
"Look at this," he steps over. "Whenever a house is empty, the rats move in."
In the upstairs room are two single children's wooden bedframes, side by side. Marijuana leaves are strewn across the floor. "See what this is?" A quick hoarse laugh. "Somebody's been drying their dope in here." He sweeps up a dry handful, lifts it to his nose to sniff.
"They smoke it themselves but they also make money off it. It's one of the reasons they don't want people moving in. They're scared for their plots."
An abandoned home at Mahana stands tidy but empty, covered with a thin layer of dust.
Arthur surveys the Mahana Valley from the balcony of an abandoned home.
In old photos of Mahana, it's populated by families and crowds of people who came to join the commune.
Dotted through the bush are a few remaining homes, where the last inhabitants live
"That's when it started. People started drifting away. Kids were growing up but they wanted to move to the city. The toys of the city are very enticing."Over a small stream, you reach the old cookhouse, where the community used to share its meals. It's empty, grime on the stove, cobwebs wreathing the ladles and spatulas.
"The cookhouse used to be the soul of Mahana," Arthur says. "In the olden days, if anybody arrived, there were always people in the cookhouse. There was always a pot of tea on the stove." On the room's central beam, children have marked off their heights.Arthur came to Mahana around 35 years ago. Before that he'd been a pastry chef, living in Wellington—he still makes the occasional wedding cake. He was a fervent pro-legalisation campaigner and racked up a few pot convictions in police raids. On his first ever visit to Mahana he says he had a "spiritual experience," sitting right here on the deck of the cookhouse. He'd been looking for something for a long time without knowing what it was, he says. At Mahana, he found it.
The commune's cooking house, where inhabitants once shared meals together, is abandoned and covered with dust.
By his concrete igloo, Arthur looks out across the valley. Over the the years, tensions have risen between him and the other inhabitants of Mahana.
An abandoned caravan among the Manuka. Over the years, people have left their homes empty.
Further along the gravel track, a man lives in a house-bus. Arthur says they were close once: good enough friends, even after he took up with one of Arthur's ex-wives. There's a well-tended vegetable garden, thickly mulched with flowers at the borders. He sees the car's progress up the hill and walks quickly, shoulders set forward, out to meet us on the garden path. He looks furious."The knife that I pulled out of my back? I've got it at home and it's got your name on it."
Arthur shifts back and forth, gestures vaguely at the valley.
"Well, collecting evidence, collecting evidence…"
"Oh! For fuck's sake. You're nuts," the man turns. "He's a nut.""Might be better if you packed your bags now!" Arthur chimes out. "Backstabber. You understand?"The man jerks his head to the side: get out.There's a pause, then:
"I've got a knife at home with your name on it," Arthur blurts. "The knife that I pulled out of my back? I've got it at home and it's got your name on it."
They stare at each other for a second
Arthur hops in his car and starts the engine.
The man watches his progress up the hill.
Arthur walks through the bush tracks of the commune. He's been living alone for some time now.
Dave Prisk has come out to the deck to meet his visitors.
"We've been having trouble with him," he says.
Dave's happy to chat, as long as Arthur waits with his car.He is, it turns out, the local fire chief, heading up the volunteer squad. He's lived at Mahana - "I like the bush, like the isolation"—since the mid-80s. The house is warm and open. His partner weaves, and it's sweet with the smell of drying flax.
A cat on the carpet that purrs loud enough to be distracting, and he looks down. "We sort of adopted her," he says. Dave seems startlingly normal. It's difficult to imagine him taking to a house with a chainsaw to stop someone moving in.
For some time, he says, some of the community have wanted to establish a two-tiered structure: people who don't live here but have signed the book, and then resident members. They want to take back control of who's allowed to move in, mostly to keep out unsavoury characters. Mahana's isolation makes it attractive to people with a variety of goals: meth labs, housing stolen goods, weed plots."The house was—what's the modern word for it? De-established," he says.
Mist rolls in off the hills of the Coromandel. Over time, the isolated commune has become wary of outsiders.
"Arthur probably does miss that."
A vase of flowers lies where it's fallen, knocked over in an abandoned home. The house's owners have long since left.
Arthur's house is up a steep incline—106 steps, hand-dug and filled with concrete, each with a different ancient rune tiled into it.He points to one, a horizontal tile surrounded by ten squares. "This one here, is one strong man. He gathers people around him and forms an army. That's the army symbol.""The hardest thing to do, believe it or not, is to live your own philosophy."
Arthur lives in a concrete igloo structure he built himself. The outer layers have begun to crumble.
He's given me a police report to read. His statement recounts an argument with another resident out by his wheelbarrow, after long running tensions over the entry of new people entering the community."I don't know any relationship here that didn't flounder. Mahana, she broke every relationship."
The man "reached into his shirt and pulled out a steel grey/black chisel," Arthur's statement reads. "He said he was going to fuckin kill me and smash my brains out. He further said he would gladly go to jail for killing a cunt like me. People will congratulate me for killing you".
Arthur tells the story like it happened last week. The statement reads February 2014."In any situation where people live close to each other, there is strife. But the community would always resolve it," he says.Relationship breakups were a problem over the years. "You might move here with your boyfriend, and then he's got his eye on another girl," he says.
"I don't know any relationship here that didn't flounder. Mahana, she broke every relationship."
Inside the house, Arthur digs around for a bottle of home-brew. He settles on a bottle of tangelo wine, which he's been ageing for three years. In recent months, he's cut down his drinking, he says. It used to be that if he opened a bottle, he'd polish it off in that sitting. Now he's trying to look after his health."Sometimes I sit here and think about Mahana. I think of all the things in retaliation I can do."
Arthur at his home in Mahana. He brews his own beer and potent tangelo wine.
"I'll show you the photos—the house, how it was. I could build a court case."
There's no good reason for the destruction, he says. Only malice.
"The first reason they say is it's a health hazard. But a health hazard for who? Two is some crackhead wants to move in. Three is they want to teach the old cunt a lesson.""They want to teach the old cunt lesson? That's me, the old cunt. I teach lessons right back. You want to teach me a lesson? Come on."
Does he get lonely up here, in the dark?
Arthur throws back his head and laughs. "Loneliness is something I've never experienced in my life!"
"I don't need anybody. My own company is satisfactory. I never get lonely, I don't understand loneliness."
In the evenings, Arthur's home darkens and cools. He doesn't get lonely, he says.
I ask him what will happen at the meeting, what outcome he's hoping for.
"Well, I'd like to see those people expelled," he says."The hardest thing to do, believe it or not, is to live your own philosophy."Follow Tess on Twitter.An earlier version of this story misspelled Dave Prisk's name. We apologise for the error.