My dad and a comic and a ferry and a seagull
Whenever my brother and/or I are asked how we ‘learned to draw comics’ we tell the story of our dad teaching us on the floor of our living room in our house at Ahipara. For both of us it’s a really distinct memory and I guess some kind of watershed art development moment.
Our father’s name was Geoff Neville and he always drew. One of the things he drew was the Toroa Preservation Society newsletter comic strip, Waitemata Gull. The Toroa is a ferry boat, the last of the steam-powered ferries that ran between Auckland City and the North Shore pre-harbour bridge. And the Toroa Preservation Society is a non-profit organisation dedicated to its restoration, preservation and maintenance (I’ll provide some interesting Toroa facts after the comics).
It’s no exaggeration to say my dad was obsessed with the Toroa and all steam-powered ferry boats. It came from living on the North Shore as a child and seeing and riding on the ferries every day. When alive, he was a very active member of the Toroa Preservation Society. He solicited donations and sanded the deck and did the screen-printing of the t-shirts. But his most important job was making the comic Waitemata Gull.
Here are some examples of the strip. It’s mostly about the boat-related thoughts and observations of a seagull as it wanders about the Waitemata Harbour (hence ‘Waitemata Gull’). It is important to note that a) the comics are of their time (80s and 90s) and the social references reflect this; and b) it was targeted at a rather niche ferry boat enthusiast market. But also the strip is enduringly beautiful and amusing and weird. And my dad made it.
Waitemata Gull no longer exists but the Toroa Preservation Society does. Please consider supporting them, they do great work.
Some interesting Toroa facts:
- Toroa is the Māori name for the Southern Royal Albatross. These native birds are massive, weighing approximately 9 kg, and with a wing-span in excess of 3 metres. They’re categorised as a nationally vulnerable species with about 8500 breeding pairs in existence.
- From 1993 to 1995 Toroa was used as a set on Shortland Street. It was a houseboat, lived on by Gina and Leonard.
- I had sex in the toilet on the upper deck when I was 17. My dad and the other Preservation Society members were far away, working on something deep down in the hull. The location was much more thrilling than the sex.
SS Toroa - Photograph by Graham Stewart