Wild Journeys

by Bruce Ansley

  Miraculously, everyone escapes.

  The NZTA should consider a driver’s licence endorsement proclaiming, ‘I drove from Auckland to Hamilton and survived.’ A kind of merit point, which could be offset against demerits.

  This kinky little road turns off SH One past Taupiri and zig-zags through the countryside to Cambridge, avoiding Hamilton. I do not want to insult Hamilton. Once, when I was a writer for the NZ Listener, I referred to the ‘four main centres’, which excluded Hamilton. The grandees of that city heaped coals upon my head. They didn’t mind being demeaned, they said, but they hated being overlooked. I could say that one of my close friends lives there, except that he hasn’t been so close for several decades because, yes, he lives in Hamilton and I always choose the zig-zag. Driving through Hamilton is just such a bitch.

  We no longer have to drive through Cambridge either, because the new expressway bypasses it. From a news report: ‘The tidy tree-lined streets of Cambridge will become a lot less congested from next week when thousands of rumbling trucks and cars get funnelled onto the Waikato Expressway.’ In other words, Cambridge loses a lot of business, including my own, for the bypass seems to have so dispirited the owners of my favourite café there that they departed, presumably on the new four-lane. The Expressway is everywhere, creeping across the country, perhaps looking for other territories to colonise.

  By now it is late afternoon. I contemplate the immediate future. Ahead lies the first of two deserts, of which Putaruru and Tokoroa are the high points.

  Can I survive without a long black? I pull out my Thermos, have a strong white, curse the bypass and plug on. Is that judder the clutch giving up, or just the car shuddering in sympathy?

  If there is a motoring limbo, then surely this section of highway is it. You go in one end and lose consciousness until you awake near Taupo and wonder what has happened in the couple of hours since. Am I still the same age? Has war broken out?

  By now it is dark. The Desert Road lies ahead. Rain has been forecast. It begins to spit. The forecast proves wrong. Instead of mere rain, this is the beginning of a full-scale storm. Drizzle becomes a downpour, which turns into a full-scale wind-blasted deluge.

  The world becomes a sparkle of lights. Whole towns seem to be approaching. They turn out to be trucks that are better-lit than some of the small towns on this route.

  The Desert Road has just two conditions: open or closed. Snow and volcanic eruptions close it. Rain and darkness do not.

  Some people love the bare beauty of the place. Having suffered a time in the Army here, I do not. Oh, bare beauty is all right, if you’re not marching through it, or freezing in it, or wrapped in a thin Army blanket pretending there’s an enemy out there who is worse than the Army itself. Moreover, it has to be seen to be properly appreciated, and I can see nothing except silver rain slicing across my headlights.

  Whatever is going on in the wet darkness tonight, I know one thing for certain: here you are beyond help. You need to be somewhere else, just as soon as possible. If something is not happening at that moment, something is going to happen.

  Something disastrous, usually. Perhaps a truck driver forgetting his lines. Or Ruapehu hiccupping. Or simply getting lost in space. The Desert Road at night is either glaring or so black the world is empty. There’s no hint of the fried landscape in the dark.

  The highest point in the state-highway network lies along this road. Also the lowest. At least, that is my view this dark, wet night.

  The road is sixty-three kilometres long.

  No one lives here, voluntarily. That includes the occupants of the Rangipo prison at one end and the Waiouru military camp at the other, although I might be prejudiced about the latter. You feel alone here, and you are. The Black Gate of Mordor scenes for Lord of the Rings were shot here. They needed no special effects.

  I drive up the long uphill stretch from Turangi. I think. The road turns into a knot, twisting through gullies. I think. A kaleidoscopic assembly of orange signs warns against everything from roadworks to whooping cough. I keep a careful eye on where I think Ruapehu might be.

  The night is a wet splashy thing and some idiot is setting off fireworks. Which turn out to be trucks.

  Then a convoy, a road train, a ragged blaze of light appears far away. It turns out to be not trucks, but Waiouru. It looks so welcoming I almost stop. I once did, one dark wet night like this one, and ate a steak the size of a doormat, although more chewy. Tonight, I have another cup of Thermos coffee.

  Then it is downhill to Taihape, whose night life consists of a man and a woman leaning against a car in the rain with a single stubby on the roof. His or hers? Are they sharing?

  Through that dismal country south of Taihape. Do I imagine the car picks this moment to shudder?

  Through Foxton and Levin and on to the outriders of Wellington’s new Northern Corridor, eventually running to somewhere north of Levin.

  The NZTA is promising everything from this new road: more trucks, more business, riches, safe sex. If we’re to believe them, the Kapiti Coast will revert to its former persona as the Golden Coast.

  With the Waikato Expressway racing south and the Northern Corridor rampaging north I imagine them colliding somewhere on the Volcanic Plateau in a furious eruption of diggers. New Zealand will become even smaller and in my view, which right now is murky, less interesting. Small towns are taking yet another hammering as the Cyclops gallops by, or over, or beside.

  Oh, those nice little escapes that form a breathing tube for claustrophobic Wellington — Manakau, Otaki, Waikanae, Paraparaumu, Paekakariki, Pukerua Bay — are they all to wither on the shrine?

  By now the rain is so heavy I can scarcely see them. We slither down the Ngauranga Gorge, turn off the motorway and into the Bluebridge ferry terminal. It is after midnight. The ferry is not due to leave until 2.30 a.m. but the woman behind the desk says we’ll be loading early. After all, she says, I booked a cabin, and it would be unfair to have me dozing in the car. ‘Especially your car,’ she says, eyeing the old Subie. Superstitiously, I hope it doesn’t hear.

  I like this sailing in the small hours. Usually, you go aboard, find a few vacant seats together, stretch out and go to sleep. It is an odd sailing, favoured by introverts, xenophobes and insomniacs.

  On a previous trip I’d woken a couple of hours after we sailed, disoriented. The ship rose and fell gracefully. It was silent but for a faint thudding. But the alarming thing was, it was deserted. If there were other sleeping forms, I could see none. The cafeteria was abandoned. It felt like the Marie Celeste, a meal on the counter but no one on board. What had happened to the passengers? The crew? Was I the only one left alive? The thought so terrified me that it was, oh, a full five minutes before I went back to sleep.

  This time I am prepared. For $30 I have a cabin of my own. I expect a bunk inside some narrow cell. Instead I have a bed, a real one, with an en-suite bathroom. For $30! And a full-length mirror, which tells me this trip is taking its toll.

  I climb into bed. Oh yes, this is the way to go.

  Two hours later, I feel the engines thud and the ship move. We’re leaving.

  I know this because I’m wide awake. The Thermos of coffee I brought to keep me company on the long journey down the island has worked very well.

  For four hours, the ship moves gently across Cook Strait, calm as custard, emitting phantom bangings and bumps, noises of the night. I hear them all, because I’m sleepless in my comfortable little cabin.

  Then comes that marvellous stillness of the ship leaving the Strait and entering the Marlborough Sounds. They give me an entirely unnecessary wake-up call. Out on deck the hills ghost by, black against the grey dawn.

  The cafeteria is serving bacon and eggs on ciabatta. Ciabatta? My first crossings between the islands were on the overnight ferry from Christchurch. Then, you were jammed into cabins full of narrow bunks whose occupants were either drunk or sick or both, and you were woken at six by a stern steward who demanded that you d
rink his tea and eat his two wine biscuits, for the Union Steamship Company didn’t trust you to get up on your own.

  We are told to go to our cars. Is there anything more desolate than a ferry’s vehicle deck at dawn? The steel echoes, the ship’s ribs are open for inspection, and all around are drivers wearing looks of grim determination. Trucks look like behemoths, like an All Black in the kitchen. Drivers, start your engines! We file down the valley towards Blenheim. The valley seems full of water. This has been a wet winter.

  We turn right at Spring Creek. State Highway One has been closed since the Kaikoura earthquakes, and this is the start of a huge detour that runs almost to the West Coast before turning south over the Lewis Pass.

  The detour runs through Renwick and heads west, along a beautiful green valley. In all the decades I’d lived in the South Island I’d driven this lovely road only rarely. The grape vines are dark and spidery in the early spring. The rain, the rain, here in a region famous for sun. A sign warns of winter weather conditions. Another points to the world’s most boring historic place, a concrete water trough. It turns out to have been the only watering place for a very long way in either direction.

  The government built a monitoring station here which is claimed by its detractors to be a foreign spybase on New Zealand soil. In 2008 three protesters broke in, damaged equipment, were charged — and were acquitted by a jury that agreed with the defendants’ ‘claim of right’ that they were protecting human life. The government sued for damages and won, but did not pursue its claim.

  Waihopai remains the subject of an annual protest camp near the Wairau River mouth. The protesters have succeeded, at least, in making this valley one of the world’s worst-kept secrets. It is known as Spy Valley. It even boasts its own wine label.

  In fact, this peaceful place has seen its share of excitement, starting with the so-called Wairau Affray at Tuamarina downriver in 1843, when settlers tried to take the rich valley land. Maori won, four dead to twenty-two Pakeha, followed by a moral victory when Governor Fitzroy ruled the settlers at fault. But Maori lost the land anyway.

  The long, braided Wairau River follows a fault line, appropriately enough. It remains a wild waterway — so far, for it is still being fought over. This time it’s Pakeha on Pakeha, mainly. Electricity generators have laid covetous eyes on it. They want to divert the river into canals for electricity and irrigation. The plan is currently on hold, but its opponents are fearful that it would ruin the river. I spend a little time staring at it from the roadside. Who knows whether it’ll be there next time I pass?

  But permanence in this valley is a shaky thing. In the 1855 Wairarapa earthquake the valley’s eastern end dropped by a metre.

  Wairau Valley town is the centre of civilisation here. You come on it quite suddenly: school, memorial hall, a church without a steeple, fire station, garage, golf course, a space where a shop used to be and a pub that has served travellers for a century and a half and is for sale when I pass through.

  Far to the west a snowy peak, the end of the St Arnaud Range, stands against a patch of turquoise sky. Suddenly I’m driving into sunshine. Prospects go from bright to sparkly. Mountains rise in proper majestic fashion all around. The Red Hills rise in sharp abutments from the valley floor, with the perfectly named Mount Patriarch glowering above.

  Right ahead, in this uninhabited place made lonelier by its huge sky, there’s a purple sign. ‘Coffee’, it says. Nothing around it. Just the sign.

  A track leads off the road. I take it. There’s a kind of tent in the wilderness, and a caravan. Inside the caravan, working busily although there isn’t another soul to be seen, is a woman. From the Philippines, she tells me later. She doesn’t just sell coffee. She makes bacon butties, and chicken curry, and banana smoothies. A balanced diet.

  I ask for coffee and a buttie. The coffee is good and the buttie comes in a beautifully light ciabatta. As she passes it over she slaps my hand, leaving a smear of blood. ‘Sandflies,’ she says. I’d forgotten about those.

  A man appears. He introduces himself as the woman’s husband. He points out their house. It’s a nice place on the other side of the road, alone in its landscape. They have two houses, he says. The other is on the Whangaparaoa Peninsula north of Auckland.

  We have the kind of comforting talk South Islanders have, assuring each other how wonderful the south is, and the north is not. He talks of retiring. Where to, Whangaparaoa or Wairau Valley? He looks at me with pity in his eyes. ‘Down here, of course.’ Pointing at his house. ‘Who’d want to live up there?’

  The road begins looking ragged. Rerouted trucks are tearing it apart. Road gangs are patching it up, moving from one spot to the next, trying to keep up.

  The road is a maze of ‘30’ (kilometres per hour) signs and one-way stretches. They’re promising to reopen the old SH One just as soon as they fight their way through the earthquake rubble blocking it near Kaikoura. Will the poor Wairau Valley highway last until then? It will take some serious work to restore.

  I pass the turnoff to the Rainbow Road, once part of the old stock route between Nelson and Canterbury and still one of the wildest roads in the country. A short-cut? I’d been through there, and didn’t think so. Another turnoff almost directly opposite leads to the Tophouse, one of the old accommodation houses built a day’s cattle drive apart. Several survive.

  New direction signs are appearing, pointing to Christchurch. Another sign warns of kiwi on the road. I didn’t like their chances at night, with a road train coming through.

  And here’s St Arnaud, New Zealand’s least-known lakeside resort. It’s quiet and beautiful. It verges the Nelson Lakes National Park. It was called Rotoiti after the lake it stands beside until the Geographic Board decided that too many people were confusing it with the other Rotoiti near Rotorua, and changed the name. Some are protesting that decision still. The Geographic Board refuses to budge.

  The lakeside subdivision looks as sparse as ever. No shopping malls or big hotels clutter the place.

  Volunteers have reduced pests to a level where, if you stop on a track, you’re surrounded by bush robins. The morning chorus still rings through the forest here. A short walk into the bush and you’re gloriously alone.

  Ahead lies the Kawatiri junction: Nelson one way, Murchison the other, Christchurch a latecoming third. The end of the line for the ambitious Nelson railway. A lonely platform marks its grave. The station was open for five years and twenty-one days before the line was abandoned. Now you can walk through its tunnels and along its embankments.

  I expect Murchison to be bustling with new life as the traffic doubles, triples. It is, but it’s the same little town. The butchers still sell their award-winning honey-cured, Manuka-smoked bacon and ham, and sausages to make the most fastidious forget their diets. Hodgsons, a good old country-town general store, still sells everything from bread and milk to kerosene to children’s clothes, and it’s a Post Office too. The big old pub’s airy verandas gaze upon the main street. The junk and antiques store sells the same amazing clutter of crockery, glasses, paintings, old tools. Some of my favourite New Zealand books have come from here.

  This was the site of another mighty earthquake, in 1929, but it wasn’t the first time Murchison held the world stage. A plaque on the site of the old courthouse records another explosive event: a ‘gentleman farmer’, one Joseph Sewell, was taken to court in July 1905 after a dispute with another farmer, Walter Neame, over a white-headed heifer.

  As the case proceeded, Sewell opted for rougher justice. He put gelignite in his waistcoat pocket and in the courtroom declared he was ‘going to blow the devil to hell’. Fearing that the court injunction ‘All rise!’ was being taken far too literally, policemen ushered him outside, whereupon Sewell blew himself to bits, injuring two and knocking several others senseless. The courthouse was shifted off its foundations. He is now remembered as the world’s first suicide bomber.

  Now we head west, and once more I note a difference between driv
ing in the North and South islands. Despite horrific accidents, North Island drivers behave better on open roads. They’re so much more crowded. In the South Island’s wide and empty highways, drivers just go for it.

  The highway branches at the Maruia River. I head west and stop at Lyell, whose fortunes have waxed and waned. This was once the biggest gold-mining area in the entire Buller district, where miners poked into every crack and crevice. Lyell had a peak population of 2000. The pub was the last survivor, of course. The Post Office Hotel was nearly a century old when it was razed in 1963. Most of Lyell’s history, its relics, treasures and keepsakes, were burned with it. Nothing was saved, and more than a half a century on from that blaze all that can be seen of Lyell is a few flat spots and a couple of cemeteries.

  This is classic West Coast. Houses for the living were the first to fall, pubs lasted a little longer, and only the cemeteries of iron and stone have a life after death. The oldest is up a steep track. Forty or fifty people are believed buried there, and you had to be a miner to entomb them in the hard rock. The declining population settled for an easier route to the hereafter, and took to burying their dead on the flat.

  But Lyell lives on. Now it’s the start, or the finish, of the Old Ghost Road, a cycling and tramping track running along the old miners’ road between Lyell and the Mokihinui River. I’d tramped up the Mohikinui a few years previously, when Meridian Energy was proposing to build a dam and power station on conservation land there. I wanted to see the river before it was ruined, and grieved for its beautiful heart.