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Maurice Gee was born in Whakatane, a popular coastal town in New Zealand. However, he spent his childhood in the country town of Henderson and it is only the latter that plays a major role in his fiction. Of special significance is Henderson Creek — a small stream — where, Gee said, "I seem to have spent half my boyhood." There, he says, he saw dead animals for the first time, which made a deep impression on him. "I'd run home from the creek to the safety and security of the kitchen," he once said. Gee claimed that the two places were of equal significance: "one the place of safety and affection, the other the place of adventure, danger, excitement."
Gee's father was a carpenter who happily allowed Maurice and his brothers free access to tools and materials for making boats in which to explore the creek. His mother's tales of family history were fundamental to Gee's emerging interest in narrative, providing a sense of social history that he would later use in his writing. His memories of primary school in Henderson are intense and detailed. Furthermore, he seems able to transfer their atmosphere to other schools. There can be few factual accounts of a primary school as vivid as Gee's Nelson Central School (1978), which was a major contribution to the history of schooling and one based on extensive oral research.
For two years he was a schoolteacher in the town of Paeroa, but he moved on feeling disillusioned with the profession. After three years' casual work in various parts of New Zealand, he spent 1961 teaching and writing in England. Ever since university he had been writing. The publication of two stories in the British collection New Authors — Short Story I (1961) created a wider audience for this new voice.
