Tideland - Part Three: Setting up a mooring

This blog was never intended to be a diary, but a lot has happened recently...

Motupipi River at dusk - the view from our deck

Easter weekend has just passed and we’ve now been living in Golden Bay for over a month - the realisation of a very long term plan. We’re adapting to coastal life and ‘Takaka time’ pretty easily: the constant good weather and friendliness of the people we’ve met has certainly helped.

But actually getting here turned out to be anything but easy.

Our biggest fear at the time, that our three cats would find the move and relocation stressful and unhealthy, actually turned out to be pretty-much unfounded. In fact, it was ultimately one of the easiest issues we had to overcome.

Ed and Monty struggle to adapt to their new deck

The biggest obstacles were physical: the notoriously rough stretch of water separating New Zealand’s two main Islands, and the 791m mountain pass which is modestly referred to as the Takaka ‘Hill’. And the biggest stress was to become our inability to get over either of them.

In hindsight picking the same day to move as the arrival of a tropical cyclone seems like tempting fate to the absolute extreme, but these storms are by their nature very difficult to predict, and our complex plans involving flights, ferry crossings and vehicle hire had been put in place well in advance. 

Wharariki Beach: The 'poster girl' for New Zealand tourist calendars never disappoints

Never-the-less, I flew into Takaka airport in a light plane with three bewildered felines the night before Cyclone Gita arrived, just to play it safe. Arriving at the airstrip we were immediately welcomed with 'Bay' hospitality, and gifted a free hire car to get us to our new home. Regardless of what lay in store for us over the next couple of weeks, this local generosity has remained a constant.

Several hours later, while I huddled in a sleeping bag with restlessly prowling cats in the  corner of our empty new living room, Rose was driving our packed-to-bursting hire truck onto the 2.30am ferry.

If you think this division of labour seems unfair you’re probably right, but I cope with rough seas (and they were) about as well as Rose copes with rough flights and she had no wish to share the cats suffering either in the air on in the car, to and from airports. 

My idea of paradise - beaches for miles, and the sun just won't stop...

Our first mistake was probably to seriously underestimate the time needed to pack properly. Although we’d been stowing belongings in our garage for months, the week was a maelstrom of frantically shoving it all in and out of a truck, car and trailer, (gradually without the benefit of daylight, food or sleep), in mere hours when we should have allowed days. It became clear that moving from the North to South Islands was more like immigrating to another country than we could ever have suspected.

Rose arrived with the truck at around 11am on the rainy morning of February 20th - scant hours before the hill she had just crossed was devastated by Cyclone Gita. Over 20 slips were brought down onto the road, some of them washing whole sections of it away.

We were blissfully unaware of this at the time, our new neighbourhood somehow almost completely sheltered from the force of the storm. The first evidence that other areas hadn’t been so fortunate was a power-cut that afternoon. but in our ignorance, even this was treated lightly. Our first day back on the national grid in six years and we’re without power - that’s got to be funny, hasn’t it? 

Living history - the Langford store, serving the Bainham community since 1928

Our sense of humour was to serve us well over the next fortnight. The road closure meant that we couldn’t return an expensive hire truck for over a week, and after a near-evacuation, a cut-off Takaka began to suffer food shortages and petrol rationing. 

But worse still, our house purchasers defaulted on their settlement payment, leaving us to teeter on the brink of financial ruin as we struggled to afford the mortgage and insurance on two houses.

Without going into specifics, the compassion of the vendor of our new home pretty much saved our bacon, (which was definitely off the menu as we struggled to survive). 

The daily late fee our tardy house buyers tided us over when the whole horrible business was finally concluded, but was little consolation at the time. I could say more here, but am choosing to move on after a brief warning. House sellers beware: the integrity of a contract is only worth the integrity of the person who signs it with you.

Naturally we celebrated once the money finally came through. We’ve dined at the Mussel Inn, picnicked at Wharariki Beach and I’ve cycled everywhere from Collingwood to Pohara. 

Rose posted a request on the local facebook group for firewood, adding that we would come and chainsaw/chop it ourselves. She was bombarded by offers and we’ve met some interesting and generous people while putting in the hard yards to stock up on wood for the winter. 

This was a shapeless pile of metal and plastic when we moved in...

She has also repaired our ramshackle greenhouse and we’ve insulated the entire underfloor of the house. Although autumn has officially been here for a month and daylight saving has just ended - the hot Golden Bay sun shows little sign of abating.

It hasn’t been easy getting here, but so far at least, we’re living the dream...

Who needs a garden bench when you can have a jetty to relax on?

http://fasmatodea.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/tideland-part-one-coming-in.html

http://fasmatodea.blogspot.co.nz/2015/03/tideland-part-two-going-out.html

Fifty shades of Age

I know it’s just a number, but the day I reached my half century was pretty special.

Being weird means you might get weird presents on your birthday....

I have a happy, fulfilling and probably somewhat-sheltered life.  I’m quick to acknowledge those I owe my contentment to - fiercely-loving, brave, pioneering parents who came halfway across the world in search of a better existence, an incredible woman sharing my life who is probably the best thing about me, and a few, long-suffering friends who enrich my life in ways they’ll never know.

I turned fifty this week, an occurrence which both astonishes and pleases me at the same time - like reaching a far-off destination in good time and on less fuel and monetary expenditure than you expected.

But last year, I had a pretty wretched birthday - choosing to spend it at work and by sheer bad luck having a ‘lousy day at the office’.  On top of this my Facebook privacy settings somehow decided to conceal the fact that it was my birthday, and anyone who might have cared remained blissfully unaware that the day was significant to me.

I wasn’t about to repeat this mistake for my fiftieth and so took the day itself, and those either side, off (and re-checked my Facebook settings).

Rose began her schedule of ‘secret’ events by inviting nearby friends and neighbours for pre-birthday drinks on Sunday afternoon.  I think I’m a much more relaxed guest than host, but having so many familiar faces give their time to gather for my benefit is something you can’t help but enjoy.  Bringing them all together also gave many an opportunity to catch up, and it was heart-warming to see so many friends in animated conversation with each other, on our deck,  on a perfect summer’s afternoon.

My birth date itself dawned hot, with the traditional opening of cards in bed.  

Rose’s card came with the message : “This is a day full of clues which need to be solved…” and proved to be the case at each stage of an unforgettable birthday.

I steadfastly failed to decipher the clever and rhyming clues which came with a new gift at each destination, but was very happy to be led by the nose through the day.  

Clues and itinerary, one of the best organisers on the planet
made no exception on my birthday

Beginning with breakfast at our favourite Greytown cafe, we headed to Wellington for the next stage of the adventure.  Incredibly, we met with wind and rain on our journey, but this rapidly began to disappear as we reached the capital. Free-forming until the sun was shining fully again, we ducked into Te Papa to see the acclaimed Scale of our War ANZAC exhibition, but queues formed from the passengers of the two enormous cruise ships docked in the harbour sent us to the Dreamworks exhibition instead.  

A swooping, very wide-screen dragon flight through the world of How to train
your Dragon is an exhilarating highlight of the Dreamworks exhibition

It might have been second choice, but I’m so glad we saw the beautifully designed celebration of this studio’s art and creativity (including the actual greenhouse set from Curse of the Were-Rabbit!).  There’s nothing like a sharp reminder of how an illustrator might not have tried hard enough, and missed his calling, on his 50th birthday…

All too soon it was time to board the East by West Ferry fro our trip to Days Bay, on the far side of the harbour.  The day was hot and sunny by this time, and we sat up on the top deck, taking in views of the harbour we haven’t seen since living in this city.  We crossed the wake of the recently passed Interislander and picked up some of the larger vessel's ocean-going companions as they turned to follow us instead - yes, I even got dolphins on my birthday!

The original plan had been to paddle board at Days Bay, but being behind schedule and a northerly breeze made us quite happy to park this activity for another time - as long as I got into the sea at some point I’d be more than happy.

"We're on a boat!"

We had a wonderful lunch at the Cobar restaurant, looking out across the harbour from a shaded outside table, watching the local school take to the water on their ‘beach day’, the squeals of delight reminding me how I used to, and still feel about getting into water at any opportunity.

We swam out to an anchored raft straight after lunch, the sea surprising Rose with how much warmer it is than the Wairarapa rivers we’re used to.  I carried on to the Day’s Bay wharf, and then we thad time for a coffee at another cafe before catching the ferry back again.

Judging by that smile I’m not the only one who loves being in the sea on a hot afternoon.

At a couple of points during the afternoon it looked as if the sun might finally be disappearing behind hazy high cloud for good, but every time it seemed to blast out with full force again (as evidenced by Rose’s ruddy complexion when we got home ).

Passing Te Papa again on the way back to the car, we decided to try our luck with the Scale of our War exhibition again, and this time we got straight in.  Not only was the detail of the oversized human figures overwhelmingly impressive, from magnified stitching and shoelaces to skin pores and stubble, but the Gallipoli-themed installation was naturally very moving.  

Richard Taylor touches up one of the gigantic recreations of an Anzac combatant
in the Scale of Our War exhibition.

A beautiful home-cooked meal marked the end of a very full and indulgent day.  Relaxing with a movie, whisky in hand and skin pleasantly taut with an abundance of sun and sea spray is my favourite way to end any day.  Unwilling to let it all end, I stayed up late, watching a movie and responding to birthday wishes on Facebook (yes, the settings worked properly this time).

As I self-indulgently reflect on my rather selfish life so far I realise that it isn’t really about me.  What makes me smile now, and always, are the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. 

Solo Misadventure: Part Two – River deep, Mountain high

Getting from the Waiohine to the Tauherenikau river isn't usually difficult where I live, unless you do it via a mountain.

Accommodation for one - bring your own matches.

The view of the Tauherenikau river in summer, glimpsed from the train at the start and end of our daily commute, scarcely does it justice.  From the railway bridge it tends to look like a large dusty quarry with some despondent rivulets of water winding their way across the gravel.

But only a little way further into the hills it becomes a poster girl for New Zealand tourism. 
The banks nestle in on either side, and native bush begins to proliferate, palms shading, and ferns fringing sparkling clear pools. I’d swear you can smell the oxygen in the water, it fizzes near the sun-warmed surface as you pass through this beautiful river.  An author I was privileged to interview a couple of years ago coined the expression ‘the weight of nature’ in one of his books, and you can certainly feel it here.

I reach these parts of the Tauherenikau by wading up the river in high summer, able to cover a fair distance due to the low water level.  But I can only get so far, and only recently I realised that the answer had been staring me n the face every time I visited my favourite swimming hole at the other nearby river, the Waiohine. At the end of the road is a sign indicating the beginning of the track to 899m Mt Reeves, but when I finally read it properly, saw that the track continues down to Tutuwai hut, perched near a part of the Tauherenikau river I hadn’t seen before. the sign indicated the 11km distance would take 4.5hrs.

My legs still feeling the effects of the previous day’s return from Riversdale, I pedalled the familiar journey to the start of the track. 
I had originally intended to make the return trip to Tutuwai hut in a day, but Rose had convinced me to turn it into an overnight stay.  Her motivation might have been to get me out of the house but she also probably saved my life.  I had almost made the classic mistake of not respecting the mountain - it might only have been 11km, but it was STEEP!

The track ascended sharply through pine, then bush and eventually beech forest.  Assuming that the summit would be the halfway point of the journey, I hoped to reach it in 2hrs 15 minutes.  Nearing the top a wind picked up.  I passed a small party of mature trampers heading the other way, and as I write this they are still the last human beings I’ve seen in 30 hours.  Because, as it turned out, they had been the last people to stay at the hut and I had it entirely to myself.  

View from the top of Mt Reeves

But back to the present, with thigh muscles whimpering, I managed to make the top exactly when I hoped I would.  The Wairarapa spread out far below me and I got my first view of the Eastern Tararua range, glowering beneath some ominous clouds and reminding me again that this wasn’t just a stroll - people have died in these mountains.

If I’d thought the climb was steep the descent was insane, and I shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was to make it down in a single hour - seeing the pink straight angles of the hut roof through the trees was jarring after the constant green and brown of the track, but a huge relief.

The company I enjoyed at Tutuwai hut.

Tutuwai appeared to have enough sleeping space for a couple of rugby teams, but presently there was just me, and it stayed that way.  As much as I enjoyed the solitude, another party might have had matches with them. This was a crucial oversight which lead to some embarrassing attempts to ‘MacGyver’ my way out of forsaking a hot dinner.  I tried to focus the sun through an empty wine bottle onto some dry leaves, but discovery of my plight had come too late in the day … I even tried rubbing sticks together and finally banging rocks.  A discarded lighter flared briefly then died once and for all.  I was stuffed, or rather not stuffed after a modest dinner of dry food and not the nourishing 'Kaweka' meal I had packed.  It was having to take the coffee, which I’d carried here, off the menu which really hurt, though.

I swam and read until the light finally disappeared - the sun appearing to roll along the ridge of the mountains, rather than dipping behind them.

The view from Tutuwai hut veranda.

I spent a surprisingly unnerving night in that huge hut all by myself.  Every creak of the cooling building seemed magnified, as did the distant scream of some still-unidentified wildlife.  What most concerned me though was the possibility that I could be invaded at any minute by a drunk party of pig hunters.  The sound of the nearby river fooled me several times by mimicking distant human voices, but despite all this I eventually fell into a deep, long sleep.

Despite the forecast, the next morning was sunny and hot, so I hit the trail early, prepared for the slope back to the top.  I say prepared, but it still hurt.  Weirdly, on summiting and coming back into cellphone range at last, I received a text from my manager, asking me if I wanted Waitangi day off.  I now see that dark things have happened to New Zealand while I was gone, but my first news was the opportunity to extend my holiday by another day - and I grabbed it.

My last view of the Tauherenikau valley as I head for home.

Like my Riversdale trip, I also finished this one with a swim in the Waiohine when I reached the end of the trail.  Tramping is supposed to be a social activity, and as much as I enjoyed myself I did feel very isolated and maybe a tiny bit lonely, (I even caught me talking to myself over breakfast).  I’ve had great, if exhausting experiences over the past week, but it’s time to call a halt to the solo misadventures for a little while.

Solo Misaventures: Part One - Up Hill and down (Rivers)Dale

A couple of years ago I cycled to Castlepoint and camped overnight -
this time it was Riversdale Beach's turn.

Bedtime - the view from my tent

Did you know kilometres stretch in extreme heat?  

I also discovered that the degree of road incline also expands, and I believe these two facts may be closely linked.

Temperatures well in excess of thirty degrees made my trips to and from the coast over the past couple of days less fun than they could have been.  Glancing at my heavily sun-blocked forearms as I trundled over liquifying tar seal, they started to look to me like giant melting Kit kat fingers, and I really had to question my wisdom of picking two sunny days for this trip just so that my tent wouldn’t get rained on.

The tent was on my back, contributing generously to the total 9.2kg strapped to my shoulders, but I kept telling myself, during many gulps of fast-warming water, that 85 kilometres should be a doddle. I have friends who might consider that distance a warm-up.

Let’s just say that it wasn’t a doddle, the heat made everything much harder, including breathing. As mentioned above, signposts seemed to mock me, distances were surely distending grotesquely under the relentless sun  I was probably saved when I started to feel an off-shore breeze pick up, but naturally it was also a headwind.

The long and winding road, gradually inching seawards

So I’m hardly proud of the seven hours it took me, butI was very relieved to finally arrive at the coast.  I bought a delicious cold beer, and pondered my next problem.  I had been told that freedom camping was possible at Riversdale Beach (there is no camping ground) but the plethora of signs forbidding tents was fast making me believe otherwise.

A tentative enquiry resulted in the suggestion that I could ask the local adventure camp if they had space.  I’m a law abiding citizen, but I didn’t come all this way with a sleeping bag and tent on my back just to be barely tolerated in a corner of someone’s playing field.  Dammit, I was sleeping on the beach!

Rock formations at the south end of Riversdale beach.  If you squint you might
 make out the Castlepoint 'castle' at top left.

My rebellious streak only lasted as far as me walking miles down the sand, as far away from holiday homes and potentially officious beach ramblers as I could get. I located a likely spot semi hidden by toe-toe bushes and safely above  the high tide mark (I hoped).

After a huge serving of fish and chips I set to work, deciding just to lay out the inner part of the tent without the flysheet - it was a perfectly still evening and still very warm and the pegs didn’t really have much purchase in the sandy ground.  The finished result looked a little shonky, but unobtrusive, and I just hoped a wind didn’t get up.

No place like home...

Wriggling inside as the sun finally began to dip I was encouraged to see  a quad-biker passing right in front of my hideout without even noticing me.

I fell asleep ridiculously early, but on waking up in the middle of the night was very glad I hadn’t put the flysheet on - the stars were blazing above me, hardly dimmed by the tent netting and I recognised new constellations each time I re-awakened and the sky had shifted. And right in front of me a crescent moon cast a glittering path on the dark waves.

Very conscious that the next day was going to be even hotter, I manage to pack my tent in the first glimmer of dawn and be on the road by 6.30am.  (These little personal challenges are all very well, but the transit time means that I barely get to enjoy the destination).

I was determined to cover as much distance as I could before the sun got high, and pedalled furiously through the coastal hills like a dawn-dreading vampire so reduced in means that he doesn’t have a black coach to race back to his castle in.  It had been a very dewy night (the tent was somewhat damp when I packed it away) and fortunately the warming sun also produced a cool thick mist over the landscape, which gave me another hour of grace.

A brief stop for muesli and UHT milk, scooped out of a former cat dish by hand (MUST remember a spoon next time!), and soon the golden hills fell away on either side of me and I was back on the  Wairarapa plain.

I had considered catching the train home from Masterton, as Highway 2 isn’t that much fun on a bike, but I was also keen to get home; so had a large breakfast and then hit the melting road again.  I really must have been eager to get home - shaving an hour off yesterday’s time.  Or perhaps it was the thought of plunging into the Waiohine river which motivated me, (and it was well worth it).

I’m a little sore, but tomorrow is the next solo misadventure: an overnight tramp to the Tauherenikau Valley, and I’m off to pack a spoon.

One of my favourite parts of the trip to Riversdale, this beautiful corridor of poplar trees.

A Safe Arbour

We've discovered a completely different form of 'suspended animation'.

Ed and I, hanging out.

 Our property is bordered by a stand of native trees which we refer to, somewhat pretentiously, as 'the forest'. A haven for native birds, it is part of a bush corridor which extends from our land into the Tararua foothills.  During the day tui and fantails flit and kereru swoop though its many shadowed branches, while after nightfall it becomes an auditorium for moreporks enthusiastically engaged in their own distinctive form of social media.

Consisting mainly of native totaras and cabbage trees, deep within our own woodland is what we assume to be a rimu which has grown in a remarkably un-tree-like way. Four metres above the ground, the dappled trunk suddenly corners at 45 degrees and then levels out to form a solid horizontal beam, eventually terminating in branches which stretch skywards once again.

This unusual form is a mystery - perhaps the tree's destiny was shaped by a long-gone over-hanging branch, forcing it to elbow its own way out from underneath.  

The drawbacks of rope swings have been highlighted in the news this year, but I have to confess it was the first thing to cross my mind when we discovered this arboreal rafter. But as usual, my wife had a better idea - we were going to make a 'hanging bed'.

Rose's Your Weekend spread - describing how you can make your own hanging bed.

Essentially a slatted wooden bed frame complete with mattress and cushions, we suspend this arrangement from our tree's natural crossbar with a series of ropes connected to each corner. Perching on one end with your feet dangling above the surrounding fern and bracken, you fall gently back and savour the softly rocking motion your manoeuvre has created.

So successfully relaxing is this structure that we defy anyone to remain awake longer than ten minutes without surrendering to its levitating embrace. A view of the forest canopy and patches of sky through the shading upper foliage is a supremely restful sight as your eye lazily traces the graceful contours of the limbs above, and before long the purring company of at least one of our cats is inevitable.

Older trees on either side form a natural chamber around you, and the weight of nature gently enfolds you like a blanket.  Eventually you'll open your eyes again to find that shadows from the leaves branches above you have shifted, indicating the passage of time while you've dozed.

We've recently had a couple of perfectly still, warm evenings, and have spent the night under the arched, protecting arm of our special tree. It's very special waking up in the cool early morning air to the dawn chorus and the first light of a new day glimmering through the overhead leaves and branches.  Obviously not a year-round activity, we intend to make the most of this while summer lasts.

Coastal Change

Happy New Year! Here's a tale of a long, long ago summer which might chime with some of your own recollections of family holidays when school/work was still unimaginable weeks away...

I was always a late developer, never more obviously so than in my early teens. At that crucial age my already diaphanous self-confidence was shredded by two things: The first of these was the fact that I went to a single-sex college and had little-to-no concept of how to interact with girls – if I could even find any.  And secondly: an oddly-shaped bite saw my nervous smile scaffolded with glittering orthodontic braces for a very long, and socially critical, two years.

Kids seem so much more confident these days, some even see similar corrective treatment as a statement, but for me it was an unsightly muzzle and I felt as if I was trying to interact with an increasingly scary world with a paper bag over my head.  Indeed, some days that would have felt like a blessing. It’s been said that one reason the Frankenstein monster is so popular in youth culture is that the clumping, out-sized, misunderstood creature chimes with how an adolescent male can feel: trapped in an uncoordinated, complexion-ravaged and oddly-proportioned  body, struggling to be accepted before rebelling against an uncaring world. I certainly wasn’t late in developing my teenage angst.

Already shy, stuttering and gawky, what passed for a social life was spent with a few classmates who have remained loyal and cherished friends to this day.  None of us were sporting legends or endowed with full social calendars, but our somewhat book-ish camaraderie enabled us to happily suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous early adolescence together. If the unimaginably remote subject of girlfriends ever arose, the awkward, foot-shuffling silence could always be covered up with the kind of braying, teenage bravado which even we weren’t immune to (while we secretly hoped that maybe the combined colleges formal dance, still years way, might be our deliverance).
Then one summer it all seemed to change in a matter of weeks - a long-overdue quantum leap.
I think I can say exactly how it began. My usual summer holiday routine of spending almost all my time with a visiting friend, whom I only saw once a year, was interrupted.  The reason is lost in the mists of time, but I suspect the very thing lacking in my life, co-ed socialising, might have been a factor for him.

I faced an immediate future which lacked its usual structure, and like many social inepts, this vexed me.  My regular friends were away on long family holidays, or working summer jobs.  So I wandered down to the town swimming pool, the only place to be, (but not necessarily by yourself). And while convincing myself that I was having a great time all on my own, I received some abuse.  The friendly, good-natured abuse which boys at this age (actually, any age) greet each other with.  It was an acquaintance from school, he was calling me over to meet his friends, and some of them were girls.

At 15, I quickly discovered that I had a horrible tendency to go all ‘Rex Harrison’, in female company. Stilted vocabulary, exaggerated courtesy, I could hope at best to be called ‘polite’, but most likely, simply a dick.  But fortunately, they were all nice people, we had fun, I relaxed, and gradually realised that the same things I could make my usual male friends laugh with made girls laugh too. I could be funny, and not just unintentionally. Somehow, I was quickly accepted into this new fold, and we went on excursions to rivers, beaches and even out at night. But mostly, long December afternoons were spent punctuated by the reverberating twang of diving boards and the myriad splashes and shouts which make up the ambient babble of an outdoor swimming complex. Water would pool on the rough concrete we lay on, while the sun warmed and dried our backs and, impossibly, I talked to girls. To them I was new and I was different, sometimes even in an interesting way (being bookish can have its advantages sometimes). I was happy… and suddenly I was also gone, due to the sudden arrival of my first summer holiday job.

I wasn’t looking, it was found for me, but in the spirit of happily accepting all the exciting new things suddenly coming my way, I threw myself into hard, vineyard labouring. It almost killed me, but there were girls there too, who also found me funny – mostly because of my total naivety forged from years of ignorance of the opposite sex.  But at least I had new stories to tell my new friends when I saw them at the Town Pool in the weekends.
I hardly recognised my life anymore, I had new friends, a tan, I was even making money – and then I was transplanted for the second time.

My own family holiday had arrived, two weeks away from this recently-born, thrillingly ‘adult’ new existence to a place which might be politely described as infamously quiet and remote.  In a tent.  With my family.

Kaikoura has considerably more glamour and appeal these days, but back then my sister and I refused to believe we were actually staying here until Dad pulled off the highway into the dusty Motor Camp.  But even here, the unstoppable spirit of change which this summer had unleashed sought me out and continued to re-order my life.

It would have made this summer a perfect cliché to talk about a holiday romance at this point.  I did meet a girl (being a relative of our camping friends and staying in a tent right next to ours, even someone with my feeble hit rate couldn’t fail to) and we spent a lot of time together.  We walked along the beach, and talked, and talked, and talked – way past my usual bedtime.  Although my arrested emotional development couldn’t fail to turn this overwhelming new experience into something resembling infatuation, it was entirely one-sided and completely platonic. The closest it came to ever becoming in any way physical was her grabbing me in fright when a startled cow loomed out of the darkness as we crossed a field from the beach one night.  But what these many hours sharing stories and experiences with a slightly ‘older woman’ did for me was give my tremulous self confidence the final boost it had so badly needed for so long.
Even through a mouthful of wire I could apparently be entertaining, and I glimpsed finally that there could be more to existence than the cycle of school, family life and homework which had somehow contented me for the past decade. I also passed School Certificate that holiday and Dad gave me my first ever driving lesson. On returning from Kaikoura I was barely ever found at home.  I was growing up at last.

Meeting up with my usual friends at the end of that January, I think they could sense the change in me, we were all changing – it was inevitable even for us.
But for me, that one memorable summer seemed the catalyst which transformed years of swelling emotional and hormonal critical mass into something finally resembling an adult. As chain reactions go, it was hardly the Big Bang but the strangeness and joy of it all encouraged me to write.  I kept a diary and I loved trying to describe all the new experiences and people I was suddenly encountering.  I’m still writing to this day.

Some thought always goes into an illustration - I'd been thinking about this one for thirty years!

The dark side of the Sun

Although we’ve just suffered another southerly blast in this most disappointing of summers, it’s always wise to use protection.

Showing more sense than I did, this Phasmatodea shelters from the sun, on our pod chair.

Summer used to reignite a love affair for me every year. It was an all-consuming passion which usually led to abandoned clothing scattered about prostrate, perspiring bodies. There was often a distressing amount of publicly exposed flesh, and sometimes whole groups of people were involved. The object of this obsession was spectacularly unfaithful, bestowing favours to any old passer-by, but it was only when this relationship literally tore a strip off me that I realised that my love affair with the sun might finally be over.

It certainly wasn’t love at first sight – quite the opposite, in fact. My family arrived in the early 1970s, fleeing the jaws of a Scottish winter to land squinting in the fierce summer sunshine, on the shimmering, bubbling tarmac of a Marlborough airstrip. Like many of my country-folk I was what is now known as a ‘‘ginga’’, with a milky-white complexion which instantly burned under the Pacific sun. It’s fair to say that Blenheim edges out Glasgow in terms of sunshine hours, and so a whole new world of hurt awaited me if I didn’t take precautions.

Although this was an age when parents cheerfully lathered their kids in coconut oil and flung them outside to get ‘‘nice and brown’’, my childhood summers were spent sensibly covered up or inside, never feeling that I was missing anything beyond stinging, peeling skin.
With adolescence came summer holiday work – always outdoors in baking temperatures – and an awkward new sense of self-image. Try as I might, long-sleeved skivvies could no longer cut it as either a summer fashion statement or practical agricultural work wear, and I had no choice but to grimace and bare it.

It wasn’t easy, but towards the end of my first summer spent working and socialising outside I remember glancing down at my own forearm and noticing with shock that it was darkening from the usual pink to a kind of orangey- brown – and I liked it. I felt like a newly born denizen of summer, no longer scorched and rejected, but finally accepted and welcomed into a bright new world. My days of cringing from the sun like some pale invertebrate clinging to the underside of a rotten log were over, and the following summer saw me hitting the rays hard. Endowed with a physique that once had well-meaning student nurses use me as the model for a skeletal system quiz, I now found that brown skin quite literally covered a multitude of sins. I looked healthy and felt healthy – sunlight gives you vitamin D and that was good for you, right? The real clincher was falling asleep outside and then finding later that the sun appeared to have dried up my teenage acne almost overnight. There was surely no end of benefits which our all-generous life-giving star bestowed and I basked in the rays whenever possible.

Years later, while preparing for a period living overseas I became aware of a shift in attitude to the sun. There was talk of something called melanoma as we left New Zealand, but that seemed to be a condition only older people got – whatever it was.

Living among the pasty Celts of my birth country once again, I found that the peer pressure to be brown made my devotion to the sun look positively indifferent.
When summer arrived – usually for a couple of mid-week days each year – sun-starved Scots would practically drop where they stood, instantly surrendering to the elusive rays. Parks would be strewn with inert bodies, like the aftermath of a sudden massacre, rapidly reddening expressions suggesting an attempt to tan through sheer force of will.
This compulsion was most obvious after the holiday season, when chocolate-brown workmates would make proud returns to work amidst a chorus of tan-envy, after immolating themselves for two weeks on a Spanish beach. And if these startling changes in skin colour sometimes looked suspiciously streaky, and a little orange, nothing was ever said. The fear of striking disappointing weather on a package holiday haunted everyone, as did the sense of defeat in having to apply a bottled tan, once home.

Returning to New Zealand in the mid-90s , I saw that change was obviously in the air. Everyone spoke of the ‘‘hole in the ozone layer’’ with dread, and beaches were noticeably quieter during the heat of the day. Sun hats and full-body swim suits for kids were everywhere, as was marketing for sunscreen. The Coppertone girl had been replaced by a milky slime which, we were told, could save our lives.
It’s not that I chose to disregard these near-hysterical messages; it was just that old habits die hard. Now living in the countryside with a large property to maintain, I was probably spending more time out in the sun than ever, and still never believing that the sun’s rays, now harmfully affecting almost 67,000 New Zealanders every year, could ever hurt me.
My long-overdue, Icarus-like plummet from the sun’s fiery influence probably began in the same way as it did for many thousands of people – with my partner noticing an odd patch of skin on my back. Even then, the area being out of my sight and therefore mind, made me delay another year until eventual bleeding finally led me ashen-faced to my GP.

I was lucky – the area was diagnosed as basal cell carcinoma, the most common and least dangerous sun-induced form of skin cancer. Still it’s not to be taken lightly. An oval portion of skin and muscle 3.8 centimetres in length was promptly cut out of my back. 

The resulting scar is as pale as I was when I first arrived in New Zealand, and would probably burn very quickly in the sun, if I was foolish enough to give it the opportunity. I still love the sun, but clearly you can love something too much. Self-destructive relationships can leave scars, or worse. It’s better to learn and live.

 

Looking down on creation

A Christmas tree might have proved an unsafe height recently, but we once climbed to an oxygen-starved 5545m.  

"Not too much further."

 The film Beyond the Edge http://fasmatodea.blogspot.co.nz/2013/12/yearly-projections.html has made me think that it’s time to recount our own humble Himalayan adventure.  Ever since a Kiwi beekeeper climbed to the highest point on Earth in 1953, Mt Everest has felt to many almost like a distant annex of New Zealand. It isn’t, of course. It’s a sacred mountain puzzlingly named after a 19th-century British surveyor, but known more authentically and evocatively to local people as Chomolungma or Sagarmatha – the great Mother Goddess. Either way, many New Zealanders are drawn to trek the Himalayan foothills, enjoying even more goodwill from the Nepalese than usual thanks to the humanitarian legacy of Sir Edmund Hillary. At the end of 1994, we were among them.

Travelling to the roof of the world had been a long-held ambition and returning to a New Zealand summer after several years away presented the opportunity to fulfil this dream. But actually reaching Nepal turned into a nightmare when we became stranded in Moscow and were forced to take an unplanned, expensive flight to Delhi to get out of Russia.

India couldn’t have been more welcoming, but we had our hearts set firmly on Nepal and we were soon part of a surge of humanity filling a night train to the northern border. Sleeping fitfully in our berths, we rattled through one of the world’s most venerable and spiritual lands, while a constellation of well-meaning eyes and smiling teeth glowed in the darkness of the carriage around us.

Finally arriving in Nepal felt like reaching the Promised Land, and we began with a truncated trek through the Annapurna circuit as a warm-up for the higher Himalayan trails. We were introduced to the rhythms of early rising and retiring, with the hours in between punishing us with endless climbing and rewarding with breathtaking views. We reached altitudes above 3000 metres, very modest compared with what we would face later, but high enough to matter when I had to literally crawl out of a steep but admittedly beautiful valley, weakened by the first of many stomach upsets. Trekkers are always warned that altitude sickness is the greatest enemy, but unfamiliar bacteria in your digestive tract can floor you more effectively. The ensuing 11-hour night bus to Kathmandu was an exhausting experience, almost every minute of the journey spent with my body clenched against cramps.

Dawn in a new city, even one as crowded and noisy as Nepal’s capital, can have a restorative effect and, after a frenzy of permit applications and transport bookings, we were heading into the Sagarmatha National Park to begin our weeks-long ascent to the Mt Everest base camp. We soon met up with a shifting roster of new friends and together had experiences that will remain with me forever as a personal cinematic montage. Roll sequence: Gazing contentedly at distant peaks from a recently conquered ridge, crossing outrageously high and unsafe wooden bridges, watching langur monkeys playing in the trees, turning a Buddhist prayer wheel as we pass one of many monasteries and exchanging ‘‘namaste’’s with smiling Nepalese sherpas as they jog past us with twice their own body weight strapped across their shoulders.

Now intercut with gut-busting climbs of hundreds of metres straight up, suddenly gasping awake from sleep apnoea because of the thinning oxygen as we ascended towards base camp, almost falling down a mountain when I foolishly climbed a peak by myself and, yes, my recurring stomach upsets. But even this had its amusing side. The night before our final climb to 5545m and an unsurpassed view of the great Mother Goddess, I was awoken by an all-too familiar urgent need and quickly found a latrine hut. Pulling open the door, I was confronted by a huge, shaggy, heavy-breathing figure stamping its displeasure on the wooden floor, and almost lost all control in shock. It was not the fabled yeti, but a yak which had somehow found its way inside and shut the door.

The encounter might have inspired me to visit Khumjung Monastery on our way back down, where I had heard a famous yeti scalp was kept. I spent a serene afternoon sipping tea and eating bread and jam with a novice monk whose command of English was only slightly better than my Nepalese. Despite momentarily startling him with my enthusiastic mime of a yeti, I was honoured with a viewing of many other religious relics, but left with the mystery of the Abominable Snowman very much intact.   Our trek eventually ended when we bumped and rattled our way off the edge of a cliff and safely into the air, at the infamous Lukla airstrip. Although our pilot appeared to be reading a newspaper throughout our flight back to Kathmandu, we arrived safely for a few days of relaxing après trek. We dined at restaurants and drank beer, neither of which was easy to do in the mountains. Perhaps it was letting my guard down and not eating as cautiously as I should have, which caused me to become seriously ill this time.

Coming out of a mild delirium in which I imagined the folds in my bed sheets were distant mountain ranges, I found our new trekking friends had come to say goodbye. ‘‘You’re not seeing me at my best,’’ I said, a little bizarrely. ‘‘We already have,’’ they replied with smiles equal parts worried and reassuring. It was to be many weeks before I was anywhere near my best again.

Rose literally carried me back to New Zealand, a lifesaving feat made easier by my plummeting body weight. Arriving back at Christmas was the worst possible time for diagnosis and treatment, but being unable to move by this point meant that I had plenty of opportunity to recover from renal failure by myself. It seems that recurring illness had dehydrated me once too often, as far as my kidneys were concerned. It wasn’t the merriest of Christmases, but I was home and safe. My mother arranged a special repeat Christmas dinner several weeks later, as I slept through December 25. It had been a summer of unsurpassed heights and life ebbing lows and, when my health returned, I had been changed in many ways. I had glimpsed the roof of the world, but also learnt to never take feeling well for granted again

The Southern Lights

35 years ago, New Years Eve in New Zealand made world headlines,
but not for any reasons you might expect. 

The final day of 2013 has dawned hot and bright – already the best day weather-wise since Christmas, over a week ago.  And this is quite natural, as this also happens to be my first day back at work, since finishing an absurd 22 hour shift on Christmas Eve.

Part of the reason for this rather long day was my determination to complete a project which I first began working on in the middle of this year, but then found less and less time available to work on as my job spiralled into the purgatory of ‘admin’.

Today is the 35^th anniversary of one of the world’s most famous UFO sightings. And it happened more or less above my head as twelve-year-old me slept on oblivious to the fact that the Marlborough skies were at that moment full of a phenomenon which I usually sent everyone else to sleep with.

I do remember seeing the now-famous footage shot by Quentin Fogarty’s camera crew, soon afterwards, on their return to Blenheim in the very early hours of December 31 1978. Although reportedly feeling as if their Argosy freighter was being played with by the mysterious objects like a lumbering fishing boat surrounded by a mischievous pod of darting, leaping dolphins, the film sadly does little to convey this. Instead a fuzzy, ‘squashed orange’ bumped around TV screens all over the country (and eventually the world) accompanied by Fogarty’s excited narrative.  In fact, I’m pretty certain we didn’t even have a colour TV then, but the even less impressive result did little to curb my enthusiasm.

Despite being the only case of unidentified flying objects ever verified by multiple radar sources and visual sightings simultaneously, (amounting to several reliable witnesses including  experienced air crews and air traffic controllers), and on top of all that actually filmed – few people seem to remember this incident today.  The only echoes of it I was aware of years later came from seeing pilot Captain Bill Startup’s son ribbed in my seventh form class, because of his father’s experiences.

I managed to acquire both Bill Startup’s book (The Kaikoura UFOs) and journalist Quentin Fogarty’s (Let’s Hope They’re Friendly!) for my research, and each give fascinating accounts - Startup’s  factually, and Fogarty’s more emotionally.  Either way, it’s clear that there was an awful lot more to this story than the public was ever made aware of, and this was emphasised further by the white-wash report prepared by the New Zealand Defence Force.  The nearby Japanese Squid fishing Fleet and/or Venus rising explanations offered are both embarrassingly inadequate, and perhaps the reaction of an anxious Government caught short by the possibility of foreign aircraft making merry in our airspace while the Cold War still loomed.

To me it’s very appropriate that this event occurred during the festive season, book-ended by child-like amazement and looking to the future. The universe, and even some aspects of New Zealand history, is still full mysteries. As we enter a bright new year may we never lose our capacity for wonder.

Happy New Year!

Stardust Memories

Anyone get music for Christmas?  Be very careful how often you play it – some albums may never find their way out of your head...

As most of us have now begun our summer holiday, here’s a not-especially proud look back at some of the albums , Christmas presents or otherwise, which somehow came to embody certain of my summers long past.  You probably have your own – music which either by choice, necessity or desperation became inextricably entwined with memories of certain December/Januarys when summers really were long and hot.  So why don’t you tell me about them - as a wise man once said: “When we share, we heal”.

Summer 1977

First I can remember would have to be The Story of Star Wars – the first album I ever owned.

Videotapes and DVDs were as much a part of the future as droids and lightsabres, but the magic of audio cassette technology condensed the film soundtrack down to roughly 24 minutes on each side, and provided wonderfully baritone linking narration from Afro-American actor Roscoe Lee Brown (To Kill a Mockingbird). I could now replay Star Wars as many times as I wanted – and I did: again, and again, and again.  Every moment from the opening 20^th Century Fox fanfare to Alec Guinness solemnly wrapping up by promising that: “The Force will be with you, always” became indelibly embedded in my 11-year-old mind. No wonder it was going to be many long years until I finally got a girlfriend.

Summer 1980

I’m probably even less proud of this one, but it really wasn’t my fault.  Leaving town on a two week family holiday to the Nelson Lakes National Park, perhaps inspired by the name of our destination (I can think of no other justification) my father picked up the cassette of a Willie Nelson album called Stardust.  I think we’d call it a ‘covers album’ these days, and it got thrashed severely over the following fortnight. At the end of ‘Georgia’, possibly his most well-known effort, Nelson repeats the line “on my mind” over and over again, which I now believe was actually some kind of insidious audio-brainwashing. Because even now, in my poor mind perfectly good songs like ‘Moonlight in Vermont’ and ‘Sunny side of the Street’ are forever associated with Willie’s arid, quavering warble.

Summer 1984

My first year away from home must surely have developed some more refined musical tastes.  Mixing with ferociously-trendy design students from all over the country must have exposed me to many new and challenging kinds of music?  Well, yes…it did, but what I chose to play this summer was the soundtrack to an unknown movie called FM. (It apparently went on to ‘inspire’ long-running radio station sitcom WKRP, which perhaps gives some idea of its flavour.)

Although often found at the bottom of bargain bins, this album showcased tracks from Foreigner, the Eagles, Steely Dan and that colossus among one-hit wonders – Boston’s mighty “More than a Feeling”.  A camping holiday with friends in the wilds of Marlborough’s back-country was spiced up no end by this collection of ‘past-its-sell-by-date’ 70s rock and our air guitars got a damn good work-out that summer, I can tell you.