Heart of the country: Warrior relishes quiet life

By BRIDGET CARTER

Everything important to Charlie Dunn lies in a remote village by the sea, north of the Hokianga Harbour.

He lives in Mitimiti, on Northland's west coast, where he grew up during the 1950s with his parents and nine brothers and sisters.

Charlie left to travel the world as New Zealand's heavyweight boxing champion in 1971.

He returned to live at Mitimiti more than 10 years ago with his English-born wife and their nine children when his grandmother left him 14ha of coastal land.

Mitimiti has not much more than a marae, a church and a school, but Charlie, now 55, says he enjoys the quieter life with few city attractions.

"I am not answerable here to anyone except the bank," he says. "In the city, people want a flash car, a video, a TV. Here ... you don't need those things."

From time to time, his self-built house has been a haven for many of the local children. Charlie has taken them fishing off the beach or hunting in the thick bush behind his property. His home, which is a two-storeyed bottle-green house, sits on a large lawn above sand dunes and is accessible only by driving along the beach and up a long driveway.

On the front of his property are two wheel-less four-wheel-drive vehicles, and a whale bone dangling from a rope tied to a tree. Chooks and his hunting dogs roam.

Inside is a cabinet full of English china, a large Maori carving and a large, dark, polished wooden table Charlie made.

He says he has developed a reputation in the community for being outspoken, but he is also known for his principles. They were demonstrated during an incident nine years ago when Charlie's wife, Janice, found cannabis in the bedroom of his 16-year-old son.

Charlie gave the youngster believed to be the supplier of the drug "a couple of backhanders around the ear" and wound up being fined for assault. He says that although he would never do that again, the local school has not had a problem with cannabis since.

Charlie has been an oyster farmer, a district councillor, a school board member, a boxing coach and the owner of the nearby Panguru Tavern.

When growing up in the area as a child, Charlie lived in a house which had a dirt floor. Later he moved to a Government-owned rehabilitation farm. His parents both spoke Maori as their first language.

Charlie first left Mitimiti on a scholarship to board at St Peter's Maori Boys College in Auckland, now Hato Petera.

It was there he was introduced to boxing by a priest around 1961. "In boxing, people talked about killer instinct. People reckoned I had that, whatever that means," he says. He finished boxing around 1973. There was little money in professional boxing back then, he says.

The youngest of Charlie's children still attend the local primary school, but most of his older offspring have left the area, travelling overseas and attending university. Some have come home to Mitimiti with their own children.

"They have not grown up to be rocket scientists," says Charlie, "but they have grown up to be pretty good people."