April 1, 2026 • 16 mins
On the podcast today Manaia tells us about some absolute critters that he used to work with.
Plus... why is he wearing a box on his head?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Daily bespoke content that you won't find on the radio
show The hurdar Ki Breakfast Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Got a hardcase box on my head. I just want
everyone to know that upfront.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Okay, I'm going to describe what I'm looking across here.
It's a forty centimeter by twenty eight centimeter box, blue
box with a giant golden egg on the side of it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It'll be everywhere on your social media feed. By the
time you're listening to this, we'll have gone viral.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I reckon Mina's head is poking out through the bottom
and through the middle of it, so the box as
boxed up as here. Basically your head is framed so
you look like a portrait. You're wandering around like like
a like a portrait with a blue frame.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thank you, or like I've seen it. I've never seen
it before, You've never seen me diorama in my own
head first time? Remember dioramas?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Now, I like to look for a bit of cell phone.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Could we use the Allison Chain song Man in a Box? Yeah,
the background slash soundtrack for this on socials.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I imagine that this me did you used to did
you do a diorama? Was Thelar System and you look
through and you see all of the different planets hung
with bits of string through the bottom mine of yeah, yeah,
we did like a day at the beach. I remember
a day at the beach. We looked through and you
see like the sand and then and all that stuff
loved to die.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Right, I did it. I did one as a kid,
and it was the inside of a pyramid. We're doing
a thing on Egypt, and so I had like the
different layers and where two and Carmen was parked up,
and then I painted like hieroglyphics on the walls and
things like that. The big triangle sucker. That was a
lot of fun. But a yellow cellophane on the top
(01:35):
of that give it that CPR tone. Look make you
feel like you're in Egypt.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Oh yeah, that's quite good.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I love the bit of when craft meets history.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Look, I mean to educate and to inform. No, we
were just having a fat winge before you came out
of the podcast here, and it reminded me of the
thing that I saw on the sosh Met about blokes,
dads in particular hobbies. When you think of dad hobbies,
you think of like mowing the lawns, yard work, smoking, meats,
(02:07):
lawn care. And it's because it's gutters, gutters.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Who else does the gutters?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Remember growing up as a kid and your dad's always
just doing shit around the house, you like, fucking all
Saturday dead, we're up on the roof for some reason. Yeah,
you know what I mean, It's always that kind of shit.
And it's because that's you know, as a dead you
can't just fuck off for the whole weekend. You can't
just a wim go over to the World Cup Grand
Final in a mid of bed.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
But you've got but you've got to be doing something
and there's something in it, and so the hobbies become
things that you can do for your family, and then
they become your hobbies. Yeah, I know exactly what you're
doing about. But also I think it's a way of
hanging around in the weekend with your family. And people
think because you know, your kids want you to be there,
(02:48):
but they don't want you to be there, if you
know what I mean. They want you to be there,
they don't want you interacting with them whole time. They
want you just to be around.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I want you on call, just so you've got.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
To pretend that you've got things to do. So then
the end of the things that you're pretending that you
need to do actually become you actually start to enjoy them.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, and he's that getting bitter at them.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, like sweep for me, sweeping the driveway. I love
sweeping the driveway now. I used to hate sweeping the
driveway as a curt Oh my god, weed to a
long driveway with all these leaves, and probably during particularly
autumnal periods, my brother and I like maybe once a
month we'd have to sweep all the leaves up. I
hated that with a passion.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Because well, who kires there's gonna be more leaves again tomorrow,
I know. But now it's in your dotage.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Now I love it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
My neighbor across the road, you can hear them all day.
He's an elderly man who's I think he's retired, and
you can hear him. He's got like an old witch's broom,
and he sweeps his driveway. I honestly reckon twice a day.
Oh no, you can hear him. How much do you
have to hate you have to be sweeping your driveway? Oh?
He is just constantly and he's his gardens perfectly manicured.
(03:56):
His lawns are an incredible shape. Because he's retired, he's
not got much to do.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Every time one leaf land, that would be the end
of his fucking day.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Whenever a storm hits. You can you can see him
standing in the front window of his lounge just looking
out there, just watching a single leaf fall to the ground.
He's out there.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I had a friend who had an astro turf back
garden in a reasonably small section, you know, like three
hundred and sixty square meter section or something with a house.
Most of it was house and then had a little
back back area was AstroTurf. And he used to vacuum
his astrotyth. So he'd get the vacuum cleaner out and
he would vacuum for leaves and all that sort of crap, like, oh,
(04:32):
I Rode, you do that, don't you? You vacuum outside?
Don't tell me, do you?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well you, Yeah, I have been known because we've got
an AstroTurf in our backyard, and again a very small
section of our section. And yeah, there was just a
few little bits of stone and rubble that come out
from underneath the astro turf. A little bits of twig,
a little bits of leaf, and every now and again
(04:58):
I'll go round and up it up. And then I thought,
one day, why don't I just use the vacuum. I'll
tell you very very infective. Yeah, yeah, And we've got
a pretty good vacuum. And the end though, I've got
one of those leaf blowers that you blow it and
then you turn the nozzle around and then it sucks
it up like a vacuum, and you, well, you want
(05:21):
to make sure because it's got a bag, so you're
sucking and then you blut. No, you blow and then
you suck. But if you put the bag on and
don't do the zip up, then you just want did
you blow the bag again? Well you're wandering around and ye,
working very well, and then you realize it there's a
big puff of dust and ship behind and you were
a moron, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
One day I was working in a in my concrete
pouring days, we had a giant ship that we worked
in a workshop, if you will, But it was big
enough that you could drive a truck through it. It's
pretty huge, dusty as fucking One day I was I
was sweeping it because I was the I was the
boy on site, and so I swept the whole and
then I saw it at the corner of my eye,
(06:02):
a leaf blower and I was like, good, an idea here,
and so I got the leaf blowergun, thinking this world,
I would just be able to make one part of
the whole workshop and just do the whole thing. All
it did was create basically a hurricane in the middle
of the workshop, and it just whipped up all of
the dust, so where basically we couldn't work in there
for an hour after lunch.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
And once you've started as well, you're like, I've gotta
keep going.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
But fuck it. Passing around house off and there was
like concrete sitting in there, so there's like dust all
through the concrete.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Ship that stuff better on the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I got, I got, I got pulled aside but the
owner of the company, and he said, I just let
me look, I'm not having to go yet. I just
like to share some information with you that was shed
to me when I was your age. It takes just
as long to do something right as it does to
do it wrong. So just do it right the first
time and then you don't have to do it.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It's bloody good advice. It was with my kids.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Actually, it really fucked me off at the time. I
hate it. I was like, you fucking dick. I wasn't
trying to do it wrong. I was trying to do
it right. I just it's a scale is shite, and
I'm also dumb.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So he should have turned around and said, you're a
dumb cunt.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
You you're a dumb cunt.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
You've done it wrong. Oh yeah, I know you're trying
to do it right, but you're a dumb cunt. Dumb
to fucking right cunts.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
In that same workshop, we had a faulty nail gun.
You know, usually with the nail gun, you have to
press it into the piece of wood. It's got a
safety mechanism and then you can shoot the nail. But
the thing had someone had pressed it in and it
had gotten stuck there, which meant you could shoot nails
across the fucking across the workshop at each other. And
so one day one of the one of the builders
(07:35):
came back from sight and then one of those he
was sitting behind this concrete mold and it just popped up,
ricocheting off the side of the shed and ship one
of them hurd him in the back of the head
and it was just all on for young and old.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Safety first.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Safety first. So they were both in high vers and
just throwing bones in the middle of the workshop. Well
thank god there meanwhile could be seen in the middle
of that old Monicas with the leaf blush.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
This sounds like a great place to work. It was.
I don't think you've ever told us any stories about the.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Concrete planting stories? Yeah, how long will we go?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I don't feel like I know anything about this place,
your seventy eight places of work.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I won't say their names, but we had some real
characters that worked there. Anyone who knew me at that
time will know who I'm talking about. I think one
of the fellas he lived in a caravan down in
the Tamuka River.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Oh yeah, so it just was a river person. He
was a river caravan. All the place that you could live.
I want to live by damn bold river. He drove
in this, had Tomka, he drove in this, and cube
from work.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, he had big long ponytail go tea combination. His
claim to fame was that because we were a precast
concrete yard, his claim to fame was that he poured
a few of the panels in the sky tower. He
would mention that every side we went on, that's high level. Yeah,
we women pulled the skytower. We had Oh wow, okay,
(09:07):
oh god, Steve's on the skytower.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Now, the next question I hear you ask is where
did he shower? If he lived in a caravan down
by a dry room. He had a gym membership, and
so he would go into Snap Fitness and Timorrow and
walk on the treadmill for long enough. Did everyone in
the gym saw him? They're working out, and then he
would just go and have a shower.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Okay, well that's kind of fair, a little bit of
fitness something.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
My first question was actually a criminal record.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Not disclosed, but you'd have to assume every working their head.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
There's a few people that gone missing down in that
sort of Canterbury South Canterbury kind of region over is.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
He might have been one of them. And then he
just popped up back again on site. Now, he and
the other guy, they they fucking hated each other, but
they were the only two people who could finish a
precast concrete slap. So like you pour it into the
thing and then there's a few different finishes you can do,
but the main one is called a Keli float, which
is a big you know, like those polishes that Janet's
(10:05):
use in the hallway. It's like that, but it's got
like bars or blades on it and you just go
back and forth across the concrete patters. It sits nickers
at that smooth finish. They were the only two who
could do it, and they both fuck They hated each other,
but every now and then they'd have to work on
the same thing and they just motherfucking each other as
they walk. Well, I don't know what it was, but
they also both smoked like absolute trains. It was insane,
(10:28):
and so.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
All that concrete dust and tar is good for them.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And part of your d no masks, and part of
my job, because you know, we'd stand the panels up
in the yard until they were ready to be picked up,
and part of my job was as we stand them up,
I had to go through and examine the panels to
make sure there were no cigarette butts poking out of
the concrete.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Jeremy Wells and Mania Steet find them on Instagram at
Hodaki Breakfast. Jerry and Mania joined the ConFlat the Hdaki
Breakfast discussion group on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
What is it about river people? I've spent a bit
of time with the river people over the years, like
people who kayak or canoe or raft like nice people,
but they often stink.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
There's a call to the river, isn't there?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
They often smell And if you've decided, like, of all
the things that you could be a person of, you know,
you could be a beach person.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, We've got heaps of beaches in New Zealand and
you don't have to be rich to be by a
beach in New Zealand. And there's heaps of beaches that
are not expensive beaches to be by. There's some bloody
expensive ones, and there's some nice beaches that are you know,
out of the way a little bit more, but they're
not expensive places to live. You could be a beach person,
you could be a city person, you could be among
(11:40):
you could be a mountain person.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You could be a lake person, even a lake.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Dweller, which is not far from a river person.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It's just a river that's not walking.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
But you've gone river. Yeah, that thing will flood, butual flood.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And bull flood once a year, I guess the thinking
is because it is if you find a good beautiful
spot and a into a river, you're like, why would
you be paying millions for our house when you can
just be down here in a fucking river and a campravan,
sitting in a having a showert snap fitness and dropping
berry butts into the concrete panels.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
What's gonna make you say I'm a lifestyle millionaire. I
don't know exactly, that's exactly. I don't know. I reckon
you could get yourself a good little spot on a
beach somewhere overlooking. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Okay, well, well let me let me tell you about
the other guy that was also the concrete finish for us,
and you can pick which one of these two lives
that you would like. He now, he at lunchtime every
day he would cook sausages and a George Foreman grill. Yeah,
fat drips off, knocks out the fat, and then he
(12:42):
would sit down and he would and he would pour.
This is where I got this trick that I showed
you guys the other day. On the salt you know,
the table salts table. See how it runs. You can
twist the blue top until the slit which is what
most people do. All these the hole and you've always
wondered what's the hole for. Well, the hole was for
concrete pours to pour salt over these sausages. And he
would just pour that much salt over each of his sausages.
(13:04):
There's a lot of salt in the sausage, I know,
and then eat it with his fucking hands. And he
didn't wear gloves when he poured concrete, so his hands
were like at the joints of his fingers, they were
cracked because they were so dry from the concrete getting
all over his hands, and then they would crack, and
every now and then he'd pull salt into the crack
of his hand and go, ah, okay.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
So I've got We've got the river guy.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
But hold on, this is where this where did this
guy live? So this is where this guy lived one night,
and I don't know where he lived before this, but
one night he goes down to the Cozy Club. It's
quite a good darts player by all accounts, and he
goes down to the Cozy Club and he starts hitting
it off with a Sheila down the coze club. Beer
in mind. At this stage, he he's probably in his
fifties at the time, he looked sixty something.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
I can't imagine why.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yes, con greet and sausages.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So he's down the cozy club, probably throwing some pretty
spectacular darts because he gets talking to this Sheila and
he ends up gone home with it.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right, she saw him playing darts and so it wouldn't
mind have been of man.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
And then he just never left and he basically just
moved in with him oh and just stayed.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Oh yeah, OK, And I think that was about two
years before it just like what happened with men Toli,
but minus the darts. But I respect that, I respect
that he found it in and then he's obviously managed
to do what needs to be done to maintain that relationship.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Going on, I reckon Characters of the South Island could
be a series.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Characters that I've worked with in the South Island. Yeah,
like the guy from at the Freezing Weeks. There was
a guy calling himself the Timoru Tunnyfah and he claimed
he'd never left the Timorrow district in his life and
he was thirty right. He's like from the I think
it was from like the White Taki River to like
the Rakaiah or something. He's like, I've never left it.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I believe, Yeah, I know, I believe. There's a lot
of people like that. I reckon. The characters get stranger
as you hid further south by the time you get
right down the bottom. There some interesting ones in Bluff.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
But what we're saying, like, which one would you choose? Ye?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Which one out of those times I'd go.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
With the I'd go with the dude that was on
that was playing darts, to be honest, rather than the
river situation. At least he's got some company.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
So yeah. Yeah, at that same place on a Friday,
they'd drop off a twenty four pack of export ultras
they hadn't been invented yet, and we would drink. Yeah. Well,
the dB actually the dB Brewery and Tomorrow was just
around the corner. You could smell it when they got
their deliveries, when they were unloading like hops and shit,
oh I don't whatever the hell they are unloading. You
could smell it, Yeah, because it was right next to
us out there and washed Dike, and we had this
(15:34):
outdoor yard with a retractable roof, so we pull the
concrete pads on there and if it's a sunny day,
you could pull the roof back and they drive it quicker.
And we would have time trials on the forklift. And
so Friday night, have a couple of beers and then
you do a time trial of a lap of the
outside shid in the forklift. We found it was safer
to go backwards. Oh yeah, yeah, far less, far less
likely to roll it if if backwards.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
This is great. This is such a great ad for
work safe New Zealand. And also, you've got a box
on your head. I'm not sure if you're aware that
you're telling all these stories absolutely dead pan with a
box on your head. Well, actually sorry, not on your head,
your head? Is it a box? Question?
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Does your voice sound different because you're in a box? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Just one?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Does it sound different to you guys? No, it's really
going in here for me?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
But do you know what pulling back the curtain, it
did sound very different the other day when the actors
from Hunt for the Wilder People and and we had
to do a little microphone reshuffle and you were using
my microphone. Yeah, gee, you sounded different better. No, I
like you better with the microphone you've got.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, me and Hoyt.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
I don't like you either way.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
You don't know.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I prefer you off.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Mike all right, Chui turned the mic off. Now let's
do that, and Joey raised it.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Jerry and Manaiah we hatched the radio show from six
to ten weekdays, The Hodaki Breakfast
Daily bespoke content that you won't find on the radio
show The hurdar Ki Breakfast Podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Got a hardcase box on my head. I just want
everyone to know that upfront.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
Okay, I'm going to describe what I'm looking across here.
It's a forty centimeter by twenty eight centimeter box, blue
box with a giant golden egg on the side of it.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
It'll be everywhere on your social media feed. By the
time you're listening to this, we'll have gone viral.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I reckon Mina's head is poking out through the bottom
and through the middle of it, so the box as
boxed up as here. Basically your head is framed so
you look like a portrait. You're wandering around like like
a like a portrait with a blue frame.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Thank you, or like I've seen it. I've never seen
it before, You've never seen me diorama in my own
head first time? Remember dioramas?
Speaker 3 (00:45):
Now, I like to look for a bit of cell phone.
Speaker 4 (00:48):
Could we use the Allison Chain song Man in a Box? Yeah,
the background slash soundtrack for this on socials.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
I imagine that this me did you used to did
you do a diorama? Was Thelar System and you look
through and you see all of the different planets hung
with bits of string through the bottom mine of yeah, yeah,
we did like a day at the beach. I remember
a day at the beach. We looked through and you
see like the sand and then and all that stuff
loved to die.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Right, I did it. I did one as a kid,
and it was the inside of a pyramid. We're doing
a thing on Egypt, and so I had like the
different layers and where two and Carmen was parked up,
and then I painted like hieroglyphics on the walls and
things like that. The big triangle sucker. That was a
lot of fun. But a yellow cellophane on the top
(01:35):
of that give it that CPR tone. Look make you
feel like you're in Egypt.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Oh yeah, that's quite good.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I love the bit of when craft meets history.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Look, I mean to educate and to inform. No, we
were just having a fat winge before you came out
of the podcast here, and it reminded me of the
thing that I saw on the sosh Met about blokes,
dads in particular hobbies. When you think of dad hobbies,
you think of like mowing the lawns, yard work, smoking, meats,
(02:07):
lawn care. And it's because it's gutters, gutters.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Who else does the gutters?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Remember growing up as a kid and your dad's always
just doing shit around the house, you like, fucking all
Saturday dead, we're up on the roof for some reason. Yeah,
you know what I mean, It's always that kind of shit.
And it's because that's you know, as a dead you
can't just fuck off for the whole weekend. You can't
just a wim go over to the World Cup Grand
Final in a mid of bed.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
But you've got but you've got to be doing something
and there's something in it, and so the hobbies become
things that you can do for your family, and then
they become your hobbies. Yeah, I know exactly what you're
doing about. But also I think it's a way of
hanging around in the weekend with your family. And people
think because you know, your kids want you to be there,
(02:48):
but they don't want you to be there, if you
know what I mean. They want you to be there,
they don't want you interacting with them whole time. They
want you just to be around.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
I want you on call, just so you've got.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
To pretend that you've got things to do. So then
the end of the things that you're pretending that you
need to do actually become you actually start to enjoy them.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Yeah, and he's that getting bitter at them.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, like sweep for me, sweeping the driveway. I love
sweeping the driveway now. I used to hate sweeping the
driveway as a curt Oh my god, weed to a
long driveway with all these leaves, and probably during particularly
autumnal periods, my brother and I like maybe once a
month we'd have to sweep all the leaves up. I
hated that with a passion.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
Because well, who kires there's gonna be more leaves again tomorrow,
I know. But now it's in your dotage.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
Now I love it. Yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
My neighbor across the road, you can hear them all day.
He's an elderly man who's I think he's retired, and
you can hear him. He's got like an old witch's broom,
and he sweeps his driveway. I honestly reckon twice a day.
Oh no, you can hear him. How much do you
have to hate you have to be sweeping your driveway? Oh?
He is just constantly and he's his gardens perfectly manicured.
(03:56):
His lawns are an incredible shape. Because he's retired, he's
not got much to do.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Every time one leaf land, that would be the end
of his fucking day.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Whenever a storm hits. You can you can see him
standing in the front window of his lounge just looking
out there, just watching a single leaf fall to the ground.
He's out there.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
I had a friend who had an astro turf back
garden in a reasonably small section, you know, like three
hundred and sixty square meter section or something with a house.
Most of it was house and then had a little
back back area was AstroTurf. And he used to vacuum
his astrotyth. So he'd get the vacuum cleaner out and
he would vacuum for leaves and all that sort of crap, like, oh,
(04:32):
I Rode, you do that, don't you? You vacuum outside?
Don't tell me, do you?
Speaker 4 (04:38):
Well you, Yeah, I have been known because we've got
an AstroTurf in our backyard, and again a very small
section of our section. And yeah, there was just a
few little bits of stone and rubble that come out
from underneath the astro turf. A little bits of twig,
a little bits of leaf, and every now and again
(04:58):
I'll go round and up it up. And then I thought,
one day, why don't I just use the vacuum. I'll
tell you very very infective. Yeah, yeah, And we've got
a pretty good vacuum. And the end though, I've got
one of those leaf blowers that you blow it and
then you turn the nozzle around and then it sucks
it up like a vacuum, and you, well, you want
(05:21):
to make sure because it's got a bag, so you're
sucking and then you blut. No, you blow and then
you suck. But if you put the bag on and
don't do the zip up, then you just want did
you blow the bag again? Well you're wandering around and ye,
working very well, and then you realize it there's a
big puff of dust and ship behind and you were
a moron, you know.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
One day I was working in a in my concrete
pouring days, we had a giant ship that we worked
in a workshop, if you will, But it was big
enough that you could drive a truck through it. It's
pretty huge, dusty as fucking One day I was I
was sweeping it because I was the I was the
boy on site, and so I swept the whole and
then I saw it at the corner of my eye,
(06:02):
a leaf blower and I was like, good, an idea here,
and so I got the leaf blowergun, thinking this world,
I would just be able to make one part of
the whole workshop and just do the whole thing. All
it did was create basically a hurricane in the middle
of the workshop, and it just whipped up all of
the dust, so where basically we couldn't work in there
for an hour after lunch.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
And once you've started as well, you're like, I've gotta
keep going.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
But fuck it. Passing around house off and there was
like concrete sitting in there, so there's like dust all
through the concrete.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Ship that stuff better on the ground.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
I got, I got, I got pulled aside but the
owner of the company, and he said, I just let
me look, I'm not having to go yet. I just
like to share some information with you that was shed
to me when I was your age. It takes just
as long to do something right as it does to
do it wrong. So just do it right the first
time and then you don't have to do it.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It's bloody good advice. It was with my kids.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Actually, it really fucked me off at the time. I
hate it. I was like, you fucking dick. I wasn't
trying to do it wrong. I was trying to do
it right. I just it's a scale is shite, and
I'm also dumb.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So he should have turned around and said, you're a
dumb cunt.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
You you're a dumb cunt.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
You've done it wrong. Oh yeah, I know you're trying
to do it right, but you're a dumb cunt. Dumb
to fucking right cunts.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
In that same workshop, we had a faulty nail gun.
You know, usually with the nail gun, you have to
press it into the piece of wood. It's got a
safety mechanism and then you can shoot the nail. But
the thing had someone had pressed it in and it
had gotten stuck there, which meant you could shoot nails
across the fucking across the workshop at each other. And
so one day one of the one of the builders
(07:35):
came back from sight and then one of those he
was sitting behind this concrete mold and it just popped up,
ricocheting off the side of the shed and ship one
of them hurd him in the back of the head
and it was just all on for young and old.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Safety first.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Safety first. So they were both in high vers and
just throwing bones in the middle of the workshop. Well
thank god there meanwhile could be seen in the middle
of that old Monicas with the leaf blush.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
This sounds like a great place to work. It was.
I don't think you've ever told us any stories about the.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Concrete planting stories? Yeah, how long will we go?
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I don't feel like I know anything about this place,
your seventy eight places of work.
Speaker 2 (08:16):
I won't say their names, but we had some real
characters that worked there. Anyone who knew me at that
time will know who I'm talking about. I think one
of the fellas he lived in a caravan down in
the Tamuka River.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Oh yeah, so it just was a river person. He
was a river caravan. All the place that you could live.
I want to live by damn bold river. He drove
in this, had Tomka, he drove in this, and cube
from work.
Speaker 2 (08:43):
Okay, he had big long ponytail go tea combination. His
claim to fame was that because we were a precast
concrete yard, his claim to fame was that he poured
a few of the panels in the sky tower. He
would mention that every side we went on, that's high level. Yeah,
we women pulled the skytower. We had Oh wow, okay,
(09:07):
oh god, Steve's on the skytower.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
Now, the next question I hear you ask is where
did he shower? If he lived in a caravan down
by a dry room. He had a gym membership, and
so he would go into Snap Fitness and Timorrow and
walk on the treadmill for long enough. Did everyone in
the gym saw him? They're working out, and then he
would just go and have a shower.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
Okay, well that's kind of fair, a little bit of
fitness something.
Speaker 4 (09:31):
My first question was actually a criminal record.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Not disclosed, but you'd have to assume every working their head.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
There's a few people that gone missing down in that
sort of Canterbury South Canterbury kind of region over is.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
He might have been one of them. And then he
just popped up back again on site. Now, he and
the other guy, they they fucking hated each other, but
they were the only two people who could finish a
precast concrete slap. So like you pour it into the
thing and then there's a few different finishes you can do,
but the main one is called a Keli float, which
is a big you know, like those polishes that Janet's
(10:05):
use in the hallway. It's like that, but it's got
like bars or blades on it and you just go
back and forth across the concrete patters. It sits nickers
at that smooth finish. They were the only two who
could do it, and they both fuck They hated each other,
but every now and then they'd have to work on
the same thing and they just motherfucking each other as
they walk. Well, I don't know what it was, but
they also both smoked like absolute trains. It was insane,
(10:28):
and so.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
All that concrete dust and tar is good for them.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And part of your d no masks, and part of
my job, because you know, we'd stand the panels up
in the yard until they were ready to be picked up,
and part of my job was as we stand them up,
I had to go through and examine the panels to
make sure there were no cigarette butts poking out of
the concrete.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Wow. Wow.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Jeremy Wells and Mania Steet find them on Instagram at
Hodaki Breakfast. Jerry and Mania joined the ConFlat the Hdaki
Breakfast discussion group on Facebook.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
What is it about river people? I've spent a bit
of time with the river people over the years, like
people who kayak or canoe or raft like nice people,
but they often stink.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
There's a call to the river, isn't there?
Speaker 3 (11:12):
They often smell And if you've decided, like, of all
the things that you could be a person of, you know,
you could be a beach person.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
Yeah, We've got heaps of beaches in New Zealand and
you don't have to be rich to be by a
beach in New Zealand. And there's heaps of beaches that
are not expensive beaches to be by. There's some bloody
expensive ones, and there's some nice beaches that are you know,
out of the way a little bit more, but they're
not expensive places to live. You could be a beach person,
you could be a city person, you could be among
(11:40):
you could be a mountain person.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
You could be a lake person, even a lake.
Speaker 3 (11:45):
Dweller, which is not far from a river person.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
It's just a river that's not walking.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
But you've gone river. Yeah, that thing will flood, butual flood.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
And bull flood once a year, I guess the thinking
is because it is if you find a good beautiful
spot and a into a river, you're like, why would
you be paying millions for our house when you can
just be down here in a fucking river and a campravan,
sitting in a having a showert snap fitness and dropping
berry butts into the concrete panels.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
What's gonna make you say I'm a lifestyle millionaire. I
don't know exactly, that's exactly. I don't know. I reckon
you could get yourself a good little spot on a
beach somewhere overlooking. I don't know.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Okay, well, well let me let me tell you about
the other guy that was also the concrete finish for us,
and you can pick which one of these two lives
that you would like. He now, he at lunchtime every
day he would cook sausages and a George Foreman grill. Yeah,
fat drips off, knocks out the fat, and then he
(12:42):
would sit down and he would and he would pour.
This is where I got this trick that I showed
you guys the other day. On the salt you know,
the table salts table. See how it runs. You can
twist the blue top until the slit which is what
most people do. All these the hole and you've always
wondered what's the hole for. Well, the hole was for
concrete pours to pour salt over these sausages. And he
would just pour that much salt over each of his sausages.
(13:04):
There's a lot of salt in the sausage, I know,
and then eat it with his fucking hands. And he
didn't wear gloves when he poured concrete, so his hands
were like at the joints of his fingers, they were
cracked because they were so dry from the concrete getting
all over his hands, and then they would crack, and
every now and then he'd pull salt into the crack
of his hand and go, ah, okay.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
So I've got We've got the river guy.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
But hold on, this is where this where did this
guy live? So this is where this guy lived one night,
and I don't know where he lived before this, but
one night he goes down to the Cozy Club. It's
quite a good darts player by all accounts, and he
goes down to the Cozy Club and he starts hitting
it off with a Sheila down the coze club. Beer
in mind. At this stage, he he's probably in his
fifties at the time, he looked sixty something.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
I can't imagine why.
Speaker 3 (13:51):
Yes, con greet and sausages.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
So he's down the cozy club, probably throwing some pretty
spectacular darts because he gets talking to this Sheila and
he ends up gone home with it.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Right, she saw him playing darts and so it wouldn't
mind have been of man.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
And then he just never left and he basically just
moved in with him oh and just stayed.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Oh yeah, OK, And I think that was about two
years before it just like what happened with men Toli,
but minus the darts. But I respect that, I respect
that he found it in and then he's obviously managed
to do what needs to be done to maintain that relationship.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
Going on, I reckon Characters of the South Island could
be a series.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Characters that I've worked with in the South Island. Yeah,
like the guy from at the Freezing Weeks. There was
a guy calling himself the Timoru Tunnyfah and he claimed
he'd never left the Timorrow district in his life and
he was thirty right. He's like from the I think
it was from like the White Taki River to like
the Rakaiah or something. He's like, I've never left it.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I believe, Yeah, I know, I believe. There's a lot
of people like that. I reckon. The characters get stranger
as you hid further south by the time you get
right down the bottom. There some interesting ones in Bluff.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:59):
But what we're saying, like, which one would you choose? Ye?
Speaker 2 (15:02):
Which one out of those times I'd go.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
With the I'd go with the dude that was on
that was playing darts, to be honest, rather than the
river situation. At least he's got some company.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
So yeah. Yeah, at that same place on a Friday,
they'd drop off a twenty four pack of export ultras
they hadn't been invented yet, and we would drink. Yeah. Well,
the dB actually the dB Brewery and Tomorrow was just
around the corner. You could smell it when they got
their deliveries, when they were unloading like hops and shit,
oh I don't whatever the hell they are unloading. You
could smell it, Yeah, because it was right next to
us out there and washed Dike, and we had this
(15:34):
outdoor yard with a retractable roof, so we pull the
concrete pads on there and if it's a sunny day,
you could pull the roof back and they drive it quicker.
And we would have time trials on the forklift. And
so Friday night, have a couple of beers and then
you do a time trial of a lap of the
outside shid in the forklift. We found it was safer
to go backwards. Oh yeah, yeah, far less, far less
likely to roll it if if backwards.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
This is great. This is such a great ad for
work safe New Zealand. And also, you've got a box
on your head. I'm not sure if you're aware that
you're telling all these stories absolutely dead pan with a
box on your head. Well, actually sorry, not on your head,
your head? Is it a box? Question?
Speaker 4 (16:11):
Does your voice sound different because you're in a box? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Just one?
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Does it sound different to you guys? No, it's really
going in here for me?
Speaker 4 (16:18):
But do you know what pulling back the curtain, it
did sound very different the other day when the actors
from Hunt for the Wilder People and and we had
to do a little microphone reshuffle and you were using
my microphone. Yeah, gee, you sounded different better. No, I
like you better with the microphone you've got.
Speaker 2 (16:35):
Yeah, me and Hoyt.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
I don't like you either way.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
You don't know.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
I prefer you off.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Mike all right, Chui turned the mic off. Now let's
do that, and Joey raised it.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Jerry and Manaiah we hatched the radio show from six
to ten weekdays, The Hodaki Breakfast
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