Return to Paradise

by James A. Michener

  Today when Freyberg stands stiffy at attention during public functions he is often attended by a stumpy, square-jawed chap who is generally conceded to have been the bravest soldier in World War II. Charles Upham was a schoolteacher, but his behavior under fire seems incredible. Once he rose from a raging attack of dysentery to lead his men against insuperable odds, “thus becoming the first skeleton ever to win the Victoria Cross.” In fact, he is the only fighting man ever to win two Victoria Crosses in a row, and he was even recommended for a third! But the generals said halt: “Three would be too many, even for a New Zealander.” When he returned home his nation offered him a gift of $30,000, but he refused saying, “Set up a scholarship for the children of the blokes who didn’t get back.” Now he tends cows on his small farm, a quiet, sawed-off chap who might serve as the model for the typical New Zealander we’ve been talking about.

  The nation lives by trading agricultural products to Great Britain. The first Merino sheep were landed by Captain Cook in 1773, and within a hundred years the wool industry supported the country. Smart scientists discovered that New Zealand’s grass could be the world’s best except for a lack of cobalt in the soil. Now the blue mineral is added each year, sometimes by airplane, and the pasturage is spectacularly rich.

  Great sheep ranches, called stations, run Merinos on the sides of mountain ranges. Lilybank is typical, a station of 70,000 acres and 6,000 sheep nestled between 10,000-foot peaks at the head of a superb lake. In the fall (April–June) the Merinos are mustered out of the mountains for eye clipping—so they can see—and belly stripping—so their shaggy wool won’t freeze into the snow. To do the rounding up teams of three comb the mountains. Top man walks along the slopes at the 7,000-foot line, tossing stones at the sheep to keep them moving downhill. He signals his two companions by setting fires on mountain peaks, and upon him depends the thoroughness of the muster.

  During winter (July–September) the men of Lilybank do the hard work of a sheep station. Sometimes on foot, often on snowshoes, they snow-rake or scuff tracks through blizzards so that sheep can follow them to caches of feed. Fortunately, the Merino has learned to live through snow that would kill other sheep and has the good habit, if totally stranded, of eating wool off the backs of other sheep to stay alive. Even so, during a winter of bad snow Lilybank may lose up to 25 per cent of its flock and in 1895 lost every one.

  In spring (October–December) Lilybank becomes a flowering wonderland, and since Merinos lamb best when left alone, the men rebuild fences, cull out bad stock and clean up the station.

  In Summer (January–March) the shearing takes place. Since the climate is rugged, all shearing is done by hand so as to leave about an inch of wool to warm the sheep. This is slow work, for a stripping machine could handle 160 sheep while hand clippers take care of 100. But since few Merinos are ever sold for meat, careful clipping is the most important part of the year’s work.

  The profit would be greater if it were not for the kea, a magnificent native parrot with a two-inch scimitar beak and a passion for sheep fat. In teams the keas hunt down ewes. A big bird will dart down, fix his talons in the wool and then slash his beak deep into the ewe’s back muscles. The terrified animal starts to dash about, whereupon the rest of the team screams with infuriating joy. Again and again the cruel rider shifts position and slashes at the back until the agonized sheep falls prostrate, when the keas strip off the kidney fat and leave the animal to die. It is understandable why station hands will track a kea crew for days.

  Today the dairy industry of North Island has passed wool in national importance, and many New Zealanders predict that soon huge refrigerator ships will run between Auckland and San Francisco carrying “our beautiful butter north.”

  But no matter how important dairying becomes, the sheep industry will always be remembered as the one which gave New Zealand its character. The lore of the top man, tramping the lonely peaks, is strong in New Zealand blood. For example, touching Lilybank on the east, high among mountain passes, is the most famous of stations, Mesopotamia. Here in 1860 appeared a scrawny Englishman with $12,000 of his father’s money. He had many wild and moving experiences, including a hundred-mile dash through a snowstorm to the land office where he defended his station against a fraudulent claim, after which “he astonished everyone by working off his excitement playing Bach’s Fugues for two hours.” He was obsessed by the mountains that fringed Mesopotamia, and from his speculations concerning what might lie beyond them grew Erewhon, by Samuel Butler. The young social dreamer was successful as a station owner and in three years doubled his investment, yet locally he is remembered for the fact that when he built his thatched hut he stupidly placed the thatches upside down so that all the rain ran inside, “an extraordinary thing for so clever a man to do.”

  New Zealand’s legendary hero also came from the sheep country and gave his name to vast reaches of magnificent upland moors. In 1845 Queen Victoria visited Aberdeen in Scotland, and the city fathers, wishing to provide an unforgettable feast, advertised for some prime cattle, whereupon an enterprising young Scot named John Mackenzie went from one farm to another and stole the prize steers, delivering them boldly for the Queen’s table. Then he hopped the next boat for Australia.

  He wound up in New Zealand and disappeared into the unexplored wastelands where sheep were beginning to graze. He became a poetic figure, moving among the great mountains with a mournful bullock and a mute dog. At rivers he would hold fast to the bullock’s tail and ferry across. At night he pitched his camp where no men had been before.

  Soon rich station owners began to miss their sheep, and it was deduced that John Mackenzie was driving them off in thousand-lot hauls. Rewards were offered, but sly John and his dog were too cautious. Then they were caught with more than a thousand marked sheep. The crafty Scot escaped but was captured at the coast as he tried to board a ship. He knocked his jailer out with a length of leg chain and was recaptured only after having a bullet pumped through him. Twice thereafter he broke loose and once he was dragged back to prison trussed up like a pig. Finally the Government decided it would be cheaper to pardon him than to have him wrecking the jail each month, so John Mackenzie was banished from New Zealand, but it is rumored that he sneaked back to his wild upland moors where his ghost may still be seen at times, tramping the barren Mackenzie Country with his silent dog and mournful bullock.

  The modern New Zealander is apt to be impatient with the sheep men. Now the emphasis is all upon manufacturing, with the nation trying vainly to make all sorts of items which common sense would tell her to import from either England or Australia. (Any importation from America is inconceivable at present.) The result is close to economic stagnation and has resulted in a marked decline from what was once “the highest standard of living yet attained by all the people of any nation.”

  The competition for labor is ridiculous. Employers must bribe help to work and are lucky if beginners stay long enough to learn a trade. Consider one advertisement of thirty-nine lines, begging girls to come to work. Twenty-five relate to the bonus system, the newly decorated tea room, provisions for time off, assurance of constant radio music during working hours plus the plea, “Bring your parents with you if you would like their opinion of the working conditions.” The ad ends: “What Girl Could Ask For More?”

  Apparently many do, because another shop offers, in addition to the above: free permanent waves, daily carfare, taxis home on late nights, tickets to the movies twice a week, and—illegally—an extra two weeks’ pay above vacation pay if the girls will consent to report to work on Monday after the annual holiday!

  A totally inadequate labor force plus a rigid 40-hour week means that New Zealand is underproduced in everything except mutton, butter and wool. For example, the country has immense deposits of coal, yet coal is often imported from Australia or even the United States. There is abundance of wool, but carpeting is simply not available. There are fine forests, but no lumber; great wealth, but not enough homes
.

  At Foxdown Farm near Timaru I watched Bob Ford work 1200 acres, run 3200 Romney sheep for mutton and 100 Aberdeen-Angus cattle for beef. He had no hired help. Could get none. Bob and his wife worked fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. They made a pile of money, but they were burning themselves out.

  The result is that New Zealand’s once-high standard of living has drooped pitifully. In ten homes where husbands earned what would be $8,000 a year in America, only one wife had both a refrigerator and a washing machine. In three homes there was neither, yet both husband and wife desperately wanted both. None available.

  Until recently New Zealanders refused to believe that their living standards had slipped. Then, in 1950, they played host to the Empire Games, which brought newsmen from all parts of the Commonwealth. The result was some of the most shocking criticism a country has ever had to absorb, and all of it delivered by members of the family. An Australian: “I get an over-all impression of gloom and depression. All public services are shockingly out of date.” A Londoner: “Even our English cities, with austerity and restrictions, are immeasurably more cheerful, better equipped and better serviced for out-of-town visitors.” Another Australian: “The transport system is painfully obsolete.” A Canadian: “New Zealand does not have a single public restaurant that would be classed as anything better than third-rate in Vancouver.” Another Canadian: “Service in stores and shops is poor. Goods are shoddy … If this is a vicious indictment of Auckland as a tourist town, it is vicious only because it is the only honest impression one can take away.” An American: “In five days I visited five cities and could not find a single hotel room. I slept in dingy rooms or in none at all. What was disturbing was that hotel clerks were outraged that any sensible human being should simply step up to a hotel desk and expect a room!”

  New Zealand was shocked by the reports of its friends. In the discussions that followed this seemed to be the common explanation: “Everyone’s got it too easy. We’ve all got minimum wages, social security. Nobody gives a hang.”

  Actually, many thoughtful New Zealanders have known for a long time that their socialistic paradise wouldn’t stand up under careful scrutiny. There is much that is truly wonderful in New Zealand, much that is third class. Only very had work will eliminate the latter.

  The question then arises: “Who will do the work?” New Zealand is dangerously underpopulated. (World average 41 per square mile. United States 48. Japan 532. New Zealand 16.) Steps are being taken to increase immigration, but the fact that New Zealand is exclusively British means that only British immigrants are welcome. In Dunedin a committee facing this problem seriously passed the three following resolutions: (1) Our population lack is critical. Something must be done. (2) But since we are of British stock, only British immigrants should be sought (3) And since Australia is so much worse off than we (less than three to the square mile) let’s wait until they get all they need!

  Tragically, of every hundred Englishmen who do arrive as immigrants, as many as forty go right back home. Their reasons: no houses to live in; the beer is too weak; we can’t stand those dreadful New Zealand week-ends.

  These latter are an astonishing phenomenon. Because of the forty-hour week, no stores of any kind—except fruit, candy, hot food—may open on Saturday. You cannot buy groceries, meat, milk, or bread. No haircuts, no doctor visits, no dentist, no shoes repaired. You can buy gasoline only in proved emergencies and then from only one station in each city. You also need an emergency to warrant sending a telegram after 12 noon. Telephone and train services are curtailed. Few restaurants are open. Life comes to a deathly standstill. The best description came from a workingman: “We have two Sundays a week, except that on Saturday we have horse racing.” The result of knocking two full days out of every week, plus working only about thirty-three hours out of the forty-hour week, is that economic production has inevitably deteriorated. It is quite possible that the social legislation of Seddon and Savage has reached the point of diminishing returns.

  Yet I myself cannot wholly subscribe to the harsh criticisms of the British visitors. Life in New Zealand is wonderfully pleasant. Each home has a garden of glorious flowers. Evergreen trees abound and make the landscape lovely. The sea is always available and no home can be far from mountains and clear lakes. New Zealand food is superb, even if the cooking is apt to be pretty dreadful. There are, however, five unique delicacies: soup made from sautéed toheroa clams, pronounced by the Prince of Wales to be “the finest soup ever made,” an understatement; grilled mutton bird, a baby sea fowl whose parents cram its rubber belly with so many fresh fish that it cannot move, so that when it is cooked it taste like chicken with a streak of trout; Colonial Goose, which is strong mutton sliced wafer thin and served with onion stuffing and an almost black gravy; the best little teacakes in the world; and whitebait. Gourmets can go into trances over a mess of fresh whitebait, pitched into a batter of whipped eggs with a touch of onion and fried into a thick, brown fritter.

  The relaxation of life in New Zealand is appealing. In addition to the two Sundays there are frequent stops for tea, a willingness to yarn at any time, plus an unbounded hospitality. New Zealand children are kept in school uniforms till they are seventeen or eighteen on the theory that if a boy is in knee pants till that age he won’t be in a hurry to mature into a criminal. The plan works, for the crime rate is low.

  The care of children has always been a special New Zealand concern. In the late nineteenth century, Truby King, a childless doctor at a mental institution, became fascinated by his hobby of feeding pigs, on whom he developed scientific nutrition tables. After adopting a waif he found that his pig principles worked equally well on humans, and within a few years he had pioneered child-care centers under the direction of the Plunket Society, so named after the wife of a Governor-General. Later, young girls were encouraged to study child care and today Karitanes—named after the hill where Truby King worked—study for sixteen months the problem of “Helping the mother and saving the child.” When a Karitane reports, and they are in great demand, she assumes sole charge of the child and soon she has it gurgling and fat. Karitanes are neither nurses nor servants. They usually marry young and make wonderful mothers. To them is given much credit for the fact that New Zealand babies are unusually healthy.

  Actually, all young things seem to grow fabulously in this country. Animals have been brought here from all over the world, and because New Zealand had no natural predatory creatures, introduced animals have multiplied enormously. American deer increased so freely that now the Government must hire cullers who roam the valleys shooting does, whose carcasses are not even gathered. The rabbit is a national pest, having made deserts out of much of the South Island. Goats, pigs, opossums, sparrows, hawks and even wallabies (midget kangaroos) have all found New Zealand a bonanza and are now pests. Even plants run wild in this fertile land. Gorse was brought in to decorate gardens, and in a few years the magnificent yellow shrub was a national menace, engulfing whole fields like a sweeping golden flame.

  But there was one introduction which has made New Zealand famous wherever sportsmen gather. The rainbow trout was brought down from Canada and the United States. Instantly it took to the cold, dashing rivers where no predators fed upon its young. Soon the famous game fish grew to gigantic size and New Zealand became known, quite properly, as the Sportsman’s Paradise. To see this wonderland at its best you must stop a while at Alan Pye’s Huka Lodge, at the northern end of Lake Taupo.

  Here, beside the swift-flowing Waikato River near a gorge where waters roar between rocks, Pye has built a fisherman’s retreat that can have few equals anywhere. In a homey lodge he serves remarkable meals: fresh chicken, trout for breakfast, all the eggs you can eat, steak, always two immense desserts with four pitchers of cream that has to be ladled out. Nearby a thermal spring pumps mildly sulphurous hot water into a deep pool walled off by evergreens so that fishermen and their wives can go bathing nude.

  But the food and hot bat
hs are not the attraction at Huka Lodge, for in the river and in Lake Taupo abound monstrous rainbows. The average fish caught at Pye’s weighs about seven pounds, and each will feed four people. Above the fire are two mounted beauties that tipped the scales at more than 12, but Pye himself, a red-faced weather-bitten Irishman—all famous New Zealanders were born somewhere else—says, “Those fish are not to be regarded. The champion picked out of this river was 26 pounds. And mark you, the flesh was firm. They aren’t lazy, the New Zealand trout.”

  For years Pye has conducted a running feud with the Tongariro crowd upstream. They fish the legendary Tongariro River, termed “the most perfect reach of trout water ever known,” where each pool bears a famous name: Vera’s, Swirl, Nursing, Stump, Log and Mud. Pye used to insist that Tongariro trout were overrated, but in recent years he has said little, for evil luck has fallen upon the Tongariro pools.

  To the west three great volcanoes have been throwing torrents of volcanic ash into the air, and prevailing winds have carried it across the river. Its effect upon the superlative Tongariro trout is unpredictable; for the present the fish have grown sluggish. The water near Pye’s lodge is so far unaffected, but he does not gloat. For if the volcanoes continue to erupt, the ash could well destroy all the trout.

  In the meantime, Pye provides near perfect fishing for $5 a day, all expenses covered. He also has a remarkable cottage which costs more and which provides the finest accommodation in New Zealand. He will not tell you how he happens to have such quarters, for he has not yet got over the shock of acquiring them.

  It happened this way. About fifteen years ago a handsome United States naval officer became fascinated by the fishing at Pye’s and prevailed upon Alan to lease a corner of land by the river. Here a super fishing lodge was built and decorated at princely expense. Year after year the young officer, now a full commander, came vacationing to try the trout. When war broke out he served with distinction as liaison with New Zealand forces.