well mate....., i wondered where you got to after leaving nelson. weirdly spike & hillary visited me a day or so after christmas & told me matthew had scored his dream home in bluff..... now i hear he's sadly moved yet again.

i'd always catch him on brook street walking with his dog to & from town... & we'd often stop and share a cheeky red & plot the downfall of humanity through art, music, & politics.
i think i first met matthew through some mates when staying in dunedin. not sure when, but it must have been around 1990, although i remember also hanging out with him while he was living under a tree somewhere around the uni in welly.

the nature of our relationship was very random, but when we'd bump into each other it was like it was mean't to happen. always culminating into a carthartic, important almost necessary milestone or 'trip' ..(if that makes sense, without the risk of oversharing)..
but where ever or when ever... we'd always pick up where we left off.

in that sense, i can't wait to catch up again bruv, as i know we will.xo
@@@

Thanks for looking after a young punk rocker in the big smoke…& glad we got to catch up with you in Bluff that time. Rest easy old mate✌️

RIP Matthew. It's been a long time but the times we spent together were golden times

Somehow I thought Matthew was much older than me… I must’ve been 18 or 19 when I met him and he already seemed like a wise old man. We were all very busy misspending our youth but he seemed so gentle and kind. And I remember that he was one of the few people I knew who was genuinely interested in books. It is great to see this photo of him surrounded by books! We fell out of touch, as you do, but I have often wondered about how he was doing over the years… I lived in the house truck that he built for a while and I remember travelling often with Matthew. He always seemed to be on the move so it is hard to imagine him finally coming to rest.
Rest in peace old friend.

Im a year or 2 younger than Matthew. I met him at high school too, but the Flagstaff hill escapades and Friday nights on the streets of Wellington was where I got to know Matthew most. We shared desires to get out of it, a love of art, books, solo walking (I'd bump into him in the town belt late at night on "missions in the trees" as often as in town around humans). I lost touch with Matthew after he went South, but in my memory there were one or 2 people in that loose collection of us all who influenced my way of seeing the world more others, and he was one of those. A unique human. Rest in peace old friend.

I really hope (?) this is the right Matthew Polden who I'm writing about. The posture's right but I hadn't seen him with white hair or looking quite so peaceful.
When I first met Matthew it was at Wellington High School. I'd see him around with blue hair, scraggly clothes sometimes with a record or 2 under his arm.
I had short, sometimes blue, striped or green hair and didn't care for the school uniform either, so I stopped him one day and asked what records he'd scored. Think he had Black Sabbath and The Members - something like that.
A group of punks and boot boys would usually start our weekend by meeting outside Chelsea Records, buying some alcohol and drinking it up Flagstaff Hill - I lied, we'd buy a LOT of alcohol. We became friends.
Matthew was prone to extreme depression and anxiety (he'd nibble his fingernails down to the quick). Despite this he was always friendly, had a quick, cutting wit and was very loyal to his friends.
He hated posers and what he called a "jobsworth" ("jobsworth ": if you were 10c short & the vendor wouldn't let you pay it back "sorry mate, more than my jobs worth").
He'd call people out for being idiots no matter their size, colour or number. Needless to say, this often resulted in a hiding, usually made worse by him saying something like "you call that a hiding?".
He was a pacifist but was arrested after an incident where the singer in Madness took an armband off a friend, when he wouldn't give it back and continued to harass her, he broke his nose. Because the armband had a swastika on it wasn't the point. If the armband had said"Nazi Punks Fuck Off" and the guy was a normal Joe he would have done exactly the same thing. He would never have hit a woman though.
Some people would say that was paradoxical or hypocritical. I don't. I totally agree and understood. Had to admire him for that.
We flatted in Dunedin with Lynda Llama (I see her comment here), we both moved around the country a lot. After he moved to Ruby Bay I didn't see much of him. He called me a few months ago - I was walking up a zigzag and was late for dinner with my GF, I was going to ring him back but something in his voice...He told me about Gore, said he had a great house overlooking the harbor. We talked for a long time. I'm glad my last words to him weren't"I'll ring you tomorrow " cause , even though I would have meant it, I probably wouldn't have called.
From the picture, it looks like he had found home.
I didn't know he had a sister (could you message or email me? I'll post my email in a couple of weeks if you can't see my number and I don't hear from you) I do know he had an older brother, that his father (who, I think he secretly idolised in his teens) left home when he was young and his lovely mother died when he was 20 something.
Stubborn!
I started cutting his arguments short by betting who was right, made me some money too...until he started arguing that Websters, Oxford, Encyclopedia Britannica were wrong.
Kind, generous, loyall and a good heart. These are what shone out from him and how I choose to remember him. I only wish I'd visited him in Gore.
He was much loved.
Gonna miss you old friend.

I knew Matthew many years ago. I've just been to the Collingwood cemetery where my partner's parents are interred and saw his gravesite!
Such a small world. Rest in peace Matthew 🙏