My neighbours in Palmerston North could trace themselves in unbroken line to a Dutch paymaster who came to England after the crowning of William and Mary in 1689. Ted Gilley, who was custodian at the Foundation for the Blind, had the middle name Unpeas, which the eldest male of the Gilley family had been given for so long that everyone had forgotten the provenance of it. Noleen Browne told me that her great-great-grandmother was frightened in pregnancy by a carriage horse, and the child was born with a chestnut mane all the way down its neck. Hec Liddey, who played senior rugby with me, claimed that on his Maori side he was descended from Tuhawaiki, the Bloody Jack who beat Te Rauparaha. Certainly, no one liked to take Hec on when his temper was up. My family has one touch of richness in its tradition. My grandfather was a Welshman who came out to New Zealand for the Better Life of the colonial dream. An ex-insurance agent and foundry worker, he was served up a bush farm in the Hokianga that gradually broke him, and then reverted to its natural state.
