The good book: A century of stories and seaside secrets
Sunday, 4 May 2025
Mike White is a senior writer and columnist specialising in feature writing including criminal justice investigations.
OPINION: This is a love story.
In truth, it’s two love stories.
It’s the story of Morag and Peter’s love for their simple rimu bach by the sea, and the wild world surrounding it.
And it’s the story of their love for each other.
These stories lie in a book that’s almost a century old and has many authors. But Morag and Peter are undoubtedly the main characters.
It’s the guest book at their West Coast bach, which has seen four owners, a string of guests, and countless fortunate visitors since it was built in 1924.
It records Morag’s first trip there, in October 1994, with friend Peter who wrote, “Very hard to leave.”
She returned six weeks later, and left perhaps the most enigmatic entry in the whole book: “With hindsight, better than the last visit.”
A newly qualified lawyer with a salary to spend, Morag bought the bach the next year.
In May 1997 she returned with another Peter, who wrote: “THRASHED Morag at Monopoly and at strip poker. Lucky the night was warm.”
At the end of the year, Morag and Peter the Second noted they were engaged: “Another wonderful West Coast New Year. Fun, sun, laughter, sunburn, good friends, hangovers.”
By mid-1999, Peter the Second pointed to Morag now sporting a hyphenated surname: “First trip to the bach as husband and wife.”
They went overseas for a long time. Busy and important jobs in London.
In 2010 they had twins, Bella and Lexie.
The visitors’ book marks their sixth birthday: “Me and Bella had lots of presents and cake Mummy made, and lemonade too. It was great!”
They filled the house with mismatched crockery and a Kiwiana collection. A Michael Joseph Savage portrait was hung in the lounge, homage to the political totem that adorned many working-class West Coast homes in decades past.
They kept the inside walls the original colours. They painted the outside brightly, in the way baches used to be coated with whatever leftover paint could be found.
When Morag and Peter and the girls weren’t there, it was let as a holiday cottage, and hundreds and hundreds of travellers have come to appreciate the bach, be woken by downpours on the tin roof, felt the bed tremble just a little as the Tasman’s swells crash ashore at high tide.
Some have been prosaic. “Excellent weather. Lots to do.”
Most rhapsodised.
A few penned haiku.
Linda, Tim and Alex from the UK were bewildered: “Certainly different.”
The odd one careered down linguistic off-ramps in their search for superlatives: “Hystorical, unreal place. Kiwi treasure. Beautiful. Fully sick brah.”
Many struggled to spell bach.
The book, which begins in 1931 with entries in fountain pen and careful cursive script, is as affecting an artefact as you’ll ever find in a bach.
Each page hints at secrets, contains small mysteries, invites the reader to fill in the surrounding story to the brief visit and inked comments.
On New Year’s Day 1943, Mavis E Ross from Greymouth wrote: “Wouldn’t it rock you, folks.”
Caroline Etherington from Christchurch visited on New Year’s Day 1988. “Yes, Mavis, 45 years later, it rocks me. Yes, indeed.”
But the best stories are Morag’s.
They’re stories of the girls growing up, of the bach being a haven, a touchstone to cling to while a world away, an anchor in their busy lives.
Sitting at the rimu kitchen table that dates to the bach’s construction, Morag documents the joys of coming back.
The glorious river swims, the playing in the sea foam, the pikelets and pizzas.
Toasting marshmallows, fireworks, barbecues.
“Bliss.”
Sand angels on the beach, where low tide presented a vast canvas to draw and write with sticks.
Rock pools and caves.
Driftwood conjured into monsters.
“Magical as always, and tears at the thought of leaving.”
Weka raising chicks in the flax bush in the garden, the singing of cicadas, the summer blaze of rata and pōhutukawa.
Board games: Bingo, battleships, Pictionary.
Enid Blyton adventures, and time to read a thousand other books.
“We’ll miss you, but will be back as soon as we can.”
The girls learning to canoe, boogie board, skim stones.
No TV. No dishwasher.
Just, “laughter, games, silliness”.
The family was there again this past summer, stepping onto the worn wooden steps at the back door, pushing through the plastic-strip flyscreen that matches the house’s colour scheme, and being enveloped by a million fond memories.
Instantly feeling on holiday, just like everyone who’s stayed at the bach over the last century.
It’s all there. In the good book, where Morag continues to write her family’s story, in the bach they continue to share, in the place that moors them amidst life’s squalls.
“Our happy place, indeed.”
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