Fish of the Week

by Steve Braunias

  But my home is happy to own 99 New Zealand Birds by Don Hadden (as a Christian—he teaches at Middleton Grange School in Christchurch—he quotes this nonsense: ‘God created … every winged bird according to its kind’), and a first edition 1948 Native Birds by Charles Masefield, with its outrageous illustrations. (‘This grotesque-looking bird,’ writes Masefield of a grotesque drawing of a demented kakapo.)

  More and more bird books. I recently bought The Travelling Naturalist Around New Zealand (1989), by the famously cantankerous Brian Parkinson. He writes of the Auckland Zoo: ‘Its native collection is dismal … There is now the ubiquitous Kiwi House, with its usual onlookers thumping the glass right next to the sign directing them not to.’ It’s also a detailed, vigorous guide, and will be sharing the ride when I take a road trip around the East Coast later this month.

  Enough books. I want birds. Birds east, birds north; blathering bellbirds, stilts on stilts, good shags, perhaps even higher knots; birds, anywhere.

  [February 26]

  Beef and Liberty IV

  Food has become one of the most absorbing issues of the age. The politics of science—to GE or not to GE. The anxiety of weight. The celebrity of Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver, Allyson Gofton. The madness of restaurant food—Maria thought the twice-cooked confit of duck on a ragout of celeriac and shallots was overdone, but Patrick showed a distinct appetite for the bok choy and onion bhujia finished with a tamarind and kaffir lime glaze.

  Placed fair and square in the middle of this new hysteria is a traditional expectation: that a constant supply of beautiful steaks is a right of birth in our great, grazing country. Vegetarians may be content with the silence of their yams. The rest of us should demand a steak that sings as loud as Pavarotti. Well, what are we getting?

  This marks my fourth column in an important series about the state of New Zealand steak. It began in October, when I compiled a guide to the thirty-three steakhouses in both islands. This led to a column in November, when I dared to voice the widely held belief that our best steak is exported. The howls of outraged denial, and affirmations that domestic beef is equal to sirloins, fillets, porterhouses and other quality export cuts, were heard in a December column. But now that debate is set to roar back into life.

  Rick Long read the column where I quoted beef industry wallahs defending the quality of New Zealand steak. A former butcher in Masterton for thirty-eight years, Long thought the wallahs had pulled the wool over my eyes. He sent an email that stated: ‘The awful truth is that New Zealand has the worst meat in the world.’

  I rang him up. He would not back down. He was un equivocal. He said, ‘The quality of meat has gone backwards, no doubt about it.’

  Long referred to a statistic I reported in a previous column— that eighty-three percent of our beef is exported to overseas markets. But most of it is used for grinding or mincing, and ends up as burgers.

  ‘There’s little or no demand for quality steak in the markets we export to, and so there’s no incentive any more to produce quality beef,’ Long said. ‘What we can produce is cheap meat.’ Apart from the most expensive burger in England: London’s Zuma restaurant charges 55 quid, or $146, for a burger made from New Zealand meat.

  Long then talked about the superior steak he has merrily wolfed in Australia, in America—he once went to a barbecue in Fresno and was handed a plastic knife and fork that cut through the steaks like butter—and in Scotland, where he viewed beef cattle with wild surmise: ‘You could see on the hoof that it was just magnificent.’

  I also received an email from Jim Shand. A former livestock farmer—‘I just grew grass and converted it into red meat’—who now runs a combined cinema and restaurant in Waipukurau, he wrote: ‘Farmers can and do produce quality beef. Quality assurance practices probably continue through to our export markets and some supermarkets. Unfortunately from my experience, the prevailing trade practice for the supply of red meat to restaurants is the last frontier.’

  I rang him up. He fair talked my ear off. He said, ‘I’ve fair talked your ear off!’ But unlike Long, he didn’t cast a dark, obliterating shadow over New Zealand steak. Farmers should be proud, he said, and so should killing floors and meatpacking plants, which he described as ‘world class’. Neither did he find fault with butchers. In his view, the missing link of excellence from pasture to restaurant plate lay with meat distributors.

  The short version of it went like this: ‘appalling trade practices’ meant that too often meat suppliers, via courier networks, fail to refrigerate steak overnight, or deliver it in an unrefrigerated vehicle. As soon as that happens, the meat fibres can tighten, meaning you’re at risk of being served a steak as tough as old boots.

  Damningly, he said, ‘We’ve got a whole bunch of lazy chefs in New Zealand. They rarely send it back.’ He then talked about shocking experiences he’d had dining in reputable Auckland restaurants, and said tourists often remarked to him about their disappointment with New Zealand steak meals: ‘Americans leave our shores vowing never to eat grass-fed beef again.’

  His own restaurant serves an Angus Pure scotch fillet for $25. Shand will probably like Long’s tale of sawing steak in Fresno with a plastic knife; he said, ‘I will not have a steak knife in the building. A steak knife is the acid test. If the beef delivered requires a steak knife, we send it back to the wholesaler … Here’s a simple test for your readers. If they order a steak meal priced over $24 and the cutlery is then replaced with a steak knife, cancel the order.’

  Easier said than done. Some of our chefs are big bastards, and you don’t want them coming at you armed with a steak knife. Also, we’re too polite. We eat what we’re given. Or, as Shand claims, ‘New Zealanders just don’t care. But only the consumer will influence change.’ Are we equal to the challenge?

  [March 5]

  A Visit to Darwin

  The last thing I wanted to do after travelling the entire length of a continent last week was to move. Actually, the last thing I wanted was for the continent to move. For three days and two nights, I settled like a hand inside the snug glove of my cabin on the legendary desert train, The Ghan, transfixed by the changing picture of the red earth from Adelaide to Darwin. They say that the outback all looks the same but it doesn’t. It trembled with lust, and lust never sleeps. I was forever staring back at something that might have moved, forever staring up at something that may have been moving, forever staring straight ahead at something that might be about to move. Nothing much ever actually moved. But there was always that chance.

  Darwin is north of no north, the Top End, the last of Australia. The train stops, the Stuart Highway stops. Singapore begins— Tiger Airways does flights for $45. The rest of Australia is foreign soil. Over a drink at the Sky City Casino, a woman complained that Darwin was changing because of people who came to live from the south. I asked, ‘Do you mean Sydney, Melbourne, those places?’ She said, ‘I just mean southerners.’ All Australians coming to Darwin are southerners.

  I have got to know it a little bit during four visits over the past few years. It’s a city with 90,000 people, luxury resorts, busy shipping, new industries. Darwin is vibrant, Darwin is full of initiative—good money can be made right now by selling fertiliser harvested from the toxic juice of cane toads; a thousand at a time can fit into the cages of a place that really is called The Cane Toad Detention Centre. But Darwin has the languid feel of a frontier town. A subtropical frontier town. Barramundi and other fish lurk in the mangroves; saltwater crocodiles scoff up to ten Brahman cattle every week at Northern Territory riverbanks. Downtown trees are black with the twitching shapes of bats that cry like babies; other trees are softened by the small pink bodies of princess parrots.

  February is very much the wet season. In two days it rained twice, heavily, howlingly, the wind coming up from nowhere in a sudden desert storm. And then it stopped, and a pair of jeans could have dried on the line in two humid minutes. So hot, so hot always, and Darwin likes to have it known that it out-
drinks the rest of Australia. A photographer at the local paper told me he had come up with a brilliant regular feature called ‘On the piss’. The average age in Darwin is twenty-six. Darwin is happily smashed. But there is now a specially created Alcohol Court, and also a newly introduced Volatile Substance Abuse Prevention Act to ban petrol-sniffing.

  I had a few beers, but I was more interested in draining cartons of Paul’s Iced Coffee—milk, no sugar—which outsells Coca-Cola in the Northern Territory. Armed with a good few gallons of this delicious oil, I relaxed on my porch at the casino hotel for hours each day and night, reading the black humours of Peter Carey’s short stories and gazing at the subtropical paradise on my doorstep. More bats, more parrots. I had a dip in the pool; when I got out a goanna raced to poolside and stuck out its long red tongue for a drink.

  The casino entrance is surrounded by palm trees, and rests in white splendour beside a long red beach. What loveliness, apart from a stern NO SWIMMING sign, which warned of the box jellyfish so lethal that one could sting you dead within three minutes. The sign told of the first symptom: ‘Immediate and increasing pain.’ Yes, that should alert victims. What to do about it? The first step is to pour vinegar over the jellyfish tentacles to deaden their sting. The sign was next to a box marked VINEGAR STATION. Unfortunately, the box was locked.

  I kept to dry land. I was happy. I read. I dozed. I walked along the beach towards one of the world’s great casual strolls, the Fairweather Coastal Walk, which winds around the coast to Darwin’s superb museum, and then to the Darwin Ski Club, an outdoor bar where beaded lights are wrapped around the trunks of four palm trees. ‘Good evening,’ said a toothless man to the barman. ‘Good evening,’ said the barman who wore his hair like Willie Nelson. It was Wednesday so it was steak night, and it was also reggae night—a DJ played records from a shed. There was the usual spectacular sunset, the last of the sun shredding the sky into big purple strips. I adore Darwin.

  And I adore the casino. Its parent in Auckland is such an unpleasant, grasping, moronic emporium of the wretched and the damned, but in Darwin it felt casual and cheerful, and even the coin machines were quiet. It was almost enough to just sit in the cool air-conditioned shadows and drink. Almost. Smoking is encouraged—a casino study approvingly defined smokers as ‘high-risk’ gamblers—and so I smoked, and was very high-risk at the two roulette tables for hours each day and night. There was always that chance.

  [March 12]

  Broadcast News

  Wendy Petrie: Tonight, new figures show that One Network News gains valuable ground in the ratings war against 3 News.

  Simon Dallow: What’s new, pussycat? A family cat returns home after being reported missing for five anxious hours.

  Petrie: In, out. Why oxygen helps you breathe.

  Dallow: Temperatures rising. The Met Office records the hottest February since last year.

  Petrie: And a fatwa is announced against the author of controversial new children’s book Green Eggs and Hamas.

  Dallow: Good evening. They said it couldn’t be done, but they can stick it up their arse. One Network News is poised to return as the nation’s preferred news hour at six o’clock. The negative publicity prompted by the departures of presenters Richard Long, Judy Bailey, Paul Holmes, Jim Hickey and even Eric Young has had an adverse affect on ratings on TVNZ. Print media in particular has delighted in cataloguing what they see as a series of unmitigated disasters. But now the tide is turning. Figures released today led Bill Ralston, head of news and current affairs, to go to lunch. Mark Sainsbury joined him.

  Sainsbury: Good on you, mate!

  Ralston: Cheers!

  Saisnbury: Another bottle?

  Ralston: I should think so!

  Sainsbury: Let’s make this a party.

  Ralston: I’ll call Braunias. He’s never too busy for a drink.

  Sainsbury: God bless him!

  Dallow: Response in parliament to the startling turnaround was hard to gauge, as Guyon Espiner reports.

  Espiner: It was business as usual in the House.

  David Benson-Pope: I totally deny the allegation! I would never do that to a child!

  Mr Speaker: Order!

  Espiner: But despite the displays of self-interest, the pampered potentates of political power had to face the sweet music that is the revival of One News. I demanded a comment from the prime minister.

  Helen Clark: I’m busy. Go away.

  Espiner: Okay.

  Petrie: Fortunately, media commentators are only a phone call away, and will drop everything to comment to the media. Owen Poland spoke to Journalists Training Organisation executive Jim Tucker and Canterbury school of journalism boss Jim Tully.

  Poland: What do the new ratings figures tell you about the appeal of Simon and Wendy?

  Tully: My research group concluded that Wendy Petrie was a bimbo with a fat neck, but we’re going to have to have a rethink.

  Tucker: Back to the drawing board for us, too. My research group had it that Simon Dallow gave every appearance of a boring, up-himself prick.

  Poland: That was Jim Tully, who—

  Tucker: I’m Jim Tucker. He’s Jim Tully.

  Tully: Are you sure?

  Tucker: Not entirely, no.

  Petrie: Continuing our lead item, we cross live to One News reporter Donna-Marie Lever, who is celebrating with staff in the TVNZ cafeteria.

  Lever: Can you hear me, Wen?

  Petrie: Sounds like quite a party going on!

  Lever: I can barely hear myself think!

  John Stewart: That’s not a sound you’d hear often. John Stewart, One Network News!

  Lever: Quiet down, you silly man.

  Petrie: Donna, could you break down the ratings figures for us?

  Lever: Gladly! Since January 23, when you and Simon began fronting, the One Network News’ share of its target audience, the 25-to 54-year-old viewers, has slipped to 40 percent, well down from this time last year, when we held 50 percent.

  Stewart: John Stewart, One Network News!

  Lever: Shhhh. Meanwhile, in TV3’s demographic of 18-to 49year-olds, the networks are head-to-head nationally, but TV3 is well ahead in Auckland, taking 40 percent of the audience, compared to our paltry 26 percent. TV3 has also won over the 25to 54-year-old Aucklanders—with 42 percent to our worrying 30 percent.

  Petrie: The viewers don’t need to hear all that, Donna.

  Lever: Oh, sorry. Where are we … ah, here it is. It says here that One News has gained an astounding 67 percent share of the national demographic aged between four and 10.

  Petrie: Awesome.

  Lever: Not too stink, is it? But there’s more. One News has also come out way on top in the demographic of the mentally deficient and emotionally unstable. Donna-Marie Lever—

  Stewart: One Network News. Wheee!

  Dallow: Life of the party!

  Petrie: Isn’t he just!

  Dallow: Save a drink for me!

  Neil Waka: Don’t forget me, pretty boy!

  Dallow: Haw, haw! What have you got for us in sports news, Neil?

  Waka: Tana puts the boot in, Cambo takes a swing, and the Tuaman talks tough.

  Dallow: That’s after the break. And later, Ian Sinclair meets visiting British political journalist Robert Fisk, and tells him where he’s got it all wrong.

  Petrie: In, out. How sex makes babies.

  Dallow: Uh-oh, what’s wrong with this picture? The cat that ate a cucumber.

  Petrie: Jesus was a carpenter. A controversial new theory about the cross.

  Dallow: And the craze that’s sweeping the nation—talking puppets.

  [March 19]

  Mr Reed

  As soon as this column is finished, I head south, then east—a road trip, a holiday in late summer. It will take nine days. That’s a lot of driving, but my girlfriend has a good navigator. Destination, the East Cape: Opotoki, Lottin Point, Tokomaru Bay, Tolaga Bay, Gisborne, Ohope. New ground to me, so to assist in my research I have chanc
ed upon a secondhand copy of Farthest East: Afoot in Maoriland Byways, A.H. Reed’s account of his December 1945 journey from Tolaga Bay to Opotoki. He walked it. He was seventy. It took him twelve days.

  Reed—Alfred Hamish, later Sir Alfred—came in at number 69 in last year’s New Zealand’s Top 100 History Makers series on Prime TV. All lists of this nature are perfectly meaningless. What makes Reed lower than Tim Finn (57), or higher than Hongi Hika (74)? In his lifetime, he was a celebrity in the true sense— he was celebrated. Really he was loved, cherished for his epic perambulations from Cape to Bluff.

  As a publisher of natural and social histories, he introduced New Zealand to New Zealanders. As an author, he was a roaring success. As a pedestrian, his achievements have formed a founding myth of nationhood. Climbed Mount Ngauruhoe at eighty-five, Mount Egmont at eighty-six. Walked from Dunedin to Christchurch, over Arthur’s Pass, down the West Coast and back to Dunedin over Haast Pass when he was eighty-eight. At ninety, wanting a change of scenery, he did Sydney to Melbourne.

  He was not quite a novice when he decided on his happy plod around the East Cape: he had already walked Northland. That was a sentimental journey—he had been brought up there, leaving school early to work in the gum fields. A lifelong eccentric, he taught himself typing and shorthand—150 words a minute—and worked as a typewriter salesman in Dunedin. The House of Reed, a history of the publishing firm by Edmund Bohan, details how Reed got his new business up and running by printing Sunday School literature. A publisher was born. Pious, shy, frugal, Reed was a non-smoker, a non-drinker, and a non-driver. ‘I have no desire to own a car or even a phone,’ he wrote.