Disco DAD - May 2025

a tangential story about wine, family, life & a car!

It turns out I don't have many photos of my car. A 2005 Landrover Discovery.

There are incidental shots of it: hazard lights flashing, laid up on the Ponatahi Hill attached to a trailer whose deck had collapsed under the weight of a full wine tanker. Potentially ruinous, financially and reputationally; parked in a vineyard covered in snow during a frost fighting allnighter; towing a big tonka toy to clear our waterrace of suffocating wild puha; towing cases, pallets, barrels of wine; a shot of the boot rickshaw-laden with tools and equipment but otherwise... I clean it from time-to-time, service it regularly, but images are of events of note only. Photographs capture the car as a peripheral albeit vital actor. No gratuitous shots in the genre of men cradling fish or stag heads. But make no mistake, I have deep affection for this car. And how could I not?

I bought the Disco in April 2010, in anticipation of our first child. A nice reliant automobile. Safe, multifunctional, capable and reliable were the arguments put forward to HQ. Scoff if you wish. But you'd be wrong. The Disco has proven to be all of that and much more. And its rego was DAD***. Zeus the earth-shaker willed it so.

DAD*** was bought from a Mount Maunganui dentist in the throes of an acrimonious divorce. Being matrimonial property, he wasn't motivated to achieve top dollar. More chivalrous but less rational, he honoured my naive offer against apparently much higher subsequent bids because I was the early bird. He must have been hurting badly.

There was more to DAD***'s origin story. Turned out the wife/tooth/money extractor took long-term care of the teeth of a university girlfriend's dad who I admired and respected. The deal was done. The exchange was to take place in the carpark of the supermarket in Bethlehem on the outskirts of Tauranga. The Lord willed it so.

And so it was, carrying several 10s of thousands of hard currency in my jersey back pocket! I set out to cycle 200 or so kilometres from Auckland to pick it up.

Those dollars, ring-like, summoned evil.

An hour into the journey riding along the crest of the Bombay Hills, a recklessly driven shabby commodore swerved in at speed while passing, honking and gesticulating. It stopped 100 or so metres up the road. Not a great sign. Long story short, it turned out the driver was a good friend of the local chapter of the head hunters club and looked forward to the prospect of joining the group himself. Good for him! A young man must have ambitions.

At some point in the discussion he made the decision not to change his car tire using the wheel brace he was ... brandishing, is usually the word. And in no time off he hopped, promising he'd immediately mention us to head hunting colleagues in the area and that we should expect one, some, all or them to be keeping an eye out for us on the road!

We proceeded in an easterly direction, the report would have read. At pace. The trip was otherwise eventless; flats in Waihi and Katikati. Pies in those towns and others. By the time we reached Bethlehem my donkey was cooked. Close to delirium. But we made it. Stories were swapped along with the precious cash. Bikes loaded into the back and off we hopped.

Brennagh was born 3 months later. And DAD*** got down to business.

DAD*** underwrote, facilitated and opened up the vast unexplored hinterland of parenting for us in so many ways. The split boot door was the perfect mobile nappy change station on journeys long and supermarket-short. The back seat ceiling-mounted video unfailingly lulled grumpy children. And they never minded that it only played an Elmo DVD which was permanently jammed in situ. The seven seat arrangement meant we could jimmy grandparents and children in. Wherever we went, we could always comfortably exceed our luggage allowance.

Bike adventures were built around DAD***. The Mount Albert 3 would load bikes into the back, head to Cambridge to watch track cycling world champs/cups or to Northland or Coromandel or Taupo. It served as a Commissar's car in the National Road Champs in Napier in 2000 and something.

There are many moments lost to posterity that really shouldn't have been. I should have taken a shot of the sleeping arrangement for the dreaded all night frost-fighting nights. A wooly beanbag, duvets and pillows. Very cosy. Or hayriding children around the vineyard - go faster, go faster!

The majority of photographs of DAD*** aren't of biking or wine adventures though. And they barely show the car at all. They are of two children, separately and together, angelically asleep in their safety seats cocooned in the mid row of DAD***. There must easily be 100 or so of these photographs. Each precious.

Last week, those moments of DAD***'s German Shepherd at the cotside service and guardianship, appeared to coalesce with two weirdly twinned landmarks. On Sunday, the baby who inspired DAD***'s purchase some 15 years ago, took her first driving lesson in it - in time I hope she can dine out on having learnt to drive in a V8 Landrover. I am already. She even reversed with great success or at least, no damage or tears! Very proud.

The second milestone occurred the next day. DAD*** clocked 300,000kms.

There was no fanfare or celebration of this. DAD*** would not have willed it so.

May 2025