Why One Tree Hill Sprang a Leak, and Rangitoto Island Sank; How We Found Wicked Nancy’s Treasure, Thrashed Aunt Effie’s Three Old Husbands, and Learned About Tourists.
The little ones came sliding down the backstays and landed in a heap on the deck.
“Why is Rangitoto sinking?” asked Lizzie.
“Hear the chainsaw.” Marie pointed. “Somebody’s cutting down the pine tree on top of One Tree Hill!” At once we forgot Rangitoto Island. The pine tree on top of One Tree Hill had been there all our lives. We cried as the chain-saw screamed, and the tree fell. There was a gurgling roar, like the chain being pulled on a gigantic dunny.
“Remember the ancient Maori story?” said Jazz. “The one that says, if the pine tree on top dies, One Tree Hill will turn back into a volcano, and Auckland will sink under the sea.”
“That’s just a myth,” Daisy sniffed.
But as the pine tree fell, something exploded out the top of One Tree Hill.
“It’s the volcano coming back!” yelled Jessie.
“Speak proper English,” Daisy corrected her. “What we say is that the volcano is erupting ash and steam.”
Behind us, Rangitoto Island was sinking deeper. We had seen the island born out of the sea, the first time we sailed up to Auckland with a load of kauri logs, and now we were seeing it drown. As we cried for the pine tree on One Tree Hill, so we cried for Rangitoto, too.
“That’s not ash and steam,” Jared said. “That’s water!”
“There’s an old tunnel from the bottom of Rangitoto that runs beneath the harbour and comes out under the pine tree on top of One Tree Hill,” said Peter. “Aunt Effie read us Mr Maurice Gee’s book about it, remember? Whoever’s cut down the tree has opened the hole, so One Tree Hill’s spouting water and Rangitoto’s sinking.”
We watched the sea water shoot like a geyser out of the top of One Tree Hill. It rained down on Auckland and turned the roofs red with rust. When we looked around, Rangitoto had sunk until only one tree – a pohutukawa – was left sticking out of the sea. We tied up to the pohutukawa and looked down.
“A wreck!” said Lizzie. A pirate ship lay on her side under the sea. The skull and crossbones flag still waved under the water. A steel hook was stuck through the mast. A peg-leg was stuck in the deck. The little ones read aloud the name on the ship’s stern: “Evil Fancy!”
The bottom of the sea was covered with treasure: greenstone, gold, silver, diamonds, emeralds, rubies, topazes, zircons, sapphires. And sleeping on top of the treasure lay a huge crocodile and a shark. The crocodile wore a black eye-patch. The shark snored with its mouth open.
Jessie pointed and said, “Captain Cruel’s second-hand false teeth!”
“And all that lovely treasure….” Casey smacked her lips.
We had a bit of trouble with the shark and the crocodile, but you can read the rest of the story on the Internet, or in the Waharoa Herald, about how we raised all those enormous riches. How the Margery Daw arrived in Auckland sailing sideways, decks awash, loaded down with taonga: gold crowns, silver swords, and greenstone taiahas.
Rangitoto Island bobbed up again, once we lifted off all that heavy treasure. Aucklanders forget things quickly because they’re only interested in the latest fashion. They’re so used to looking out across the Hauraki Gulf and seeing Rangitoto, they’ve forgotten how it’s actually gone up and down several times.
During the Second World War, the government put a huge gun on top of Rangitoto, to stop the Japanese from invading, but the gun was too heavy, and Rangitoto sank under the sea that time, as well. When they raised the gun, Rangitoto popped up out of the sea again. In the 1950s, the Japanese really did come to Auckland, melted the gun, used the steel to build the new harbour bridge, further up the Waitemata Harbour, and charged everybody two bob to drive across.
There were photos and articles in the Waharoa Herald about what happened, but Aucklanders can’t read. Once they’ve looked at the advertisements and wrapped their fish and chips in the Herald, they throw it away.
Aucklanders don’t have time to look at old newspapers because they’re so busy looking at themselves in the shop windows, but you can read in the old Herald for the ninth of March, 1931, about how the little ones pulled Wicked Nancy’s hook out of the mast of the Evil Fancy, found her black eye-patch, and sawed her peg-leg out of the deck. Ever since then, they’ve squabbled about who wears the hook, the eye-patch, and the peg-leg. Of course, the one who has the hollow peg-leg also has the treasure map.
You can read how the mean old Mayor of Auckland was too tight to plant another tree on top of One Tree Hill, and how some public-spirited citizens – which means us – took the pohutukawa off the top of Rangitoto, planted it like a plug in the hole on top of One Tree Hill, and stopped it squirting salt water all over Auckland. Which was just as well because the city was starting to sink! If it hadn’t been for us, Aunt Effie always says, everyone in Auckland would have had to swim out and live on Rangitoto Island, and their weight would have made it sink again.
You can also read in the same old Herald how the police arrested the man who cut down the pine tree, and cut him in half with his own chainsaw. There’s a good photo of them feeding the bits of him to the crocodile and the shark.
But what the Herald and the Internet won’t tell you about is how we were attacked by a schooner-rigged scow called the Lady Euphemia and steered by Chief Rangi who wanted to steal Wicked Nancy’s treasure. And how we sent him to the bottom with our cannons, Humpty and Dumpty.
Another thing the Herald and the Internet and your teachers won’t tell you about is the submarine that tried to torpedo us between Bean Rock and North Head, and how we forced it to the surface with a depth charge, and about the hiding Aunt Effie gave Captain Flash.
What the Herald and the Internet and your teachers and your parents won’t tell you about is how Samuel the Missionary tried to dive-bomb us from his pedal-powered biplane. Nor how we shot him down with Humpty and Dumpty, so he crashed and had to swim ashore without stealing our treasure.
But newspapers, the Internet, teachers, and parents never tell the whole story. The rest of it happened like this.
Decks awash and glittering with treasure, we sailed up the Waitemata Harbour. It was busy with ships going back and forth through the Tom Davies Canal at Otahuhu, across the Manukau Sea, and through the Dame Cath Tizard Canal to Lake Waikato. They carried tourists all the way up to Hamilton and Cambridge. There the tourists were turned around and shipped all the way back to Auckland, where they were turned around and put back on the ships to go to Cambridge and Hamilton again.
“It’s much cheaper to use the same tourists all the time,” said Aunt Effie. “It saves bringing more into the country each week.”
“It doesn’t seem right to me,” said Daisy who worshipped Monetarism.
“It makes perfectly good economic sense!” said Aunt Effie. “
“I read in the School Journal,” said Peter, “that there was a time when we were forever bringing in planes and shiploads of new tourists with foot and mouth disease between their toes and their teeth. It took hours just to teach them to scrub their feet and clean their teeth properly. This way we don’t have to worry about that.”
“What about when we want to go to Japan or Britain?” asked Ann. “Aren’t we tourists?”
“We’re different!” said Aunt Effie. “But, for everyone else, I think it’s much better if they just stay at home and watch T.V.”
“Don’t the tourists get sick of looking at Hamilton and Cambridge all the time?” asked Lizzie.
“When the old tourists are worn out,” said Aunt Effie, “we swap them for a new lot. It’s called Market Rules.” She laughed to herself. “Steam gives way to sail!” she bellowed. A steamer full of tourists on its way to Hamilton got out of our way quickly.
“Tourists don’t notice anything, not after the first day,” Aunt Effie told Lizzie. “‘There’s so much to see!’ they say. Besides, what can you see when you’re staring through the viewfinder of a camera? Most tourists wouldn’t know whether they’re in Taranaki or Timbuctoo.”
“Don’t they get sick of eating the same food all the time?” asked Jessie.
“You can feed tourists any sort of rubbish,” said Aunt Effie, “as long as you tell them it’s ethnic. You give them the same tucker each day, but just dye it a different colour: pink on Mondays, green on Tuesdays, and so on. They think they’re tasting something new every day. Do you want to be a tourist?” she asked Lizzie.
“No, thanks!”
“Thank goodness for that,” said Aunt Effie. “What’s going on in Queen Street?”
We could see people running and pointing in Queen Street. “I think,” said Alwyn, and he was so excited that he forgot to say it backwards, “the Casino Tower is falling over.”