The Hell Hole of the Pacific

Russell began life, for Europeans, as a whaling outpost.  It was noted as a lawless place full of drinking and prostitution.  Sailors who risked their lives in icy antarctic seas, harpooning whales from small boats amid towering waves would, no doubt, limp into Russell crying, "Dreadful!  You expect us to sit in this Hell hole, drinking, whoring, and being generally lawless?  We want to go home to Eastbourne."

(From Wikipedia)

Things have changed.  The stink of flenshing no longer lingers, drinking places offer cocktails not grog.  On prostitution I have no information.  Like many a reformed rake, Russell is now squeakily genteel.  I'm told that Pahia, across the bay, is wilder.  It has, perhaps, traffic lights so you can jaywalk.

But imagine you are walking along Russell's main street.  "The sun pours down like honey" seems a particulary apposite quote.  To your right beyond the row of gleaming white buildings is a pedestrian track, beyond that a gravelly beach and the ocean.  On your left a row of mostly "useful" shops: hardware, pharmacy, estate agent, wine shop, 4 Square (like Spar), a bakery that closes when it's sold all its bread (about 11.30am), the Internet Cafe (on its last legs - it also sells locally made frozen meals for one), a charity shop and a second hand book shop (where we bought an Angela Carter and John Fowles worst reviewed novel). At the end of the quarter mile that is Russell stands NZ's oldest Anglican church with Russell Museum opposite.  That row is enough to service the 800 or so permanent residents of the village.

Russell Church - From about 1850 Maori and European gravesare side by side and both languages are used. 

The pedestrian esplanade is lined with eating and coffee places, dress and memorabilia shops but there are also residential houses, the town hall and one of the most elegant police houses in the world.  

Police House

At lunch today we had a stunning view across a bay dotted with small boats and islands. This part of town hasn't changed more than you'd expect.

For the big change, look inland.  After a few non-descript streets the land rises sharply upwards on three sides.  What were wooded slopes are now festooned with very large, very modern, very expensive villas - most of them holiday homes of the rich. 

A population of 800 becomes about 6000 in the summer - with a consequent increase in prices, especially for property.   Building houses on the hill sides means views over the harbour but also many more sealed tracks up to houses (increasing the speed of rain run off), many more big cars and so on.  This view was almost virgin bush when we last visited.

But sitting here by our van, it still looks good. 

Outside the Gates of Eden?

But Waiheke Island of all that land

For those who truly understand.

Apologies to Rupert Brooke - but Waiheke is a rather wonderful place.  It is the only island of the many in the bay of Auckland we have visited but I'm sure we're right.

We first went there 13 years ago.  Old friends, Rosie and Colin have a son in NZ and so bought a bach on the island. Baches are holiday homes which can begin life as little more than a beach hut but can evolve.  Like all NZ homes.  Our friends had bought their batch just before our first visit: we even played a small part in it's embryology.

Here are Eleanor and I, in 2005, working while Colin (on right) supervises and discusses with a friend the problem of getting decent labourers. 

Now it is an elegant but comfortable house and we were very happy to sit outside in the shade where we talked, ate and drank.  And I forgot to take any pictures so here are more from our first visit.

It still looks much the same except that what, 13 years ago, was a hippy-ish, just about getting along, place has become a bijou magnet for the wealthy with posh shops and eateries.  Property prices have gone up enormously.

Another couple, Rob and Sue, joined us for a very convivial afternoon.  After they left we realised it was Rob who had offered to sell us a house on our previous trip.  It was well built with, if I remember correctly, three bedrooms, all mod cons, big hot tub in the 3/4 acre garden.  The Pacific Ocean lapped about 50 yards down the road.  About £180K.  We chose St Werburghs, but, ....

(Serendipity alert: The title was from Bob Dylan or maybe the bible but it turns out that Auckland was named for George Eden, Earl of Auckland.  Funny old world.)

Auckland Houses.

Auckland is hilly.  From any high point of suburbia you can see lots of other bits of surburbia.  Forever there are small white houses in neat rows, some look like this:

 or this:

Those came from the Internet.  Here's my favourite:

Beautiful workmanship!

There are various family relationships.  Almost all are built of white painted wood (a touch of pastel creeps into some) with 'decorative features' (fretwork, columns, twisty bits).  They are small (2 or 3 bedroom max) with minimal front gardens.  They have corrugated iron roofs (I remember an expat Kiwi telling me she was really homesick for the sound of rain on corrugated iron).  And, most notably, they are all different.  We have never seen two adjacent identical designs.

I'm talking of the suburban majority, built perhaps in the early C20.  As you move towards wealthier areas you begin to see, maybe every 20 houses, a modern design where an older house was removed.  In some cases the original house is sawed into manageable chunks, taken away on a low-loader and re-errected elsewhere.

One other aspect seems ubiquitous.  Houses aren't things, they are processes and projects. The former case is an inevitable result of building wooden houses in a semi-tropical zone. The paint peels, the wood rots and insects devour them for a start but the corollary is that the same vegetative vigour means the gardens blossom and fill as shrubs turn into trees with massive epiphytes cadging rides; giant cacti and succulent produce leathery leaves with razor sharp edges or sharks teeth or are harmless in which case they serve as homes for venomous insects.

This is a garden tree:

 


Walking down the road we stopped to chat with a man, about our age, stripped to the waist hacking at a solid mass of razor edged plants.  It was 30° and hard work. Returning a few hours later he'd cleared maybe a couple of square feet.  If he doesn't act immediately something from Little Shop of Horrors will.  It can't be a coincidence that Richard O'Brian who created Little Shop of Horrors is from NZ.

Here's a picture of a sweet little baby plant to reassure you all.

Is diddums teething?

The more, as it were, existential issue is the project.  NZ is full of active people.  If you aren't sailing, playing rugby, surfing or bungy jumping what's left? Evening classes, TV or modifying your house.  Having now watched a bit of TV, it seems the choice is between Maori music and dance (best choice), reruns of ancient UK series and films dubbed into Chinese (?).  So, extend your house into the garden, add an extra storey, create a workshop or studio.  Later you can tear bits down and change them.  How about fretwork for the soffits? Damn, time to refit the windows .... maybe new age stained glass.  It's a lifetime's work done in the knowledge that when you go, the next owner will start all over again.

NZ at last.

Another more overnight flight.  I'm reduced to watching "You've Got Mail" , so old fashioned!  Has Meg Ryan ever not worn pyjamas in a film?  I think George Burns once said, "I'm so old  can remember Doris Day before she became a virgin" but even she, in The Pajama Game wore only the top half.  In the long dark watches of the night, I was reduced even further to "Wonder Woman". Due to a temporary (temporal?) glitch I missed the last 5 minutes so don't know if she survived or what was the secret Hippolyta had kept from her but I gather she saved the world anyway.

We first visited NZ about 24 years ago.  We went out one evening from our hotel in the centre of Auckland at about 9pm and failed to find anything to eat or drink. Everywhere was dark, silent and closed. Twelve years ago a small gay area had emerged on Ponsonby Rd.  You could get a meal even after 9pm.  Now Ponsonby is all cafes, clubs, posh clothes shop and coffee bars selling CBAs (Chicken, Brie and Avocado is the new BLT - probably is in Bristol as well for all I know).

I discussed the ending of Wonder Woman with a shop assistant there while Eleanor looked in vain for something that hadn't been designed for a malnourished hobbit obssessed with Hello Kitty.  He couldn't remember the ending either.  What was the point of it, he wondered.  Me too.  Women with metal underwear?  Nobody, he said, was that weird. 

Auckland itself seems much more crowded, busy, cosmopolitan and, especially, hot. However our AirBnB is quiet and peaceful.  There are chickens in the garden, a banana palm with evil looking buds,  a small lime tree with lots of fruit and a rampant bed of squash. 

The garden has been visited by a steady stream of monarch butterflies all coming to the same bush to lay their eggs - the bush hasn't many leaves and I worry for the health of the million caterpillars - and the plant.

The photo doesn't do credit to the monarch: she has a wingspan of 3 to 4 inches and glides elegantly around the garden as if she owned it.

Nearby there's a very posh organic, fairtrade, hand knitted from tofu, almost free from everything, NZ produce supermarket.  For about £8 you can buy a small jar of honey.   Across the road is a forbiddingly strange, matt black cuboid.  A mysterious narrow walkway leads around it.  All that's missing is "Abandon Hope All Who Enter Here".  Follow the path out of sight of the organic shop and enter a door.  Surprisingly you are in a supermarket selling ordinary stuff at about half the price.  Leave quietly, make sure nobody is watching.

Continue across some grass to a tree lined path to the bay.

We relax.