve of a dinkum Kiwi bloke, and his wife and daughter and village friends, confronted by greedy layabouts, criminals, bullying bureaucrats and nest-feathering politicians prepared to use intimidation, stand-over tactics, blackmail and kidnapping involving both Jack’s son, daughter and grandson. In a contemporary world where bullies and threatening politicians are in the ascendant, the calm and resolute Clint Eastwood-like qualities demonstrated by Jack and his fellow villagers, minus Clint’s preference for magnum force, are models for resisting overwhelming odds. Laughing at megalomaniacal ratbags is a potent weapon.