PROBABLY PAPAKURA

“Probably PapakuraMaybe maybe ManurewaPossibly PapatoetoeO Otara” I started singing the chorus to the song PROBABLY PAPAKURA as I swung into the car park at the Papakura pools.  There it stayed for several months while I worked out the rest of the song. I grew up in South Auckland and went to school there, but for 25 years I lived and worked in Wellington, and have the bulging calf muscles (hills!) to prove it! When I returned to South Auckland I saw a very different place to the one I had left behind. The road by our house used to be a rural backwater, now it was main arterial route and I got an adrenaline rush just making it out of the driveway.  Exotic looking older Sikh gentlemen with long flowing beards solemnly paced the footpaths on the way to the local temples, and Asian eateries and $2 shops had sprung up like shiitake mushrooms in local shopping centres. I joined the Tai Chi group in the Botanic Gardens, checked out Pasifika performances at Polyfest, and sampled fluorescent orange Indian sweets. It was ethnic-o-rama! Back to the song.Over a series of re-writes, the catchy PROBABLY PAPAKURA chorus developed into a cheerful reggae track celebrating life in South Auckland. I thought it would make a cool video, reminiscent of the old KFC ad: ”And Hugo said you go, and I said no you go” with two kids sitting in the back of a car “getting thinner”. On a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, I drove up and down Great South Rd, taking lots of photos, and sent them to my Wellington friend Ross Payne. Ross is a great illustrator and animator. We had worked together previously on the award-winning DON’T SIT UNDER THE POO TREE video. As luck would have it Ross was coming to Auckland to do caricatures at the Armageddon festival, so I nabbed him and locked him in a darkened room with a pencil and paper. For two days Ross sketched, and Grant Lahood captured the development of the story on a second by second basis.  I provided refreshments and knitted a scarf that grew longer and longer as the stop frame animation took place before my eyes. We ended up with a joyful hand-sketched music clip, featuring two kids going for a jaunt along Great South Road in a bus, seeing all the local sights and people through the window.  “Probably PapakuraMaybe maybe ManurewaPossibly PapatoetoeO Otara”The music video will go live 5pm, 15th October (UC+13) on our YouTube channel.