Hello, I'm Julia Zemiro, and welcome to Home Delivery.
Just up here, thank you, driver.
Is this the same place? (LAUGHS)
This series, I'm going to be taking some extraordinary
actors and musicians...
So, no basketball, then.
I did pash a guy over there though.
..comedians and journalists...
Is it true your brother once shot you?
Yeah, he did shoot me, yeah, in the face.
..back to their childhood selves...
This room was just everything.
..and find out what has made them the people they are today.
Help, Julia Zemiro is radicalising me!
I'm in the beautiful South Island of New Zealand.
We first fell in love with him in My Brilliant Career,
and over 100 films later,
he's still one of the most extraordinary actors
Australia has ever produced.
OK, New Zealand.
It's Sam Neill.
Oh... look at that.
Would you look at this beast? (CHUCKLES)
And I'm talking about the car.
(LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
Hello.
Ca va? Oh...
This car is extraordinary.
Was this the car that your parents used to drive?
Dad always drove Consuls
and I was always slightly embarrassed about them
'cause we wanted a Zephyr. Did you?
The Zephyr would have been a little more cool.
Oh. But how rare is this now?
Because everyone's kept the Zephyrs
and the Consul - look at it.
We always had the AA badge
in case we broke down, which it did sometimes.
It's a beautiful car. Good thing you're driving.
Oh, look, he's even...
Oh, first guest who's ever opened the door for me.
Can you be...? And it... Thank you, Sam Neill.
How extraordinary. Oh... thank you.
Seatbelts on, please. (LAUGHS)
Goes very fast.
We never had seatbelts in my day,
just slid all over the bench.
♪ Jump in my car
♪ I wanna take you home
♪ Jump in my car (CHUCKLES)
♪ It's too far to walk home alone. ♪
The moment he rode onto the screen in My Brilliant Career in 1979,
we knew we had a keeper.
I'm sorry.
Urbane and eloquent, Sam's own career has been stellar,
with credits as diverse as The Hunt For The Wilderpeople,
Jurassic Park and Peaky Blinders.
He refuses to slow down,
still creating engaging characters
and producing moving documentaries.
Two great armies faced each other here
and fought each other at a standstill for four years.
So, where are we going today?
We're going on to the Otago Peninsula,
which one side of the beautiful Dunedin Harbour,
to Macandrew Bay,
which was really substantially where I grew up.
No-one really wanted to live out there - it was out of town.
And we liked it 'cause it was out of town.
Look, here we are at the harbour.
It is gorgeous, Sam, honestly.
Now, Sam's not your real name. Sam is not my real name.
No. What is your real name?
Nigel. Nigel.
Nigel Neill.
Come on, Mum and Dad, what were you thinking?
Look, my...(CHUCKLES)
My best friend at school was a very funny boy
called Nigel Nutt.
Nutt?! Nigel Nutt.
We were under the gun, really. We were under the gun.
We were just asking for trouble.
But we decided together, "Why am I calling you Nigel?
"Let's change our names."
And we liked westerns
and we looked up a couple names in westerns
and there were a lot of Sams and there were a lot of Bills.
Great.
And I said, "I'm going to take Sam."
He said, "I'll take Bill."
This is about the speed that my father used to drive.
(CHUCKLES) What am I doing?
30. Just a little over 30,
which is quite... quite fast enough on a road like this.
Here we are. Howard Street.
Might have to go down to first, actually.
(ENGINE REVS) To get up that hill.
Come on. Oh, Jesus.
Am I going to get up? Yeah, we are.
If we had a horse, it'd be easier, wouldn't it?
Shall I... shall I just...? Hang on.
(ENGINE REVS)
This is awkward.
(ENGINE SPUTTERS)
Oh, God.
I can't get it back down. (CHUCKLES)
OK. You're OK on this side.
You're still OK on here.
Boys, could we just give it a push?
Yeah, give it a push.
Oh, oh, oh!
Yep. Here we go.
Let's get out and we'll just evaluate the situation.
Yes, let's evaluate.
We'll just give it a little rest.
(LAUGHS) Let's walk.
Done quite a lot of work this morning already.
Exhausted. We'll walk up.
I'm glad we've got legs and we can walk up.
I know. Aw...
It's OK. It's beautiful.
How long has it been since you were here, Sam?
1968.
Well, it's high time you returned.
Oh, my goodness. How beautiful is the garden?
Ohh, it's beautiful!
It was a good garden, but this is fantastic.
Look at the house, it's picture perfect.
I'm so touched because it's so well looked after.
Look, there is a lock on there,
but I don't think that lock ever worked.
People would just come in and say...
"Anyone home?"
And if there wasn't an answer, then you'd probably leave.
And this was always the dining room,
which always had this nice sort of garden aspect.
Gorgeous!
To me, this feels kind of idyllic.
Does it... did it feel idyllic for you?
I don't know about idyllic because...
I had this divided childhood
because I was at boarding school all the time.
So, this is where I came home
and I was always excited to come home.
And our family was together, my brother, my sister,
Mum and Dad.
And then you'd have to go away to school again.
I saw Stephen Fry on the thing the other day,
he said, "Self-pity is the ugliest emotion."
And I don't feel sorry for myself.
It's just the way it was. Mm.
I just... just coming here,
you're sort of, um...
..you feel those things again.
A few ghosts, you know.
This is the sitting room.
My father always sat in that... in a chair there.
That was always Dad's seat. You can be Dad if you want.
Please, I'll do it.
He'd say, "Time for... time for bed, old boy."
You do it. Time for bed, old boy.
OK, and you'd come over and say, "Goodnight, Dad."
"Goodnight, old boy." Goodnight, old boy.
No kissing goodbye, no hug?
No, goodness, no.
If Dad had kissed me, I would have been mortified.
Would you, really?
Well, it wasn't... it wasn't that kind of...
Family. And you did what you were told?
You went straight to bed? Muck around.
If Dad told you to go to bed, you went to bloody bed.
So, it's off to bed. (LAUGHS)
This is my sister's room.
Never liked to go in there
because she had mice and it smelled like mice.
Oh. That was Mum and Dad's room.
You never went in there.
This is the only time my father ever came into my bedroom.
Really? Only time.
OK.
You know, I'd say goodnight to him down there,
that was the last I saw of him until the next day.
One time, he came in my bedroom.
Shall I be you? You can be me in bed.
Alright. Door's closed.
Yes.
(KNOCKS)
Come in.
He said, um...
"Alright, old chap?"
"Good, good, good. Alright.
"Um... Off to...
"off to college tomorrow.
"Off to college.
"Look, um..."
And obviously, he'd been sent up by my mother.
He said, "Look, I was wondering..."
(CLEARS THROAT)
"I was wondering..." (CLEARS THROAT)
"if, um... your old headmaster at prep school had...
"I'm wondering if he'd ever said anything about...
"about other boys."
And I said, "Yes, Dad, he did."
And he said, "Oh, good, good. Alright, right, right.
"That's great. Alright.
"Right, goodnight, old boy." (LAUGHS)
(LAUGHS)
Mum had obviously said, "Look, Dermott,
"he's going to... he's going to college now.
"There'll be homosexual boys there or something
"and you'd better go and have a talk."
(LAUGHS) (LAUGHS)
And you've got that beautiful view out there.
Yeah, that's right. There was an open door there.
So, my brother had an open door.
My brother was really rather nice to me.
And I would be drifting off to sleep here
or would wake up early in the morning,
he'd read me books.
Yeah. Well, that is divine.
Treasure Island and things like that.
I'd say, "Can you read me some more?"
"Alright."
And he was a really good reader.
He did all the voices, Long John Silver and stuff.
Whenever he was reading things, he'd... do the characters.
Let's go and look in my brother's room.
Gosh, they seem so small now. They are little, aren't they?
When my brother left for England,
I had this as supposedly my study room,
you know, through to my bedroom.
Never did any study.
I had The Beatles and The Stones and...
..all those guys, um, stuck on the walls around here.
Another place, of course,
you were never allowed to come was Dad's study.
And he had a sort of Victorian desk here
and it was covered in bills and stuff like that.
My father was a very handsome, quite remote man, you know.
He'd been through the war
and he'd seen a lot of things,
and like a lot of people his generation,
you know, he never spoke about any of it.
I think he was very fond of us, as children,
but he wasn't expressive about that.
He was always a bit puzzled by me
because my brother, you know...
..we would come back and the reports would arrive
from our schools the same day,
and I knew my report would be really shithouse
and my brother's would be outstanding.
But the one thing that I did...
..that I was OK at was I could... I did a bit of acting
when I got... when I got to school.
I was never quite sure whether he was...
..he knew what I did exactly.
And when Dad died...
..two things happened
that gave me great satisfaction.
First of all, just before he died,
but, uh...
..I got a letter and I took the letter,
and Dad was in his... in his bed,
on his way out,
and I said, "Dad...
"they're giving me an OBE."
And he said...
.. "I'm very proud of you."
And...
..then the second thing was,
to my great surprise... I'd cleaned out his office
and all this stuff, you know, old bills and things,
and at the bottom of one of these drawers
was a scrapbook.
And I picked out the scrapbook and... he'd cut out things.
Um, this funny old remote chap,
he'd cut out all these cuttings
of me from school.
Um, Nigel Neill. (CHUCKLES)
Nigel Neill. Outstanding in...
..in, you know, the sixth form comedy.
And it's, "Wow, Dad's cut out all this stuff."
And he'd followed my career, but never talked about it.
And I thought... That took me by surprise.
I was so touched by that,
that he'd actually taken a real interest
without making a fuss. Hmm.
Anyway, I'm not going to... that's enough crying for now.
Didn't mean to do that. I'm so sorry.
Won't happen again. Good!
Won't happen again. I hate it when he cries.
Righto. Let's have a sit outside.
OK, let's cheer up now.
Where was your mum from? She was English.
She was the daughter... daughter of a soldier,
married to a soldier.
I'm a little embarrassed
about having a little bit of a tear before
because my mother always used to say, "A soldier's...
"a soldier's daughter never cries."
Hmm.
And I never saw her cry about anything in her life.
Nothing at all? No, she was staunch.
Wow.
Not that she didn't feel things,
but she wasn't going to cry about stuff.
And she was a splendid woman in many ways.
She was a great equestrian. She was very active.
She didn't like the kitchen and ironing and stuff.
Who does? But...
Yeah, who does? But she loved...
She was very active and she loved getting out and about.
What does it feel like to be sitting here
after all this time?
Um, you know, I was really quite nervous
about coming here because it wasn't just family,
it was also a sanctuary.
You'd come back here and it was...
..you know, hearth and home and family.
And it was always temporary because you knew
it was only three weeks
and then you'd be back on the train.
Yeah.
And I was nervous about coming here
because... places without people
are just places, really.
And I never really wanted to come back here at all,
uh, because I thought it would sort of be a bit upsetting.
And it's not upsetting, really, it's just...
I feel like the house has been well loved.
And I actually feel like I'm at peace with the place,
which is nice.
Thank you very much for that.
Oh, that is our pleasure, Sam. For dragging me back here.
So, now we're off to another special place.
Let's hope the car makes it.
When Mum and Dad left Macandrew Bay,
they came out to the country.
And their last 20 years, their lives were really happy.
This is where they lived out here
in these extraordinary woodlands.
Ooh, I nearly tripped over.
(CHUCKLES) I enjoyed that.
(LAUGHS)
My dear old military father
devoted pretty much the last 15-20 years of his life
to dressage,
and he built this dressage ring especially for...
My mum used to call it 'Dad's playpen'.
(LAUGHS)
And he'd play music
as loud as he possibly could down there
on his big boombox,
and so he'd do his dressage to music.
Would you like... I can sort of show you what he was like.
Yes! Could you give us some music?
You'd like a bit of music?
Something he would have played on the boombox.
He had a great stance on the horse.
Excellent. And...
♪ Oh, give me land, lots of land
♪ Under starry skies above
♪ Don't fence me in. ♪
That is great. And then the crossover.
♪ Give me land, lots of land
♪ Under starry skies above
♪ Don't fence me in
♪ I want to ride through something
♪ Where the west commences
♪ Gaze into the something till I lose my senses
♪ I can't stand hovels You're onto it.
♪ And I can't stand fences
♪ Don't fence me in. ♪
I mean, you know... That's it.
And why are we here?
Was this part of your parents' property?
Let's have a look and I'll show you.
All these trees,
and there are thousands and thousands of them,
were planted by Alec Thompson, who lived here in this cottage.
That became my parents' place.
He was a veteran of the First War.
My father was a veteran of the Second War.
And they really liked each other very much.
And Alec had been at Gallipoli and he'd been in the Somme.
He'd spent two or three years in France,
in all that mud and horror,
where everything... every living thing
was reduced to mud and blood.
And he came back and just planted obsessively,
just planted and planted and planted.
Couldn't stop planting things to grow.
He just wanted every... you know...
And this is the result, you know.
I think it's an incredibly beautiful thing.
You plant for future generations,
and it's people in 300 years' time
that are really going to see the power
and the majesty of these trees.
Thank you.
(STRANGE BRAYING)
What's that? (STRANGE BRAYING)
That's the New Zealand bellbird.
(LAUGHS) (STRANGE BRAYING)
I never heard it quite like that before.
That idiot donkey. Oh, that's a donkey.
That's a donkey. The idiot donkey.
Well, they all sound like idiots.
They're all the loneliest animals on the planet.
(BIRD SINGS) That's a bellbird.
(BIRD SINGS)
Every bellbird in every valley has a slightly different call.
He'll go again in a minute. (BIRD SINGS)
There he goes.
Is this somewhere that you come to find a bit of peace?
I think this is one of the most tranquil places on the planet,
you know, and it's so secret and undisturbed.
(BIRD SINGS)
There's lots of springs through these woods.
Each one has a different composition.
And here's the main spring.
The source is right under there.
No-one's been here for ages.
(GASPS) Look how red that is.
Yeah. That's all oxidised.
Right.
Wow.
I want you to be entirely honest with me.
(GASPS) It's so cold,
like straight from the fridge.
My father used to drink this with whiskey every night.
Oh, that's delicious.
And it's fizzy.
It is fizzy. Real bubbles.
What's it called?
Well, it's called 'wai whakaora',
which means "healing waters" in Maori.
Let's go down to the karris.
Getting into the karri trees.
I think this karri tree is about 40 or 50 metres high.
And these are growing a thousand miles further south
than they really ought to be.
So, that in itself is a little miracle.
(GASPS)
The other reason we're here is...
(BIRD SINGS)
..the birdsong. (LAUGHS)
And this is where my parents are scattered.
Oh... And they just loved being here,
they loved these trees.
And the first one I scattered was my dad,
and we all came down,
the nephews and nieces, my children and things,
and we'd all scatter a bit round here and there.
And then one small nephew went 'boof' with the can
and there was, like, a pile of Dad,
like, down here. Oh, my God.
And I stayed behind with my mum for about three weeks,
take the dog for a walk through here every day,
and every day I'd look and Dad's still there.
Just, you know, all the other ashes are gone,
but there was this pile of Dad there.
And I thought, "He's never going to go," you know?
"He's never going to go.
"He's just going to be there as a big pile of ashes forever."
Then, one day, I came past and there was no sign of him.
He just... evaporated.
It evaporated.
This is a bit of a sacred space, then.
I do sort of feel my parents' presence here.
It's not too woo-wooey, is it? No, no.
I just think, spiritually, this is...
You know, I've... I lost all my religion many years ago,
but I do believe our forebears are within us
and without us as well,
and, you know, they're with me all the time.
But particularly in a place like this.
(BIRD SINGS)
Here's to Mum and Dad and your mum and dad...
Yeah. ..and all the mum and dads.
All the mums and dads. (BIRD SINGS)
Now, before we take you back to school,
let's do some trainspotting.
Very grand railway station.
Why does Dunedin have such a grand railway station?
Well, railways were grand in the good old days.
(GASPS) Look.
New Zealand Railways, New Zealand Railways,
New Zealand Railways...
And right on the middle... a steam train.
No expense spared.
Oh, would you look at this?! Oh, it's so beautiful!
(CHUCKLES) So, we'd arrive,
the train would be there already.
It left about 12:30.
If it left at 12:30, Dad would be down here about 12:27.
And he'd stride on. He'd stride through here.
And... and there'd be my brother...
..my brother standing here too.
"Goodbye, old chap. Have a good term."
And he'd look down at me, "Goodbye, old boy."
And I'd be going, "Bye, Dad."
I'd be wanting to have a bit of a cry,
but soldiers' boys never cry.
Stride on.
Stride onto the... get onto the train.
"Bye, Mum. Bye, Dad."
(SOBS) (WAILS)
And then howl on the train. Yeah.
Well, it takes four hours to get to Christchurch by train.
But we'll be flying.
Yeah, go on, let's go to Christchurch.
May as well. Yeah.
Well, this is quite something, Sam.
It's a very beautiful collection of buildings, really, isn't it?
It was a little bit daunting when you first arrived.
As a little eight-year-old, absolutely would be daunting.
No, no, I was 13. 13 already?
I'd already been at boarding school for four years.
The absolutely essential rule here
was you could never walk on this grass.
It was like it was radioactive. (LAUGHS)
And even a foot and you were in the shit, you know?
Really?
So, I'm just going to walk on the grass.
Oh, my God. And...
I'm not.
I feel so naughty, I'm just absolutely...
(LAUGHS)
..breaking the rules with abandon.
Oh... Couldn't feel better.
No.
I won't, 'cause I don't want to spend the afternoon in detention.
Did anyone see me? No... (LAUGHS)
This is like therapy.
I'm so delighted you finally got to do that.
This is cosy.
Yeah, and look,
years and years of boys sitting up here and...
Oh! ..these grooves for shoes.
The grooves!
And would you have done a bit of this in your time?
No, this is day boys over here.
Is it?
Tough boarders were over that side.
That was... there was four boarding houses,
schoolhouse, which had all the inbred farmers in it,
that, you know, years and generations of inbreeding.
Jacobs House, where a lot of my mates were.
They were all the thick boys. (LAUGHS)
Flowers House across the road
had all the really unusual boys.
Yeah?
Very strange with strange hobbies and habits.
And Richards House, my house, had all the dregs.
What, that didn't fit in or just...?
Yeah, the dregs that no other house wanted.
I was one of the dregs.
I arrived as a dreg and I left as a dreg.
Was the Old Boys' Theatre here when you were here?
No, there was no theatre, so at such time as we did plays,
which was my best fun at school,
we'd go to the repertory theatre,
which was demolished in the earthquake, sadly,
like so many other things in Christchurch.
Was that exciting to go off campus,
off school grounds to perform somewhere else?
Yeah, but in my early days at school,
you know, the junior boys had to play the girls.
Of course, in the old Shakespearian tradition.
I've worn a frock!
What's a play without a girl? Nothing.
Nothing at all. Well, this is nice here though.
Well, it's nice hanging out with you.
Yeah. (LAUGHS) Hanging out with a girl.
This has never happened before.
You're breaking another rule on school grounds.
I know, I know!
So, this is the library where you spent hours, obviously, Sam,
studying hard, did you?
I probably came in here twice the whole time I was at school.
It's been kind of done up
and there's books you actually would want to read now,
by the look of it.
So, what kind of student were you?
Were you studious?
The stuff I was interested in,
I was pretty good at. Hmm.
History and English, and that was about it.
Who were your favourite teachers?
Most of them, you know, thought I was hopeless
and I was, you know.
But there were three guys,
Scruffhart, Piggy Hamilton...
Don't. You couldn't call him Piggy Hamilton.
Don Hamilton, sorry. Thank you.
And Nigel Crease, who was the headmaster,
who spotted something in me as an actor
and they would cast me in good parts.
Those three guys did an enormous amount
for my self-confidence,
and, you know, I felt like I was valued for something.
So, this is the dining room,
where I ate rather indifferent food for five years,
three times a day.
But it's also the memorial dining room,
and it was built in memory of people who served and died
in the First War.
And up here is what interests me.
This is a book with all the names of people
who served in the First War.
Be lots of relations of mine here.
Here's one - Neill, R.B.
This is my father's uncle.
I've never touched this book before in my life.
Well, you're obviously not allowed to.
It was only school prefects
and I was never a school prefect.
No, you weren't.
(CHUCKLES)
I'd like to see you at university.
Yeah, OK.
This is where I went to university.
In '10 and '11, there were these two
devastating earthquakes in Christchurch.
And this has been a building site,
well, six years now, really.
And now, it's gradually beginning to open up.
So, there'll be something probably here soon.
There'll be something, yep.
Coming through that archway
is sort of a tremendous liberation for me.
Here I am at university,
I'm surrounded by women who were normal people
and... and I'm exposed to new ideas, and politics,
and drama, and all the things that...
It was just a fantastically exciting place to be.
I didn't do any work. I was absolutely hopeless.
But it was all... the thing about...
..the thing about being here was, uh...
..it was all the extracurricular stuff,
not being in the library.
Again, it's a theme - not being in the library.
Not being in the library.
It was all the stuff I shouldn't have been doing
that turned out to be my life. Yes.
But the other thing that was so liberating about this place
was that in those days, education was free.
So that there were people here from every possible background,
race, creed - all here -
and what a wonderful thing for a country.
Education is everything.
That's all changed now
because now it's very costly to go to university.
And all that free education was systematically destroyed
by the very people who benefited from,
you know, the freedom of a free education...
I know. It's hideous. ..the liberation of all that.
And I just think that's one...
And it's not just New Zealand,
it's happened in Australia, it's happening in England.
And I'm so embittered by those people that took it apart.
I really am. I'm pissed off with them.
I'm pissed off, Julia! He's pissed off!
I'm angry, I'm pissed off. And where do you get pissed off?
Uni! (CHUCKLES)
Oh... now, this is gorgeous.
Yeah. I had lectures in here.
Um, quick lecture from you, Sam?
What I think you should all be aware of,
you can't just spend your time studying at university.
It's very important that you get involved in other stuff.
All the things that we cared about,
we were on the streets.
Apartheid, Vietnam -
these were important issues
and we were out demonstrating in the streets.
Yes.
Uh, should we also be drinking in the bar, sir?
Yes, I think you should definitely be drinking in the bar.
That's a very important part...
I'll just write that down. ..of university life.
Yeah. It's a very short lecture.
(LAUGHS)
(GASPS)
This is the Great Hall,
and I think the only thing I ever did here was exams.
But this is the thing I pondered, you know,
while I was trying to think of...
The answers.
..something to say in the exam.
And you look at this and you gasp, really,
because...
..this is probably circa 1920
because it's after... it's after the First War.
And here are the ANZAC troops fighting dragons.
And then you start looking at what the rest of the iconography is.
It starts off with the Christ Child,
and it goes through Roman civilisation.
Here's William the Conqueror.
And now we're getting towards New Zealand.
Here's James Cook and here's some of the founding fathers of the colony.
And look at the bottom.
There's a grateful native receiving the word of God.
And you think, "Oh, my God." That's terrible.
"You were doing so well up to that point."
(BOTH LAUGH)
You seem to have a genuine interest in people.
Would I be right?
Well, you know, there's that Maori saying,
"What is the important thing?
"It is people, it is people, it is people."
And as an actor, that's also very useful.
Yeah, I don't think you can really approach...
..approach a character without having...
..without having some idea about how people work.
And some kind of compassion too - for everyone.
Ideally, yeah, yeah.
And I think, you know, when I approach characters,
it might be written as a bad guy on the page,
but I try and think about
what else there is to the character
other than just badness, or goodness, you know.
I read somewhere that you said doing My Brilliant Career
kind of turned you into an actor
rather than just a part-time thespian.
Yeah, it did.
While I love New Zealand, it was never a very...
I never thought it was a very encouraging place.
And really, my first words of encouragement
were when I got to Australia
and I did that film My Brilliant Career.
And people would say, "You're good,"
and I'd be very surprised to hear that.
You know, "Are they pulling my leg?"
Yeah. No-one said that to me before.
I thought... I thought we should get married.
Well, what a handsome proposal. How could anyone say no?
How dare you?
And I'm very grateful to Gillian Armstrong
and to Margaret Fink, who cast me in that film.
It was a leap of faith.
And I thought two things.
One is, "Maybe I could actually have a career as an actor,"
and the second thing was, "Much as I love New Zealand,
"I think Australia's fantastic."
There was this great wave of new Australian filmmakers
that were peaking,
and I was in the middle of it.
I couldn't have been more thrilled or excited.
It was great. I think you're a good actor.
Do you think you're a good actor?
Um, you can't say you're a good actor if you're from New Zealand.
Oh, OK. It's engrained in you, you can't.
If you blow smoke up your own bum,
then you're forever damned.
So, what I would say is I'm serviceable,
durable... (LAUGHS)
..and I'm reasonably cooperative to work with.
(LAUGHS)
I'd call myself a useful actor.
Earlier, you mentioned that you're someone who's lost their religion,
but you do seem spiritual on a few levels.
Look, the more I read about science,
the more mysterious everything gets.
There's a wonderful book,
The Short History of Nearly Everything.
And the first chapter is about the creation of the universe.
And I can only read about three sentences at a time
because it just blows my mind to pieces.
You know, we're so insignificant.
We're such little fleas.
A flea is over-exaggerating our importance.
This tiny little blue planet
in the middle of this absolute infinite,
infinite, infinite.
We just don't have the brain to grasp it.
Hmm.
This book that's being offered to the noble savage here,
all these books - I don't want to be controversial -
but they were written hundreds and thousands of years ago,
when we had a totally different idea of ourselves
and man's importance and things,
and they're really out of date.
(LAUGHS)
They're really just simply out of date.
I trouble myself about the state of the world
and how much trouble religion is.
I read somewhere, someone said,
"If I was God, I'd ban religion."
(BOTH LAUGH)
How has today been?
How has this trip back to Dunedin and Christchurch been?
Look, thank you very much for taking me round.
And it's been...
..it's been a strange old trip, you know.
This is a little unusual in that we are in two cities.
But my life was bifurcated, you know.
My heart was in Dunedin, my mind was here.
And then that swapped around, probably in my...
You know, my heart was here and I was thinking about home.
You know, it's a very, very divided childhood
between two different places.
So, thanks for accommodating me on that and the oddity of...
Everyone has an odd bringing up, don't they?
Absolutely, everyone.
Mine was no odder than anyone else's, but it was odd.
Yeah, there's always oddness.
And it's interesting to have a look at it from all these years on.
If you could say something to your 12-year-old self,
to little Sam, what would you say?
Little Nigel.
You'll be alright, mate.
Don't worry about it. Yeah.
You'll be OK. You'll be fine.
It's been a really wonderful day. Thank you.
You've been so generous with all your stories and your time...
Oh, thanks, Julia.
..and the places we've been to.
So, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Hopefully, there's a bar open on campus.
Captions by Ericsson Access Services
Copyright Australian Broadcasting Corporation