The following is an excerpt from ​I Wanna Be Na Nah Na Nah Nah, a walking tour of 1980s Ponsonby devised by Dave Fane, Stephen Bain and Tessa Mitchell, opening tomorrow as part of the Auckland Fringe.

When people started putting fences up, that’s when I noticed the change. Suddenly people were starting to put fences on the boundary line. It’s pretty extreme, 'cos once you put a fence up, kids can’t go through there, no one goes through there anymore, it’s a fence.

No, not allowed, don’t know ya!

I remember early in 1984, these Palagis started moving in and they weren’t just the students. They were there to renovate houses. One Sunday we were going to church and this woman from across the road is out cleaning her car... in a bikini!

“Fark! Fuckin… Fuck!”

All the Islanders were out going to church just up the road, and every guy’s watching this woman cleaning her car. And my mothers going, “Don’t LOOK. Don’t look!”

That’s when we knew the area was changing.

Cause all the other Palagi on the street were students, at least they’d say hello. Y’know, you knew how to get along okay. My dad would say, “He’s alright.” But when the change started to happen, it was really quite quick, the whole gentrification thing was pretty quick, pretty brutal. Like society on speed.

A lot of the industries were moving out, that’s why a lot of the Islanders left as well. Their jobs had gone somewhere else. My Dad got himself some other work, but so many of the Samoans moved that Mum and Dad eventually thought, well, we’ll move out to where some of our mates have gone. That’s when they moved out to Point Chev.

And they didn’t tell me.

I came back from studying in Wellington and knocked on the door. And this Palagi opens the door. I was just staring at him going, “Who the f…” I was looking at the number of the house and I said, “But I live here man.” And I said, “Is Sonny and Fang’ii here?” meaning my mum and dad, and he says “Oh, oh no they moved and we bought the house.”

“Oh. Oh yeah.”

And he said, “Wait, we’ve got some mail to send on, here’s an address.”

And I said, “Oh, oh yeah.”

So I went there, to Point Chev, and by then it was at night and I was looking through the windows. I thought, ‘that’s their house, that’s their stuff, yeah yeah’. Then a cop car turns up. “What are you doing?”, and I say, “Oh just waiting for my mum and dad."

“Oh yeah… so… where are they?”

“I dunno, oh na… I know how it looks, I’m from Welling-town and ….”

And the cop says, “Yeah well the lady across the road, she just noticed you peering through the windows.”

And I said, “No, no, my parents… they live here…”

“Alright. Why don’t you come down the station.”

And I was walking towards their car going, ‘fuck I was only looking for my mum and dad’ when they pull up in their car, and the cop goes over the car window and says, “Do you know that guy?”

And my father says…

“No.”

And my mother just bursts out laughing. Bursts out laughing and I think, ‘arseholes’.

But mum was saying she really misses Ponsonby, the way it was y’know. It was cool days. All those old families, they moved out. They’d still send their kids to anything that was in the central city, to represent.

In a way it was like looking after each other, but it all changed once the fences started coming up. When you put up a fence it’s more of a sign than anything. When there were hedges, they were awesome, 'cos we used to push our way through the hedge. Because that was expected you know, it was a hedge, oh that’s a nice hedge. Go through.

My mum and dad live just round the corner from me now, that’s why we built this place in Point Chev. My brothers convinced me, they said, “You should buy a house in Point Chev, keep an eye on Mum and Dad.”

And I said, “Oh, yeah, yeah,” and then they go and move to Samoa.

I Wanna Be Na Nah Na Nah Nah runs from Thursday 12 - Sunday 22 February
Tickets available through iTicket