No Strings Attached: Sleeping In

Many years ago, a boy went missing. Now that in itself is not unusual. Many boys, and many girls too for that matter, go missing, disappearing without a trace every year, and nobody knows why or where or how or who or what. One moment they are at home, and the next day, when everyone expects to see them, they just aren't there any more.

It's the strangest of mysteries.

But this particular boy, the one this story is about, disappeared for reasons everyone knew about, and what's worse, a lot of people know exactly where he is.

Confused? Let me explain.

In 1906 a family moved in to their brand new house somewhere in Otago. It was a big, rambling, wooden house, with weatherboard walls and a corrugated iron roof, and chimneys sticking up through the roof like trees made of brick in three places. It sat on a flat place in amongst the hills, with pine trees and poplars and willows scattered on all sides, and behind it was a few acres of dry, brown land.

The family consisted of a Mum and Dad and three children, and they lived there for many years, until the children were grown up and gone to work in the city. By now the parents were too old to run the farm so they sold it, and the house of course, went to a new owner.

The sad thing about passing a house on is that you can't guarantee that the new owners will take as much care of it as the previous ones. And this is what happened in this case. Before ten years had passed, the house was showing signs of serious dilapidation. The roof was rusting, the paint was flaking, and the garden had gone to wrack and ruin, or ruin and wrack as the case may be.

Before long, a new buyer turned up. He wasn't interested in farming, or gardening, or sitting on the lawn with a cup of tea and some genteel friends however. All he wanted was the house. He wanted to restore it, so he did a deal and paid a small amount of money because the house was rather shabby, and everything was signed properly, and the lawyers took their slice of the money, and everyone was happy.

So it was that, in 1954, just as the spring buds were beginning to open in the orchards, Donald MacMackie and his son Mick moved into their new home.

Now I'm just guessing, but I think the first thing any normal, healthy child of ten would do if they arrived at a brand new place to live, on a beautiful spring morning, is do some serious exploring! A normal, healthy