Old brain, new media

The work I did at the Govett-Brewster is now online. Check it out at:

http://www.govettbrewster.com/lenlye/

Cheers, Tyler!

Haere ra Aotearoa

O land of dense bush & slippery vowels; boy racers and Ngati dreads; long blacks and short shorts, blistering wind and waving wands, warm fronts and chilly baches, little blue penguins and big grey mountains, I would like to say thankyou with all my heart to: Megan & Gareth for Mt Roskill, Northland and healthy breakfasts; Megan, for listening to daft theories, Auckland café culture, and putting up with Kelly Tarlton’s; Gareth for an account ready on Grey Lynn, being crazy enough to jump from the top of the Skytower, and keeping my pedantry finely honed… Karen & Alan for Korokoro, NZ culture for Poms 101, and coming all the way to New Plymouth; Karen for weather reports, the Kepler, and dodgy old kiwi movies at The Film Archive; Alan for Bro'Town and explaining how houses work… Mark for the mad dash from New Plymouth to Christchurch, the omelettes, and even the toast… Tyler for a tour of the dungeon, Len’s wands and the stencils, Alejandra, for nights out in New Plymouth, and everyone else at the Govett-Brewster for making me welcome… Lyn & Lex for two nights on the deer farm… Trudi & Eian for nights and meals at the Victoria Railway… Graeme the Guide for knowing the names of everything that lives on Stewart Island… The Skinner Family for making me laugh… Sultana & Aniz for the biriani, the grog, and the huge bags of Munchy Mart goodies, and Aisha for showing me round while they fixed the till… Farman, Mushtaq and Bashir for the rugby… Sarah from Auckland for asking difficult questions on Stewart Island… and Ashish, Franz, Kirsten, Liz and Eric for company along the way.

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.

Top 10 cheesy bus driver/tour guide jokes

1. Anyone here support Manchester United? Right, get out and walk!
2. See that horse tied up over there? It's to distract the bears from the tourists.
3. (Of an abandoned car) I was going to take the radio, but another Maori beat me to it.
4. I say they're 'Just Another Friendly Aucklander'
5. If you miss the coach, I'll be back here to pick you up, same time tomorrow.
6. Be good, and if you can't be good, be careful. If you can't be careful, call it after me. Colin: it's a good name.
7. I beep when I go over the cattle grid to warn the trolls to take their fingers in, because the last thing you want is a grumpy troll. I should know: I used to live with one.
8. (Pointing at a shag) That's what we call the Native Abel Tasman Flying Tree Penguin
9. If you want to know more, ask a question,  If you want to know less, just look really bored.
10. (Driving rapidly towards sea) You all know where Sydney is, right?

Geothermal Wonderland

A day trip around Rotorua (sister city to Beppu). The Wai-o-Tapu 'geothermal wonderland' and the volcanic Waimangu Valley, where an 1886 eruption obliterated nine Te Arawa villages. There are bubbling mudpots, hot springs which stain the ashy clay vivid yellow and green, and pools of intense green, blue and red. Years of deposits build up into intricate sinter terraces. At the Lady Knox geyser (they say Guy-zur here), a man throws soap flakes down its maw in order to ensure it spouts on time at quarter past ten every morning.

Hangi in Vegas

On the road from Taupo to Rotorua, alongside the steaming geothermal plumes and the encroaching smell of eggs, signposts to 'maori villages' and 'cultural experiences' line the highway. You don't see a 'Pakeha suburb' sign pointing to Korokoro, so perhaps this is a unicultural country after all, though there was that Kiwiana bar in Wellington with the spiked drinks… maybe that's 'culture' too.

But the hangi and cultural experience are to Rotovegas what bungy jumping is to Queenstown, so off I go to the i-site and take my pick of what's on offer. I choose Mitai because it's outdoors and not in a hotel.

First up when we get there is a chance to take photos of the hangi (and a quick explanation of the difference between this and a hongi, which is the nose-touching Maori greeting), a huge steaming pit containing our dinner. Burning wood is put in the pit and rocks piled on top of that: when the wood burns out, the rocks fall through the embers, then water is poured on the rocks and the food laid in trays on top of that, covered in blankets and left for about three hours. It smells delicious.

It all goes a bit Disney for a while after that, as we're led down a path through the woods past scary masks, warriors shouting at us from the bushes, and a party in a war canoe paddle up a small river beside us, torches blazing, and leap out onto the riverbank opposite to do a quick haka.

Then comes the main show. A traditional Maori village has been laid out, with huts and smoking fires, and the 'junior' troupe (mostly high school students) is waiting to do the formal welcome. An Australian named Simon has been appointed temporary chief of our tourist 'tribe of ten nations', and goes up on stage to be shouted at and then offered a symbolic gift of peace, which he accepts (if he didn't we'd have to go to war with these guys and though there are more of us, they look better-prepared). Then we sing a song, and the chief speaks very seriously to us in Maori before saying 'OK, you can clap now'.

The rest of the show is entertainingly shambolic: taiaha and other weapons are demonstrated; conch-shells and other instruments are played. The tribe drop their stuff sometimes and giggle. They do a properly frightening-looking haka, and the chief explains it all as they go along. Most of them have full facial moko and body tattoos, all stamped on rather than tattooed (I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I've seen walking the streets in New Zealand wearing moko). We all have to stand up and practice a bit of a haka. It's all done in a non-patronising and funny, very kiwi way. The chief says he hopes we've learned something between the jokes.

When the performance is over, the kids all bomb off in their cars, and we go to the feast awaiting us. The meat from the hangi tastes just as delicious as it smells: the meat is soft and tender and has a slightly smoky barbecue flavour without being the least bit charred on the outside. There's a trifle and chocolate log too, but I don't think they've been anywhere near the steaming pit.

We finish off with another walk through the woods to see some glow worms and a spring pool with trout and eels swimming in it. The bus drops us back all over town and I pester the coach driver, John, about the relationship of his peoples to this show: his iwi is Te Arawa, the hapu is Ngati Whakaue, and Mitai is the family organisation who lease the land from the hapu to do the cultural performance business. He thinks I must have either either read a lot or be married to a kiwi to be interested in this stuff.

It would be easy to sneer at this all as a tourist spectacle, which it is. But it's good-humoured, funny, and you do learn something (I didn't know that the moko which women wear that looks like scary dribbles represents the head of an owl, or that the forehead on a man's moko is a bat and the marks on his nose a parrot's beak). The thanks we are offered at the end for visiting "our place" is genuine and well-meant. There could be tree museums much worse than this.

Tongariro Crossing

The Tongariro Crossing, widely-hyped (believe the hype) as New Zealand’s finest day tramp, starts off where the Kepler left off, above the bushline at about 1000m, and climbs to 1880m or so, up lava flows, across crater beds, and past lakes and fumaroles. The bus comes to pick us up at 6.30am outside the fairly unpleasant Go-Global Backpackers. There are two other English blokes there waiting with me. One of them is coughing like a proper consumptive and wearing jeans, and his mate tells him he looks dressed for a hike all the way to the shops.

If you don’t enjoy reading rambling tramping monologues as much as I like writing them, click on the links for the pictures, or even better just go straight to the pictures.

It’s a bit of a circus at the Mangatepopo car park. Even this late in the season there are a couple of hundred people attempting the walk. Three have died on the crossing this year, the driver tells us, but people who were unprepared on days worse than this, which is an unusually lovely day indeed. We quickly catch sight of the massive crags of Ruapehu, the highest of the three major volcanoes, followed by the dimpled cinder cone of Ngauruhoe, and the broad and stumpy Tongariro.

The biggest eruption at Taupo was the one that created the crater which forms part of Lake Taupo. In 186AD, New Zealand, anxious to announce its existence to the inhabited world, blew 24 cubic kilometres of ash and debris out of Taupo into the air, clouding the world’s skies for several days, which was noticed (and therefore dated) in both China and Rome, but no-one was sent to investigate for more than a thousand years.

The walk starts off easily beside a stream and waterfall, through yellowy tussocks, at the end of which is a crater bed and then a steep climb up a chunky lava flow to the side of Ngauruhoe. Nothing grows here, and any stone you grab onto to help you up is hard and scratchy volcanic rock. It takes about forty minutes to climb, and it’s known poetically as ‘The Devil’s Staircase’ (I wonder what the Maori for ‘bastard steep hill full of sharp bits’ is?). At the top is the side path off to ascend Ngauruhoe’s dimpled summit, which is stained red, yellow and white with salts, and if you look very hard you can see it smoking slightly.

On the way up Taranaki’s cone is visiable all the way over on the west side of the island, peeking above the clouds. All four mountains used to live happily together round here until Taranaki started hitting on Tongariro’s girlfriend. Taranaki beat Ngauruhoe in a fight, but the massive Ruapehu got the better of him, after which he ran away, carving out the Wanganui River behind him.

Even by midday, where the ground has yet to feel the sun’s light, ice crystals and thin crusts of rime persist. A man who did the Northern Circuit and missed the view yesterday has come back with his plastic bag for a look (he’s not stupid) and warns me where the ice is on a tricky bit of the climb.

The yellow, muddy bed of the South Crater follows, and then a further hike up leads to the summit of the walk at 1886m, at the ridge of the Red Crater, whose black black sides are stained with salty red like spraypaint. Immediately beyond, at the bottom of a steep scoria track, which I edge down nervously, are the resplendent Emerald Lakes, an unhealthy-looking green bordered with yellow, and several fine steaming fumaroles. As I walk across the Central Crater someone points out how great the view behind me is, and indeed it is, but within minutes cloud has obscured the view entirely and is creeping rapidly upon us. I start to frantically hope that my backpack is full of all the things that a bewildered seventy-year-old wouldn’t think to pack (rolls, bananas, scroggin, woolly hat; no USB key!) but it’s OK because the worst the cloud does is kind of obscure the view of the Blue Lake.

From there it’s a zigzag through tussock to the Ketetahi DOC hut where everyone hangs out and has their lunch. There’s no mileage in getting to the end too quickly because you’re only going to have to wait for the shuttle bus when you get there. I deduce that almost everyone is younger than me, and that everyone English is posher than me.

We cross the stream below the mysteriously steaming Ketetahi hot springs, which are off-limits. The National Park land was a gift from Ngati Tuwharetoa in 1887 to pre-empt development and preserve the ‘cultural landscape’.

And then we descend, seemingly endlessly, back to the pickup point. The track falls first through scrubby vegetation, and then into virgin bush proper, down your standard-issue DOC retaining steps: tramp-tramp-tramp-thump, tramp-tramp-tramp-thump. I get stuck behind a bunch of English girls, who despite having Latin A-levels don’t seem to be able to pronounce the name of the mountain they’re climbing up, and a kid who has his own personalised ‘Gap Year 06’ hoodie with his itinerary on his back (he’s been to Peru! He’s going to India!).

When the buses arrive, everyone crowds to get on so they can go home at 3.30, rather than wait on the 4.30 bus for the stragglers to arrive. Back to Taupo we go, but not before we drop the meatbombs off at the skydiving centre, to do what Taupo is after all there for. But this has been one of the most amazing walks I've ever done.

19 things I’ll miss about New Zealand

1. Genuine day-to-day friendliness: of course no-one really cares how your day was, but they ask because it’s nice to ask;
2. Perky Nana. The Mighty Perky Nana;
3. Being eleven hours ahead of everybody in England and therefore constantly ahead of the game, like the early bird;
4. Everyday stunning scenery: these days I can’t be bothered looking out the window for anything under 3000m;
5. Big beaches, wide sand, rolling waves. Just to look at;
6. Red black and white: the Maori stuff;
7. Wilderness walks: no OS maps, just the one track;
8. Boats across wide water;
9. Megan & Gareth, Karen & Alan;
10. Loving Auckland, to the bafflement of everyone who doesn’t live there;
11. Pies, and sausage rolls that have more sausage than roll;
12. Kayaking. No, seriously;
13. 'eh?' at the end of every sentence: it's like AQI on steroids;
14. Big Len Lye sculptures
15. An engaging willingness to fuck with the basic Eggs Benedict. It doesn’t always work, but they’re constantly trying to improve it, which is noble;
16. Being off the hook from worrying about the world because you hardly ever see any foreign news anyway;
17. Flashes of comedy genius: Bro’Town, Sione’s Wedding and Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby;
18. Oh go on then… very rarely getting a shit cup of coffee;
19. A holiday so long I can’t imagine it being over.