{"id":267589,"date":"2026-02-04T18:13:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T18:13:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/267589\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T18:13:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T18:13:11","slug":"the-hewitson-profile-christine-fernyhoughs-new-book-showcases-her-unusual-treasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/267589\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hewitson Profile: Christine Fernyhough\u2019s new book showcases her unusual treasures"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Christine Fernyhough was a little girl, she was an enthusiastic collector of shells and coins and was sometimes lucky enough to be given exotic coins from foreign lands \u2013 \u201cyou know, if anybody went overseas, which was very rare in those days\u201d. <\/p>\n

\n She didn\u2019t collect stamps, but one
\n day, many years later, she went into the collectible shop in Kaiwaka, which she calls \u201cthe investment shop\u201d. She \u201cbought this little bronze square with a box in it which had, inside, an old Beehive matchbox.\n <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I pulled out the matchbox, it was full of old, old stamps: English stamps, Australian stamps, all from the 1940s, 1950s \u2013 you know, the first one where the Queen looked beautiful \u2013 and lots of George V \u2026 some of them certainly rather bent and ripped. But that is such a funny find, isn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the way she tells stories, like a happy magpie, say, pecking discursively at this and that in search of treasures only another magpie would appreciate as treasures. She gets waylaid by things and ideas and excitements. <\/p>\n

\u201cShould we start by talking about the book?\u201d she says. We could, and then we could talk about her. Although, I say, I suspect the book reflects her and her the book. She thinks that\u2019s about right.<\/p>\n

The Albino Kiwi and Other Rarities features 75 of the artefacts she has been collecting for years. In the foreword, her grandson George Hellriegel writes, \u201cCollecting is a form of self-expression. Over time, the things we choose to assemble around us are a reflection of who we are as people \u2026 Christine, who I affectionately refer to as Granniii, is a master of self-expression through her considered choice of artefacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ChristineChristine Fernyhough with her mother Gladys, and off to a party with late-husband John. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

She has self-published her book because she wanted it to be elegant, itself a collectible object, and it is. It is a beautiful thing, bound in pigskin, its title gilded. It is limited to 250 copies and costs $300. How much did it cost her to self-publish it? \u201cA lot.\u201d She\u2019s selling it through Lamplight Books and to her mates. She must have 250 mates. \u201cI\u2019m trying. I\u2019m working through them.\u201d<\/p>\n

She is, she says, a good friend. You can see that she would be. She makes you feel as though you have known her for years within 10 minutes of talking to her. It is partly her voice, which is like a slug of single malt whisky \u2013 rich and smoky and somehow peaty. She is partial to a single malt. She likes Laphroaig, which she calls Lapfrog.<\/p>\n

Among her friends is the author Alan Duff, with whom she founded the Duffy Books in Homes programme. She also founded a Gifted Kids Programme for high-achieving kids in low-decile schools. In 2011, she was appointed a companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to education and the community. She is patron of Limited Service Volunteer South, a course at Burnham Military Camp for unemployed youth. <\/p>\n

A proper upbringing<\/p>\n

She grew up Christine Don in Auckland\u2019s Remuera, the middle child of three in a middle-class family. Her dad, Angus, was an accountant. Her mum, Gladys, was kind and clever and strict. There were fish knives and proper table settings and proper behaviour.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe went to St Mark\u2019s Anglican Church on Remuera Rd. Back in the day, a good place to meet chaps and get to go to church dances. Opportunities to socialise were few and far between and were almost always supervised by parents. They usually hung out in the kitchen with their flagon of sherry \u2013 every now and again poking their noses through the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was brought up in an era when the world rotated around the vicar, the doctor and the teacher.\u201d She is 82.<\/p>\n

She went to Diocesan School for Girls in Epsom, where she made many of the friends she still has today.<\/p>\n

As a child, she says, she was pretty much exactly what she is still: \u201ccurious, inquisitive, adventurous, open and born with the optimist gene. Some friends call me inimitable \u2013 impossible to copy, unique. Now, that\u2019s a show off!\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside her magpie\u2019s-treasure-nest of a book: a hand-made, pull-along spotty dog which moves its hips when you drag it on its little green trolley with red wheels, Boy Scout and Girl Guide blankets with badges lovingly and proudly sewn on, and a battered Hillary\u2019s Honey carton. The honey had been produced by Ed Hillary\u2019s father, Percy, his mother, Gertrude \u2013 who was famous in the apiary business for breeding queen bees \u2013 and his uncle Rex. The man who would become Sir Ed worked on the bee farm in the summer and climbed in the winter.<\/p>\n

\"MollyMolly the moa. Photo \/ Haruhiko Sameshima<\/p>\n

On page two is the skeleton of a moa. One day, the owner of Auckland\u2019s Cordy\u2019s auction house, where for many years Fernyhough spent her Mondays rummaging, phoned her and asked if she would like a moa. Of course she would like a moa. \u201cI was not fooled that he was talking about a contraption to cut my lawn.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bones were delivered to Cordy\u2019s. \u201cHow was I to know the skeleton was complete, or even a moa? For all I knew it could have been an oxen.\u201d <\/p>\n

It took two years for the moa to be put back together. She is missing a bit of a toe and her lower jawbone, but otherwise she is all there. She is, or was, a South Island moa. Called Molly, she lives in a kauri-framed glass cabinet at Hakaru, near Mangawhai, on 10ha where Fernyhough runs some sheep and cows because she loves sheep and sheep dogs and farming. <\/p>\n

From city to farm gate<\/p>\n

She used to have a rather bigger farm, Castle Hill. In her 2013 book The Road to Castle Hill, she writes, \u201cThis is not a conventionally pretty landscape. Rather, it has a harsh beauty and an unforgiving terrain that at certain times \u2013 early morning or summer twilight \u2013 can with a trick of the light deceive, making the erosion-exposed bones of the hillsides appear velvety soft, as if coated in the finest of grey powder.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2003, recently widowed and grieving not only the death of second husband John Fernyhough but also her father Angus, she saw an advertisement for a famous high-country farm, Castle Hill. Would she like a famous high-country farm? Of course she would. <\/p>\n

She bought about 2600ha of the best farmland on Castle Hill Station, with the Department of Conservation acquiring the remaining 8000ha. She was a rich lady from Parnell, with its nice shops full of cashmere sweaters and antiques. Castle Hill is near Porters Pass in the Southern Alps. She had no farming experience. She learnt to ride a horse, train a heading dog, what good grazing land is, what makes a good sheep.<\/p>\n

Here is her philosophy of life, as applied to sheep and people: \u201cI hadn\u2019t thought about it but when I went to Castle Hill, I thought: everybody walks up the drafting race of life. And if you\u2019re, say, a ram or, more likely, a ewe, you\u2019ve got to start that drafting race and you\u2019ve got to be able to look quite good. You\u2019re not allowed to be limping, you\u2019ve got to have a good clean bum, and you\u2019ve got to have good udders and the good ears and a good walk.<\/p>\n

\"ChristineChristine crossing Porter River at Castle Hill with heading dog Midge. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you\u2019ve got to have plenty of teeth and you\u2019ve got to be looking forward, not up. Because you want to be drafted on the right-hand side. Out there, you get kind dogs, good food, the best chaps on Father\u2019s Day. If you were no good, done your work, teeth falling out, you go straight ahead.\u201d We both know what happens if you are a sheep and get sent straight ahead. You\u2019re for the chop.<\/p>\n

In other words, it\u2019s kind of the luck of the draw and, I suppose, genes and bank accounts. \u201cAnd we are so lucky to be born in New Zealand. And I had the good fortune to be able to buy this collection, not only the everyday [items] but these rarities, and to be able to hopefully leave a legacy. Of a loss! I mean, not many people go into making books to make a loss.\u201d She reckons she\u2019s losing about five bucks on every book.<\/p>\n

High old days<\/p>\n

She has no idea what her various collections are worth. She collects art \u2013 she has an Andrew McLeod and a Liz Maw, a Blomfield, a Hoyte. She drives a 2012 Lexus SUV. \u201cFront end held together with plumber\u2019s tape.\u201d She used to buy fancy designer clothes. \u201cIn the high old days of the 1980s and 90s, I wore glorious clothes made by Marilyn Sainty, Adrienne Winkelmann, Zambesi. Nowadays, I\u2019m a slightly eccentric dresser. Fond of hats and layering.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has an online collection: Museum of the Everyday, which is Kiwiana and old kitchen stuff and some very odd New Zealand-made crafts and endearingly ugly carvings that look like they were made in man caves by drunk people.<\/p>\n

\"AA Hillary\u2019s Honey carton, and a pull-along spotty dog. Photos \/ Haruhiko Sameshima<\/p>\n

This seemed about the right moment to ask about the dosh, because the thing everyone seems to know about her is that she has a lot of dosh \u2013 at least she did in the \u201chigh old days\u201d. John Fernyhough \u2013 \u201cmy John\u201d \u2013 was a successful businessman and the first chair of Electricorp. His Herald obituary described him as a multimillionaire. She has dedicated The Albino Kiwi to him. She didn\u2019t want me to go on about her other two husbands, so I won\u2019t, other than to say she was married before Fernyhough and has three children from that marriage, and she married again after his death, to Dress Smart co-founder John Bougen. That ended in 2015.<\/p>\n

The question I really wanted the answer to was, is she very rich? \u201cNo. Not any more. I was in the high old days of the 80s. I was thinking to myself if I hadn\u2019t got this collection I might have been able to go around the world. And I\u2019m absolutely, unashamedly unapologetic for that because it\u2019s much richer than anything I could have if I had shares in Infratil or something. I have got these wonderful things I can touch and look at.\u201d<\/p>\n

Endless optimism<\/p>\n

Presumably she has not been reduced to looking for coins down the back of sofa cushions but I did wonder what her three kids think of their mum frittering away her fortune. \u201cHa. Oh, I think they really like it because all my kids, at one stage or another, collected things, some more avidly and kept going; others less avidly. If we were on trips, we would alternately go into the collectible shop, so the first person was allowed in for five minutes, and they could do their grab-up.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here is my grab-up. I really want the pull-along dog. Can she leave it to me in her will? \u201cHa, ha. Yes, why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

She believes in luck. After the luck of finding that old Beehive matchbox with the tatty stamps inside, she went out and \u201cbought a raffle thing because I thought, \u2018Oh look, I\u2019ll restore my money by winning four million\u2019 or whatever. I won $24, so the four came through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"TheThe albino kiwi which gives the book its title. Photo \/ Haruhiko Sameshima<\/p>\n

She is endlessly optimistic and endlessly innovative. The last image in The Albino Kiwi is of her walking stick. In 2004, she tripped and broke what the doctors told her was \u201ca perfect hip bone\u201d.<\/p>\n

The hip was replaced but she saved the ball, jugged it in formalin then dried it in sand. She asked her friend Chris Bissell, of Christchurch\u2019s Chaos Collections (you can guess how they met), \u201cto repurpose it as the head of a late-1900s carved ebony walking stick.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy hip bone now sits in an \u2018egg cup\u2019 from the base of a light, and the ring is a bearing from the engine of an aeroplane. The rarest of rare objects.\u201d<\/p>\n

That last sentence will do to sum her up. She really is inimitable. <\/p>\n

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