Bush Walking

Paths are well marked in NZ and, following on from the theme of the last post, walking is definitely 'experiencing' if only at a wimpy level. So we set off for a casual stroll, through Coromandel Town onto a path which would give a clear view of the bay.

The first thing you notice in a NZ wood is the noise.  There are tickings, whistles, rustles and what are almost certainly chompings.  Every tree is covered by things either eating it or eating the things that eat it.  It formed a constant backdrop until we emerged at the viewpoint.

Coromandel Bay

One thing we'd seen many of, and would see every fifty yards or so for the rest of the walk, were traps.  Maoris called NZ "The Island of Birds" - when they arrived there were no land mammals (except two sorts of bat).  Lots were later introduced, some generally seen as benign (eg the hedghog), other as pests: rabbits, rats, possums etc.  Stoats were introduced to reduce the rabbit population but succeeded in decimating bird species by eating their eggs.

The traps we saw were aimed at rats and stoats and were obviously part of a drive to get children involved in pest control.  The basic argument was rats and stoats eat kiwi eggs and kiwi are the endangered national bird.  Eight year olds painted "we love kiwis" or "kill all rats" on the traps and added bait - often eggs (chicken I assume), sometimes unidentifiable bits (meat?) and sometimes what looked like torn up plastic bags.  None that we saw contained either rats or stoats.

As we climbed the first hill we could also see evidence of NZ's gelogical instability. The photo shows a layer of sea shells about a foot below the land surface and about 100 feet above the current sea level.

Virtually none of the plant life was familiar except blackberries and thistles - both presumably invaders.  We continued to climb though denser woods, at some point transferring, unknowingly from a 'day' to  a 'bush' path.  Day paths are easy walking, vegetation gets trimmed back, there may be a gravel surface, they may even be wheel chair friendly.  A bush path is anything else.  

The path got steeper and muddier.  I think New Zealanders like corrugated iron because it reminds them of their country - up and down.  It wasn't completely wild. Some of the rises and falls had flights of steps.  The longest run I counted was over 100 steps.  At the bottom, turning a corner you saw another flight going up again, and then, and then, .....

Eventually they stopped, we were as high as we could be, clear of woodland for a few moments.  It started to rain, good steady NZ rain which continued for the next hour.  No more steps though, just slithering and sliding up and down muddy slopes, across a causeway in a mangrove swamp, up a mud slope with, fortunately, a rope to hang onto ... part of the way.

The last obstacle was a stream with stepping stones.  We nearly crossed successfully but were by then too tired and muddied to care.  We walked back to town dripping water and mud. A  Maori lady smiled and said "Hello" so we were recognisably human I guess.

We travel with only cabin luggage and now everything was wet and dirty.  It all went into the campsite's big washer and then drier while we sat in our van wrapped in the big faux fur bankets which came with it for just such occasions.

"People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading", said Logan Pearsall Smith.  At the moment I tend to agree, especially sitting here in my furry comfort blanket.

Being There

NZ is all about experiencing stuff.  Look in any brochure: you can white water raft across rapids, climb into the caldera of an active volcano, swim with dolphins, paddle a Maori canoe, attach rubber bands to your ankles and jump off bridges.  I'm told the current younger generation is all about doing things; the previous younger generation which wanted to own things have been retired.  Now it's, "Been there, done that, but don't want the teeshirt".

Eleanor and I are more of the looking at, talking about, thinking about but not needing to risk (or pretend to) life and limb. You can paddle a tiny boat into and underwater cavern to see glow worms, or like us you can stroll below an a bridge, move aside the ferns and also see glow worms.  How boring we're becoming.  So we decided to experience something. Which in our case usually starts with a meal.

Driving Creek Cafe would fit very easily into St Werburghs, vegan/veggie organic everything, with a quote by the Dalai Lama on one wall and a poem by Janet Frame on another.  It's facebook page shows it better than I can; it's Trip Advisor's top eating spot in Coromandel but that's a bit unfair - it just totally different.

Here's a house sparrow helping us out with the chocolate cake - no longer so common in the UK but everywhere in NZ.

Fifty yards down the road is Driving Creek Railway.  Forget train spotters muttering about gauges, 2-4-2 engines, left flanging widgets and all that stuff.  This is an art work that took a life time to create. Barry Brickell was a potter and potters need clay so he bought a small bush covered hill of the stuff (about 60 acres for NZ$ 8000).  To fire pots you need fuel and bush provides wood for that as well.  If, in addition, you want to conserve NZ's unique flora you can have the extra satisfaction of cutting down invaders (e.g American pine),  firing your pots with them and then replanting with indigenous trees.

To make this possible, Barry built a railway, laying all the track himself.  Here is a film of the very early days.  His and other pots and artworks decorate it.  The decorative bricks are made of local clay, fired in kilns made of bricks fired from the same clay and fueled by wood from the site.  I can't compete with a few photos but look on youtube to see what it's like now.

Barry died a couple of years ago and is buried beside the track.

And I made a small friend:

I'm not sure where it came from but I think it wanted protection  As soon as I saw it, so did others and they started snapping.  I encouraged it onto my hand so lots of pople got good pictures ... except me who couldn't take a photo because I was too close.  Afterwards I put it down safely away from all the feet!

Stars that Shine and Twinkle

You don't often see the Milky Way in England, too much light pollution, but in the NZ countryside the stars seem more and brighter.  Even on the edge of Russell you can see the Milky Way but I have poor visual/spacial awareness and am disconcerted by an upside down Orion.  Once you get him you have the Seven Sisters, Taurus, Sirius and Andromeda - but in NZ I don't.

Any way up, the Milky Way is a wonderful sight.  Hard to photograph so instead here's Henry Vaughan lines which almost do it justice:

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;

We leave Russell the next day driving towards Dargaville through long stretches of agricultural (cattle) countryside and single street towns with old fashioned looking signs over shops very different from those in chic Russell.  One town, whose name I forget, advertises itself as having Hundertwasser Public Toilets.  I'm afraid we didn't stop to try them.  What the locals probably don't notice is that their shop signage makes an equally colourful picture.

The weather (day time temperature is rarely below 16°)  and the space, contribute to the presence of many makeshift homesteads scattered beside county roads.   A rainbow painted bus with a couple of sagging awnings can be a home,  a couple of containers with windows cut out or just a few straggling tents.  There are some small communities comprising little more than a collapsing wooden shack leaning against an old coach, with canvas draped over its edges along with a few sheets of rusty corrugated iron.  This would all be unimaginable in England though I suspect only because of the scarcity of land (and the weather).

Further south the land begins to resemble, to some degree, how the Lake District would look if the hills were allowed to spread themselves more generously across the land.  A hundred mile square Lakeland perhaps. Though similarities mask differences: the trees growing on the slopes are usually impenetrable bush which would require machetes and chain saws to cut through. Also you don't get many tree ferns in Cumbria.

In the midst of this we suddenly find ourselves next to Hokianga Harbour with it's beautiful blue water and vast sand dunes. 

The small boy in the picture just happened to be there - I didn't bribe him, honest!  Perhaps he is the dolphin boy; the hamlet where we stopped had, at one time, a friendly dolphin which formed a particularly close relationship with a local child. It seemed so significant that a statue was erected to commemorate the pair. Later the statue was moved from the roadside to a local museum and a replacement statue put by the road. Oddly the original child was a girl, the replacement statue shows a boy.  Make of that what you will.

Here is the big tree I mentioned earlier.  Kauri wood is massively protected - to see the tree you must first wipe your feet and then spray them  with disinfectant.  The picture doesn't show the scale of Tane Mahuta, it is wider than a bus, over 50 metres high and perhaps 2000 years old.

And then we stop at a new site.  Walking down the road we meet a woman picking blackberries. (remember it's autumn here).   When it gets dark we also scour the hedgerows, not for blackberries though: beneath a bridge, under damp ferns we find our own small Milky Way -several dozen glow worms shining brightly.

Not quite Vaughan's style but I'll echo W H Davies (with a bit of a bodge)

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stop and stare?
...
No time to see, .....
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

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.