by Josie Dew
Hahei, 8 January
Tonight I’m camping at Hahei (‘outward curve of Hei’s nose’ – another ancient explorer man, I’m told), said to have the best beach on the Coromandel. It certainly looks very lovely: a long expanse of white sand tinged pink by shells, shaded by sloping pohutakawa trees in blazing red bloom and protected by a higgled bastion of offshore islands. I’ve found a nook for my tent among a bit of bush on a hill overlooking this beach and as I lie here now there is no sound but the wind and trees and the omnipresent sea.
On the talkback radio station Newstalk ZB (not to be recommended) there has been nothing but talk of Steve Irwin, an Aussie with his own television show and zoo in Australia. It seems that overnight his fame has turned to international notoriety, having sparked controversy after he used his month-old son Bob in a crocodile-feeding show at his zoo. From what I gather, he didn’t actually feed his son to the crocodile. Though apparently it was a close thing. Steve entered the ‘croc pen’ with Bob in one arm and a chicken in the other. Steve then dropped the chicken into the jaws of a four-metre crocodile. Everyone’s now talking about this act as an ‘open-and-shut case of negligence’. Child welfare groups and members of the public are up in arms and have criticised Steve for recklessly endangering his son. Some callers on Talk Radio are likening him to Michael Jackson, who held his baby over the edge of a balcony. the New Zealand Herald quoted an editorial from The Australian evidently none too impressed with Steve’s behaviour. ‘The croc tamer’s bravado at his Queensland zoo last week for the entertainment of visitors is looking all the more pathetic after his lame defence of his one-month-old son’s participation in the act. Talking of animals that can lunge in a split second and that have reportedly chased people up trees, Irwin said he had “a safe working distance with that crocodile” and “it’s all about perceived danger”. He also left himself open to a charge of over-confidence by declaring it would have taken a meteorite to upset his balance. Then, referring to the baby, he said he wanted his children to be “croc savvy”.’
On another talkback station, Radio Pacific (also awful), there’s more talk of Steve and his actions. They are also debating something else: immigration. Every caller launches into a diatribe of racist rants. One man finished off his call by saying, ‘If we’ve been good enough to let these ragheads into our country and they don’t want to become Kiwis, then they should do the proverbial and bugger off!’
Opoutere, Coromandel Peninsula, 9 January
Sailors Grave Road came and went. As did Pumpkin Hill Road, Mount Paku (an ancient pa site, or fortified Maori village – this one complete with the legend that you won’t return from the top for seven years, though it took me about fifteen minutes) and the Twin Kauris. In the overdeveloped beachside town of Tairua, I stopped at the quiet tourist office. Two women behind the desk asked where I was from and what did I think of New Zealand. I said hilly and full of bad drivers (I’d just had several near misses). ‘Unfortunately we have a reputation for being bad drivers,’ said one of the women apologetically. Her friend told me about an advert that was on TV a few years back showing a family man, all loving sweetness, kissing his family goodbye as he set out for work. Once behind the wheel though, his whole persona changed. He sprouted horns and became a snarling monster, speeding, bad overtaking, shouting and swearing, shaking his fist. When he arrived at the office he returned to being a good-mannered and considerate man. But on the drive home the devil was reincarnated, cutting people up, steam pouring out of his ears. The minute he stepped back through his front door, angelic child in his arms, he was all sweetness again.
Tairua is a twin-town with Pauanui, Tairua Harbour separating the two. Pauanui is even more of a luxury retirement and holiday resort than Tairua, where only the rich reside. I read in the local paper that at this time of year the population of Pauanui went from around 750 to 18,000 people, which only translated into a lot more angry drivers on the road with horns. I took off over Opoutere Saddle (New Zealand tends to call its hills saddles) and then, not long after I passed ‘K9 ’N’ Katz – Homestay for Pets’, I turned off to secluded Opoutere, riding down a road that hugged the shoreline of Wharekawa Harbour – flowering pohutukawa trees on one side, towering pine-covered hills on the other.
There was not a lot to Opoutere – no shops, no petrol stations, no upmarket suburban monstrosities. Just a pine-shaded campground, a hostel, a handful of houses clinging to the hillside and a five-kilometre expanse of wild white beach. I was aiming to camp somewhere down on this beach, known as Ocean Beach, but just past a driveway with a sign pointing upwards into the sky with the words STUDIO AT TOPADAHILL, I spotted a garden that looked like a perfect place for a tent. A sun-faded blue picnic table sat at the bottom of the garden shaded by an orchard of apple and orange trees. A few feet away across the quiet road lapped the gentle slap of waves of the bird-crowded harbour. An indiscreet sign advertised that the house at the top of this garden (a garden decorated with interesting lumps of metal sculptures) offered ‘Backpacker Accommodation’. A long-haired man in a cowboy hat answered the door. This was Rusty, ex-motorcyclist (‘I used to ride a Triumph, but sold it in a fit of madness’), carpenter, sculptor and blues-band fan. He told me no one had ever asked to camp in his garden before, but he didn’t see why I shouldn’t now that I had. I’ve just had a shower up in Rusty’s bathroom and am now lying flat out in the orchard listening to the swash of water as it hits the shore.
Opoutere, Coromandel Peninsula, 10 January
Among the many places that Rusty had travelled he said this was the best place he’d ever found to live. He’d been there twenty years now. Bought this place for next to nothing. ‘It was a wreck of a hovel but I built it up over the years. It’s now worth quarter of a million bucks. That’s because it’s all the rage to live in Opoutere these days. Property prices have gone through the roof. It’s bloody ridiculous. But I can’t say I’m complaining!’
Before I left, Rusty handed me a postcard with a picture of a butterfly sunbathing on a sunflower. The printed words on the back said:
As we seek the pathway of sunflowers in our life,
The seeds of happiness and contentment grow stronger.
All a bit deep for me. Easier to grasp were the address and phone number Rusty had written on the back. He told me to contact him if I ever needed any help.
My plan was to get a good few miles under my belt today. Good intentions are one thing, but actions are quite another. My actions this morning took me in quite the opposite direction from the one I intended. This was because I fancied an early morning saunter alongside the roaring surf and seething wash of Ocean Beach. But before I made it to the beach I passed a track leading up to the hostel – a big white building overlooking the harbour and virtually surrounded by encroaching bush. Ten minutes after packing up my tent at Rusty’s, I was putting it back up – this time beneath a peach tree in the orchard behind the house.
The hostel was run by an amicable couple, German-born Rosemary (an ex-teacher) and John, an Englishman and ex-engineer from Stroud, Gloucestershire. When they first got married they lived in London and then Canada. New Zealand has now been home for forty years. ‘When we moved here,’ Rosemary said, ‘our standard of living went up by three-fold.’
I liked Rosemary. She had quite a silly sense of humour. When I was checking in and having a chat with her, a man (a bit of an oddball who had obviously rubbed Rosemary up the wrong way) came in to check out. When he’d left, Rosemary turned and said to me, ‘We’re always happy to see people. Some when they arrive. Some when they leave!’
The hostel offered free use of kayaks so I spent half the day paddling among the black swans and multiple bird life of Wharekawa Harbour. The water was clear and sparkling and shallow in places. At one point as I was bobbing about in the water peering over the side, I saw the flattened diamond-shaped body of a stingray sweeping itself off the sandy bottom with a few swishes of its whiplash tail. At low tide a wide patch of the harbour turne
d to mudflats, drawing a smattering of locals and tourists into its glutinous midst with buckets and spades to dig for the harbour’s supplies of plentiful shellfish, including something called pipi.
At the harbour entrance end of Ocean Beach and tucked among the dunes was a bird sanctuary and breeding ground for the shore plover, pied stilt, bar-tailed godwit, variable oystercatcher and endangered New Zealand dotterel. There was a roped off area with a handwritten sign saying: ‘NESTING DOTTERELS – please respect the fence and give the little dudes a chance!’
Birds as dudes. That’s not a name you would get the National Trust calling them. Walking the length of sparsely populated Ocean Beach, I spotted more rare species – this time not so much dudes as nudes. Seemed the top end of the beach was an unofficial naturalist area. Mostly of men. I tried to avert my gaze as one man strode brazenly along the shore towards me, coconuts swinging gently in the wind. Further along I saw a man with nothing on lolling beneath a sun umbrella he had stabbed into the sand. The wind was no match for this umbrella and one gust later the umbrella had taken off, somersaulting along the beach. The man took off after it, the more dangling part of his anatomy slapping in a pulverising fashion from side to side. He then tripped up on a small piece of driftwood and, legs splayed, went crashing to the sand, whereupon I had the misfortune to observe an area of his body where the sun don’t shine.
Back at the hostel I met a Japanese man (thankfully clothed) preparing a bowl of noodles in the kitchen. He told me he was from Osaka (‘Ah so, desu-ka?’) and worked as a fitter on the Toyota car plant production line. At least he did until he gave up his job to travel around New Zealand for a few months by bus, though he told me he could get a job back at the plant anytime. When he asked if I had ever been to Japan and I replied that I had spent eight months cycling around the country by jitensha, he became very animated and wouldn’t leave me alone. He even tried to crawl into my tent, which I thought was a bit forward for a Japanese man.
The only other tent at the hostel belonged to a middle-aged German man called Klaus. He was on a bike kitted out with front and rear Ortlieb panniers. ‘I carry precisely zee twenty-five kilo of gear,’ he told me proudly. Klaus said he had flown to New Zealand from Berlin, arriving in Auckland on the 23rd of November. He was due to fly home next Thursday. Like my Toyota car plant man, Klaus became quite excitable at the prospect of me travelling alone by bike. So we did a bit of comparing of notes. Like me, he was not too impressed with the drivers down here. ‘I have found zee traffic makes for very stressful cycling indeed.’
We both agreed that uphill left-hand bends were not good news in New Zealand. Most drivers raced up the hills with no thought that there could be something up ahead hidden around the corner travelling much slower. ‘Usually I like to lose myself in zinking when I cycle,’ said Klaus, ‘but when I hear zee big truck coming from behind I have to hold zee handlebar tight like ziss,’ (quick demonstration) ‘and also I am taking my feet out of zee clip pedals. Ziss does not make for a relaxing cycle.’
Klaus was a software man. He told me I needed to do away with my diary notebook and to get a mini computer like his (another demonstration) into which he’d logged his whole itinerary before he left for New Zealand. And he’d kept to it rigidly – day by day, kilometre by kilometre. He left nothing to chance, computing in the nearest tourist offices, accommodation info, even bus timetables which he’d downloaded from some site while sitting at home in Berlin.
‘What happens if you like the look of another road rather than the one you are on?’ I asked. ‘Are you allowed to divert course?’
‘Ziss is impossible,’ said Klaus, looking at me as if I must be mad. ‘I have no need to do so.’
During the night two hissing possums fought over peaches in the tree above my head. One fell out of the tree and landed on my tent. Gave me quite a shock it did. I thought it might be Klaus trying to get into my haus.
Waihi Beach, The Coromandel, 14 January
Opoutere was one of those places in which you thought you were only going to stay a night and ended up spending the better chunk of a week. At least it was if you were not attached to a Klaus-style schedule-strict computer that dictated your every move.
Next stop was Whangamata, though I didn’t stop long. It was another one of those holidaying places whose population exploded at this time of year. Rusty said that unless I enjoyed being submerged by crowds of surfers and boogie boarders and holiday homeowners and boy-racing hoons, then don’t linger there as the population of 4,000 shoots up as much as tenfold in January. It also seemed to be full of rented campervans (Maui and Britz and Kea Campers and Breakaway Libertys). There were lots of private licence plates doing the rounds too: LIVIN IT; MAJIC 1; BOLLIK; B NICE – this last one on a battered old hippy bus.
I bought a paper and read how four women had suffered severe burns after using a public toilet in Christchurch. An acid-like substance had been put on the seats of the toilets. Police were now appealing for help from anyone who might have seen anything suspicious. In the New Zealand Herald, Sergeant Lewis Corbett said, ‘This is a very serious incident. These young women may need plastic surgery.’
Think I’ll stick to the fine art of darting behind a bush.
The weather has been all at sixes and sevens with itself today – clammy and humid with the sky a drag of dirty grey rag. Every so often, and when I least expected it, I got pelted by a torrential downpour. Then, just outside the old gold-mining town of Waihi, I was overtaken by four hoons in a Subaru Legacy with a noisy exhaust. As they roared past in a burst of erratic acceleration, one boy, with a face like a broken crag, spat at me and another threw a beer bottle. Both missed. The spit flew over my head while the bottle smashed against a roadside rock like shrapnel.
3
Omokoroa, Bay of Plenty, 15 January
Today I passed through the open-air art gallery town of Katikati (Maori for ‘nibbling’). In 1991 Katikati had something of an inferiority complex moment. It fretted over its small size and non-descript status. It thought that, because it was boring, it was being overlooked by tourists. So in order to become a little more eye-catching, it decided to rebrand itself as a mural town. Katikati is a typical New Zealand town, architecturally uninspiring, the buildings not built out of the land as in Europe or India or Africa, but imposed upon it. The favoured building materials seem to be laminates, concrete, fibre cement, steel frame roofs and plastic-coated tin shaped to look like timber. Now in Katikati every wall of every uninspiring building has been smothered in a mural, and the town is also promoting itself as The Gateway to the Bay of Plenty.
Despite having left the Coromandel Peninsula behind, I didn’t get very far today. After packing up my tent on Waihi Beach I joined State Highway 2, the only road down the coast. This road was the stuff of horrors, heaving with heavy traffic. It carved its obnoxious path through acres of orchards – lemons, oranges, kiwis, nashi pears, avocados. When I stopped at a roadside stall to buy five avocados for $2 the stallholder told me that this stretch of road between Waihi and Tauranga was one of the worst in the country for car crashes and deaths. I wasn’t surprised. Dotted at regular intervals along the roadside were small forests of white wooden crosses – memorials to all those car-crash victims. One corner had five crosses planted on it. All the victims were teenagers. And all of them male.
Billboards were strung out along the road warning drivers of the hazards of speeding and drink driving. One said succinctly, ‘DRINK DrIvE’, while one from the emergency services pleaded: ‘GIVE US A BREAK!’ Another was a cartoon of a bird saying: ‘PSSSSSSST – HAVE YOU HEARD? – DON’T DRINK AND DRIVE!’ Then there was the one that asked, ‘YOU’RE A LONG TIME DEAD SO WHAT’S THE HURRY?’
I read in today’s paper about the latest Land Transport Safety Authority (LTSA) figures, showing that most fatal or serious injury alcohol-related crashes in New Zealand happened in rural areas – 270 per year compared with 170 per year in the cities – despite the fact that less
than a third of the population lives in the country. Most of those killed in country areas were locals, and 82 per cent of rural drunk drivers who crashed were male.
After being passed too close by one driver too many today, I gave up on cycling much earlier than normal and veered off Death Highway 2 down a dead-end road. I’m now camping in a field lined with big blue balls of hydrangea bushes bordering an orange orchard. A hippy bus is parked at one end. It belongs to Sally Hutchings, a woman in her late sixties or early seventies. And slippers. Sally’s bus was once a school bus in Auckland. But that was about forty years ago. When the school bus was replaced with a more modern version, Sally and her husband Steve bought the old bus and gave it a complete overhaul and refitting. They put in beds, bookshelves, tables, couches, gas cooker, fridge and a pot-belly stove. Then they spent years travelling around the country. As well as being keen bussers they were also keen bikers. As were their two sons. All went well until two years ago when within the space of a few months Sally lost her cat, husband and son. John, her son, was killed on his motorbike. ‘He was a speed merchant,’ said Sally. ‘He just loved the feel of going fast.’ Sally was working on a strawberry farm at the time. ‘I was in the nursery when I saw John fly by on his bike. He gave me a huge wave like he always did. That was the last I ever saw of him. He just lost control. The odd thing was that he didn’t have a cut on him. And his helmet was untouched. They think he simply died of massive shock. His pillion rider walked away fine. The pain of that year though was unbearable. Still is.’