“ I was born in a little town called Marsterton in NZ. I was the youngest of 4. We moved to Upper Hut, just north of Wellington when I was about 3. We lived near a river so that was our playground. My older brother Phil and I spent our entire childhood roaming the river and climbing the mountains, catching big Trout with our hands and sometimes we’d cook them up on a fire by the river. On the way home we’d pick blackberries and Mum would make Blackberry and Apple pie. Always stay on the good side of your Mum.
Dad was the best dad you could have. He was a very good person, considering what he’d been through spending 5 years in the war in active service. We got our good share of floggings but it would be when we’d done something really bad like stealing the neighbours golf clubs and trying to sell them. We got caught. Phil and I got up to mischief.
Mum would say if you’re not home by lunchtime, 12 o’clock on the dot, you won’t be fed. Dinner was the same..6pm on the dot or you’d miss out on dinner, have a shower and go to bed. We spent our entire day having the best time in nature and watching the clock (laughs). My mother was a tyrant. She would beat the shit out of us so we made sure we always got home on time, that way we could go to the river. No-one thought about danger or drowning, that’s how we all learnt to swim and survive. No adults around! There were many situations where I could have drowned, I had many lives. We learnt from trial and error. Because it snowed up in the mountains the river was crystal clear. We’d take rafts down the rapids for about 3kms. Every child should have a childhood like that where you learn to cope with problems when you bumped into them.
My brother went to the local high school. He was smart but in and out of trouble a lot. My older sister was a lot older so she’d moved out. I went off to Nelson Boy’s College which was a boarding school when I was 12. I had this romantic notion of what it would be like. I’d read books and thought it would be great. My brother said, well, you’ll get caned! That was something I thought would be pretty spesh as I thought it could not be worse than Mum’s floggings. I learnt to survive very fast in school, you keep your head down, mind your own business, sort of like going to prison. I spent 5 years there. I guess the only good thing that happened was I got laid for the first time by the girl whose parents owned the corner store. You can drive a car at 15 in NZ so I had a girlfriend who drove us all around.
I didn’t really retain any friendships from there except one and same with my childhood. I was taught to be such a loner. It wasn’t intentional, it’s just how life worked out. I’m quite a gregarious, social person but I’m very happy in my own company.
I’d done art since day one, always been a drawer since I was a little boy. When I was at primary school, they’d get me to draw Father Christmas on the blackboards before the holidays. Santa would be there when we all came back the next year. I had a great art teacher called Sam Majors in high school so in my final year I did English and Art which was great. My Dad wanted me to follow him as he was a Law Accountant and my Mum was hellbent and told everybody I was going to do medicine. My grades were really good but subconsciously that scared me off. The expectations were high and really I didn’t like school. I was pretty cocky too which was probably my downfall. I look at old reports…wonderful student but a bit too arrogant. I felt like I could do it all and I still feel a bit the same. Any challenge wasn’t too big a challenge.
My Mum worked at General Motors so all of us kids when we finished school always got a job at General Motors. I was the last and Mum thought, here we go, going from dreams of being a Doctor to working in the factory, not even in the office (laughs). To rub salt into the wound my friend Paul and I were pretty useless so they put us in the box room where the boxes were made to put the parts in to send off to dealerships. We weren’t even doing that, we were pulling the nails out of second hand timber to make the boxes. So for 8 months I walked around with my right arm looking like Popeyes and my left arm looking like I’d had a stroke from pulling out nails. I calculated it was 130,000 nails I’d pulled out so that was definitely not my forever job, anyway I saved to go to Art School.