Review: In The Time of The Manaroans

Miro Bilbrough, a New Zealand-born, Sydney-based writer and film-maker, reveals a wounding trauma in the first pages of the memoir of her hippie upbringing, In the Time of the Manaroans.

Born in 1963, Bilbrough was six when she asked her pregnant mother, “You don’t love me, do you?”

Her mother, sunk in depression, never answered.

Behold mum and dad, memorialised in the book with a photo taken in Rocky Bay, Waiheke Island, in 1971. Christine and Norman, young, hairy, unsmiling, are holding an infant, Paola. She was born after the cot death of their son, Paolo, Miro’s little brother.

Before Paolo’s death, Bilbrough was banished from this grim ensemble, sent to Wellington to live with Christine’s mother. Grandmother Margaret, a stern but interesting figure, shared 46A Upland Rd, Kelburn, with her adult daughter and son, who, these days, says Bilbrough, would have been diagnosed as bipolar.

She writes movingly about longing for her mother’s letters, but she had to absorb the “contaminant” of rejection. It has burned deep inside, she adds, “for much of my adult life”. Bilbrough was fortunate she could drift away creatively, writing and drawing, developing obsessions with fabrics and aromas.

This admirably restrained memoir is, in a way, another part of her armament, propelled by short episodes which drive the narrative on at a brisk pace. Her writing has an appealing light touch, even when recalling the most dire of times, like another major rejection; Margaret threw Bilbrough out when she was 14.

In a state of emotional despair, Bilbrough turned to a stranger - her father, now living as a recluse in the Nelson-Marlborough area, shattered by his failed marriage.

When Bilbrough took up residence in Norman’s dank rented riverside home, the Floodhouse, her psyche became fully attuned - for the first time since she lived with her mother - to the ethos of hippiedom. The reek of dampness, dirt and boiled soybeans rises from the pages.

With remarkable resilience, she rose above the grime while pursuing the last two years of her secondary school education.

Life at the Floodhouse was a mere taster. When the house lived up to its name, the Bilbroughs moved in with the Manaroans, a tiny hippie community on the farther reaches of the Marlborough Sounds.

Their moody image was inflated beyond reality but, in the context of the conformist-driven New Zealand of the times, they represented an alternative way of living. For a period, Bilbrough was transfixed by the Manaroans but, even though she was living in a caravan near her father, predatory guys - older than her - were starting to sniff around, making their “free love” moves. The dreariness of these one-sided encounters actually helped the love-starved teenager assert herself and push them away.

In truth, daily existence at Manaroa had no glamour. It was isolated and transient, its residents consumed by food anxiety, enervation and illness. Bilbrough moved on, physically at least, still visiting the place and people repeatedly in her dreams. Thrillingly, she became a Wellington punk.

In the final analysis, she concludes that her short stay with the Manaroans resonated deeply because she was so naïve and vulnerable. She has come to recognise Manaroa as yet one more stage of establishing a lifelong predisposition for “transitions … which have been far from smooth”.

She signs off In the Time of the Manaroans with a collection of old photos and some thoughtful insights. In an early chapter, she notes she had been “on the chase” since childhood. Here, she makes a really impressive effort to articulate what she has been pursuing, optimist against all the odds, for most of her life.

See mirobilbrough.com for details of Miro Bilbrough’s films and publications.

Reviewed by Linda Herrick