Mount Cook

New Zea­l­and is a coun­try Cesca and I have longed to visit for many years.  Tales speak of this island and its seem­ingly unique people.  That they are more friendly than the most soci­able of Australian’s, more “outdoors-loving” than even Scot­tish high­landers and more into extreme sports than any­one out­side Cirque-de-soleil!  Moreover, all of the “Kiwis” I have met have been the most per­suas­ive of ambas­sad­ors as they have a deep and abid­ing love of their coun­try, a great love of sport­ing life and and all of them stand a pint.

Then Lord of the Rings came out and that, as they say, was that.

Auckland’s SkyTower

After watch­ing LOTR for the first time I star­ted a long jour­ney of the heart.  The first steps were the read­ing of the book itself, now and forever with the New Zea­l­and land­scape in my mind, fol­lowed by many years won­der­ing if the real coun­try actu­ally looked like that.  Many steps, down this long road, later I have actu­ally stood on the Pel­lanor fields and I can tell you that yes, in fact, New Zea­l­and does look like Middle Earth.

But it also looks so much more. 

Hole in the Rock – Bay of Islands

Whatever it was that brought me here I finally came to see this whole coun­try and its people for myself and not rely on a vis­ion encap­su­lated by a (albeit very good) series of movies.  One of the main reas­ons is that New Zea­l­and itself has finally awoken from defin­ing itself in terms of the LOTR movies and is now return­ing to some semb­lance of nor­mal­ity in regards to its own iden­tity.  Indeed the LOTR tours and attrac­tions have retreated firmly into their geek/AD&D and high-brow lit­er­ary roots and every­one seems all the hap­pier for it.  The movie makers have returned the coun­tryside to its ori­ginal form and apart from a few smal­ler oper­a­tions the whole “scene” is over.

Just in time for “The Hob­bit” to start it all up again of course.

As a coun­try in the polit­ical sense New Zea­l­and also has much to offer the refugee from Europe.  It has told Amer­ica to bug­ger off for starters by deny­ing them the right to have war­ships in their waters and thumb­ing their nose at the USA even when Uncle Sam sub­sequently threw them out of the south­ern ver­sion of NATO (ANZUS) and said that New Zea­l­and was “a friend, but not an ally.  It has also relen­ted from totally des­troyed its nat­ives; the Maori.  The Maori may not have the full rights yet, which they undoubtedly deserve, but they are not get­ting any­thing like the raw deal being handed out to the Aus­tralian Abori­gines’.  My feel­ing on this is that it is due to the Maoris being a fairly up-to-date society/tribe and there­fore much bet­ter placed to integ­rate into mod­ern west­ern style soci­ety.  The poor nat­ives of Aus­tralia simply can­not integ­rate and at the same time keep their 40,000 year old soci­etal struc­ture intact (some­thing Cesca and I have dis­cussed at great length). 

Fur­ther to all this is the feel­ing of being home.  Kiwis may be more like the hardy South Afric­ans in terms of their work ethic, but their coun­try has the indelible thumb print of Bri­tain on its struc­ture.  Road and town names hint at a deep fun­da­mental con­nec­tion with my home island and, for example, we have been found driv­ing out of the town of “Epping”, towards “Brighton”, clutch­ing maps of “Ching­ford” and sur­roun­ded by Scot­tish archi­tec­ture.  This deep con­nec­tion is also in the people who – to a man and women — love the coun­try, loath politi­cians and basic­ally want to live in peace.  All pre­cepts you will find in the hearts of those dwell­ing in England.

Of all the “chil­dren” born by Britain’s empire, all the ones I have vis­ited thus far of course, I sense that the Kiwis don’t hate Eng­land in the way the Aus­trali­ans do, nor have they grown into some­thing else all together like the American’s.  Rather they are quite com­fort­able, on the whole, to be part of the Com­mon­wealth and rightly feel that they gain many bene­fits from inclu­sion while avoid­ing many of the down­sides by vir­tue of their far dis­tance from their birth-mother.

As you can tell, in my short time here, I have come to respect the people of this land a lot. 

The stun­ning end­less­ness of 90 Mile Beach

Not that there are that many people here in the first place.  The entire stock of Kiwis is less that the pop­u­la­tion of Lon­don and most of them are firmly situ­ated in Auck­land.  Huge tracks of land are given over to the wilds, farms and moun­tains and all are gov­erned by the all power­ful Depart­ment of Con­ser­va­tion.  DOC is simply a moniker for the Gov­ern­ments power and not all like the Aus­tralian National Parks (the National Trust with more teeth).  Rather DOC are pure silent power as old as the hills and not tak­ing any shit from any­one.  Whatever DOC do is right.  It is this strength that stops the march of glob­al­isa­tion and tour­ism from squash­ing the inhab­it­ants of this land, for while the coun­try has much more than its fair share of moneyed-tourism (coach com­pan­ies, bun­gee jumps and lots of sell-sell-sell on the tours), the DOC simply under­cuts the entire lot and offers a more “do it your­self” exper­i­ence.  Most walks start in a DOC camp­site and DOC will let you walk into the moun­tains with noth­ing more than advice on equip­ment and a well thought out grad­ing of tracks.  A grad­ing that here means any­thing from a wheel­chair friendly waltz along a river bank to a 5 day long hike over moun­tains and up water­falls that a ninja would struggle with. 

The grease between out and out com­mer­cial­ism and DOC is the excel­lent gov­ern­ment run chain of iSight inform­a­tion cen­ters that lit­ter the islands.  These are uni­formly bril­liant and some­thing for lesser coun­tries to adopt forth­with.  Moreover the Kiwis have developed a relaxed atti­tude to tour­ists in gen­eral.  A great example of this is how they have dealt with a ram­pa­ging infest­a­tion of Pos­sums; they simply shoot them and make them into jump­ers which are sold to tour­ists every­where as a “fine wool”.  Another example is the fact that you can­not buy trout in New Zea­l­and.  No, here you have to go catch your own.  Thus, everything is designed to take out of the towns and into the country.

Essen­tially then New Zea­l­and is made up of huge tracks of open wil­der­ness the likes of which you have never seen.  From beaches to moun­tains all sprinkled lib­er­ally with people, the occa­sional town and even – like the shil­ling in a Christ­mas pud­ding – the odd city.  It is often said that there are more sheep than people here and frankly that isn’t hard to ima­gine.  There is more of everything than people here and that is all to the good I say.

The view from the front of the Inter­Is­lander ferry

This fol­low­ing series of art­icles about New Zea­l­and will track our jour­ney up and down this fair coun­try.  Into all its spe­cial nooks and cran­nies and past all its sights.  We will talk of high moun­tains, dan­ger­ous passes, isol­ated beaches, craggy cliffs, highly vol­canic gey­sers and majestic gla­ciers.  We will also high­light the people we have met and divulge the nature of the canny Kiwis as best we can.  We will to do this in the most enter­tain­ing way our mea­gre writ­ing skills will allow and we hope that you will come along for the ride. 

At the very least you will get to see me jump off a 145m high-wire bungee!

Our New Zea­l­and adven­ture star­ted in late August with our land­ing in the largest of the cit­ies of the North Island and kicked off with a cel­eb­rat­ory din­ner of that most Brit­ish of foods; the curry!

Kapiti Sun­set

To be continued…

Basho

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