Hamilton gets it right

2026-02-22 - 17:17

Hamilton! The founding city of post-colonial white man’s New Zealand literature as the birthplace of dear old Frank Sargeson, now the home and office of our most adored practising novelist Catherine Chidgey—all literary roads lead to that flat, appealing city on the banks of the Waikato River, and I travelled there at dawn on Saturday to experience the second annual superbly punned HamLit writers festival held in the arcadia of Hamilton Gardens. It was a smash hit. There was much laughter and maybe the longest ovation I ever heard at any literary festival. There were very long book-signing queues. The people came in droves, from Te Awamutu, Tamihere, Cambridge, and other towns on the plain; the thing about Hamilton is that it functions as the centre of a region, part of a greater good, unlike the selfish fortresses of Wellington and Auckland. They sell tractors in Hamilton. The river, brown as chocolate at Mercer, is pale blue beneath Hamilton’s magnificent bridges. Town and country are in it together. I booked a room at the VR Hotel on the main drag of Victoria St, an establishment so grand and Parisian that it was no surprise to detect its original name above the entrance: Le Grand. It is a masterpiece of faded glory. Everyone should stay there. My room cost $102 and was as immense as a barn. There was a huge concrete pillar in the middle of it and it served as a kind of landmark or bearing point because otherwise you could get lost. The ceiling went up to heaven. The bathroom is bigger than your bathroom. It had a long, elegant bath. I was loathe to leave either the room or the bath and it took a supreme effort to head downstairs for dinner at The Chilli House where I feasted on the best spicey noodle soup served anywhere in the country. It cost $22. With prices that low I could afford to give $5 to a tramp screaming on the pavement further along Victoria St. Hamilton has it all. There is the Outcasts Motorycycle Club ganghouse and two blocks down there is Harvest City Church. Culture exists at such addresses as second-hand records store Fossick and film-festival DVD store Auteur House. I was busy all day Saturday examining 11 opshops and took the bus that night to Hamilton South for a house party in Glenview with a live band and lines of cocaine. Sunday was devoted to HamLit 2026, this year held at the Indian Char Bagh Garden, a white-walled wonderland with beds of marigolds in yellow and orange glowing in bright summer sunlight. It’s a dazzling venue. I attended three events, or four including the event where I appeared onstage as the author of Polkinghorne: Inside the murder trial of the century. I was joined by old mate Jared Savage, author of three terrific books on organised crime in New Zealand, at an event chaired by crime novelist Fiona Sussman. It was sold out. Just about every event at HamLit was sold out. “It was a huge success and it exceeded our expectations,” said Bridget van der Zijjp, who co-curated the festival with Elisabeth Easther. She confirmed that the Hamilton Arts Festival, the mothership so to speak, will feature HamLit in 2027. I enjoyed the session with Easther chairing Kate Camp and Catherine Chidgey, although really I would have been happier if the tables were turned for Camp and Chidgey to-chair Easther: as the author of Seed, she has the number one bestselling NZ novel in the land right now, and besides she is a wildly entertaining speaker. I more than enjoyed the session starring Dr Lucy O’Hagan, author of the memoir Everything But the Medicine: A doctor’s tale. Like everyone else who saw it, I was knocked-out, stunned, blown away. It’s a really good book. I named it one of the best of the year at ReadingRoom. But I had no idea her hour-long show was going to be a theatrical production with props, songs, stand-up comedy, as she acted out a typical day’s consultation with 11 patients. The audience laughed like drains and held onto every word. When it finished, she was rewarded with the longest standing ovation that I think I have ever heard for an author at a writers festival. I mean it just went on and on and on. She was whisked away to the book signing table at the Poppies Bookstore stall. I dealt with a really long queue after my event, and sold two tall stacks of Polkinghorne as well as copies of three of my other books; the demand for Everything But the Medicine was so great that Poppies sold out every single copy. Huzzah to O’Hagan. She was the break-out star of HamLit. But the session I enjoyed the most was another event: pop legend Suzanne Lynch in conversation with Karyn Hay. I mean this was just so insanely charming that I sat there with a goofy smile on my dial for the entire hour that Karyn asked Suzannne about her life and times as recorded in her wonderful memoir Yesterday When I Was Young. I use first names because both of them are part of the New Zealand cultural household, cherished throughout the land, Karyn for her innate sense of cool that has remained just as powerful and intact as when she presented Radio With Pictures in the 1980s, and Suzanne for her voice, better capitalised as Her Voice. Their banter was fun but what took the event into another dimension was when Suzanne stood up and sang. She won’t see 70 again and I daresay 80 is coming down the pipe. No matter. Her voice is still fantastic, a young woman’s voice, strong and clear. She performed five songs. They included her 1971 ballad “Sunlight Through a Prism” which Karyn said had sold an astonishing 55,000 copies in New Zealand. More astonishing is that it didn’t sell 55 million copies worldwide. It was a thing of rare and delicate beauty, with its introductory frills played on a harp, and its strange, profound lyrics about a pure love—the song was written by Huntly genius Shade Smith as an ode to his grandmother. Suzanne sung it even better at Hamilton Gardens than on her 1971 record. I sat there listening to her on Sunday afternoon with the marigolds glowing orange and yellow in the sunlight, and wept with the joy of experiencing great art.