A Visit to Colville

The Colville General Store
(August 5th, 2001)

"Colville" is one of Kendrick Smithyman's most iconic small-town New Zealand lyrics. (And, yes, I know - I hate that word "iconic," too, and agree that it's overused. It's difficult to find a good alternative in this instance, though).

Here's the poem in its entirety, from his online Collected Poems.

The editors, Margaret Edgcumbe and Peter Simpson, comment:

Colville: first published in Westerly 3 (October 1968), 33; also in Earthquake Weather [1972] and Selected Poems [1989]; a town on the Coromandel Peninsula

Succinct and accurate, but somehow not the full story. For one thing, on his Stout Centre recording of the poem, Kendrick remarks that the poem caused quite a lot of fuss when it first appeared, and that people kept on assuring him that "it's not like that now." As a result (presumably), when it was included in Ian Wedde & Harvey McQueen's 1985 Penguin Book of New Zealand Verse, the title had been changed to "Colville 1964". Subsequently he seems to have gone back on that decision, though, and the title reverted to its original form.

So is it still "like that"? "That sort of place where you stop / long enough to fill the tank, buy plums, / perhaps, and an icecream thing on a stick / while somebody local comes / in, leans on the counter, takes a good look / but does not like what he sees of you"? Is it still "intangible as menace, / a monotone with a name, / ... an aspect of human spirit / ... mean, wind-worn"? It's not exactly a pretty picture he paints.

Anyway, in the winter of 2001 I decided to find out. I'd been discussing and poring over the poem for years in class, so I felt it was high time to go and check it out for myself.

[Simon & camera]

I went with my friend Simon Creasey, which may not (in retrospect) have been such a good idea - but then he couldn't be said to have stuffed up any worse than I did, so I guess I'd better just stop blaming others for my own shortcomings.

Colville Store (interior)

The trouble began shortly after we first got into town, about mid-morning. I'd been snapping away with my camera, and just naturally lifted it up and took a picture as we walked into the store. There it is above, in fact.

Well, the way the guy glared it me, I realised at once that this went far beyond any conventional faux pas. And fair enough, too! I hadn't actually realised until them just how much people resent flash photography, when they haven't been asked permission (which I suspect he would have refused, in any case).

It was a supremely vulgar, touristy act, and the fact that I was desperate to get a shot of the counter to illustrate those first lines of the poem was neither here nor there. Mea culpa, that's for sure.

What's more, when I looked at the postcards he had on sale (one of which I bought - you can see it there below), it became obvious that the picturesque nature of his shop was part of his stock in trade. Basically, what I'd done was the touristic equivalent of robbing him at gunpoint.

Colville: the sunny side of the street

How do you recover from a thing like that? The obvious answer would have been to get the hell out of Dodge, but it was a misty, moisty morning, we were both pretty frozen, and since the general store doubled as a café, we decided that forking over some cold hard cash for a coffee and a muffin might help restore matters to an even keel.

Simon in the café

Lo and behold, it seemed to work! The coffee was good, the muffins were tasty, and we even found ourselves getting into conversation with some locals at an adjacent table, which almost never happens - to me, at any rate. Everything was going swimmingly, but then ...

The conversation had been cycling generally around Colville, the people who lived there, tall tales of the bush and the communes, and then Simon asked:

"Has Colville always been this small? I mean, you read about it as one of the big trading ports on the Coromandel ... has there ever been more to it than this?" (with a lofty sweep of the hand, indicating the four or five buildings in sight).

Man, you could almost hear those people stiffen! You treat a couple of random Auckland tourists as if they were human beings, and the next thing you know they're taking liberties. I hastily ushered him out of the café and into the car before he could say anything else, and tromped on the gas pedal.

"What's wrong?" persisted Simon. "What did I say? Is there a problem?"

I'm not sure he got it even when I stopped on the outskirts of town to read him a brief lecture on small town etiquette ("Rule 1. Never look around with a sneer and then comment on how small things are here; Rule 2. Never reveal that you hail from Auckland and that your beverage of choice is latte in a bowl; oh, and of course Rule 3. Never take photos of locals without their permission, especially if you have to walk right inside their dwellings to do so ...")

But maybe I'm just paranoid - perhaps they were just a bit surprised by the question, or genuinely didn't know the answer. One mustn't overreact (after all). We'd almost persuaded ourselves to believe that by the time we roared back into town, many hours later, after having been up to the tip of the peninsula and even taken a dip in the icy cold water.

To give you a slightly better idea of the context, here's a panorama of pictures I took just a bit out of town, with suitable captions from Kendrick's poem:

[Thames Estuary Panorama (1-10)]

Face outwards, over the saltings

the bay, wise as contrition

shallow as their hold on small repute,

good for dragging nets

which men are doing through channels

disproportionate in the blaze

of hot afternoon’s down-going

to a far fire-hard tide’s rise

upon the vague where time is distance?

I don't remember too much about our return to town. We were starving by then, and had (as I mentioned above) persuaded ourselves that there was nothing to worry about. So we went back into the café ...

The coffee was lousy this time round. That can happen anywhere, of course, but it had been quite good on the way up. I couldn't help thinking that something had been done to it. One thing's for certain: that latte wasn't made with love ...

these have another tone
or quality, something aboriginal,
reductive as soil itself – bone
must get close here, final
yet unrefined at all. They endure.

A school, a War Memorial Hall

the store, neighbourhood of salt and hills

The road goes through to somewhere else.

That last line rather sums it up, I'm afraid: "Bleenk and you missed it," as the Australians say. But, then, someone has to live there, maintain the petrol pump and the dairy, organise the dances at the War Memorial Hall.

The poem ends rather equivocally:

Not a geologic fault
line only scars textures of experience.
Defined, plotted; which maps do not speak.

How is that sentence to be construed? Is "scars" to be taken as a verb? "It's not only geological faultlines which scar you - creating textures of experience"? Or is "scars" a noun: one of the items in a list (with commas omitted)? "Not a geologic faultline only, scars, textures of experience" ...?

One thing's for certain, he's positing a close link between the character of the inhabitants and the nature of their surroundings - or, at any rate, speculating (as an urban/e outsider) that such might be the case. I can't help feeling that he was onto something there, or is that just me being crass again?

COLVILLE

That sort of place where you stop
long enough to fill the tank, buy plums,
perhaps, and an icecream thing on a stick
while somebody local comes
in, leans on the counter, takes a good look
but does not like what he sees of you,

intangible as menace,
a monotone with a name, as place
it is an aspect of human spirit
(by which shaped), mean, wind-worn. Face
outwards, over the saltings: with what merit
the bay, wise as contrition, shallow

as their hold on small repute,
good for dragging nets which men are doing
through channels, disproportionate in the blaze
of hot afternoon’s down-going
to a far fire-hard tide’s rise
upon the vague where time is distance?

It could be plainly simple
pleasure, but these have another tone
or quality, something aboriginal,
reductive as soil itself – bone
must get close here, final
yet unrefined at all. They endure.

A school, a War Memorial
Hall, the store, neighbourhood of salt
and hills. The road goes through to somewhere else.
Not a geologic fault
line only scars textures of experience.
Defined, plotted; which maps do not speak.

11. 1. 68

[No wonder they gave me a bit of a hard time ...]