minutest details of his life story to the accompaniment of proselytising gospel tunes on the tape deck. I try to ignore the smell of my crotch. My next ride is from a tired but gigantic sheep shearer who says absolutely nothing, not a word, but plays the same gospel as the Good Samaritan. We pass someone with a backpack walking on the shoulder of the road, head down. I guess it is the Englishman on his way up to Cape Reinga. Contrary to my expectations, he looks perfectly sane.
I am dropped off on the outskirts of a small settlement, but before I can stick my thumb out again, the air brakes of a double tractor-trailer snort and gasp. It pulls over on the shoulder, engulfing me in a cloud of dust. The driver jumps out of the cab wearing an oversized baggy jumper and apparently not much else over bare legs. I am apprehensive about his intentions until he helps lift my pack into the interior of the trailer, revealing a tiny pair of stubbies, rugby shorts.
An hour later he lets me out at a fork in the road. A driver stops his car to ask if I would be interested in delivering his sedan to Christchurch. ‘I’ll pay the petrol and you can take two or three days to deliver it if you wanted.’ I decline, as I’m not heading back to Christchurch just yet, but I have to wonder at the trusting nature of these people. Within minutes, another ride picks me up.
I could be tempted to settle in this hospitable, bucolic corner tucked away from the rest of the world. Even while I talk with the
driver, I cannot take my eyes off the spectacle of a world so incredibly pure and unspoiled. I want to saturate my senses with the feel of this peaceful place. The sparse, small frontier settlements of rectangular bungalows on either side of the road do not have the charm of old European villages and towns, but they are clean, appear safe and fit the clich�d description of New Zealand. It is like an innocent Midwest North America, or Britain – at a stretch of the imagination – fifty years ago. A man walking his dog waves as we drive by. I smile and wave back, as though I knew him.
A little old lady stops to give me a ride. Like the rest, she asks how I like New Zealand and when I respond positively she invites me home for tea in Te Anau. After pavlova – meringue with fruit and cream piled on top – she drives me to a backpackers lodge. I walk to the supermarket under low-slung black clouds threatening to rain or snow, and ask the manager if the grocery bag I mislaid a couple of weeks ago was ever returned. She remembers me and smiles. ‘Ah yeah, we got it back. The person behind you brought it in. No worries.’
At a pub that night, I recognise the tall muscular Maori, nodding in time to the beat of the local band. ‘You were the guy who was behind me in the supermarket a couple of weeks ago,’ I yell over the awful noise blasting out of speakers the size of a vertically mounted DOC bunk bed. ‘I think you accidentally took one of my bags of groceries.’ He barely notices me. ‘Thanks for taking the bag back,’ I bleat, looking up at him.
He glances down at my earnest upturned face. ‘No dramas, mate,’ he says. He seems unsure why I would bother to thank him for his honesty, which is normal here, even if it isn’t in the rest of the world. As we watch the band render their barely recognisable imitation of a Beatles song, he says: ‘Going off in here tonight.’
‘Yuh, you can say that again,’ I reply, flubbing the ‘yeah’ yet again. I shrug my shoulders in approximate time to the tune, attempting to look cool, like one of the boys. The music is more than just going off though, it’s rancid.
‘Yeah, choice group,’ he adds, totally confusing me.
Return to beginning of chapter
DECEMBER
----
QUEENSTOWN – WANAKA – GREYMOUTH – CHRISTCHURCH
AKAROA
CHRISTCHURCH –KAIKOURA–NELSON
ABEL TASMAN NATIONAL PARK
HEAPHY TRACK
CHRISTMAS DAY, KARAMEA
BOXING DAY,
I am dropped off on the outskirts of a small settlement, but before I can stick my thumb out again, the air brakes of a double tractor-trailer snort and gasp. It pulls over on the shoulder, engulfing me in a cloud of dust. The driver jumps out of the cab wearing an oversized baggy jumper and apparently not much else over bare legs. I am apprehensive about his intentions until he helps lift my pack into the interior of the trailer, revealing a tiny pair of stubbies, rugby shorts.
An hour later he lets me out at a fork in the road. A driver stops his car to ask if I would be interested in delivering his sedan to Christchurch. ‘I’ll pay the petrol and you can take two or three days to deliver it if you wanted.’ I decline, as I’m not heading back to Christchurch just yet, but I have to wonder at the trusting nature of these people. Within minutes, another ride picks me up.
I could be tempted to settle in this hospitable, bucolic corner tucked away from the rest of the world. Even while I talk with the
driver, I cannot take my eyes off the spectacle of a world so incredibly pure and unspoiled. I want to saturate my senses with the feel of this peaceful place. The sparse, small frontier settlements of rectangular bungalows on either side of the road do not have the charm of old European villages and towns, but they are clean, appear safe and fit the clich�d description of New Zealand. It is like an innocent Midwest North America, or Britain – at a stretch of the imagination – fifty years ago. A man walking his dog waves as we drive by. I smile and wave back, as though I knew him.
A little old lady stops to give me a ride. Like the rest, she asks how I like New Zealand and when I respond positively she invites me home for tea in Te Anau. After pavlova – meringue with fruit and cream piled on top – she drives me to a backpackers lodge. I walk to the supermarket under low-slung black clouds threatening to rain or snow, and ask the manager if the grocery bag I mislaid a couple of weeks ago was ever returned. She remembers me and smiles. ‘Ah yeah, we got it back. The person behind you brought it in. No worries.’
At a pub that night, I recognise the tall muscular Maori, nodding in time to the beat of the local band. ‘You were the guy who was behind me in the supermarket a couple of weeks ago,’ I yell over the awful noise blasting out of speakers the size of a vertically mounted DOC bunk bed. ‘I think you accidentally took one of my bags of groceries.’ He barely notices me. ‘Thanks for taking the bag back,’ I bleat, looking up at him.
He glances down at my earnest upturned face. ‘No dramas, mate,’ he says. He seems unsure why I would bother to thank him for his honesty, which is normal here, even if it isn’t in the rest of the world. As we watch the band render their barely recognisable imitation of a Beatles song, he says: ‘Going off in here tonight.’
‘Yuh, you can say that again,’ I reply, flubbing the ‘yeah’ yet again. I shrug my shoulders in approximate time to the tune, attempting to look cool, like one of the boys. The music is more than just going off though, it’s rancid.
‘Yeah, choice group,’ he adds, totally confusing me.
Return to beginning of chapter
DECEMBER
----
QUEENSTOWN – WANAKA – GREYMOUTH – CHRISTCHURCH
AKAROA
CHRISTCHURCH –KAIKOURA–NELSON
ABEL TASMAN NATIONAL PARK
HEAPHY TRACK
CHRISTMAS DAY, KARAMEA
BOXING DAY,
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