How I became... a hunter gatherer

Pam Goddard swapped a dull British existence for a hunter gatherer’s life in New Zealand.

"It was late one night while I was out walking amongst the relentless rows of Yorkshire chimney pots when I became fuelled with the passion of escape.

We lived in a Coronation Street-type house in England; the front door opened almost onto the pavement and not a blade of grass could be seen.

I married a dour Yorkshireman whose ambition, like his ancestors, was to go to work, come home to a meal then out to the pub with his mates. He had no desire to do otherwise.

It was so cold the water in the toilet froze. Each morning I poured boiling water on the pipes to get it to flush. I worked in a fish and chip shop and dreamed of a house by the sea with a big veggie garden and even a little boat to go fishing with, all of course in a warm climate.

Thirty-four years later, I now spend my days gathering food from our natural surrounds. At night we sit back with a glass of home brew and watch the waves of the Manukau Harbour lapping at the bottom of our organic orchard and veggie garden. It was a long road, but my dream has been achieved.

How did we get here? Well, it was 1974 when I returned home after that teeth-chattering walk amongst the chimney pots and I said to the dour Yorkshireman, “Let’s go to New Zealand.”

“No way,” he protested, and he thought my hair-brained idea would go away. But I was determined. I prepared everything and he was still objecting as we got on the plane.

But he soon came on board with my dream to be as self-sufficient as we could. He worked as a carpenter and I studied for a BA while doing all manner of menial jobs for $2 an hour. I became his labourer and we renovated and built houses. Eventually I became a teacher by day and did commercial cleaning by night.

By a stroke of luck we stumbled across an old dilapidated bach at Cornwallis in the Waitakeres, right on the beach. We snapped it up. We had started to edge toward my goal. My husband used gardening skills passed down from his father to put in a huge organic veggie garden and fruit trees.

I’m now the hunter gatherer, roaming the beach for mussels, oysters, scallops and seaweed for the garden and fishing from my little dinghy. I make jams, chutneys and all manner of preserves from the garden. Freeze veggies, mow lawns, chop firewood and knead bread. I used to set my fishing net at night and retrieve it as the sun rose over the water in the morning. Nowadays at 63, I sleep in a bit and sometimes a few fish escape the net. But I don’t mind because there’s not a chimney pot in sight."

Photograph and interview by Rosalind Le Bas Walker