VISITING FOOTROT FLATS

INDIRA NEVILLE

DESCRIPTION Wal Footrot escaping a rugby tackle, assisted by the Dog, Evening Post, 1989

MAKER / ARTIST Murray Ball (1939–2017)

REFERENCE Reproduced by permission of Diogenes Designs Ltd., New Zealand Cartoon and Comics Archive (H-450-002)

The romance of rural life is embedded in New Zealand’s culture, a curious form of nostalgia for something most people have had little experience of. From the start of British colonisation, the majority of immigrants have lived in urban areas, always vastly outnumbering the people actually doing the business ‘down on the farm’. Despite this, the idea of farming being ‘Kiwi as’ affectionately persists, providing fertile ground for some of the country’s most iconic comedy—television farmers such as John Clarke’s Fred Dagg, for example, and comicstrip farms like Murray Ball’s Footrot Flats.

Murray Ball (1939–2017) originally became famous for his cartoons in the British magazine Punch, but here in his home country he is undoubtedly best known for Footrot Flats. The strip first appeared in Wellington’s Evening Post in 1976 and ran for 20 years. When I was young, our house was full of Footrot Flats collections and I loved the drawings and jokes. Even as a child, I understood that this strip was ‘New Zealand’ in a way that Peanuts or Garfield were not.

Footrot Flats is the name of the farm where most of the strip’s action takes place. Alongside lead characters Wal Footrot and Dog, depicted here, there’s Wal’s hairdresser girlfriend Cheeky Hobson, his permaculture neighbour Cooch, fussy Aunt Dolly, a vicious stray cat called Horse and, among many others, my favourite— Pongo Footrot, Wal’s niece. When a friend once compared me to Pongo I was so excited—Pongo is her own woman, both tough and feminine.

The farm is an expansive and complex universe, with recurring events and places, characters who slowly but perceptibly age and mature, against Ball’s gentle exploration of political themes, particularly environmentalism and feminism. It is rendered via lively singular black-and-white drawings, with short, sharp strips. The masterful interplay of image and text places a lovely emphasis on particular moments and events within the Footrot Flats world, such as the rugby game in this image. These are sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant, often both.

The strip was syndicated in overseas newspapers and published in more than 40 books. It inspired a musical (in which my father played Wal, to great acclaim, in the Whakatane Repertory Society’s 1986 production), an illustrated novel and an animated feature film. In 2002, Ball was awarded the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as a cartoonist. He died in 2017, but Footrot Flats lives on forever.

Ferociously loyal defence by the Dog sees Wal Footrot en route to glory on the try-line. The Turnbull’s New Zealand Cartoon and Comics Archive includes various classic Footrot Flats cartoons by Murray Ball.