“The louder he talked of his honour, the faster we counted our spoons.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson.
1984Event-wise, 1984 was one of the Lost Years of my life. Yet it was a most signifigant year for me in other respects. In its course I formulated a set of priorities which still (modified by changing circumstance) rules my life; and in addition I forged the personal philosophy which drives it. It was a slow metamorphosis, but it led quite inexorably to the grand gesture with which I closed the year and by which I set my feet firmly upon a new path.
Before anything else, I wanted very much to see parts of NZ I’d so far missed. During 1984, I laid my plans for making my 1985 a wanderjahr.
I had approached the watershed through dissatisfaction with my lifestyle, a feeling that I was wasting my time and allowing life to pass me by. Mixed with this was a gathering hatred of my job and a general feeling of being confined by it at a time when my spirit wanted to wander.
I was staying at the Columbia Hotel, in lower Cuba Street, central Wellington. I had chosen it because it was cheap ($56 per week), clean, convenient to shops and work — and, being a hotel, it did not tie me down with bonds, leases, power, phone, and other complications. At the end of 1983 I had returned from 6 months in Australia determined to rebuild my resources preparatory to another attempt at changing my life. Furniture and other heavy chattels would be a waste of money, and a ball-and-chain come moving time. Since I’d already experienced hotel life in Melbourne, a hotel was the obvious solution.
In 1984 a private hotel was a better place to live than you may think. Once you got used to the communal toilets and showers, and to the stench of cheap disinfectant which seemed common to cheap hotels in both Australia and New Zealand, it offered a surprising degree of privacy and required a lot less housework (on your own part) than a flat. Many of the other denizens were strange, true, but by no means were all residents of private hotels old, poor, or alcoholic; and the proportion of weirdos was probably no higher than that of the general population — you just met them concentrated in one building rather than spread up and down a street.
One day early in December, I handed my notice to my employer and went to the beach for the afternoon.
Because I was paying on a weekly basis for my room, my preparations for moving were simple: I packed up everything not immediately required and sent it off to my parents in Wanganui. Then, having wound up my affairs in Wellington, I stuffed a pack with the rest of my gear, returned my room key — and went.
1985If I must choose one word by which I might sum up my 1985, that word is "serendipity". If the plans I made did not turn out as I intended, then unexpected developments more than compensated me. If I missed some things which I dearly wanted to see and do, nevertheless I did and saw other things which suited me quite as well. For this is the essense of serendipity: that you must be willing to cast other things aside to grasp the chance that comes, and you must be willing to follow wherever that chance may lead you. In 1985 I realised a number of my life’s goals, stepped closer to others, and discovered not a few more that I had never previously considered.
My journey began on the outskirts of Wanganui on the 3rd of January. I was carrying a 31kg (70lb) pack, cash worth about NZ$270 and a credit card worth $800. Even then, this was not a fortune, but it was what I had and it would last me a while. I planned to work my way round the country.
My father dropped me off on the motorway south and my nice new pack received its baptism of road dust. I grunted as I lifted its weight onto my unfit back. As always, I had set out with too much junk and too little useful gear. No matter: sorting dross from platinum was one of the minor objectives of this exercise. Within fifteen minutes the weight was off again and I was in a car driven by a semi-retired man on his way to a wedding in Palmerston North.
It was an interesting ride. As with most older people, he possessed a strong opinion on almost every subject that came up, and since standard hiker etiquette demands the evasion of argument with your ride, we got along famously. The Labour Government, he affirmed, was doing a pretty good job — but he wasn’t too sure about this Super surtax. A bloke, he asserted, worked hard and paid taxes all his working life and had a right to expect something back when he retired. "But can the country afford the Superannuation Scheme?" I timidly suggested. Of course it could, was the reply. Put those lazy buggers off the dole and marry off some of the solo mothers and you’d soon have plenty of money for Super. As things stood, though, he was going to have trouble paying for the yacht he was having built up in Whangarei. He and his wife would have to give up their planned world trip to pay for it.
He dropped me off at the turn-off at Sanson. One more ride and I was in Wellington, four hours out from Wanganui.
I didn’t feel like looking anyone up. I felt distinctly seedy and wanted to lie down somewhere. “Too soft,” I muttered to myself. So off I went to the Columbia Hotel, where $13 bought a comfortable room for the night.
I did not, however, spend a comfortable night. I felt nauseous, and twice lost control of my stomach. By hindsight I know that I’d caught a virus from my sister the night before. She’d left her infant son with my parents overnight, and I must have picked it up when she came round to collect him. But this did me no good at the time.
From Picton to Invercargill
The next day I caught the Cook Strait Railferry to Picton. It was a fair day and I was on the Arahura, newest and largest of the ferries, so the crossing wasn’t too bad. I alternated dozing in a corner with going on deck to calm my insides. I managed by this to debark at Picton feeling, if anything, a little healthier than I had when I embarked at Wellington. Neither sea nor travel-sickness have ever been a nuisance to me.
An easy walk through Picton brought me to the local Youth Hostels Association hostel. In due course it opened, and I renewed my YHA membership ($15), booked in ($6), and bought the mandatory “sheet sleeping bag” — picture a cotton Queen sheet folded lengthwise, with one end sewn shut and the other end folded over to form a pillow-case (a one-off $8.50). I slept on a mattress on the floor in the male dormitory, a converted classroom: the Picton YHA was a seasonal hostel, open only December/January).
I was on the road early the next morning, and reached Blenheim easily. I did not know, at this point, that there was a good road from Picton to the town of Havelock direct, via the base of the Marlborough Sounds. I’d taken the long way round to cover the same net distance. I walked up the Nelson road awhile, then walked some more, and then some more. I rested frequently by the roadside, thumb out, and in this stop/start fashion walked some 10 km before someone stopped. It took me almost four hours — double the time similar distances would take once my fitness picked up. The locals were friendly — one roadside stall keeper sent her daughter out with two ripe apricots, for example — but the cars simply would not stop. I nearly reached the point of examining my pack to see if there was a bloodstained axe sticking out of it.
Discouraged, I went into the YHA at Havelock, thinking I might give up travelling for the day. They told me that for $5.90 I might catch a Newmans bus though to Nelson. I decided to do that — but first I’d try hitching on. By now it was after 13:00 and the day was stinking hot. Just as I decided to turn back, a car stopped. This pattern was to repeat itself several times throughout the trip: almost enough to convince me of an all-powerful and malicious force hovering over me. I couldn’t fool it by pretending to turn back; I had actually to do so before a car would stop.
The ride took me to Pelorus Bridge: a metal structure cast across a deep ravine through which flowed a deep and cold river. It was a popular place: people drove in from Nelson and Blenheim to escape the heat. I watched with envy, as I crossed the bridge: people running, diving, swimming, sunbathing. Several people dived in off the bridge, a distance of some 15 or 20 vertical metres. Almost, I stopped and stripped down to join in. But I decided that if I did that I might not make Nelson that day. If I’d found myself in the same position later on, I would have given way — and serendipity would likely have given me my lift to Nelson. As it was, I gained nothing by my stoicism. I walked for three more hours before a truck picked me up, 8 km further on. That same truck picked up three other hikers, one of whom had stopped for a swim at Pelorus Bridge …
I finally arrived in Nelson around 7:30 pm and found the Nelson YHA full. Fortunately there was a “summer overflow” across town, and that had room for me.
As it turned out, the “overflow” — the dormitory of a local girls school — made for better accomodation than the main hostel. Hostels aim at people hardened to travel. As a rule, their facilities are complete, but spartan. The “overflow” at Nelson, however, spent most of its year catering to the needs of young girls fresh out of their homes …
§
I stayed in Nelson three nights, sorting through my pack to rid myself of crap I didn’t need and buying a few things I’d overlooked — such as a rain cover for the pack. I also went to the beach and got myself quite dreadfully sunburned — and received the wasted second of three lessons in serendipity (the first wasted opportunity, of course, was when I walked on over Pelorus Bridge).
While lying there roasting, I enjoyed watching an attractive woman who arrived shortly after I did and who arranged herself a few yards away. After a couple of hours she stood up and collected her belongings. Catching my eye, she came over and asked directions for getting into central Nelson, and also how to find the “Cobb & Co. Hotel”. I gave her directions for the former, and on learning how long a walk it was, she decided to take a taxi. As to the latter, the only “Cobb & Co.” that I knew was a restaurant. She was not sure this was right, but I gave her directions for that anyway — it might be attached to the hotel. I finished by pointing her in the direction of the nearest phone-booth so that she could call her taxi. In the process, I learned that she was Australian and that she had spent the night at the nearby Tahunanui Motor Camp.
A few minutes later, feeling the sun, I packed and started back myself. Walking, I saw a pair of red shorts some distance ahead, but thought nothing of it until I came up level. “I thought you were taxiing?” Turned out she’d decided the walk would do her good. So we enjoyed a pleasant walk around the shore line, and I got invited out on the town. Still not educated in the intricacies of serendipity, I declined and instead accepted a lunch in a coffee-house. We exchanged timetables and agreed that if (as seemed possible) we were both in Christchurch at the same time, we’d look each other up. (In the event I went through Christchurch long before she was due, so nothing came of that). She told me her address in Australia and I didn’t write it down and I forgot it. After all that, I had practically wasted a very rare occurrence — being picked up — and I have regretted it ever since.
Another early start, for this was the day I looked up a few orchardists to see if I couldn’t pick fruit to replenish my funds. A couple of obliging drivers hitched me round the area, but the nearest offer I got was berry picking without accommodation near Redwoods Valley. I might have taken it, but the pay was fortnightly and I did not think I’d be there long enough. So I gave that away and walked several kilometres back to the Greymouth road.
I’d missed the early traffic — it was now long past noon — and I wound up, several hours later, walking near Belgrove. The sun was dropping but, true to form, just as I gave up hope and the traffic died to zero, a woman stopped and picked me up. She had just tramped Abel Tasman National Park. Her story fired me with a great desire to see the Park, a desire I have not yet consummated. She lived in Dunedin. A friend had driven her car up for her to drive home with. She was on her way to Christchurch, where she planned to stay with friends. She invited me along. Regretfully, I got out at Murchison — where there was a YHA — because I still planned to hike down the West Coast and return up the East. If I’d had that ride later on, or if I’d known what was waiting in Greymouth, I’d have gone with her through the Lewis Pass and quite likely have had even more fun than I eventually did have. This was the third and final missed opportunity. After this I had learned my lesson.
In Greymouth I formulated Greg’s Rule for Hitch-hikers:
The first attribute a hitch-hiker needs is patience. The second is persistence. The third is determination. But the fourth, and often most important, is the ability to let go of a cherished goal and to accept an alternative when circumstance and serendipity dictate. This saves a great deal of frustration.
It rained and rained and rained:
The average fall was well maintained;
And when the tracks were simply bogs
It started raining cats and dogs.
The poem goes on to outline the aqueous events of the next few days, including downpours, gentle rains, etc, before concluding: “and then — the rain set in!” Only too apt! The West Coast of the South Island gets a tremendous rainfall, and I arrived in Greymouth on the verge of a proof of this. I woke next morning to the sound of rain. The weather forecast predicted rain for at least the next two days. Franz Josef Hostel, my next planned stop, was booked-out for the next two days. With my newfound wisdom, I veered. Through Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch.
I’ve often blessed that rain since, though I cursed it at the time. If it hadn’t rained that morning, I would probably have gone on the Franz Josef and been rained-in or locked-out there. Instead I saw Arthur’s Pass, where otherwise I might not have gone.
§
The highway started easily, winding up through green foothills. All inconspicuously however, the surrounding peaks got higher. I saw none of this because the clouds descended to grip the mountain-slopes in a grey ceiling. But I did see the Pass in what was arguably one of its loveliest phases: in rain, with all the waterfalls running. Looking down the valley from the top I had the unreal thrill one gets whenever one’s eye is caught by those superb visualisations in L-5 literature, of the inside of a space-habitat. The land tilted crazily, with superb waterfalls at every angle and in all ranges of size. The clouds completed the illusion of looking along the axis of a tube by blotting out the sky and the horizon.
The road was often badly maintained and narrow. There were places where I sat, barely breathing, as the wheels of the bus rolled along a foot or so from the edge of the road. Beyond the road there was a couple of feet of soft, slanted mud — and then a drop of one hundred and seventy metres to the swollen Otira River. In one place the road went up steeply to get above a kilometre-wide shingle-slip which had often closed it in the past. In another place we passed through the spray from a waterfall that came down beside — and on — the road, making the bus shake.
After this section the road levelled out, and by the time the township of Arthur’s Pass came out of the muzz I was becoming jaded with bleak hillsides. We’d climbed 920 metres in about 80 km. Ahead lay a similar fall, but spread out along 155 kilometres on the road to Christchurch. The scenery was still beautiful — as pretty as anything in the Lewis Pass, for example — but it was an anticlimax after the gorgeous western stretch. I was told that Milford Sound had more lovely scenery, but as second-best, Arthur’s Pass would do.
§
In Christchurch, the sun was shining and the hot, dry northwesterly wind was blowing — US readers can think of the Santa Ana for comparison. The high Alps squeezed every drop from the winds that brought rain off the Tasman Sea, then the air heated up in its passage across the Canterbury Plains.
Overnight in Christchurch, then on to Dunedin. But now I had a new reason for heading south, in addition to my long-standing aim of reaching Bluff. While in Christchurch I had seen a notice on the Information Board. Apricot-picking in Clyde, central Otago. Phone, etc. I rang them and they said come ahead — they’d take me.
This job was the second fruit of serendipity: for if I’d not come to Christchurch I might have missed out on it. Money was starting to run low — I’d already used my credit card to stretch it (dangerous when you have no income). I couldn’t afford to turn down a good chance at wages.
Money is like sleep to a traveller: Grab it while you have the opportunity!
Dunedin was a beautiful city. It did have its tacky side — a fountain which played badly distorted music and squirted in time to it, for one thing. But the statue of Robbie Burns was just twee, rather than tacky. Dunedin was a happy city, and I couldn’t understand what some friends had against it.
§
Onwards the next morning, striking at last for Invercargill. My memory comes up blank on this trip, except for advice that several rides gave me: “Head for Gore — but don’t go there!” Sure enough, I wound up in Gore and spent several hours of an otherwise uneventful day trying to get out. In a cold wind and spitting rain. I caught a chill and sniffle, almost the only illness I suffered in the whole trip.
I think that every hitch-hiker is familiar with the concept of what I call holes. A hole is a place that is easy to hitch into and very difficult to hitch out of. They are commonly located in large centres of population set amidst thickly populated farming areas. Three holes in New Zealand that I feel I must warn prospective travellers about are: Hamilton city, Dannevirke, and Gore. There are lesser holes in Whangarei and Blenheim and Nelson.
I feel I must add that the South Island was not nearly as good for hitching, on the whole, as the North Island. A rule-of-thumb for North Island hitching was 1.5 times the travel-time by car. For the South Island the factor was from 2 to 3 times the car’s travel-time, depending where you were.
Hitch-hiking is for travellers not in a hurry. If you are travelling against a deadline — don’t hitch. This will save wear and tear on your nerves.
Invercargill, considering its size and wealth, was dull and bland. It had few distinguishing features. Not even the floods of a few years back, which turned most of the town into a lake, had left any real mark: a few walls still tidemarked, a few empty lots. Plenty of new paint. Few decrepit houses. I suspected the flood-relief aid that entered the town in the wake of the water was more than adequate. There was no sign now of hardship.
Two days in Invercargill, even so. I was determined to fulfil my first major objective of the trip. On the Sunday, after several misdirections, I found the H&H bus that links Invercargill and Bluff. Settling back, I was rolled out through low hills and along the peninsula. Where I finally got out, the Tiwai Aluminium Smelter bulked hugely across the bay. I walked the last kilometre of State Highway 1 until, rounding the hill, I came finally upon the end: a small carpark/turnaround, focussed on the famous weatherbeaten International Distances sign. I made a note of all the distances but lost it. The only one that stuck in my mind was: “Cape Reinga — 1401 kilometres.” *
It was not quite the southernmost tip of the South Island, but it was close enough.
I didn’t go over to Stewart Island. The ferry was exorbitant and the airfare, while cheaper than the ferry, was similarly beyond my slender remaining funds. Besides which, it was raining there, had been raining for days, and looked set to continue for another day or so.
* The old AA-branded sign said “1401" as recently as 2018; the current, non-branded sign says “1403”. However, even the old AA sign looks too new to be the one I saw in 1985. I have tracked down a 1997 image that may be the one I saw.
From Queenstown to Havelock
And so to Queenstown, jewel of the southern lakes.
If Invercargill was my southern goal, Queenstown was my backstop target, in case of failure. I counted on it to lift me out of the doldrums in case I arrived there depressed and dicouraged. In the event, not needed.
The notable event of the Queenstown-wards leg was the ride with three yobbos. The car reeked of beer and marijuana. Nevertheless, rides being thin on the ground, I took it. But I kept a hand on my pack — and particularly on the unzipped side pocket which held my knife. Never hitch without a good, sharp knife (15 cm blade), but never show it unless you expect to use it.
When the car turned off onto a side road, I almost brought the knife out. “Where are we going?” I asked, staying calm.
“It’s alright, mate, there’s always a panda car up the top of that next hill so we’re just taking a cut around it.”
Nevertheless I kept my hand on the knife for the rest of the ride, and have rarely felt so relieved as I did when the car eventually turned back onto the main highway. One of the hitch-hiker’s nightmares is being in a car which turns suddenly and inexplicably off the main highway. Think of this, O reader, should you ever offer someone a lift!
Queenstown was the busiest small town that I had ever seen. With a census (1981) population of less than 3,500, it managed to give the impression of a small city. The setting is exquisite. It nestles in the shadow of mountains, on the shore of a lake, with more mountains all around. For those not satisfied with the view from lake-level, there was a gondola lift to the “Skyline” Restaurant, from which you could walk into the mountains on good paths or just stand and take in the scene. The “Skyline” by night was an intriguing sight, for from the town all you could see were the lights, so that it looked rather like a brightly-lit-up aircraft, frozen in approach to landing.
Probably the biggest drawback to the town — which had not yet been so completely spoilt by its success as a tourist trap as Rotorua had been — was that it was expensive. Even food from supermarkets was more expensive than you would expect from consideration of transport costs. If you planned to stay there a while, you could save money by stocking up on croceries elsewhere.
Now the time had come for me to work. Tired of hitch-hiking, I used almost the last of my cash for a bus fare to Clyde. It left me with about $15 in the bank and $10 in hand. I had cut things distinctly fine! But the gamble paid off. My job was there, waiting for me in the massive half-billion-dollar shadow of the Clyde dam.
The work was on an orchard about three kilometres from the Clyde PO, across a bridge that spanned the Clutha River. From the bridge I could look upstream to the great concrete wall of the dam, and see beyond it some of the mammoth earthworks that were changing the shape of the river-valley for many kilometres.
I stayed with the other workers in a small, overcrowded hostel. It was never very tidy, nor clean. But in the long summer afternoons after work (I was not picking, but rather slicing apricots ready for smoking in sulphur, so I worked to set hours rather than as long as the light lasted) I could walk up a dirt road between the groves to a small irrigation lake. The water was always cold and deep, and it made an oasis where I could escape the heat and maybe find someone to talk to in peace and privacy.
The slicing machine consisted of a hopper at one end of a conveyer system, on which full bins of picked fruit were placed. The fruit were shaken gently onto the belts, which separated them into rows. Each row passed under a rotating disk-blade which neatly bisected the fruit as far as the pit. The cut fruit passed onto another conveyer where workers armed with tea-spoons grabbed them and scooped out the pits. The pitted fruit finally slid down onto a latticework board which, when full, was removed and stacked ready for the smoking house. There were two boards, used in alternation, so that one was always available to take fruit. When the machine was operating correctly it could slice as many fruit as a dozen seasoned tea-spooners could handle, and the boards kept two people busy arranging the fruit and stacking the full boards.
My job was mainly on the boards. I worked in conjunction with a woman named Nicola, from England (Sussex, if memory serves). We would work side-by-side to fill one board, then swing a gate to switch the flow of fruit to the other board. Nicola would go on with that while I carried off the full board and replaced it with an empty one. We talked incessantly, for the job was hot and boring.
I worked there from the 15th til the 22nd of January, then decided a week’s wages would do me for the time being and that nothing — not even Nicola’s pleasant company and quick mind — could keep me working so hard for so little money while the road still sang in my blood.
Whether this was a missed opportunity — the chance to gain a travelling companion as well as more money by waiting a little longer — was debatable. After this trip, in light of later events, I suspected not. I guessed the horsetrade worked out even. I was not yet the lonely, isolated man of 22 years later. A travel companion would be nice, but I was still enjoying the freedom of going solo.
§
Picking up my mail from the Clyde PO, I bussed back to Queenstown. There I conducted fanac on the lakeshore: answering a letter from Lee Smoire (she was organising a group of travelling US fans in conjunction with the Aussiecon II World Science Fiction Convention and wanted info. I sent her a bundle of tourist brochures). There was a Holier Than Thou (the issue with the fold-out orgy on the cover, I think) and a couple of other zines and letters.
The YHA Hostel was full, so I found a place in a share-room at the Hotel Wakatipu with three other unlucky travellers. We went out on the town and got roaring drunk, singing songs and throwing glasses at the no ski boots signs. Then we lurched off in search of food, late at night. The Canadian told a story about a Pizza Hut he’d once been in where he found baked cockroaches in his pizza.
Following an aroma, we eventually came within earshot of clinking dishes. “I hope it’s not a Pizza Hut,” said the Canadian. It was a Pizza Hut.
There was room in the YHA Hostel next night, so I stayed there; and the next day I moved on via a gruelling 8½-hour walk-a-hitch to Wanaka. From Queenstown to Wanaka via the main highway was about 115 kilometres, if you want to measure my speed.
Wanaka was lovely. A gentler landscape than Queenstown, but lacking the tourists and the high prices. The lake was breathtaking.
The travel bug had bitten hard. Next morning I tore loose and moved towards the West Coast. I can still remember being dropped by the shores of Lake Hawea by my first ride. I walked along the road-edge for a while, but no cars stopped. I didn’t mind. It was a warm, sunny day with just a few wisps of cloud drifting picturesquely along the shoulders of the hills across the lake
I walked around a corner and up a hill, passing behind a huge boulder-cum-hill that stood out into the lake, then coming out to an even lovelier view afterwards. There I stopped and ate my lunch, lost in the scenery. No traffic passed me in either direction. Finished my lunch I packed the rubbish and lifted my pack to my back — and a car came round the corner, slowed as it approached, and stopped beside me.
The driver — an englishman, but related to one of my schoolteachers from High School — made good company. We jolted our way over unsealed road at The Neck, up over the saddle of Haast Pass, and entered the West Coast from the south. The sandflies came up to meet us (sandflies are similar to midges, blackflies, etc; they bite). Windows up, we cruised — with many a stop at scenic points — to Fox, didn’t like it, and went on to Franz Josef. Side trip down a dirt road to Lake Matheson, where we missed the famous reflection because clouds covered the mountains.
In Franz, off to the Hostel I went — and there was room for me.
§
“The Franz Josef and the Fox are fairly steep as glaciers go: they drop about two hundred metres in a kilometre — a one-in-five grade. The Franz, fifteen kilometres, is a bit longer than the Fox and is about the same length as the longest Swiss glacier. NZ’s longest is the twenty-nine-kilometre Tasman Clacier near Mt. Cook.”
— Colin Simpson in Wake Up To New Zealand
I stayed three days at Franz Josef. Despite spending half my new wealth (or so it seemed) at Queenstown, I was flush for the moment and inclined to make the most of the spell of good weather that arrived at the glaciers coincident with myself.
I well remembered the tale of two Australians I originally met at Greymouth. They were pre-booked for Franz Josef, so they had to go south when I went east. I met them again Queenstown on the 14th. They told me a tale of rain and wind, crowded hostel and invisible mountains and unreachable glaciers. But while I was there the hostel was never full up and, apart from odd showers, the weather was fine. Reaching the glacier face was difficult because of rockfalls which had swept away parts of the paths, but that was only an obstacle, not a barrier.
An incident written down at the time is an incident written down for posterity. An incident missed because you were writing down trivia is an incident lost to posterity. Discriminate!
There were many walks and tracks around the township, and I followed quite a few of them — so many that even at just three years remove, when I first wrote this, they jumbled together in my memory. I didn’t go down the road to the “local” pub (in one of the THC Hotels), and so I missed out — cheerfully — on the main portion of the nightlife; but I was still fresh from Queenstown, and was interested in Franz for its setting, not its people.
The main feature of the setting, of course, was the glacier.
§
I walked south out of town and crossed a bridge over the milky Waiho River which carried the chilly melt from beneath the glacier face. Then I turned left and followed a winding road (dirt? — my memory fails me) into native bush. It was an idyllic walk, and I was so enraptured by it that when the tourist bus that ran from Franz stopped and offered me a free ride the rest of the way, I said “no”. Some tourist aboard, astonished by the apparition who preferred walking to riding, snapped my picture. I wonder where that photograph is now?
Eventually I emerged from the trees into a vast rock-strewn valley. My first thought was, “My God! Helm’s Deep!” Later thought changed that to the road to Khazad-dum. A flat, boulder-covered floor flanked by huge cliffs that rose sheerly for some hundred metres or so. I walked between those cliffs, awed by the scale of the place, in my tatty t-shirt, shorts, and jandals.
The air was still warm when I started up the valley, although I could soon see the glacier. From a distance it was hard to believe that it was ice: you felt no cold, and the face just looked like a white-painted wall with blue highlights, hanging at the end of the valley. A stage-prop wall, wrinkled and soiled from too much use.
Everywhere there were signs: Beware of falling rock. I bewared, for the foot of each cliff was cluttered with evidence that the signs were no tourist bumf. I clambered over a couple of falls that had fallen in the last couple of days and buried the track beneath them.
I couldn’t approach the ice-face from the normal side of the Waiho, for the track was completely destroyed by a treacherous mass of fallen rock near the end. So I retraced my steps, back across the Waihou by a hanging bridge whose approaches had been carried away by another fall, and then up to the tourist lookout. From there I followed footprints downslope to the south side of the Waiho, which then led me, eventually, to the glacier face. I didn’t feel the cold until I was almost up to the ice-face.
There was ice floating in the river. On my way back, I stopped by a swirl-pool in the bank and picked out a breadloaf-sized chunk. This souvenir proved quite popular back at the hostel — the Americans especially took pleasure in stepping on it and saying that at least now they could tell their friends back home that they’d set foot on the ice of the glacier. I put the ice in the fridge, and it lasted until the morning I left Franz. The last hand-sized sliver I placed in a sink and melted with hot water. It was the least I could do.
§
Up to Greymouth, which town excited me no more this time than it had before. Rather than walk in my own footsteps back to Nelson, I decided to take an alternative route via Westport. This would allow me to see the Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki — not to be missed, if I could get there!
I intended to turn aside short of Westport, at the Buller turnoff. But when I reached it the signs were up: ROAD CLOSED. DANGER. BLASTING. So I went on to Westport and spent the night in a cabin at a local motorcamp.
Next day, ignoring the signs, I went up the Buller road.
I walked up that road, friends. And I walked. And I walked. And eventually along came a Ministry of Works car which offered me a ride. The road would be opened about noon, the driver said, and I might be able to cadge a lift then.
So I spent a couple of hours watching the demolition of “Hawk Crag”, one of two rock outcroppings which had long strangled the road to single lane and which Somebody had decided Must Go. The job was first intended to be finished the day before, but someone bungled the explosives and so they were still blasting when I came through.
I became quite blasé about the crack! of a charge going off — but only until one charge went whomp! instead and I saw everyone dive beneath cars. So I dived under the nearest car, too, and something heavy went bang on the bonnet. When I clambered out I was able to put my thumb into the dent left by that chunk of debris.
A cyclist rode up around 13:30. We talked a while, exchanging yarns, and then a MoW person came over to tell us they were opening the road. So we walked across the big hump of earth that graders were still shovelling over the cliff-edge, admiring the glittering angles of the virgin rock-face above us.
I walked again, no cars stopping for me. Again I walked, on and on. Gradually I stripped off my sodden clothes until I had only my bathers and pack against my sweating body — and felt overdressed! I wished I had a sun-umbrella.
Finally a blessed car stopped, and the elderly couple in it drove me down to Inangahua Junction, where I turned for Nelson.
I was late getting into Nelson, so I rang the YHA Hostel from Tahunanui. The hostel was full. I booked into the nearby motorcamp and spent the night under the stars. Next night I was in the hostel, still resting from my Buller escapade. But after that, short of money, I struck out for Havelock, determined to make it my last stop in the South Island.
As if my birthday the day before had brought mercy into the breast of the deity of hitch-hikers, the rides came fast and easy. I reached Havelock by early afternoon. And while I was at the hostel, easing a few things out of my pack preparatory to seeing about kayak-hire for the afternoon, serendipity struck again, in the form of a bearded Canadian guy who dashed in and yelled, “Anybody here wanna job?” So I said, “sure!” and that’s how I became a mussel rancher.
The Canadian, it turned out, had just spent two months on the mussels, but his time in NZ was running short. So he’d grabbed a lift to Havelock, and had been asked to replace a “work available” sign in the hostel. Seeing people there, he’d thought to save time and effort by calling out.
He walked me up the main street, pack on back, and introduced me to Steve, the guy who’d given him the lift into town. Steve looked at my pack, looked at me. “Ready to go?”
For reply I tossed the pack into the back seat and climbed in beside Steve. Five minutes later we were tearing along the blacktop, aimed into the heart of the Marlborough Sounds.
Living in Clova
For years after this I thought that when I grew old and had done with travelling, and if I could bear to pass up all the other appealing places that I had visited or would visit before then, I would like to retire in the Sounds. Chaotic hillsides, sheltered arms of blue water, sudden vistas and valleys — and above all else, room. The population of the Marlborough Sounds area was about 30,000 — but most of these lived in Blenheim and Picton; for how 30,000 people could be tucked into even the large area of the Sounds and make no impact I didn’t know.
Steve kept the accelerator close to the floorboards as we followed the road to Picton awhile before turning left at Linkwater. From Linkwater it was 22 kilometres to Portage. From Portage it was a further 30 or 40 kilometres to the mussel ranch, which was located on the shore of Clova Bay beneath kilometre-tall Mt Kiwi. At the speed we were moving we swung wide on the corners, kicking out dust and gravel, with Steve serenely sure that we would meet no opposed traffic, or that if we did, we would somehow scrape by without one car ending up in the water. So my first passage of this road was a kaleidoscopic series of glimpses of sheep and hillsides, rocks and water, snatched in the moments when the car was relatively steady in the gentle curve before the next sharp, blind bend. I have no idea how long the drive lasted. Finally we rumbled across a bridge, rattled across a cattle-stop, and pulled up outside a dilapidated shack.
Sheep scattered at the opening of the car doors. About half of them were rams, their balls swinging clumsily against belly and rattling dags alternately. Most of the sheep also had tails, which in New Zealand (in past years, at least) was rare.
An expanse of flattish ground covered by tussocky grass. A grove of dark trees towards the shore, a couple of less dilapidated shacks in the middle distance, a ruinous barn-like structure on the far side of the stream we’d crossed. Inland, a hedgerow with a neat rooftop behind it and the bulk of Mt Kiwi rising like a moun- er, like a wall behind that. To left of the hedge was a tractor-sound, revving irregularly. “That’ll be Talbot”, said Steve, and he led me towards the sound.
The tractor-driver was a lanky individual with the indefinable stamp of the hill-country New Zealand farmer. The tractor was fitted with a hydraulic scoop and the driver was using this to dig a hole in the ground at one spot and fill it in again at another. “Moving the rubbish pit”, said Steve. That was my introduction to my new employer.
Incidentally, although it would be easy to track down the farm and suchlike, I will be changing names freely. In some cases I’ve forgotten the real names of the people concerned; in others I have my own reasons for doing it. Talbot is Talbot and did indeed own “Clova Bay Motels” (the shacks already mentioned), Steve is Steve; the others I make no guarantees for.
Once Talbot finished with the pit and the formalities had been done with, Steve took me back to the shack with the car parked outside. Inside the building was cleaner and homier than I’d expected. The scruffy appearance was mainly superficial. And I had a room to myself, which further endeared it to me.
After a good night’s sleep, the next morning I started learning how to ranch mussels.
Mussel ranching in New Zealand — or mussel farming, to give it a less colourful but more frequently-used name — requires a boat, lots of rope, and a few dozen metres depth of salt water.
The mussel is related to the oyster and serves much the same role in the restaurants of the world. It does not produce pearls. It has a life of three segments: a free-swimming spat period, followed by settling somewhere to grow, followed by maturity. Commercial ranching involves harvesting them just short of maturity, when they are large and fat but have not yet run to spawn. This requires careful timing, as they will mature in a matter of days and all that fine fat flesh will turn to seed. It then takes months for them to fatten for a second spawning, which is not good economics for the farmer.
Mussel ranching divides into several clear stages. First spat must be collected. Special ropes are used which have loose fibres hanging out into the water, giving them a “hairy” look. Spat find these fibres a congenial place to settle down.
Once enough spat have settled, and have grown a little, the ropes are drawn up and the spat are gently stripped off and “seeded” onto new ropes that lack the “hair”. This simultaneously thins the population and makes later re-seeding and harvesting easier.
The first stripping is often by hand because of the fragility of the young shells, but after that it becomes simpler. The rope has a knot at the “upper” or “head” end. This is put into a notch in a capstan and the capstan is then revolved to wind the rope onto it. The rope passes between two edges of metal, which hold back the mussels and so strip them off the rope. The loosened mussels fall into a collecting bag.
When the bag is full it is hoisted ready for the next stage, seeding. Seeding involves a big tank (like a shallow bathtub), a water supply, lengths of special cotton “stocking”, a PVC tube, more rope, another bag, and two men (or strong women). The tube is fixed below the plug-hole of the shallow tub so that water from the hole runs through the centre of the tube. The tube has already had a vast length of the cotton stocking rolled over its outside (see later). A rope is passed through the tube head first, and the end of the stocking is drawn over it. A piece of nylon twine, called a “tie”, is tied about the rope/stocking just below the knot.
While this has been going on, the flow of water from the tub has been impeded by a coffer plug formed from a short piece of PVC tubing with a cut down one side. The mussels from the hoisted bag have been released into the tub and the coffer stops them from swirling down the hole, too. (The rope passes down the centre of the coffer.)
Now the main task begins. With one worker controlling the tub, as “top man” and the other controlling the tube’s lower end as “bottom man”, the coffer is removed (the slit in its side lets the rope slip out). A mixture of water and mussels begins to pour down the tube. The top man controls the water flow with a spigot and sweeps mussels towards the hole with his other hand. His job is to set up an even flow of mussels using the minimum water, and to be ready to replace the coffer if the bottom man calls out. He must also watch for kinks in the rope and warn the bottom man when the knot at the “tail” of the rope enters the hole.
The bottom man, meanwhile, is standing in a flood of water from the tube, listening to the rattle of mussels falling. When he judges that there are enough mussels in the tube, he begins pulling the rope through the tube with one hand and controlling the stocking and the thickness of the mussel coating for the rope with the other. The length of rope layered with mussels (which are held against the rope by the stocking) is collected with a bag placed below the tube.
The bottom man, as well as everything else, must ensure that the rope coils neatly into the bag so that it will coil equally neatly out again at a later time. This is tricky.
If mussels are allowed to bunch together too thickly on the rope, then when they grow a little more they will need to be reseeded too soon in order to prevent their weight from sinking the buoys from which the rope will be suspended. On the other hand, too thin a layer is wasteful of rope and energy. Learning the art of “just enough” is probably the hardest part of the bottom man’s job. In my month on the job I barely mastered it. My early attempts were very baggy and pathetic.
Communication between top and bottom is mainly profanity: it is rare to find a team where both men work/like to work at the same pace. One or the other is always either too slow or too fast (and it’s not always the same man).
Ideally the top man will feed mussels through at such a speed and so smoothly that the bottom man need merely keep the rope moving as fast as he can, with no need to control the number of mussels. In practice, it almost never works out that way.
When the tail of the rope snakes towards the hole, the top man yells a warning and when it disappears he replaces the coffer, after sending a final surge of mussels to fill the tube just enough to coat the final length of the rope. The bottom man pulls the rope through and waits. The top man drops the head of the next rope down the tube, the bottom man puts a tie around it (usually without snapping off the stocking connecting the tail of the last rope to the head of the new one), and the process is repeated, until the bag is full.
The collecting bag normally holds four ropes and their attendent mussels. When the fourth rope goes through the bottom man snaps off the excess stocking and knots it, and the full bag is hauled away.
§
When enough bags have been filled, a boat is brought and the bags are loaded aboard. The boat takes the bags out to a selected row of buoys in the bay. The buoys are connected by heavy ropes. Each buoy is about the size of a very large pig. The end-buoys in each row are attached to hawsers which run down to heavy concrete anchors on the bed of the bay.
The tail of the topmost rope in the bag is attached to one of the connecting ropes of the buoys with a tie. The rest of the rope is fed out and the head’s tie is attached to the connecting rope a few feet along from the tail. The next rope is fed out and the process repeats until all four ropes are fixed. Then the next bag is brought up. Later the stocking will rot away and the tail tie will be removed and each rope will dangle it’s twenty metres of length down into the depths, while the mussels grow steadily in their new home. The stocking will have held them in place until they secrete new anchorages for themselves to the rope.
The mussels will be stripped and reseeded several times as they grow. As they grow they become heavier, and if their numbers on each rope are not thinned then eventually their weight will pull the buoys under. Judgement must be used when deciding if a rope needs thinning. Too-frequent thinning is uneconomic, but if the rope is left even a few days too long the buoy may submerge. A line of buoys that is afloat and apparently secure one day will, once the lift of the buoys is matched by the weight of the mussels, sink overnight. Once this happens quick work is needed if the whole crop is not to go to the bottom and die.
Harvesting is like the stripping stage of seeding, but instead of being seeded onto new ropes the stripped mussels are bagged and put on ice. At the end of each day the iced mussels are rushed to port and sent on their way to whatever destination has been selected for them. Since the equipment used for reseeding is too slow and inefficient for economic harvesting, several local farmers will combine to buy or hire the services of a specially-built harvest barge. The high-speed strippers in such a vessel feed the mussels onto a conveyer belt which carries the mussels past hopefully sharp-eyed workers who spot broken shells, rubbish, and the unwanted varieties of mussel.
The mussel farmed commercially in NZ is known as the “green-lipped” variety. However, common rock or “blue” mussel spat settle on the same ropes and must be weeded out at harvest time. The waste mussels are thrown into the bay and sink to the bed, where, since they are shallow-water types, they die.
Talbot employed several men on a regular basis. Steve, 22, had been there six months and was the foreman. Rob was a big, lanky American. He drove the big boat (a converted trawler). Jimmy, 17, was working his University holidays in the Sounds. Bruce was a small, wiry Australian who lived on a nearby commune with his wife (they were the last people left there). Rob would pick him up on his way to work if we needed an extra pair of hands that day.
Steve, Jimmy, and I shared the shack. We got on fairly well. Each person cooked what they pleased from their own food supplies, and sometimes one person or another would put on a meal for all three. With Steve this usually meant a meal built around cheese; with Jimmy, sausages and spaghetti; and with myself steak and veg.
Steve was a glutton for cheese. “Something missing …” he would say thoughtfully, chewing a mouthful. “Ah! Cheese!” And he would add a mountaim of grated cheese, a slab of grilled cheese, or a wedge to the plate. Cheese was his catch-all solution to every deficiency in a meal.
Rob had come out from America years ago. He had a degree of some sort (engineering, I think) but found life in the Sounds more congenial. He could have been foreman, but preferred working independently laying out the seeded ropes from the trawler with help from Jimmy. That left Steve, Talbot, Bruce, and myself to work the seeding barge and gad about in the outboard.
§
The South Island had other names, up to 1856. It was at first called Middle Island because it lay between Northern Island and Southern Island, that tailpiece of land more commonly called Stewart’s Island.
Then, when New Zealand became a Crown Colony in 1840, the islands were designated as three provinces, New Ulster, New Munster, and Stewart Island became New Leinster. “It would have been infinitely better to have named them New Mustard, New Pepper and New Salt, as these are names that people would at least recollect,” was the starchy comment of that early traveller A. Marjoribanks.
— Colin Simpson, Wake Up To New Zealand
The seeding barge was anchored just across Clova Bay from the Motel, in the lee of the far shore. We would go out to it each morning in the outboard. Talbot would put Steve, Bruce (if he was working that day) and myself aboard and then take Rob and Jimmy over to the boat nearby. Steve and I would start the deisel motor which worked the hoist, the stripper and the pump. Talbot would return and the day’s work would begin.
It was not entirely drudge. There were lighter aspects to it. For example, teasing the mullet which would appear (from nowhere, it seemed) at the sound of the deisel to catch the morsels shovelled overboard from the stripper. Occasionally a mullet would flounder into the forest of empty ropes we draped overboard after stripping the mussels from them. Work would be abandoned while we scrambled to catch the confused fish with our bare hands before it could find its way back into clear water. Larger fish would occasionally appear to hunt the mullet, giving us the spectacle of the water on one side of the barge or the other suddenly turning silver and rippling to the motions of frantic bodies. And always there were the surrounding hills and the blue expanses of water. To work out on the bay was in itself recreation, after so many years of working in buildings.
Occasionally we would get ahead of Rob in the seeding and would take a load of ropes out in the outboard instead. Since the mussels were mostly located in bays other than Clova Bay, this afforded me with wonderful opportunities to see the surrounding region. And occasionally I would be sent with the big boat, which would go further still, far into Beatrix and Crail Bays. If the harvester needed extra hands the owner would send his speedboat in to pick us up (twin Mercurys make short work of any distance to be covered in the Sounds) and I would see still more — as far as Northwest Bay in Pelorus Sound, for example, which was the area it was working most while I was there.
I didn’t make as much of my opportunities as I might. I set out twice to climb Mt Kiwi, but never got more than about half-way up (the weather was too changeable). I wanted to take the mail-boat out to where I could do some of the tramps (such as to Ship Cove, where Cook careened his vessels while charting NZ’s coast) but never quite made it. The boat never came at the right time for me, and the terrain was all against any inland route.
It is hard to convey the nature of the Sounds. I mentioned that Mt Kiwi is a kilometre high (actually 993 metres). That sounds quite good, but I’m sure most of you know of higher mountains near you. However, I forgot to put emphasis on one salient feature: that Mt Kiwi rises direct from the shore. Almost every metre of that height is mountain. Most mountains rise from a base of high plateau, so their heights are deceptive. Not so Mt Kiwi. This is typical of the Sounds, which are really the northern end of the Southern Alps, with the valleys drowned in water and only the peaks and ridges standing above the surface. In the saddles between peaks and at the ends of the bays, where streams have silted the water, are small areas of flattish land. All else is vertical. The road from Clova Bay to Portage was made by carving it into the rock face. At one side the road is walled by the rock; at the other, a steep drop leads to the water.
Jimmy lost a car to this terrain just before I arrived. He had taken some people to Portage for the weekly booze binge, in convoy with Steve. Steve had snared a partner for the night and decided to stay at the hotel. So Jimmy was nominated to taxi everyone home, nine tenths under the table and the other tenth blind. He was doing quite well for a while, until an opossum skipped across the road in front of him. He missed it and it stopped at the drop-off and stared after the car. Not to be beaten by a mere animal, Jimmy slammed the car into reverse and tried again. The opossum dodged again — and the car rolled majestically over the bank and into twenty feet of water. Nobody was hurt, but Steve was a little pissed off at getting a shame-faced phone-call to say “uh, look, can you come and pick us up? We’ve written the car off”. Steve had, he swore, just been getting into bed … not alone.
Since I’m telling anecdotes and have already finished telling about the mussels, I have one other story to stick in here. Seems that a deal was made with the Japanese and a shipment was duly dispatched. Now it seems that the mantles of the males are white and those of the females pink. But it’s a little difficult to tell which is which, as they are shipped whole. You can therefore imagine the feelings of Talbot’s partners when they eventually received a letter that said that the Japanese liked the mussels, and wanted more — but, “Only the pink ones — not the white ones.” One shell is much like another, so this directive was a little difficult to comply with.
And then there was my introduction to the Tequila ritual, which involved a bottle of Tequila, a bottle of soda water, and some salt. Salt on wrist, Tequila to half-fill a small glass. Add soda, lick wrist, slam glass on table, down the hatch. After a while it got easy. This might have something to do with the numbness that crept through your body as the alcohol took hold. The patio of the Portage Hotel where we did this became a magical place in the moonlight after we switched off the lights.
§
All things end. On the 1st of March, Steve drove me to Blenheim. We stayed there overnight at the house of one of Steve’s (apparently many) girlfriends, and in the morning he took me to Picton.
After three exciting hours on the ferry, I was back in the North Island. After two months of winnowing, my pack was down to a manageable 20 kg, 11 kg lighter than when last I was here. An hour with my thumb out beside the central Railway Station in Wellington, and I had a lift north. I was on the road again, but now I had a bankroll in three figures, my credit card was paid off, and I had a clear run at my next objective: Cape Reinga. I had no worries, and I was determined to enjoy myself.
