Christine McFetridge

The bones of my Grandparents’ old house are unrecognisable beneath what is now the Lake Okareka Lodge. The resort promises butlers and personal chefs; a night’s stay affordable only to the likes of Steven Spielberg and honeymooners with expensive taste. When it was ours, we’d gather there at Christmas-time. I’d help my Grandmother decorate the gingerbread house jewel-like with jubes and pebbles, and my Grandfather would let me steer the ride-on lawn mower around the edge of the property wearing his enormous earmuffs as Flo, the Huntaway cross, followed behind. I can recall the interior stairwell tableaux at Lake Okareka well: still smell the worn shag-pile carpet, feel the rough wrought iron banister through my fingers, and hear the thunderous clang as my brother and I would run up and down the spiral staircase at break-neck speed to get dizzy. In quieter moments, I would sit on the top stair admiring a large aerial photograph of volcanic undulations speckled bovine; the old family farm at Ngongotaha, and then move down step by step till I was level with the dozens of framed photographs organised like tree roots. Fading black and white at the top, colour filtering out at the bottom. An elaborate mosaic of imagery conveying a history I was barely old enough to understand.