by Josie Dew
Kathy laughed and said just the same thing happens with her and Peter. ‘They just need encouragement, these men,’ she said. ‘When Peter goes into great detail about something I nod and say “What a good idea!” Like if Peter says, “I’ve got a new idea for a rigging set-up on the top mast,” and then starts explaining his idea, I have to be quick on the uptake because if I pause for a minute as if I don’t understand then it’s fatal and I get the “coloured pen” treatment for ease of understanding.’
Geraldine, South Canterbury, 23 March
News today was of an eighty-year-old woman visiting relatives in a Nelson hospital who herself had to be admitted into the hospital when the automatic doors closed on her and broke her leg. A hospital spokesman said, ‘It’s a freak accident.’ I’d say more like dodgy doors, myself.
After a teeth-chattering night of icy rain, it was sunny, clear and hot this morning and the mountains looked resplendent with their dazzling snow-topped crowns. I shot along what is known in tourist leaflet speak as The Inland Scenic 72 Route. Myself, I would just call it a most enjoyably flat road with the hills on my right rolling skyward. The only place of any size I passed through (all of four-and-a-half houses – plus the ubiquitous community swimming pool) was Mayfield. As I entered Mayfield I saw a sign at the side of the road in the shape of a nightcap-topped Santa. Santa said, ‘WELCOME TO MAYFIELD – blink and you will miss out.’ I blinked but I didn’t miss out: the public conveniences were spotless with a clean stripy roller towel and fresh soap and soft toilet paper imprinted with butterflies.
Then, before I knew it, I was in the town formerly known as Talbot Forest, then Fitzgerald before finally becoming known as Geraldine, which is a bit like calling a town Derek or Kevin. I was planning on ploughing onwards from here into the hills, but because my ankle seemed to have gone up the spout again I decided to call it a day. This decision was helped by the fact that there was a handy park-like campground right in town and situated directly opposite the Geraldine Medical Centre. I wandered in, thinking I would never get an appointment (I have NHS waiting lists in my bones), so was surprised when Rob Hill, the in-house physio, whisked me off there and then to his consulting room for an investigation of malfunctioning parts. Rob was a Yorkshireman, originally from Barnsley, and had been in New Zealand about nine years. He had no intention of living in England ever again. I said, ‘Don’t you miss the dales and the good, sturdy forthright folk, Rob?’ And he said, sweeping an arc of arm towards the window and the all-embracing but hidden-from-view mountains, ‘What, when I’ve got all this on my doorstep?’
Rob reiterated the importance of stretching before and after cycling. He couldn’t find anything too wrong and told me to simply listen to my ankle (I try but I often can’t hear). ‘If one day your ankle tells you it’s fine with cycling fifty miles uphill, then that’s all well and good. But if on another occasion it says “Whoa there!” after a mere ten, then do what it says and stop.’
‘But it’s not that easy on a bike. I might be in the middle of nowhere with no food or water,’ I said.
‘Then cross that bridge when you get to it,’ said Rob with a wink. And I left thinking: would that be a bridge over braided waters?
Fairlie, Mackenzie, Canterbury, 24 March
Not very far today. Only about fifty kilometres under my wheels. This is because I couldn’t decide whether I should give my floppy ankle another day off, or press on and risk snapping it off.
Everywhere I’ve been in New Zealand, from city to town to smallest village, there have been vast swimming pools (both inside and outside varieties), devoid of crowds, just asking to be swum in. And unlike back home where even a short dip in a public pool can make you feel as if you’ve been swimming in bleach, making your skin feel three sizes too small, Kiwi pools were more akin to swimming in spring water. In New Zealand I’ve stopped to swim in most of the pools I’ve come across. In fact, at this rate, I think I might have swum further in New Zealand than I have cycled. Geraldine had a very come-hither outdoor pool, sparklingly clean in the sun. I spent hours in it, one-leggedly crawling up and down, thinking: This is the life! Mostly I had the place to myself, but this morning, which after a night of chilly rain dawned bright and cool, I was mid-length when a group of local women, all on the well-built side and pushing sixty plus, with white legs that had come out in goosebumps and purple splotches, entered the pool for a class of aqua aerobics. And ONE leg in and ONE leg out. And ONE leg up and ONE leg down. Occasionally they would embark on a length, swimming with their chins held high so they wouldn’t wet their hairdos. The aerobics teacher, who also doubled up as the receptionist, was an attractive, big-smiling, fair-haired Dutch woman. When I was in a state of undress in the changing room, she came in to invite me to her home (she had emigrated to New Zealand) as she was a keen cyclist and said she felt she knew me after reading my translated De Wind in mejn Wielen. I would have gone had I not decided to hit the fairly hilly road to Fairlie, which is where I am now with a thin film of frost covering my tent. I sense a cold night ahoy.
Lake Tekapo, Mackenzie, Canterbury, 25 March
There’s been much in the news recently about how Fuarosa Tamati and her daughter Saralia were given $26,000 of taxpayers’ money to travel the world on a hip hop investigative tour. The two women from Christchurch, who described themselves as ‘established youth workers’, spent seventy days travelling between New York, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Fiji and Samoa to trace the origins of New Zealand hip hop. Or, as one of the women (who was given the money by something called the Social Entrepreneur Fund) put it, so that they could ‘do a whole lot of travelling for hip-hop’. The mother had just admitted to having a stopover in Paris and spending some of the cash ‘chilling out’ in Hawaii, but she was adamant that any investigation into her spending would prove she had not wasted money. ‘I think people are being really bitchy and horrible,’ she said. ‘They don’t understand I apply for lots of grants and haven’t had them all approved.’
The best letter about all this was by Mike Harris, printed in The Press:
Having read your article re the hip hop overseas trip (and the undoubted value of this to New Zealand as a whole), I feel sure that taxpayers will be only too willing to fund another of a similar nature.
For many years I have been an avid wearer of jandals and as such I intend seeking funding for a world tour to trace the origins of flip flop. Progress will be slow, however, as I will be stopping off for a few weddings and chilling out on the Riviera.
Readers wishing me well can email to ripoff.com.
Much had been made of this hip hop extravaganza on the radio, especially talkback Radio Pacific. But I kept losing the train of conversation because the programme was constantly interrupted by the annoyingly urgent voice of someone called something like Magnus Benrow who insisted on cutting the presenter or caller off in their prime to scream his live horseracing commentary: And as Fly Away Babe overtakes Baycity Blue Jeans, Life Stock and Barrel is closing in fast … and what’s this …? Jacket Turbine is tripping over Bow Anvil … and now Temple Franco falls right across the whole heap of them with Life for Living adding to the chaos … and as Classy Calendar takes the final fence … only to find Cheery Cola and Guilt Trip collapsed in a tangle of hoofs …
Or something like that.
National Radio (a bit like the BBC’s Radio 4, but more light hearted) tends to be a little more relaxing on the ear. And it’s where I became quite familiar with the tones of Dick Wheeler. Dick doubled up as both chatty newsreader and continuity announcer. Unlike Radio 4 announcers, who usually just read their lines in a mostly demure and sensible manner, Dick was a little more excitable and actively involved. After a documentary programme that he’d particularly enjoyed, he could be heard saying in a sort of Queen’s English form of Kiwi accent, ‘Well, well, well. That really was very interesting, wasn’t it? I wouldn’t mind hearing that all over again!’
Nor me neither, Dick!
Yesterday, I listened
to a play on the radio. The minute it had finished, Dick said, ‘My goodness! What a mysterious ending! That will keep us all guessing no doubt for a long time to come.’ I should say it will, Dickie old chap.
*
I seem to be cycling through lots of gateways in New Zealand. The latest one is right here in Fairlie, a small Wild West type of country town that heralds itself as the ‘Gateway to Mackenzie Country’. Mackenzie Country begins just west of town at Burke Pass – a gap through the foothills that leads to a vast tussocky basin of moonscapes, rivers, lakes and wild lupins. After stocking up on food at the Four Square and passing one of Fairlie’s few shops (a craft and clothes shop called Fairlie Interesting), that was just the direction I headed in, up and over the surprisingly easy Burke Pass sandwiched between the Rollesbury, Albury and Two Thumb Ranges. The change in scenery was dramatic. Suddenly I was riding among the high barren hills, an anchored remote land of intense country shades and storms and snow and sun and crystals and desert. Tuffets of native tussock grass, growing in golden clumps like excitable heads of wind-tossed hair, shook their locks wildly in the strong northwest wind. Ahead of me in the far distance rose the indomitable ridge of jagged Southern Alps – the wedding-cake icing blowing off a few of their peaks like a blurring streak of cloud. Apart from the odd tourist bus with its processed contents of jet-lagged, dozing passengers, and the occasional motorhome with names like ‘MEANDERIN’ ALONG’ and ‘LET’S GO HOMEY ’, I had the whole wonderful wide expanse to myself.
So here I am at Lake Tekapo. Tekapo is Maori for ‘sleeping mat night’, quite an appropriate interpretation as I’m camping on my sleeping mat at the lakeside, overlooking the extraordinary brilliance of its icy turquoise waters. This magnificent colour is caused by ‘rock flour’ – finely ground particles of rock brought down by the glaciers at the head of the lake and held in suspension in the meltwater, which, in combination with the sunlight, creates the unique bright blue.
Nearby stands an unusual memorial commemorating the hard work of the trustworthy sheepdogs of the area. The bronze sheepdog statue, sculpted in England by a certain Mrs I Elliott, stands proud on a stack of rocks and was built in memory of all high-country mustering dogs ‘without the help of which the grazing of this mountainous country would be impossible’.
Mackenzie, Canterbury, 26 March
This morning I awoke to a bright blue lake and a rich red dawn. Oh, and a northwest wind blowing like a devil possessed. As I followed the straight dyke-like service road alongside the Tekapo Hydro-Electricity Canal, this wind slammed into me from the side with such force that I had to cycle on the opposite side of the road, keeled over at an acute angle into the wind like a spinnaker-racing yacht to prevent the gusts from hurling me down the steep embankment into the water. Fortunately I was the only one following this canal road. All the other traffic stuck to SH8.
And so to Twizel, site of the black stilt (one of the rarest wading birds in the world) and precious little else. This highly uninspiring town, resembling an army barracks minus the high fences of razor wire, only came into existence thirty-five years ago to service the nearby hydroelectric power scheme, and was supposed to have been bulldozed flat once the project was finished. Shame it wasn’t, although I have to admit that at the moment it’s quite a useful place to have in the middle of nowhere as my ankle has conked out on me again.
Twizel, Mackenzie Country, 31 March
The only good thing about Twizel is its proximity to Mount Cook. After three days of ankle-resting amid the high winds, intermittent storms and freezing nights (lowest temperature so far has been minus 7°C, turning bones stiff and tent rigid and air as cold as steel), a brilliant crisp morning saw me taking off with just front panniers on the 130 km ride along the dead-end road that skirts the choppy milky blue waters of Lake Pukaki. As I headed deeper up the valley in brittle autumn sunshine, a continuous conveyor belt of dazzling views and colours unravelled all around, headed by Mount Cook – a 3,755 metre monolith of rock, ice and snow. The Maori call Australasia’s highest mountain Aoraki – ‘cloud piercer’ – but the day was so pristine perfect that there were no clouds to pierce. Instead a saintly circle of wispy wind-blown snow seemed to hover above its head like a celestial halo.
There’s always something slightly shivery about standing at the foot of great mountains – the height, the scale, the grandness, the aloofness, never minding the power of the earth to shoot these magnificent monoliths skywards. The Alpine Fault, a huge rent in the earth’s crust, lies at the snub end of the Southern Alps about 20 km west of the range’s crest. Here not only are the Pacific and Indian–Australian tectonic plates grinding past each other along the fault, but the Pacific Plate is also being pushed up over the other one to form the Southern Alps. A spectacular illustration of this uplift equilibrium (plus the following erosion) was the Mount Cook rock avalanche in December 1991. During the night the summit rock and icecap collapsed, plummeting an estimated 14 million cubic metres of debris down to the surface of the Tasman Glacier nearly 3,000 metres below, at speeds approaching 600 km/h, and instantly reducing the height of Mount Cook by 10 metres.
Cycling to Mount Cook proved good for spirit but bad for ankle. So I’ve spent the last few days in Twizel, going nowhere. Saying that, I have fitted in a couple of appointments with a physio called Katharine. Katharine is from Bristol. Out of all the people I’ve seen so far about my ankle, she is by far the youngest but seems the most thorough. She says I’ve got tendonitis in my Achilles and she can feel that the muscles in my calf and hamstrings have gone all hard and knotty and into spasm to try to protect my ankle. So she’s given my leg a good pummelling massage. She’s also given me ultrasound on my malfunctioning Achilles and acupuncture in my calf. She even set light to the needles. Five minutes later my leg was emitting smoke signals.
During my stimulating travels around the concrete bunker of Twizel, I came across a Buddhist monk called Jampa Khandro. She was seventy and originally from Worthing on the sunny Sussex coast. She had left Worthing when she was twenty and became a nurse. Then she worked with the aborigines for a while in Australia. She’d worked her way through three husbands, one of whom was a helicopter pilot at Mount Cook so she lived up there for years. All Khandro’s husbands had been violent. ‘I’m just no good at picking husbands,’ she admitted. So the best thing for it was to become a monk and she seemed quite content now in her Mackenzie Drive white-walled home that doubled up as the Shaey-Drub Buddhist Centre, with its colourful Himalayan prayer flags flapping in the wind out the front.
Khandro, like Katharine, was good with her hands – only with Khandro she went for the full body massage, using lots of heady-smelling oils. Before I knew it, I was in my altogether and lying face down on the slab of her towel-covered massage table in a darkened room surrounded by the sounds of New Age floaty music.
Halfway through this palm-pummelled delight, one of Khandro’s friend dropped by. Win, or Winipera Maoi to give her her full name, was a big and buoyant Maori who also knew a thing or two about massage. One of the fine things about New Zealanders is that they are very uninhibited, so the next I knew Win had set to on me as well. Suddenly I had hands everywhere. I was not quite sure if all these hands running themselves all over my body was going to make any great shakes on my ankle. But I can’t say I minded. Four-handed massages aren’t something that come along my street every day of the week and I feel it’s best to grab them while you can.
11
Wanaka, Otago, 1 April
I phoned a friend of a friend in Auckland the other day, and when she discovered I was immobilised in Twizel she said, ‘Can we get you helicoptered out?’ That’s the sort of reputation Twizel has. It’s definitely not a town to inspire.
But instead of being helicoptered out, I was jeeped out, care of Katharine. She only worked a couple of days in Twizel. Sensibly she had chosen to make her home not in Twizel but in Wanaka, where she also worked as a physio in the modern practice there. She was in the midd
le of setting me on fire again when she offered me a lift in her jeep to Wanaka. ‘Wanaka,’ she said, ‘is a lot more exciting than Twizel. And I could also work on your ankle there for you.’
I pondered on this for a minute while watching the smoke from the mini bonfires pouring from my leg.
‘And then if you want I could give you a lift back here again because I drive back and forth once a week.’
So here I am in Wanaka, camping just across from the willow and golden poplar-lined shores of the wave-flopping lake, 311 metres deep and 45.5 km long – New Zealand’s fourth largest lake, and one that according to Maori legend was carved out of the bedrock by a great tribal chief with his mighty ko (digging stick), piling up the debris to form the towering mountain ranges that surround the whole of Wanaka.
Wanaka, Otago, 12 April
Two weeks later and I’m still here. It’s a good time to be in Wanaka: cold clear nights of weighty frosts and sub-zero temperatures; brilliant days that start out numbingly cold until sunlight gently warms my outer layers and then my inner layers. In New Zealand, Easter is autumn. And here, more than anywhere else I’ve ever been, autumn bends the lights of summer and spreads morning and evening skies with reds and golds. In the still of the early frost-sheeted mornings, I’ve watched birds hop on the hardened grass outside my tent door and heard the grass blades snap. The sound of birds hopping has never been so audible.