by Josie Dew
Tonight I’m camping between a railway and a main road. There’s also a dirt road running alongside and it’s on this road that the town hoons are racing and spinning their cars. I’ve erected my flimsy abode among a stack of permanent residents in beaten-up caravans. This site is situated just down from a farming supply store with its fetching display of reapers, threshers, cultivators and harrows. The town’s called Waipukurau. In Maori the ubiquitous wai means water or stream, whereas pukurau means a fungus soaked in water before eating. So Waipukurau means something like ‘river of edible fungus’. All this gets a bit complicated so the locals simply shorten Waipukurau to Waipuk, which in a way only complicates itself even further because there is a Waipuku up near Mount Taranaki as well as a Waipu just north of Mangawhai Heads. Both Waipuk, which was formerly a Maori pa site, and its near neighbour Waipawa were founded as farming settlements and the two have been rivals ever since.
6
Dannevirke, 12 February
Just in case you’re wondering where I am now, I’m in the region of the lower North Island known collectively as Rangitikei–Manawatu–Horowhenua–Tararua. Otherwise called a mouthful. But this mouthful pales into insignificance compared with the name of a nearby small hill known as Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikmaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu. This hill, which is just down the road from Porangahau, rates as the world’s longest place name and apparently translates as ‘the brow of the hill where Tamatea of the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as “Landeater” and who travelled over the land, played his flute to his loved one’.
And so from a Maori-themed land to a Nordic one. In the early nineteenth century the plains and hill country east of the Ruahine and Tararua Ranges (the big long line of lumpy mountains off to my right as I cycle south) were covered with forest and thick primeval bush so dense that the back-breaking work of clearing the land with axes and fire and the consequent struggle to farm the area discouraged all of the settlers who arrived in the 1870s, apart from the hardy Norwegians, Danes and Swedes. They established such towns as Norsewood, which is just up the road from where I am now in Dannevirke (‘Dane’s Work’). I thought Dannevirke might look like a smorgasbord of Scandinavia, the local people wandering the streets with platinum hair and Viking cheekbones. Instead the town looks just like any other rural New Zealand town and the locals, rather than looking like Sven or Aha, are indistinguishable from any other Kiwis.
Last night it rained so hard with the wind blowing such a flapping gale that I had to get up and get soaked to find a rock to whack my tent pegs in as far as they would go. This morning, on the radio’s ‘local news brought to you by Credit Union Bay Wide’, I heard reports of severe flooding around Masterton and Wellington causing extensive road closures. Oh dear, because that’s just where I’m going.
Today I had one of those rare opportunities when I could divert off course from Death Highway 2. That’s because round here there’s a choice of roads to take between Waipukurau and Dannevirke. I was going to go the long way round via that very lengthy-named place of large slippery knees, but when a local sheep farmer told me that the dirt road down that way was completely flooded, I took a shorter alternative. And very unexpectedly lovely it was too. Soon out of Waipukurau I turned off to Hatuma (‘that you, mum?’) and wove my way among a medley of lanes empty of traffic apart from the odd farmer’s pick-up and steel Fonterra milk tanker with their ‘I TURN OFTEN!’ warning signs across their tailgate. This is sheep and cattle country. The rumpled blanket of green pastures and hills are full of sheep stations. Not just a fluffy handful of sheep like back home, but vast cascades of undulating wool. The sheep pens apparently have a capacity of 50,000.
Some of the roads around Hatuma were very English-like, lined with tunnels of oaks and grand old houses in big grounds set back from the road with names like Holyrood and Arundel. Then it all got a bit wilder, with the road plummeting down into mini chasms carved through with a river followed by a slow clamber back out of the valley. A rarely sighted freight train passed me today, chugging along in slow motion with over thirty wagons attached. The only fast-moving thing around here was the red New Zealand post car (private plate: YA MAIL) charging around from pillar to post, pausing only for an arm to pass out of the car window and shove a handful of mail into American-style mailboxes of tubular metal, some customised into shapes of sheep. A small armed flagpole (occasionally made into a sheep’s tail) indicated to the farmhouse situated up the track and well out of sight that the mail had arrived.
Something else moving fast in this wind was the ubiquitous clumps of pampas-like toetoe grass, their feathery fronds waving about in the maniacal breeze like a frenzy of raised arms at a rock concert.
Eketahuna, Taraua, 13 February
Shivering in my tent last night (it was uncannily cold) waiting for the weather forecast to predict a day of sunshine (rain), Radio Pacific kept getting interrupted for the live racing report so all I learnt was how She’s a Trouble Maker was on the brink of overtaking Pam’s Passion on the finishing strip. Quite riveting, I can tell you. That’s why I fell asleep never learning what the elements were going to throw at me today.
More white crosses of car crash victims continued to line sporadic bursts of Death Highway 2 like wild flowers did on other sections. Thankfully I only had a short truck-sucking canter along this traffic-hammering strip today before I veered off on to a confusion of quiet country roads through virtually non-existent settlements before being jettisoned back into a scene of busyness at Pahiatua, whose main street is like some towns in America – about a mile wide. If you want to cross over it’s a good idea to allow yourself a good twenty minutes to reach the other side. But unlike America, which just likes to build things big for the sake of it, the size of this street has a reason for its being. When Pahiatua was founded in 1881 in the heart of Seventy Mile Bush, the extensive centre strip of this street (now made into gardens and rest areas) was originally planned to carry the railway line that eventually took the route on the outskirts of town.
*
Outside New World supermarket a man came up to me and said, ‘You German?’ When I put him straight he said, ‘It’s just that practically everyone you see touring on a bike around here is German!’
Studying my bike in detail he then said, ‘That’s a good sit-up you’ve got.’
For a moment I thought he thought I was riding a sit-up-and-beg when really I had a touring steed complete with drop handlebars. And then I realised my stumbling block. He had pronounced a very Kiwi sit-up for set-up.
‘In 1999 I cycled for sex months around Europe,’ he told me. ‘Didn’t go to the UK, mate. Too bloody igg-spin-sieve!’ The man no longer cycled because of a dicky hip. Before I disappeared into New World he said, ‘Mind how you go. Motorists hate cyclists here!’
Half an hour later I was perusing the leaflets in the tourist office when a woman came in wielding a $10 note in her hand. She looked at me and said, ‘Is this yours?’
I said, ‘No.’
She said, ‘Is that your bike outside?’
I said, ‘Yes.’
She said, ‘Well, I found it by your bike so you might as well have it. You look like you need it more than me!’ And with that she thrust it into my hand with a smile.
From Pahaitua I was planning on diverting course across the mountains to visit the mother of a friend of my sister-in-law in Palmerston North. But due to all the rain and floods the road through the Manawatu Gorge had been closed and the locals informed me there had been equally severe landslides on the quieter route to Aokautere. Instead I continued south and so here I am now in the heady delights of Eketahuna (‘elephant crossed with a hyena in possession of an estimated time of arrival’), camping in the poky municipal campground. It’s dark and dingy and deserted. One of the reasons for this is that no one wants to come here. Most people see Eketahuna (pop. 579) as being a place on the way to somewhere else. In fact, in New Zealand Eketahuna
is used as an aphorism for a boring nothing-ever-happens back-of-beyond. The campsite here in Eketahuna (which I’ve just discovered means appropriately ‘to run aground on a sandbank’) isn’t improved by being in this dark and gaunt tree-shrouded dip. It’s all a bit depressing. There’s a comment in the damp visitor’s book in the shabby kitchen that says that this site would be a ‘good place for a revolution’. I’m not quite sure about that – the surrounding land is mostly mud and swamp, because last night the nearby river burst its banks and flooded most of the site. You can see how high the water rose by the tide level on the trees and where the water stirred itself into the soil and formed dark oozing mud. There’s also a detritus of flattened rushes and driftwood and debris.
After a prolonged search, I finally managed to find the owner, a bit of an odd man, who lives in a house some distance away. He doesn’t seem to take any pride in the place but he has let me sleep in one of the small cabins situated just slightly up from the flood mark. The cabin is the size of a small shed with two bunks and a table and chair. But it is cold and dank so I’m sleeping in my tent in the cabin instead. More cosy that way.
I haven’t got a good feeling in this place. There’s a track running right through the site which is open to the public for access to the river. It’s just the sort of place in which you can imagine something horrible happening at night. If I had the energy I would move on. Instead I’m battening down the hatches and keeping an ear out for any rain and sounds of rising water. The owner says there’s no rain forecast for tonight, but I’m not sure I believe him.
Masterton, Wairarapa, 14 February
What a night! All went fairly well, albeit sleeplessly, until 12.45 a.m. when a carload of hoons arrived on the scene. They disappeared down the track for a while before returning to do donuts in the mud, revving their engine and blasting the horn with their lights on full beam. They finally got bored of this and took off at speed up the hill.
Then the rain started.
It hammered on the roof as fast and resonating as an army of Sado drummers. As it was completely pitch black outside I had to keep monitoring water levels with my head torch. When dawn finally arrived I ran down the mud track in the thundering rain to find the brown river looking as if it was about to burst its banks any moment. It was high and wide and moving heavily towards the sea. It was not the sort of river into which you would wish to fall. It would pull you under in seconds.
It was a huge relief to be up and away from Eketahuna this morning, even if the weather was being more than a touch assertive. Tattered clouds scudded across the sky as if in a speeded up film. The wind screamed up the street. Once out in the open all hope of cycling was out of the question. It was wind you could lean on. The rain fell so heavy it was like cycling through a carwash. The swash and suck of the big trucks on Death Highway 2 only added to the hazardous conditions. So I pushed my bike, though even then I was blown clean off my feet. At the earliest opportunity I turned off on to a quiet side road that twisted and ducked its way alongside swollen rivers and flooded farmland. Huge herds of cattle and sheep had clambered up the hillsides to keep clear of the river’s menacing water, frothing and foaming below.
Entering Mauriceville I noticed a sign that said: ‘Historical Site 400 m’. When I arrived at the site wondering whether perhaps the Vikings had strayed this far or whether Hannibal had marched his army of men and elephants over a Southern Alp as well as a northern one, all I found was a run-of-the-mill locked-up village hall with a faceplate indicating it had been built in 1897. This sort of thing happens quite a lot in New Zealand. Another time I’d passed a similar ‘historical site’ sign only to discover it was indicating a nondescript blip in a lay-by marked by a boulder with a plaque to commemorate a man who had planted a handful of trees near the lay-by at the end of the nineteenth century. Then there’s the plaque I noticed in Devonport. It said: ‘ON THIS SITE IN 1897 NOTHING HAPPENED’. At least Kiwis have a hearty sense of humour about their fledgling land – the last country in the world to be settled.
By the time I arrived in Masterton I was completely soaked. These last few weeks I seem to be continually trying to dry out, if I’m not being busy getting wet. I’m now camping in the rain at the motorcamp down by the river. Despite being the ‘height of summer’, there’s only one other tent here, a tiny-toy blue wedge of triangle that is dwarfed by the size of the tent’s owner’s 4WD parked alongside. I don’t know why they simply don’t sleep in the vehicle – it looks like they would have a lot more room to manoeuvre. And be drier to boot. The 4WD couple are looking miserable with all this rain. They are so averse to getting wet that even though it would be far quicker to run, they clamber into their Landcruiser to drive all of twenty yards to the toilet block. And when they’re in the toilet block they leave the engine running. I ask you! Some people, eh?
Since I wrote the above I have had to bail out and move tent and belongings to another patch of ground that is marginally less sodden. Despite this sludge of grass being the highest point of the campsite, I’m not sure how long I will last here. The ground all around is beginning to drown. Over the last few hours the rain has been coming down perpendicularly, with a sort of measured intensity as if it were driving nails into a coffin lid.
Masterton, Wairarapa, 17 February
Masterton may be the chief town of the Wairarapa but it’s not really the sort of place you would make a special effort to visit – not, that is, unless you have a particular interest in sheep. It is said of Masterton that the town lies dormant for eleven months of the year, only waking up in March for the international Golden Shears sheep-shearing competition. Apparently this is the sheep-shearing competition of all sheep-shearers, attracting hundreds of competitors from around the world and thousands of observers. Since the inaugural competition in 1961, the Golden Shears has become a national institution: at the competition’s peak during the 1960s and 1970s, seats to the event were sold out twelve months in advance. I never knew watching a sheep being shorn could be such a draw. But it seems much appreciation can be had observing the skills and physical strength of the ‘gun shearers’ who are able to strip a sheep of its fleece in under a minute, without a cut or a ridge. What’s more, sheep shearing has entered the world of professionalism with big prize money, corporate sponsorship and shearers adopting fitness and training programmes as gruelling as those for any top athlete.
I was still a few weeks too early to catch this grand ovine spectacle, but not to worry – there were other arresting sights to catch in Masterton. In a swampy park across from the motorcamp, a halfhearted rock concert tried to take place for a while, involving a handful of scroungy, beatnik-looking groups dressed in rags and tags jumping around in the mud making a lot of noise. The patchy audience comprised mostly boy-racing hoons who, if they weren’t getting completely off-their-heads drunk in the park, were noisily tearing up and down the town’s main streets in their fat-exhaust cars with licence plates shouting unnecessary things at you like: DEAFENZ; ONE OFF; BLITZM.
Another interesting pastime to be had in Masterton was to wander around the town observing how many of the shop names like to substitute an ‘S’ for a ‘Z’ in their spelling. Notable examples included the video shop ‘VIDEO EZY’ (motto: ‘The choice is Ezy’). Hairdressers appeared particularly partial to this pursuit, as observed in the salons named ‘MENZ’ and ‘HOWZ YA HAIR’. Well, as you’ve asked, not too good thanks. But then having a cycling helmet strapped on top of your barnet through thick and thin does not make what was bad before any better.
You might ask why I’m spending so many days in the heady delights of Masterton (this is my fourth day). Let me assure you that it is not a matter of choice that I am here, but a matter of necessity. That’s because Masterton has been effectively cut off from the rest of civilisation owing to the biggest floods in history to hit the region. Along with the rain, which has been falling constantly for the past few days, there have been gales and hurricane winds gusting up to 120 km/h. Th
e campsite has turned into a lake so Mike, the owner, told me to sleep in the TV room. As my tent is freestanding, I’ve erected it in the corner of the room. Means I can still sleep in it while drying it out, which is most satisfying. Also means I can lie in my sleeping bag in my tent watching telly. This is the life, I tell you, though the only television I’m interested in is the news – saturated by the floods – and the weather forecasts. Front after front seems to be hitting the lower North Island. More gales are expected to lash the region with strong, cold southerlies forecast (it’s odd to think of southerlies as being cold, but then, being upside down, they are blowing off Antarctica) along with more heavy rain, plummeting temperatures, thunderstorms and hail. Oh joy!
The weatherman Bob McDavitt (who for some reason is called the Met Service ambassador – I can’t imagine Michael Fish or John Kettley earning such a title) said, ‘We are having June weather in February.’ I’m not quite sure how I manage this. For years people have told me that if I ever cycle around New Zealand, I should make sure I’m there during February as it is the perfect summer month with glorious settled weather. Instead I have managed once again to end up in a country on my bike and attract the floodiest, stormiest, windiest, wettest, most horrible weather on record. The locals are saying to me that February is not usually like this, that it is usually hot and wonderful. And then they apologise for it being as it is – as if it’s their fault, when really I’m the one to blame. I bet if I hadn’t come to New Zealand, this summer would be just perfect. Sorry about that everyone.
Just outside the TV room is a large man-made turf bank (though it’s currently looking not nearly large enough) and on the other side of this bank flows the Waipoua River. The bank is called a stop-bank and Mike told me that the council spent a small fortune building it after the Waipoua burst its banks a few years ago following days of heavy rain, when it completely flooded the motorcamp, including all the buildings and cabins. Mike told me that this stopbank is far higher and wider than the previous stop-bank. ‘We won’t get any water coming over the height of this bank,’ he said. I hope he’s right.