by Josie Dew
I was planning on riding the 120 km from Wairoa to Napier today but then I got distracted. I had just cycled past Kakariki Pit Road when I noticed a hand-written sign mentioning something about a cyclist’s hostel called The Bothy. Turning off the road down a long dirt road I found The Bothy looking very bothy-like – small, simple, stone and remote. It belonged to moustachioed Hamish and Elsa MacLean and sat squat and sturdy in the middle of a vast sheep farm in the hills.
Hamish told me that doing up the bothy as a place to stay had only been a recent idea. ‘I’ve hardly advertised as I want it to be a mostly word-of-mouth place,’ he said. ‘Which probably explains why I’ve only had about ten people to stay since I opened up last October! My plan is to target real travellers – mostly cyclists. I don’t want any noisy parties of people and I’m not interested in backpackers. They’ve all turned a bit soft, if you ask me. In my day backpackers hitch-hiked everywhere. Now all they seem to do is drive around the country in hired cars or cars they’ve bought. And they call themselves backpackers!’
Judging from the visitors’ book I was the third cyclist to stay this year after German Felix Ebner and Scotsman Gary Mochrie from Glasgow, who wrote, ‘Follow your nose in this country and you’ll stumble on something special and unique … a fantastic memory – CHEERS!’
The bothy was painted blue and cream on the inside and green and primrose yellow on the outside. It had a handful of bunks, a small kitchen with an old Airco pull-handle fridge (the sort of thing that would fetch a small fortune on the streets of Notting Hill), a shower with shiny corrugated iron for walls and a floor of handpicked stones from the nearby Mohaka River. There was even a selection of cassettes: Midnight Oil, Phil Collins (no thanks), Talking Heads, Split Enz and The Bucks ‘Dancing to the Ceili Band’. Although I made the most of the toilet, shower and kitchen, I slept in my tent behind the bothy – not because I didn’t fancy the bunks, I just preferred sleeping outside with the wind-rustling palm fronds and the mournful call of the morepork.
Hamish was originally from Scottish stock though he’d been in New Zealand most of his life. ‘I’ve had the farm for forty years,’ he told me as we sat in the courtyard outside his kitchen drinking tea as various biting insects landed on me for their blood-sucking feast, ‘though in between I’ve buggered off here and there. I lived on the South Island for a while building what we called ‘mud’ houses – earth houses. I’ve also spent a couple of years travelling overseas. I went to see what Scotland is like as my family come from the Highlands. But I didn’t find the people very friendly. They were fine to have a drink with in the pub, but apart from that they didn’t want to know. Edinburgh was better because of all the students. As for the English, I found them very standoffish – friendly enough when in the pub or out in the open but they don’t invite you to their homes. It’s not like here in New Zealand. I suppose because there are so few people out here in the country in so much space that when someone appears you welcome the company with open arms. My nearest neighbour lives just across the river as the crows flies, but he’s ten miles away by road.’
Hamish had a whole heap of farm dogs, one of which was called Rain. I spotted two cats. When the fluff-ball called Wookie tried to sneak into the house, Hamish shouted, ‘Get outta there you little bugger!’
I mentioned to Hamish the railway I’d been cycling beside all day, and all the trouble men had gone to in order to build bridges and viaducts and slice through mountains, yet I hadn’t seen one train on the tracks. Hamish told me that when the railways were nationalised there were about four trains a day on this line. ‘Though you did wonder if you were ever going to make your destination,’ he said. ‘Sometimes it could take all day just to travel fifty miles. Then it was privatised and the network was bought by an American outfit who wasted no time in closing any sidelines and stripping the passenger rail services back to nothing. Now I think the Americans have sold it to an Aussie who’s not interested in it at all. Not so long ago all the logs used to be carried out of the forests by rail. Now, as you’ve probably noticed, it all goes by road. It’s stupid really as we’ve got all the infrastructure there and yet it’s all going to waste.’
Lake Tutira, Hawke’s Bay, 7 February
I noticed a lot of free-ranging goats in the hills around the bothy. Hamish said they would have their use if they ate all the gorse. ‘I’ve got a big gorse problem on this farm,’ he said. ‘It’s a pain in the arse. I’m going to get a helicopter in to spray it all. My green friends say, “You can’t do that!” but I say, “You try and stop me!”’
There I was this morning thinking how I would easily cycle the 70 km to Napier today, if not quite a bit further. And yet I’m still not there. More distractions I’m afraid.
The ride was spectacularly hilly, plunging in and out of gorges and canyons. In some places the road was so narrow and rocky and winding that when a logging truck squeezed by, in order to prevent being swept under the multiple of wheels or pushed over the edge into the gorge, I just took a deep breath and hoped for the best. So far I’ve survived, but it’s a close shave.
Somewhere near Putorino (‘put a rhino where?’) – a veritable metropolis with a population of 300, a pub and a dairy – I found myself bowling along through the heady wafts of a eucalyptus grove, its trees standing to attention in their Gulf War camouflage. Like gum and eucalyptus groves everywhere the trees had left their shed bark, shed twigs and shed branches untidily over the ground. When I cycled over this heap of debris it made a lovely crackling noise and smelt like a nasal decongestant.
It was still early by the time I arrived at Tutira, but the lake here looked so appealing that I thought Napier could wait, so I put my tent up on a hill overlooking the water in the DoC site (water tap and long-drop toilets). I spent the rest of the day walking in the high hills around the lake. Lake Tutira is a wildlife reserve and ornithological hotspot for spotting black shags, welcome swallows, harrier hawks, black swans, whitefaced herons, New Zealand kingfishers, New Zealand scaups, New Zealand shoveler ducks and New Zealand dabchicks. Never mind dabchicks, you’ve got to be a dab hand to identify that lot, like Peter. Peter was camping in a nearby tent with his twelve-year-old son, Zac. ‘We’re having a “boy” weekend,’ said Peter. ‘Fishing and camping and kayaking while my wife and daughter are elsewhere.’
Peter, who had some sort of banking business, was originally from Boston. For a while he lived in London in Notting Hill Gate and loved every minute, but his wife (who I think was now his ex-wife) hated it. Peter now lived in Napier, as did his wife, who lived elsewhere in the city. I’m not quite sure who his children lived with. All he’d said about his daughter was that she was seven going on fifteen. I sat beside the lake with Peter and Zac for quite a long time this evening. Zac was busy catching cockabullies (tiddly fish) in a plastic bread bag that he waded into the weedy edge of the lake with to scoop through the murky water. Every so often he scurried back to us to hold up his bag (which was fast springing leaks) to show me his latest cockabully catch. Then he’d upturn the bag into the water and start again to catch some more.
Napier, Hawke’s Bay, 8 February
This morning I awoke to heavy rain clattering on my tent. A man sleeping with his daughter in a camper van on the other side of the trees told me that he moved to Hawke’s Bay from High Wycombe (where he was doing something with wood glue) fourteen years ago and that this is the wettest January/February he’d ever known. ‘I’ve never seen the hills looking so green,’ he said. ‘At this time of year they are usually a parched yellow.’
Peter and Zac gave up on the day early. After piling the kayaks on to the roof of their car they were ready to head back to Napier. Peter offered me a lift. ‘You don’t want to be out in weather like this,’ he said.
‘And there’re some stink horrible hills – like mountains – to get over before Napier,’ said Zac. ‘One of them’s called the Devil’s Elbow.’
Despite the rain bouncing off the road in front of my wheel
and water cascading down my neck, the Devil’s Elbow turned out to be a fun hairpin ride of relatively high altitude. My only complaint was the amount of stock trucks and trailers. They came swishing by in thick spray leaving me even wetter and dirtier, with the stench of animal fear on the wind.
Places came and went – Kawaka (‘forceful hitting of automobile’), Waipatiki (‘Well, why not pat her?’) and Onehunga (‘solitary starving’). The last twenty-odd kilometres to Napier involved labouring into a socking headwind, but at least it was as flat as a tray. Just over seventy years ago I would have been cycling through water along this stretch; it was known back then as the Ahuriri Lagoon. But then at 11.50 a.m. on 3 February came the earthquake of 1931, measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale – the biggest ever in New Zealand’s recorded history – which over the space of two-and-a-half minutes twisted and buckled the land with dramatic effect. The two major shocks (there were 525 aftershocks over the following two weeks) were so violent that they were felt throughout the country. Unfortunately for Napier it sat virtually at the epicentre. As a result the city lost 258 people to the eruptions of the earth but gained 5,000 acres of new land when the quake threw the seabed above sea level – uplifting the land level in some areas by over two metres. Trawlers were left high and dry in the lagoon and fish floundered on the mudflats. In some ways Napier did quite well out of this new shift of uplifted seabed as the airport now stands on part of this swathe of naturally reclaimed land.
Near the airport, on the opposite side of the road, I rode by what looked like a hugely industrial paper mill with high-pressure wisps of steam emanating from various pipes and funnels – a steel Krakatoa threatening to blow. Traffic came thick and fast as I approached the city, drenching me in oily road-soaked spray. Practically every other car was an upmarket SUV with kayaks on the roof and bikes on the rear. It was Sunday and people had obviously given up on the weather and their planned day of play and were heading back to the city to take cover. Some of these vehicles, especially the Toyota RAV 4s, had customised covers on their rear-door spare wheels. One was a cartoon of a cowboy wielding two pistols in hand, pointing the barrels of the guns into the face of the driver behind. The words on the cover said: ‘BACK OFF!’ Another wheel cover was a picture of a cartoon duckling and simply said: ‘BUGGER!’ One SUV had a bumper sticker that warned: ‘IF YOU GET ANY CLOSER I’LL FART’.
In urgent need of stocking up on food supplies, I stopped at the big Woolworths supermarket in the middle of town. Most supermarkets in New Zealand have rows of bulk bins – big dustbin-like tubs of cheaper-priced food complete with scoops so you can shovel how ever much you fancy of a substance such as cereal or dried fruit, nuts and oats, sweets and biscuits into a plastic bag. I was in the middle of busily excavating the contents of the porridge oat bulk bin when I was simultaneously spotted by Peter (minus Zac) and Brian and Karen, a couple I didn’t know but who apparently knew me after reading my books. It all suddenly got very complicated because Peter wanted me to come and stay with him, but then so did Brian and Karen, who upped the offer by saying they would like to take me out to lunch. After cycling over various elbows of devils in torrential rain and fighting into an exhausting headwind, it all seemed a bit unreal to be half-submerged in a bulk bin while being fired with kindly offers. In the end I turned everyone down and went to find somewhere to camp. Then, once the site had been located and tent assembled I rode off on some visiting rounds.
First stop was Peter, who lived in a huge house on the hill overlooking the sea and a jumble of rooftops. Zac was there and we all had tea and chatted a while before Peter had to take Zac off to chapel. Then I cycled off towards the airport, where I found Brian and Karen in a rented house that they called ‘the shed’. They both hailed from northern England. Brian liked bikes (he had about five of them, including a red Moulton) and music – he used to have an instrument shop on Merseyside for many years but never made any money. ‘Bike shops and music shops are much the same,’ said Brian. ‘They both attract good and interesting people, but as far as I can tell, there’s no money in either of them.’
Napier, Hawke’s Bay, 10 February
After the earthquake had shaken Napier to the ground, the city had to be rebuilt almost entirely. It was the 1930s when art deco was at its height of popularity and this is the style in which the architects chose to go a bit overboard in raising Napier from the ashes. As a result the city now possesses one of the most significant collections of these buildings in the world, making the town look sunny and bright – even in the rain. It was a pleasant surprise to find a New Zealand town so architecturally distinctive from all the other samey places I’d seen so far.
Just past the Grumpy Mole Saloon on Tennyson Street I came across a museum. Inside I wandered among the exhibitions and artefacts on Maori art and culture, colonial history and dinosaurs. I also came across a nineteenth-century shark-tooth sword that had come from the Kiribati Islands (those tiny atolls just below the Marshall Islands). The sword was made of coconut wood, fibre and hair and lined with sharks’ teeth, making the weapon razor sharp. These swords weren’t so much designed for killing as for shredding skin and weakening the enemy. I found this an unusual approach of warfare and imagined a Kiribati warrior running up to his enemy and saying, ‘Don’t worry, mate, I’m not here to kill you. I just want to have a go at shredding your skin.’
Not surprisingly the museum had quite a big section on the earthquake. I read a cutting from the Auckland Weekly News headlined:
FEARFUL DEATH – WOMAN IN CHURCH PINNED UNDER GIRDER. One of the most tragic incidents at Napier occurred at St John’s Anglican Cathedral. When the first shock occurred, communion was being conducted. Almost without warning the walls caved in and although most of the congregation were able to escape, several were trapped. An elderly lady, Mrs T. Barry, was pinned beneath a fallen girder, but was not killed. Rescuers immediately noticed her plight but all efforts to lift the huge girder were unavailing. Then the flames broke out and gradually drew nearer and nearer to the stricken woman. Hoses were used but in a few minutes the water supply failed. Finally it was realised that she had no hope of escape and in order to save her from a frightful death by burning a doctor administered a large dose of morphine. Death was inevitable, but at least it was without pain.
Waipukurau, Hawke’s Bay, 11 February
Those in officialdom don’t talk about Napier just as Napier, but as ‘the twin cities of Napier and Hastings’. Hastings lies a short way down the road from Napier and suffered as equally flattening devastation in the earthquake as Napier. From here I was planning to cycle to Cape Kidnappers, said to be the world’s only mainland gannet colony – up to 15,000 of these torpedo-diving birds occupy the sheer cliffs of this eroded promontory at this time of year.
All started off well enough. I rode as far as Clifton, where the road ran out and then, as it was low tide as planned, started out walking the ten kilometres along the beach. But then the rain came (the weather forecast for today had been bright and sunny but I’ve discovered New Zealand forecasts tend to be like British ones – the weather people tend to get the weather right, it’s just that they tend to put it on the wrong day; tomorrow will be glorious, I’m sure, as heavy rain is forecast). The further I plodded, the heavier the rain fell and the more the cliffs became obscure. So I turned round and traipsed back to my bike.
Death Highway 2 was horrible today – trucks, trucks and more trucking trucks. None of which was helped by the rain. There were lots of very stupid drivers, too, doing lots of very stupid things. And I had another carload of boy-racers spit at me. When I stopped to use some public conveniences in Waipawa (‘questionable cat’s feet’) I met a man cleaning out the toilets and he said, ‘There’re a lot of SOBs on the road.’ When I finally worked out that he meant sons of bitches, I said, ‘I quite agree!’ It’s always nice to have an agreeable moment in a toilet.
So what else has happened today? Well, not a lot really. I stopped at a very friendly bike sh
op in Havelock North where I bought an extremely stretchy striiitcheee. And I found some sturdy mole-grips lying in the road. They weighed about twice as much as my tent but I put them on board anyway because, you never know, they might be useful.
The sun came out for a very brief excursion when I was cycling through an expanse of orchards. If Napier was known for its vineyards, then Hastings was known for its fruit trees – much of the fruit appeared to be sold at fantastically low prices at the side of the road. One roadside stall I passed was selling 10 kg of peaches for $10. In other words about 35p a kilo, or about 17p a pound. This was so cheap how could I say no? I couldn’t, so I bought 10 kg, which amounted to about five times the weight of my tent. But unlike my tent, they were edible.
Somewhere near Pukehou (‘unwell half-built house’) I cycled through a white cloud of butterflies, many of whose flight paths had been sent into disarray by the speed of rushing traffic so that they ended up littering the road like confetti. The two fields bordering the road were full of cabbages and I think it’s fair to surmise these butterflies were cabbage whites.
Since I’ve been in New Zealand I seem to have passed a lot of fields or patches of wasteland piled high with those windowed boxy plastic lids that fit over the beds of pick-up trucks and turn them into campers. And judging from today’s observance of traffic, they seem to have all been on the road. Maybe there’s a pick-up camper-mobile convention taking place somewhere.
But far more exciting than a posse of pick-ups was seeing two freight trains on the track today. In fact, this sight was such a pleasant surprise that I had to stop to take in the scene for full appreciation value.