Aunt Effie's Ark (14 page)

I am a lying old author. Not a word I say is true.

I was born on a raupo island in 1831, and grew up in a hut my father built in the branches of a cabbage tree in the middle of the Great Waharoa Swamp. We had to swim to school each morning, so our sandwiches were always wet at lunchtime. We swam home after school, and Dad hung us to dry in front of the fire. In winter, our uniforms were still wet when we put them on next morning, so Dad told us off, made our lunches, threw us in the swamp, and we swam off to school again.

If we were too slow, the enormous eels ate us, so we became very fast swimmers. My sisters and I won every race at the Waharoa Primary School Swimming Sports. The other kids whined, “It's not fair.”

“Tough luck!” we told them.

We wondered what Waharoa would look like, covered with water. So we damned up the Waikato River, flooded New Zealand, and built a boat. This book is about what happened.

When he found what we'd done, Dad wouldn't let us go to the pictures for the next three Saturdays. But we didn't care. Would you like to have to swim home in the dark through a swamp filled with enormous eels?

I am a lying old author. Everything I say is true. So there!

Charlie the Cheeky Kea 1976

Rewi the Red Deer 1976

The Lake 1987

The Mangrove Summer 1989

Uncle Trev 1991

Uncle Trev and the Great South Island Plan 1991

Uncle Trev and the Treaty of Waitangi 1992

The Conjuror 1992

Harry Wakatipu 1993

Dead Man's Head 1994

The Waterfall 1995

The Battle of Pook Island 1996

Because We Were the Travellers 1997

Uncle Trev's Teeth 1997

Taur 1998

The Shaman and the Droll 1999

The Lies of Harry Wakatipu 2000

Kalik 2001

Aunt Effie 2002

Harry Wakatipu Comes the Mong 2003