Auckland, at last

It’s my last day in New Zealand. I catch the ferry across to Devonport on the North Shore. The port looms large to the East, giant cranes shifting containers about, just like the container port toy my brother had as a kid. It’s good to see a central city waterfront working, rather than turned into hectares of glass-fronted ziggurats: beaches aside, Auckland thankfully doesn’t seem to have yet got the hang of revaluing waterfront real estate with pretension.

Auckland’s like Sydney in a lot of ways: it’s stretched around the south side of a harbour with a North Shore too; the gentrified suburbs are to the south and west of the CBD; it’s even copied the Sky Tower (though in the Auckland skyline it looks much better standing alone, uncrowded by skyscrapers). But Auckland’s not only smaller, it has less edge than Sydney, more souvenir shops and less seriousness, but perhaps a little more studied cool. Even the sleazy side along K’Rd has its conical-breasted Vegas Girl mural preserved to gaze at semi-ironically from the espresso cafes with their faux-industrial coffee pumps.

I’m lucky enough to be staying out in the sticks, or the inner suburbs at least. Mount Roskill is impossibly spread out by London standards, each wooden house an island; a family of ducks walks along Penney Ave in the mornings. Living here would be impossible without a car (I’ve met few Kiwis who haven’t been astounded by my inability to drive). On the other hand, it’s only a thirty minute drive into the centre of town, quicker than you can get into the West End from most parts of London, and if you ignore the question of scale, Mt Roskill has an ethnic and age mix similar to London’s inner suburbs, and a curiously similar feel.

Auckland’s the only part of New Zealand that’s properly immigrant-multicultural. Polynesians and other Pacific Islanders have settled here, as well as Asians and Indians (here, ‘Asian’ means East Asian: it’s weird to hear Indian-looking people going on about ‘lots of Asians’). Some fit into niches: superettes owned by Gujaratis (“They called us curry munchers when we came” says Aniz. “Now who doesn’t munch curry?”), Asian business students, and Chinese- and Korean-run cake-bakeries on Dominion Road. Hanging out at the Munchy Mart on the university campus, there’s a world of snacks to be discovered, from addictively tasty Japanese chewy sweets to the very strange green Korean aloe drink with jelly pieces in it, but the last time I was there I came away with a whole box of chocolate fish as an authentic kiwi souvenir.

There are even corners of the downright weird: I’m fascinated by a shop halfway down Dominion Road outside which hangs a union jack and has emblazoned on its windows “What is the destiny of the British Race? Does it have a pre-determined future?” Finally getting a chance to investigate I discover that rather than fascists, it’s some kind of Lost Tribes of Israel outfit. It’s closed four days a week, and free literature yellows in the window. One night in New Plymouth I saw the shop on television, part of a videotrack to the Muttonbirds’ Dominion Road. Auckland has four free-to-air terrestrial music video channels, one of them, Alt TV, plays leftfield tracks like NZ poet Sam Hunt’s “Your Body has no Flaw”. But sometimes there’s just dead air and the logo.

Stumpy dead volcanic cones litter Auckland: it goes up and down just as viciously as Wellington but much less predictable. The most recent cone, Rangitoto, popped out of the Hauraki gulf at the end of the fourteenth century, to the surprise of the Maori living on the island next door, and while crumbled lava fields and caves persist, and the scoria tracks are lumpy and hard on the feet, the crater itself and much of the island besides are densely forested with pohutukawa trees.

There’s a lot of JAFA-abuse about. Perhaps it’s like Nadene’s mum said: “It’s a brother-sister relationship: we say what we like about them, but if anyone else criticizes, we’ll come to their defence.” But I feel as if I left a different New Zealand behind when I got on my last InterCity coach out of Whakatane and crawled towards the skytower through the Bombays, the traffic choked satellite towns, and Manukau City. Goodbye to both, but to Auckland last of all.

Skyjump!

There must be something in the water, because I’ve been in New Zealand only just over two months and I’ve already given in to the compulsion to throw myself off something perilously tall. A line has to be drawn somewhere though, and that line is an elastic band wrapped around the ankles, so once Gareth’s participation has been assured, we opt for the altogether more urban(e) Auckland Skyjump experience, from 192m above street level.

The Sky Tower is the defining feature of the Auckland skyline: in a view of the city centre from any distance, it stands head and shoulders above everything else. It also completes the Australasian subset of my ongoing collection of members of the World Federation of Great Towers. It’s a standard-issue Eastern-European-style communications tower, with a slender concrete trunk, a flying-saucer observation deck, and a tapering aerial mast. Being less than ten years old and in New Zealand, it naturally has a thrill ride incorporated right into it.

After a hearty porridge breakfast we spin up to the tower to get jumping, the first customers of the day. Gareth’s, and even Megan’s, family have turned up to watch. While Gareth’s putting on his jumpsuit I make a nerves-dash to the toilet, and once I’m in my harness too we ride the lift up to the top floor where two Maori blokes are dropping sandbags off the apparatus to check that it’s working. While we’re waiting I pace up and down, pontificating on the difference between the fear of being very high (legitimate) and the fear of dying by falling (illegitimate). “Shut up and sit down” says Gareth.

Gareth goes out first. It’s a complicated process of being hooked on a karabiner inside a glass box, then hooked on another attached to a rail running out along a metal plank into the open air, and finally having the hook of the jumping wire attached to your harness. As Gareth is led out he wraps his white knuckles around the railings and his face looks as pale as a sheet. He grasps two poles either side of him, and they count him down to jump, but he waits till he’s ready, and then disappears over the edge. The mechanism that slows him as he falls is a fan in a drum attached to the wire he’s on, effectively massively increasing his wind resistance, and it makes an almighty racket as it spins round.

Then it’s my go. They walk me out, hoist me up, lean me forward and I look down at the streets and cars a looooong way below me. This is the single most frightening moment of the whole experience. They count me down, and I jump. Five metres below the platform they stop the wire and dangle me in front of the observation deck so that the punters can get a good look at me flailing around, and they can get a good photo of me hanging in the air. Then they drop me properly. The descent is supposed to take sixteen seconds, but it feels like about two to me as the concrete shaft of the skytower rushes past and then I’m slowing and from the little landing platform Gareth is shouting “bend your knees” and I manage to land without quite falling over or knocking down the English woman catching the landers.

It’s all over too quickly… we have coffee downstairs with the families, review the video footage shot by Gordon and admire the photos the skytower people took of us hanging in the air (in my case looking like a complete idiot). But I don’t know how Gareth could put his mum through that, especially on Mother’s Day.

Oddly-shaped balls

To Eden Park, then, for the Blues’ final Super 14 game of the season, against the Chiefs. Sultana has season tickets, but she can’t make it, so she assigns Farman from the Munchy Mart to pick me up. We stop off on the way to look at a beach south of Mt Roskill, where Farman tells me about his family’s place in North-Eastern Afghanistan, with it sweet water and lakes, and how American soldiers pointed a gun at his grandmother. We pick up Mushtaq the Maori and go the Munchy Mart, where Sultana again plunders the store’s shelves to fill two bags with chocolate bars, sweets and those peculiar Korean aloe drinks full of little jelly pieces. Bashir comes along to make up the numbers on Sultana’s season tickets.

Sultana’s seats are right up the front on the 22 line, so we get an up-close-and-personal view of the lineouts and scrums, and also the pirate mascot and cheerleaders. The stadium is mostly Blues, but over behind the posts there’s a cheerful bunch of mooloos clanging their cowbells like mad. A local league is playing a game as a crowd-warmer, which gives Mushtaq the opportunity to slowly explain to me how the game works, some of which I even think I understand.

The game goes badly for the Blues. The first half is drawn 6-all on penalties, but the Chiefs get much the better of the second half. I don’t realise how seriously I’m taking it till I find myself yelling “Miss it, you farmer!” at a Chief taking a penalty kick. But by the time the Blues are 30-9 down five minutes before the end we leave in disgust, and drive home in silence.