Question One
I’m staying in a house that began its life as a picker's cottage, meaning: accommodation for the seasonal workers coming to Motueka to pick the fruit, the hops, the tobacco. An echo of a different time and place; one in which the local cop had a file of photos in his drawer of known troublemakers. He would send a constable down with the photos to meet the bus and check the arrivals as they stepped down. You can get straight back on mate, you're not stopping here.
A different time and place, one when it wasn’t just pickers who got cottages. All kinds of employers would sort you out a place. Staff accommodation for police. Staff accommodation for nurses. Houses for teachers, houses for rabbiters. Little pokey shoebox rooms for hotel staff, little railway houses down the line from the station.
What a great arrangement. What a shame it’s mostly been abandoned.
