Long Cloud Ride

by Josie Dew

  Fran, like Carol, had had a life of boats – more recently working as a skipper on one of the yachts used for ferrying some of the 450-odd film and supply crew around an undisclosed Pacific island location for the TV series ‘Survival’. Along with being an experienced sailor, Fran was also an artist and writer and was known by both her maiden name, Whitworth, and married name, Bird. Her husband Cliff had been killed – electrocuted – when working on the electrics of their boat over thirty years ago.

  Wellsford, 21 June

  In a normal upright state of events, today would have been the longest day of the year, but being in an inverted position as we currently were, we had to make do with the shortest day instead. Still, despite Gary reminding me that we could be basking in the balmy heat of an English summer day (a bit of an oxymoron if you ask me), today has not been a day to be sneezed at.

  It started out on a dry footing, at least for the first hour. While Gary mended one of Carol’s broken bikes, suffering from an obstinate fixed freewheel and found lurking among cobwebs in yet another outer barn, Carol took me on a tour of her fig trees and orange trees and veg patch, a veritable jungle of silverbeet or, as we northern hemisphere dwellers call it, Swiss chard. As the rain pounded down, I made a triple batch of flapjack biscuits to leave in our wake for Carol and Fran. When the sun suddenly and unexpectedly burst out, Gary and I took this as a sign of our summer solstice and, dawdling no more, left Carol making fig jam and cranberry bread while we took off up the road for Wellsford.

  We were now in the district of Rodney. To cycle to Northland from Auckland there was a choice of two roads: traffic-pounding Death Highway 1 or SH16, the quietly winding out-of-the-way road that Gary and I followed. Because the bulk of the traffic travelled on SH1, leading to multiple crashes and delays and jams, Transit New Zealand was trying to encourage motorists to branch out from the crowds and take to SH16 instead. Courtesy of Transit, the New Zealand Herald had recently run an article in an attempt to woo the stampeding hordes off SHI on to the more sedate SH16. In a letter to the Herald headed ‘SH16 NO SOLUTION’, Crispin Caldicott from the Kaipara Coast Highway begged to disagree with this suggestion. He wrote:

  Your article ‘Just far enough from the crowds’ is not entirely accurate. SH16 does meander through some very beautiful countryside. It does offer great views, and stopping to admire them at the absent lay-bys would be the only way to avoid a stressful ride. For many reasons it is not a good road, or a sensible alternative to SH1.

  There are no passing lanes, very few long straights, a high degree of curvature and some pretty hairy hairpin bends and hills just south of Wellsford. The 47 km from Kaukapakapa to Wellsford are without motoring facilities of any kind – there is at least a warning sign at the former heading north.

  Transit consistently advertises the road as an alternative route to the North, failing to point out that it is considerably longer and much slower. Shifting the problem away from SH1 has failed to solve it – SH16 does not have the capacity for fast, heavy traffic.

  And a good thing too. It was perfect for cycling. If a little hilly.

  After a 5 km climb, we arrived at the top of Cleaseby Hill. The view from up here was tremendous, encompassing the mottled pasturelands of the valleys rolling downwards to the pewter-like reflections of the distant sea. To the east tatters of cloud hung like rags on the shadows of Conical Peak. All about, vast messy clouds were banking around the heavens.

  It was at this scenic high spot where we stopped for some food in a dip by the road out of the wind. After eating we were having a frolicsome moment on the ground when the only car that had passed in a long time pulled up beside us. Out piled two elderly men. One was twig thin and bird-boned. The other had an almost spherical body, the flesh of his face sagging in hound-dog folds. Both men looked rather concerned. That is, until I jumped up and bid them a chirpy hello. They then looked quite relieved because, as one of them explained, they had seen two bikes on their sides in the verge with two bodies beside them and immediately presumed we’d had a bit of a spill. All quite touching really. After a bit of a chortle, they went on their way, assured that all was well.

  Down the hill in Wellsford we were about to camp in a small green patch behind the Sun Valley Motor Lodge when the Sun Valley suddenly turned into a flooded valley, thanks to a violent thunderstorm that struck out of the blue with all-consuming fury. One minute a tui and a bellbird had been perched in a nearby tree singing their competitively fluted tunes with their usual indefatigable beauty, and the next the tree was thrashing around wildly in the chaotic wind as a tumultuous rain poured from the skies, hammering on the tinny rooftops and rushing down the gutters deafening all other sound.

  Paparoa, 23 June

  With Wellsford under water and all tuis and bellbirds blown into oblivion, we gave the camping a miss and took a room at the motel instead. The motel was owned by a friendly house-proud couple called Bill and Sue, but I think they were a bit concerned about two scruff-bag cyclists occupying one of their rooms, especially when we stayed an extra day due to adverse weather conditions. Sue was itching to get into our room under the guise of changing our towels, but really because she wanted to see the filthy tip that she presumed we had turned the room into. We told her to save on the washing as we’d be fine using the same towels twice, which only made her all the more agitated and determined to sneak a look into the assumed bombsite of our room.

  Actually, Sue had no real reason to be concerned. I veer towards a tidy nature as I like to pile and file or, as Gary puts it, tidy things up so effectively that no one can find anything. Gary, on the other hand, prefers to upturn things and thrash through them in an alarming manner before leaving every flung-about possession in a splayed heap like a mini landfill. This time, however, because we wanted to demonstrate to Sue our fastidiously pernickety leanings, we went completely overboard by stacking all our panniers in neat rows, making the bed to perfection, folding the towels, cleaning out the shower and polishing the taps. We even gave the toilet paper that carefully folded and pointy edge that you find cleaners doing to toilet paper in hotels, presumably for aerodynamic reasons. For the first time in history, Gary folded his clothes. In fact he didn’t just fold them, he ironed them out as best he could with his big builder’s hands before stacking them to perfection on the spare bed as if he worked in the clothes-folding section of Benetton. Gary even scolded me whenever he spotted my pile of scrupulously folded clothes a millimetre out of line with the parallel edge of the bed or saw an edge of plastic bag poking from the corner of a pannier.

  All through our exaggerated tidying campaign, Gary acted in an amusingly straight-faced manner which, combined with his absurd shop-folding hand movements, evoked an almost continuous cackle of hilarity from me. My cackles were further increased whenever we saw the shadowy form of Sue passing outside our large net-curtain frontage. Quite what she thought was going on within, I hate to imagine, but the thought of what she was thinking only made it all the funnier.

  Tidying practices finalised, we at last ventured out into the flooded streets. At one point a hailstorm hit with such force that to avoid severe denting to our skulls we jumped into the doorway of the Phat and Phunky store to shelter from the savagery of the elements. Further up the street we paid a visit to Hammer Hardware for Gary to buy a jubilee clip, as he had noticed a crack in the frame of his rack braze-on attaching to the seat stay.

  Wellsford, like Helensville, is a dull and humdrum place. It has one main street, its two rows of uninteresting shops separated by SH1, which scythe a vehicle-rushing path down the middle. Signs in the town tried their best to lure us down the road to something called Sheep World, where presumably you could have an ‘experience’ living in a world of sheep. Thankfully we never got further than the Four Square supermarket, because another hailing downpour forced us to take cover. Sheltering in the foyer of Four Square came as a lucky stroke of luck because, as it happened, it was by far the most interesting place in Wellsford – f
ar more interesting even than the local museum (a room filled with everything that anyone had ever acquired and no longer wanted). The interest attained from the Four Square was down to its noticeboard advertising offerings along the lines of:

  ‘PINECONES – $5 a bag’

  ‘FIREWOOD FOR SALE – dry, split, blue gum. $70 m3 delivered’

  ‘PIG

  Sow raised for breeding 18mths old. Long White / Landrace – nice temperament.

  $295.00’

  ‘I’M LOOKING FOR MY OWNER IN A GOOD HOME

  I AM A YOUNG CALICO

  I HAVE NO COLLAR

  I’M VERY AFFECTIONATE

  MY PAWS ARE UNIQUE, I HAVE AN EXTRA TOE ON EACH’

  ‘TOMARATA PRE-LAMBING CALVING DOO

  “The Academy Awards”

  with the band “Sticky Fingers”’

  ‘SALE

  Clearance of Pre-loved clothing for adults and children’

  As SH16 ran out at Wellsford, we had to head north for 30 km on Death Highway 1 – a nightmarish scene of thick-fast traffic and cyclist-hating logging trucks. Nor did the weather help matters: strong headwinds and heavy rain. At Brynderwyn, where we could turn off westwards on to a quieter road, we stopped to warm up and dry out at the Swinging Cow Cafe and were served by a woman wearing a cow cap that said, ‘Love one an-udda’. A man bustling about behind scenes wore a cow hat that declared, ‘There ain’t no bull here but luvvabulls!!!’ Oh dear, what had we let ourselves in for? Behind the counter hung cow-shaped blackboards serving ‘MOO-SHAKES’. The tables were littered with bovine-flavoured jokes: What kind of cowfee do cows like? De-calfinated!! Why do cows wear bells? Because their horns don’t work!! Why did the cow cross the road? To get to the udder side!!

  We continued down the road to Maungaturoto, which according to the roadside sign was ‘A real New Zealand town!’ – though I’m not sure why as it looked pretty indistinguishable from all other New Zealand towns. Maybe it was the bright blue painted pillbox-like public conveniences that earned it such a title. Or maybe it was the hairdresser’s called Urban Fringe that sat across the road from this concrete bunker. Whatever reason, it wasn’t worth lingering around to find out as it was getting rainier and colder and windier by the minute.

  By the time we arrived in Paparoa the weather had deteriorated even further so we dripped our sodden way through the doors of The Old Post Office hostel (an old kauri building circa 1903) where a worried-looking woman showed us to a small blue room with an electric blanket fire-hazard (circa 1952) on the bed. Down the hall blazed a pot-belly stove (with the door left open) to warm our cockles. Hazardous heating appliances aside, the most noteworthy thing about the part of the house we were in was the amount of dead possums used about the premises as wall and floor furnishings – most of them in the form of a sheet of leather adorned with a grimacing set of teeth at one end.

  Maybe the worried-looking woman had been partaking in the Pahi Possum Patrol. I’d been reading about this particular possum patrol in the Paparoa Press, ‘The Village in the Valley’ local community magazine, which was paying its thanks and

  … congratulations to those people who’ve acted with a wee bit of dosh, and baited and trapped possums. Some have been surprised at how many possums they’ve been feeding, but not for long! That many hands make for light work is absolutely true. If everyone did their bit, we’d have possums, rats, ferrets, stoats, and weasels licked with relative ease.

  The article went on to say that there were now 70 million possums running havoc all over New Zealand (seventeen-and-a-half per person!) consuming 21,000 tons of vegetation nightly – much of this being native trees. The paper said:

  Female possums are now carrying young that will appear in spring as joeys. If we can deal with these now, we’ll have more than halved next year’s population.

  Further down the page, the reader was asked:

  Did you realise it takes about 20 Northland possums to supply 1 kg of fur? That 1 kg is worth $80+. The best fur is hand plucked from a warm possum and enough at a time to make the trip worthwhile.

  We were then informed that Pahi Possum Patrol was assisting a local trap designer in his efforts to produce a multi-live trap capable of holding up to fifteen possums all caught with one lure they didn’t get to eat.

  We hope to report outstanding success with these over winter. It is hoped they can make controlling possums a valuable activity even for amateurs. Remember – You can’t get anywhere unless you ‘spread ze legs’!

  Matakohe, 24 June

  Things got off to a bad start this morning. First we were awoken by more rain. Then, as we were preparing ourselves for another soaking, the worried-looking woman about the house accused me of stealing one of her lacy doilies off the top of the chest of drawers in our room (the previous night I had stored it in a drawer of the chest to prevent it getting ruined by our wet clobber and this morning had forgotten to remove it). Anyway, quite what she thought I might want with an old doily, I don’t know, because doilies aren’t a vital part of long-distant travel inner tent decoration. There again I could sport it like a skull cap, worn in fetching manner draped over my head beneath my helmet with the dangly lacy bits trailing over my eyes like an errant fringe.

  Thirty seconds after leaving Mrs Happy, we stopped. A small Four Square store beckoned us to grace its shores. So, despite having not long finished breakfast, we were eating again. This time: two bags of liquorice, a packet of raisins and a bunch of bananas. Once refuelled to tackle the wet and to overcome the shock of being mistaken as a purloiner of doilies, we set sail once more, only to stop again a mere 6 km up the road. Trouble was, we got no further. It wasn’t rain or food that stopped us in our tracks this time (though it was still raining and we did somehow demolish another bagful of food without any noticeable difficulty) but a large museum devoted to kauri, those vast and ancient trees comparable in age and size to California’s giant sequoias.

  New Zealand’s economy was once heavily dependent on the exploitation of kauri timber and kauri gum. In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that the whole of the north was covered in kauri forest. Then, along came Captain Cook who, on seeing his first kauri forest in 1769, wrote: ‘The banks of the river were completely clothed with the finest timber my eyes have ever seen.’ Uh, oh! Not for much longer. Human greed was all too soon to destroy something that had stood untouched for millennia. Acres upon acres of these magnificent trees, many of which had been on earth for over 2,000 years, were seen as lucrative money-makers. Cook’s report inspired the Royal Navy to send ships to New Zealand to harvest these fantastically straight trees for spars. Then came the bushmen, gum-diggers and farmers, who felled kauri for their timber, dug up the gum to make resin and cleared the forests to form pasture.

  The enthusiasm of those early settlers for harvesting (or decimating) this seemingly limitless resource, together with the privations they endured, was all part of the woody package that came with a wander around the Kauri Museum – a veritable temple to all things kauri, including a century-old steam-powered mill with life-sized mannequins, apparently modelled on the descendants of the men who worked the mill, busily slicing giant logs into rough-sawn boards.

  A mind-boggling proportion of the museum was devoted to lumps of kauri gum (the amber-coloured fossilised resin of the kauri tree) and the uses of its resin, one of those being as an essential ingredient in the manufacture of Victorian false teeth. As the immigrants rapidly depleted the country’s native kauri forests (by the early twentieth century less than 10,000 hectares remained), the new industry of kauri gum began to emerge. Resin, exuded by the trees, became a valuable commodity in the production of varnish and linoleum. It was mostly the Yugoslav immigrants who carried out the job of locating the lumps of resin by poking long rods into the ground near dead trees.

  The largest kauri on record, though the trunk height is not known, grew at the head of Tararu Creek on the Thames coast, Coromandel, in the 1870s and had a diameter of 8.54 metres (28 f
eet) and a girth of 26.83 metres (88 feet). Further up this way, on the Kauri Coast, the largest kauri ever to be officially measured grew on Tutamoe Mountain near Dargarville. It had a diameter of 6.4 metres (21 feet), a girth of 20.12 metres (66 feet) and a trunk height of 30.48 metres (100 feet). S. Percy Smith, New Zealand’s Surveyor-General, documented his reaction when first setting eyes on this tree:

  I was constructing the triangulation north of Auckland in 1870–74, and on one occasion was in advance of my men, they carrying the instruments and myself using my long knife to cut a track up one of the south-east spurs of Tu-ta-moe Mountain, when I saw (out of the corner of my eye, as it were) in a slight depression, what I took to be a cliff! But as I advanced a few paces I saw that I could look round it, and then it dawned on me it was a kauri tree of enormous size.

  One of the most amusing moments at the museum occurred when Gary and I were walking back past the ticket desk. A very large and loud American tourist had just arrived to buy a ticket and the woman at reception asked him where he was from.