Monday 23 April 2012

Kiwi Truths: Ten Things I've learned in New Zealand

Now six months into my Kiwi adventure, the journey I’ve embarked upon has been as much a slingshot up a learning curve as a trundle across New Zealand. In this post, I’ve selected just a few of the quirky things - some peculiar to NZ, some applicable to life as a whole - that I've picked up from people and experience along the way.

1. Nothing tastes better than a fish you caught yourself.
Fishing in New Zealand isn't just a hobby, it's a integral part of kiwi lifestyle and culture. "The most important things in New Zealand are your boat and your bach" observed one Bay of Islander I spoke to. Almost every household in the country seems to have some seagoing vessel or other trailered up in their driveway, and every weekend boat ramps and fishing spots swarm with activity, abuzz with the whir of 2-stroke engines. Harbour fronts and jetties are populated by parents teaching their toddlers the basics of angling, and at every rocky atoll you come to there is always a lone fisherman stood stoically beside a 12ft surf-casting rod while the waves burst over him. Though not quite as hardcore, I've gone from knowing zilch about catching a fish to being able to paddle out on our kayak, catch, gut, fillet, and cook in as many ways as you'd care to mention. We've fried it, barbecued it, steamed it, chowdered it, smoked it and even eaten it raw, marinated in lemon juice and coconut milk. Delicious.

2. Anyone performing the Haka is terrifying, no matter who they are.
Whether you’re watching the All Blacks, a show at a traditional Maori ‘village’, or a tribe of school kids stamping their feet, grasping the air and chanting in unison, a Haka is always fearsometo behold. I happened across a school performance in central Rotorua, and can confirm that, despite the fact the kids can’t have been much older than eleven or twelve, it genuinely scared me. It’s a display of practice, discipline and ferocity, and I for one would not have anything with which to display in answer.

3. Kumara are the best root vegetable. Ever.
Though lumpy, misshapen, and with all the aesthetic appeal of a bull’s scrotum, Kumara are downright delicious.New Zealand’s sweet potato will enhance any recipe when used as a replacement ingredient to your bog-standard king Edward, but best prepared in a Hangi (a geothermal oven/hole in the ground).Watch your vitamin-A levels and the smile on your face grow as you munch. 

4. There are very few issues that can’t be solved with a chainsaw.
This seems to be a logic held by most Kiwi blokes. Before heading out to New Zealand, I had expected to end up falling into a culture of holistic communes, dreadlocks, and people who insist on slinging fire-poi around a beach as soon as the sun sets. In reality, New Zealand is a society built on manliness, on things that guzzle petrol and make loud noises. It’s flannel shirts, beards, and more tree management companies than you can shake a Manuka branch at. I’d stab an educated guess that at least eighty per cent of any commercial break on NZ television is made up of advertisements containing men shouting loudly about power tools.


5. It’s impossible to judge a drive time by looking at a road atlas in New Zealand. 
New Zealand has over two thousand miles less motorway than the United Kingdom, meaning that even the most major highways in the country don’t cleave their way  through the hills – they wind and knot their way up the slopes instead, often in the most bizarre, precarious route possible. Sadly, road maps here are rarely detailed enough to reveal the fact that what appears to be a course of flat, straight asphalt on the page is, in fact, a thousand metre climb and descent made in a noodle of hairpins. Consequently, what you predict to be an hour’s easy cruise can unexpectedly become three hours of engine-straining, hair-raising motoring without warning. Nice views though.

6.       The Kiwi has a rival.
That’s right, the humble Kiwi has an unlikely contender for the position of New Zealand’s national icon. Looking like the blue lovechild of a moorhen and chicken on stilts and strutting around with a misplaced air of dignity, the Pukeko was the surprise winner of the 2011 favourite bird competition. These squawking birds are seen in the warmer parts of the country, setting up camp in damp dwellings such as swamps and bogs. We lived amongst a resident flock of them in Rotorua, with Amy becoming thoroughly enamoured with them to the point of obsession. Whenever we pass one in the van, she insists on mimicking their shriek, grinning from ear to ear  - a habit I'm hoping will fade as we fade further south.


7. Freedom is shopping barefoot.
It may sound odd, but there are few things in this life quite as liberating as walking down a high street or around a supermarket with your feet as Mother Nature intended. In New Zealand, it’s the done thing, unlike the UK, where you’re shunned as too poor/mentally unstable to be a part of societal comfort. It’s often too warm for shoes, and why waste a small fortune on jandals (Kiwi term for flip-flops) when you’ve a perfectly good pair attached to you free of charge? New Zealanders seem to cycle, skateboard, even apply for jobs barefoot, all in the comfort that it’s a perfectly normal thing to do. Streets are clean here and shards of broken glass are rare, so you can walk around, soles to the ground, without the niggling fear of being struck down by hepatitis lurking at the back of your mind. Good for the heart, great for the sole.

8. How to speak Kiwi.
When immersing yourself in a culture, learning the native linguistic peculiarities is essential. Making even the smallest effort (and getting it wrong) is enough for the locals to see you're at least taking the time to embrace more than just the sightseeing. On North Island especially, place names are predominantly Maori in origin, and pronunciations can easily go awry. Perhaps the most helpful tip is know that 'wh' is pronounced as an 'f' or 'ph'. Rawhiti, for example, is rarfitee, or Whitianga is fiteeanga.
But it's not just the Maori spellings that can catch you out. New Zealand English has its own curious habits. Somewhere, at some point, someone decided, infectiously, that saying 'ay' at the end of eighty percent of sentences uttered was how it should be done, and it stuck. I've still not quite worked out whether it's turning the sentence into question, and I've often found myself wondering how or even if I should reply. Other lexical oddities include: saying the word 'heaps' heaps; saying 'good on you' heaps; and calling you a 'hard-case' heaps, ay.[?]


9. Humans have a lot to answer for.
New Zealand is the epitome of natural beauty, a country defined by its ability to let you escape into the most breathtaking landscapes, virtually devoid of signs that humanity has ever been there. But as you explore the tracks and trails and natural history, you realise just how close we, in typically colonial nineteenth-century style, came to buggering it all up. From the extinction of the Moa, an enormous flightless bird, caused by early Maori hunting, to the virtual annihilation of kauri forest, New Zealand's natural resources have been scarred by the tortures of human population. While its unique rainforests were exploited for their gum and timber during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the incidental introduction of mammals  into its ecology caused by fur traders is something from which Aotearoa's bird life may never fully recover. It's only in the past sixty years or so that a concerted effort has been made to end the destruction caused by possums, stoats and rats, and even now many methods to cull or trap them are still in question. The threat to habitats still comes from farming and industry, but their impact is minimal in comparison to what it used to be. The country is now a champion of conservation on a domestic and international level, but you can't help feel that it wouldn't have had to be if we hadn't made such as mess of it in the first place. New Zealand is a prime example of the fragility of the environment, and, consequently, how to protect it.


10. There's too much to see and do.
Six months in, and we've barely covered half of North Island, let alone South. Better get a move on...


Sunday 15 April 2012

The Bay of Islands Part Two: Farm Life

Our occupation as ‘farm hands’ in the Bay of Islands was a job neither of us are likely to forget. Everyday life on the farm involved charging around on quad bikes while chased by the resident dog, trundling around in the tractor, and generally immersing ourselves in the glorious subtropical environment.

A standard morning commute
Toiling amongst the fields and paddocks meant that we were brought (sometimes uncomfortably) closer to some of New Zealand’s indigenous wildlife: Weta, enormous cricket-like beetles; six-inch-long stick insects; bright green Mantises that would pray quietly on your shoulder without you noticing; Cicada the size of mice, with a penchant for waging kamikaze into your face, clattered loudly amongst the trees. Abound with creepy crawlies, the bush and paddocks were a natural haven for birds, and we worked in the company of herons, kingfishers, Amy’s beloved Pukeko, turkeys, bright green Kākāri (parakeets) and the endangered Brown Teal duck. Though we weren’t fortunate enough to see them, the local forests were also home to a healthy population of Kiwi.

Just across the road was a secluded bay with easy fishing where we found ourselves accompanied by inquisitive Eagle Rays and Stingrays gliding by the water at our feet while we cast in the quiet evenings. The waters teemed and danced with baitfish as Snapper chased their prey, and we would watch as Mullet would  spring rhythmically in gracefully arcs out from the glassy water.

Only a few moments’ drive from the farm, hidden amongst the hills of dense Mānuka (Tea Tree) and Totora stand some of New Zealand's most magnificent natural wonders: Kauri. 

Enormous twin-bole Kauri looming above the local forests
I’ve mentioned these arboreal giants in passing before, but they’re deserving of much more. Growing only in the country’s subtropical northern quarter, they’re a living relic of a prehistoric New Zealand, where lack of human interference and introduced predation meant that the forests could flourish without restraint. Sadly, the immense Kauri forests were one of the main natural resources New Zealand had to offer at the turn of the 20th century, and very rapidly the they had sacrificed their timber for short-term economic growth. Today, these barely ten percent of these gargantuan trees exist, and only in pockets of Northland, Auckland and the Coromandel, made all the more special by their scarcity. We were fortunate enough to have one of the largest and oldest remaining on our doorstep, a unique twin-bole kauri, thousands of years old and reaching almost 50 metres above the forest floor. Several other giant kauri exist in the country, the grandest and most visited being Tāne Mahuta (Lord of the Forest), a 2500 year old behemoth near Dargaville, but our local grove, tucked off the beaten track, was wonderfully quiet and all the more personal.

Culvert pipe installation. More fun than it sounds. Honestly.
Working on the farm exposed us to dimensions of Kiwi culture that are easily missed as a tourist. Some aspects we loved, and others took us out of our comfort zone. We were taken rather aback when we were handed a duck - fully intact but for the signs of a shotgun wound, and still rather warm – as a meal, and had to quickly learn how to gut, pluck and butcher it. Hunting here is a big part of life, and Amy couldn’t believe it when she saw two men proudly haul an enormous pig onto the ferry one day as she went to Paihia. At times, the farm seemed like a boot-camp for masculinity, where conversation rarely strayed from guns, chainsaws and engines, but we never minded, because we were a part of something we'd never been before.

Above all, I consider my time up north as an education. Before, I’d  have barely known where to start if you asked me to put a fence up. Ask me to install agricultural electric fencing now, and I’ll ask where your wire strainers are. I can now confidently wield a chainsaw, drive a quad bike, and even install a culvert pipe. Okay, so they sound like boring skills, but the experience was epic.




Sunday 8 April 2012

The Far North


The weather deteriorated as we drove further north, and by the time we’d reached the start of the 20km of loose gravel track to Spirits Bay, the rain formed a relentless cascade down the windscreen. The unsealed road wound its way through the bush, dipping and climbing, all the time buffeted by strengthening wind and rain. Worryingly recent landslips covered half of the track, forcing the van to negotiate its way between piles of freshly exposed tree root and red clay on one side, and terrifyingly steep drops on the other. “Maybe we should have waited for next weekend”, I said with exasperation as we narrowed another hair-raising corner.

But Amy was nothing if not stoic, "Knowing us though, the weather next weekend will be even worse, and we’ll never get up here, so we shouldn't complain”, she said. And, as ever, she was right – we couldn’t not see these places just because the weather didn’t show them in their best light; that’s a mentality best saved for the tourist, not the traveller; and in northern New Zealand, with its humidity and temperamental climate, adopting it would often mean you wouldn’t see anything. 

Eventually we arrived at Spirits Bay DoC campsite, and determined to let the rain dampen anything but our resolve, we did the honourable British thing: threw on our cagoules and trudged, heads bowed to the wind and rain, to the beach. 

I’d read somewhere that Spirits Bay is considered the most supernaturally-active place in New Zealand, with strange, distant figures seen walking in the twilight towards the ocean, paying no heed to the calls of others. I'm confident that these eerie beings are, in fact, hardy British tourists, made oblivious to anyone else by the deafening thunk of sidewards rain hitting their anoraks, determined to see the seaside no matter what the weather brings.

The coastal perfection of Spirits Bay
The next morning couldn’t have been any different. The piercing squawk of a Pukeko outside the van heralded a bluebird dawn, and we knew we’d  made no mistake in coming here. The departure of the cloud revealed Spirits Bay for what it really was; radiant in platinum-white sands and sapphire waters, divided by the thunder of heavy waves. After a morning of basking, we decided to make the most of the clear weather while we could, packed the van and headed back  along precarious gravel road to the iconic Cape Reinga.

The Tasman (left) and Pacific (right) do battle.

The cape marks the tumultuous confluence of the dark, cold Tasman Sea on New Zealand’s west coast, and the mighty glistening Pacific on its east.  A lighthouse perched atop the cliffs overlooks the engagement of the two in constant battle, their waters broiling and churning in a maelstromic embrace. Incredibly, you can even distinguish the two oceans in their different hues of deep blue.


The spectacular, spiritual Cape Reinga. 
At the foot of the craggy headland, a wizened Pohutukawa tree marks the place where Maori belief says the spirits of the recently deceased make their descent beneath the waves on their journey to the underworld. There is something unequivocally asomatous and ethereal about its stark, lonely silhouette clinging to the rocks as it gazes north across the vast emptiness of the Pacific, and it’s not hard to imagine how its ancient gnarled branches and roots could be seen as a portal to the afterlife.

The good weather unveiled the beauty of the peninsula as we trundled back down - enormous sand dunes and dazzlingly white spits, rolling hills, and the seemingly endless Ninety Mile Beach - an unbroken stretch of sand that extends, rather confusingly, for sixty miles, forming the an arcing crest at the top of New Zealand. 

The horizon is lost in the waves and sand of Ninety Mile Beach.

Sections of Ninety Mile Beach act as a dubious highway along the peninsula for the daring motorist – daring, that is, if you’re driving a fully-laden 1.6l rear-wheel drive. We’d managed to get our van stuck in a small sandy rut before in Piha, but I wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Why drive on tarmac, when there’s a perfectly novel, slightly more dangerous alternative running parallel? Thankfully, my gung-ho decision to take on this granular motorway paid off, and for the 20km between Pukenui and Waipapakauri, the tyres of our van enjoyed the freedom of beach driving, while we enjoyed the genuine adrenaline rush of wondering whether or not we were going to become sand-bound.

Everything about Northland seemed wonderfully pristine and idyllically empty, just as we'd imagined New Zealand would be. 
The sun sets over the Karikari peninsula.