Long summer days may feel like a distant memory as winter edges closer, but for Fionna Hill her memories of holidays at Milford Huts remain strong. She shares her memories of childhood summers at the small settlement, 23.8 kilometres from Timaru.

Inspiration comes in many forms. For me, it’s the long summer days my family and I spent at our tiny bach in Milford Huts, a small settlement in South Canterbury, just out of Timaru.

Those times spawned my love of nature, which has been so much a part of my life as a florist, forager, gardener and writer. The Milford Huts hold some of my most cherished childhood memories.

My dad, who was a keen fisherman, bought the hut in the 1940s or 1950s, and we spent every spare moment there.

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Our hut appeared to be a series of add-ons, connected in a random way.

In my mind, I can still see daylight beaming through a hole in the indoor wood storage area. Popular with mice too.

The porch had an unlined roof of old mismatched corrugated iron and I liked lying on the couch there and looking for the holes left by nails and with bright skylight shining through. The sound of rain on that unlined tin roof was special.

Another sound I loved when tucked up in bed was the sea pounding and crashing on the beach a long way away. That stretch of beach was open to the Pacific Ocean and could be loud and dangerous. But, safely in bed, I felt a wonderful calmness.

The nearby Ōpihi River could reach our hut in some floods though, and it’s still a problem for owners today.

I remember a remaining high-water mark and silt on walls inside the hut marking how far water had once come up.

Mum and dad tried to drive out to The Hut once while the river was still in flood to check it was still there. But they weren’t allowed to cross the Temuka River Bridge that night, so they were left wondering. And, yes, water had come into every room.

Brother Malcolm and I slept on old bunks on kapok mattresses on distended, dipping wire mesh bunk bases so that we were like happy fillings in a spongy bread roll. The loosely woven base was perfect for poking Malcolm in the backside with my feet when I was in the bottom bunk.

​There was no kitchen nor bathroom at The Hut. A huge wooden dining table doubled as mum’s kitchen bench, food prep area, water was in enamel bowls filled from the pump outside. Mum, who was a good cook, did all her cooking on the coal range irrespective of the daily temperature.

She had a cast iron boiler and hand-me-down heavy cast iron fry pan from my grandma.

We used a thermette at the beach to make a cuppa.

Invented in 1929 by Kiwi John Ashley Hart, the thermette has become something of a New Zealand icon, providing a quick and easy way to boil water outdoors.

The Thermette uses a copper cone-shaped cylinder that holds water. This cylinder distributes heat inside from a small wood fire at its base to the large coned surface area that is surrounded by water. Heat from the small fire not only heats the internal water rapidly but also funnels it out the top of the cylinder creating additional heat for cooking.

We sometimes built our own open fire on the beach and baked potatoes thrown straight into the coals.

They formed a thick charcoal coat so that when they were cooked enough to eat, we could cut them in half and squeeze the white fluffy flesh out while imprinting a thick moustache on our upper lips.

I liked finding the dried seaweed that has those small oval brown pods which when they were burnt dry exploded like fireworks.

We had no bath but a small tin baby’s bath where we squeezed in with our knees up under our chin – all water had to be heated in cast iron kettles on the stove-top and the bath was set near the coal range.

Enamel potties were warmed in the oven of the coal range to save us kids from going outside at bedtime to the long drop.

The ramshackle long drop toilet was backing on to a paddock at the back of the bach.

Toilet paper was bits of newspaper torn into vague squares that were threaded onto a piece of string and hung on the dunny wall near the hole.

As an adult, I trained as a florist in London and went to the Covent Garden Royal Opera house to decorate the private room behind the Royal Box.

It had a loo like ours but with grand polished timber – not an earth hole below splintered wood planks. It also flushed.

​I didn’t like eating fish so all the bounty we caught was eaten by mum and dad or picked at by my brother. One thing I did like was flounder tails fried until they were crisp. I notice disappointedly now that TV chefs neatly trim off tails and fins of flat fish.

There was no refrigeration only a meat safe; fish would soon get smelly if left around for more than a day. Dad built a tall wooden food safe with metal mesh to hang long, huge, salmon.

Dad’s tipple was beer. He had a flagon case with a handle that neatly held two half gallon flagons of on-tap beer.

Flagon cases were used as a natty way to take beer home or to events in the 1950s and 1960s. I have always called them ‘bowls’ bags, but maybe dad was trying to pull the wool over my eyes?

A terrific jack of all trades, Dad used to make our own whitebait nets in various sizes. He knelt on the dining room floor with sheets of fine wire netting and coils of wire to meticulously make the frame. Then a long wooden or bamboo handle to bolt onto it with wing nuts.

We whitebaited up the river where it was safer. We’d build a groyne out from the shore to deeper water where the shoals of whitebait were more likely to swim and set our nets touching the groyne end and with the net top above water level so that bait could not swim over or beside it. We had to learn to sit still and quietly.

Bait can see the slightest movement and speed up in an instant and escape. If there was a run of whitebait, the river mouth was crowded with men catching masses of bait in a large net.

Some of the whitebait runs were huge and, if people didn’t have enough vessels to hold their catch, Mum rushed back home to The Hut to collect kerosene tins - and even her nylon stockings to hold bait.

Herrings were easy to catch. To cast we swung the end three metres of string line wound on a stick (which had the hooks and lead sinkers on it) around our heads, then released it spinning to the middle of the river. We made our own lines aka long string tied on a stick with a lead sinker. Hooks were small as were the herrings which were bony and bland to eat. Salmon and trout fishing require far more skill; my dad was superb and later my sister and brother too. Dad’s rods and reels were beautiful and with hook fishing flies with great names like Grey Ghost and Ginger Mick.

​We made brown paper kites with homemade gloopy flour and water paste and fine stick edges. We tied mum’s old stockings on the fine point as a tail and flew them successfully in the back paddock. We commandeered the huge kitchen table and used sheets of heavy brown paper to cut a large four point kite shape.

The Hut was hard work for mum and dad – lawns to mow, a huge macrocarpa hedge to prune, a veggie garden to plant and weed, things to mend as the place was a bit of a wreck.

Tilley lamps and a coal range needed to be lit and keep alight. Not to mention all the small labour-intensive daily chores.

My parents died long ago without me ever thanking them for those hut experiences that have so strongly shaped my life ever since. But, as teenagers, we children lost interest in The Hut.

Dad became despondent and sold our beloved shack.

As an adult I’ve sometimes yearned for that place. My sister once took me back there many years later and all that remained was the disembodied doorstep leading to and from nowhere.

Fionna Hill, who is now North Island-based, left Timaru on OE in 1967 and since has variously been a London-trained florist, newspaper librarian, retailer, international author of seven books, feature writer, and photography stylist. She returns home to Timaru for family milestones and school reunions.