It's Nice To Move Around Your View

A bach by Gerald Parsonson in Hawke’s Bay provides places to sit in the sun, and places to retreat from the wind.

- Simon Farrell-Green

On the wall in the den of Adie and Matthew McClelland’s Hawke’s Bay bach, there’s a small Dick Frizzell painting entitled ‘Mangakuri’. It depicts a little old greeny-blue weatherboard cottage: pitched roof and deep, covered verandah. The couple bought the cottage in 2000, after renting baches in the bay for 13 years. “That particular bach was one we never thought of,” says Adie McClelland. “But the extraordinary thing is they all have their really special uniqueness, and a view.”

Mangakuri – the place, rather than the painting – is one of those classic little east coast beach side settlements. There’s one winding road in and out, over grassy burnt hills, the dust kicking out behind your wheels. The gravel road winds along the dunes between the beach and a handful of houses, which are small and polite, generally one storey.

The McClellands’ place is at one end of the beach, up a small rise and sheltered with plantings of flax, pahutukawa, ngaio, karaka and cabbage trees . There’s a farm gate, a loose gravel driveway and, at the top of the drive, two weathering cedar boxes designed by Gerald Parsonson.

Despite its painterly appeal and what Parsonson describes as “a wonderful spirit stacked up with McClelland bits and pieces”, there wasn’t much to work with or save. “We loved the old bach to bits,” says Adie, a food writer who featured the place in her ‘Black Dog Cottage’ cookbooks. “But it was very broken down.”