Paki Connelly

Tu Tangata, Issue 28, 1 February 1986, Page 27

Paki Connelly

Poroporaki

Whanarua Bay, on the East Coast, has lost one of its most priceless jewels. To be sure, the sun and sea will still outsparkle the brightest diamonds and sapphires. And come Christmas, the crimson pohutukawa blooms will once more carpet the coastline like clusters of giant rubies.

But never again will the passing public be dazzled by that gem of an old lady, Mrs Paki Connelly.

Paki died recently, a week before her 85th birthday. Widowed 30 years ago, she had no children. But Paki had friends... hundreds of them... all over the country. All over the world. And though she will be sadly missed, she leaves behind a lot of people who are the richer for having met her.

For to meet Paki for the first time was to stumble across a rare and exotic bloom in a wilderness of weeds. For a start, you had to venture off the beaten track to find her. Just past the Whanarua Bay Tearooms an old painted fridge... Paki’s mail box... marked the spot where a pot-holed and dusty driveway lured you off the main highway. You bumped and bounced your way to the top of a cliff overlooking the bay.

The view was breathtaking. But it was only the aperitif. There, pottering in her garden outside a small, two-roomed shack... an old Maori lady. Paki Connelly. Dressed rather like a mobile jumble sale, her spectacles patched up with pieces of sticking plaster, her hearingaid invariably on the blink. Small wonder she was sometimes referred to by those who knew no better as “the old hermit lady”.

But though she lived alone, Paki loved company, and the minute she opened her mouth, her arms and her heart to welcome you... you were completely captivated. Not just by her overwhelm-

ing hospitality... a pot of tea and giantsized pikelets in her humble abode, seated amongst her twenty or more much-loved cats. Not just by her youthful zest for life and her merry, twinkling eyes. More, much more than that. She was like a conundrum.

How could a woman who lived such an isolated existence; who’d never travelled overseas; never been to university; who was short-sighted and hard of hearing... how could such a woman know so much? About so many things? How could she speak so eloquently and informatively on such a wealth of topics? How could such an old, old lady be so sharp-witted, so quick with her repartee? Her vision and hearing might have been impaired but her mind was like quicksilver.

In her cosy kitchen-come-diningroom-come-lounge, paintings, photographs and sketches adorned the walls. In the other room, above her bed, shelves crammed with books. Large, literary tomes. She quoted Shakespeare, philosophers, poets and politicians. She was deeply interested in spiritualism. And human psychology.

She kept a visitors’ book, not just as a record of the many hundreds of people she’d met over the years, but so that later she could pore over their handwriting with a magnifying glass, indulging her passion for graphology.

Spellbound overseas visitors who’d chanced upon her years before still remembered and wrote to her. She kept all their letters, and answered them too, eloquently, in her copperplate handwriting.

Hungry hitch-hikers had gratefully demolished plates-full of Paki’s pikelets, as well as the rich and famous. It didn’t matter who you were... Paki was a great leveller. But what were her origins?

Well, she was born at a tiny place

called Tuparoa, near Ruatoria, further round the Coast at the turn of the century. Her mother was Maori, her father Scottish. She reckoned she was like a good whisky... a perfect blend.

Paki attended primary school locally but she completed her education at the Remuera Ladies’ College in Auckland. An establishment, where, she said, “young girls were taught the social graces”. Pause. Wicked laugh. “But they never made a lady out of me,” she’d add triumphantly.

If they didn't, well, someone did. Because Paki was every inch a lady. A very charming cultured, caring, captivating lady at that. She’d lived at Whanarua Bay for more than 40 years when she died. Her late husband, Tony, had been a fisherman, and Paki used to sell crayfish by the sack-full back in the good old days.

Despite her obvious contentment, you couldn't help but wonder what she might have achieved had her circumstances been different.

Somehow it seemed such a waste... Then again, perhaps not. perhaps Paki was the perfect ambassadress, not just for New Zealand, but for the whole human race. A philosopher and a philanthropist, she embraced the world with open arms. Always ready to share her meagre meals and her wealth of wisdom.

She confessed she’d never stopped missing her husband, but she never wallowed in self-pity. Whenever she felt a little down, she'd get out and weed her garden. Feel the dirt beneath her fingers. Soil, she said, was one of nature’s best healers. She loved her garden with its panoramic view. This was Paki’s place. This was where she wanted to be laid to rest when her time came... in a plot overlooking her beloved bay. Her wish has been respected.