Chapter Two. The Road to Waitetuna

The drive home was rather uneventful. My Dad is a talker. It is a trait that I, myself, have inherited. However in this situation Dad took Alpha Male role, and I just nodded and smiled, and finally nodded off to sleep. We reached the Kopu Bridge, the historic one-laned crossing that links the Hauraki Plains to the Coromandel Peninsula. It is the bane for the multitude of Aucklanders that invade our sandy beaches every summer. With queues literally fifty kilometres long or more, and a car full of sicking-up kids, the blistering hot journey must be utterly intolerable. The faint hope of sharing a beach with literally ten thousand other visitors must be the only thing keeping one from jumping out of the car and into the mud-brown water of the Waihou River, the barrier that created the problem in the first place. As a youngster our family would avoid the veritable onslaught by packing up half a houseload of tents and tennis rackets and bicycles, and take off to some other lesser-known part of this beautiful country. For most of the year my homeland is a pristine and under-populated paradise disturbed only by the occasional Israeli cyclist or disorientated pelican. However, for the two weeks that encompass Christmas and New Year, the tranquil beauty is despoiled by schools of red-faced boaties, and the orgiastic tendencies of a horde of prepubescent children, having managed to swipe the half-bottle of vodka from their heavily made up, and very passed out mothers. In response to this horrid situation my parents would take us on the most amazing adventures. I haven’t stopped adventuring since.

My heart always leaps a little when I come back to Thames after a stint away. The small town is nestled between the Coromandel Ranges and the Firth of Thames, and serves as the gateway to the peninsula. Some people write Thames off as ‘boring’ or other such nonsense. All I have to say is this. In my whole time spent in Auckland I have yet to find a river. I mean, seriously, where the heck are they? Where I live in Thames there are about four rivers within five minutes drive from my house. One of them runs right through our property. If you parked your car in the middle of town and looked east you would see the bush clad, and often romantically misty mountains. To the north lies the winding yet very picturesque Thames Coast. To the southeast lies the historic Kaueranga Valley with its bush walks, swimming holes and old logging artifacts. Take a hop to the left and you are in the ocean. Thames is not boring. It is an inviting playground waiting to be explored.

We chugged up the last hill and pulled into the driveway. I was home. Well, for a day at least. I had only the weekend to regroup before making the journey to the West Coast. The afternoon was spent trying to get hold of Anita. I still didn’t have the address for the house at Waitetuna. I still didn’t really know if this place actually existed. Apparently Anita was up the Thames Coast at Colville, about fifty kilometres the wrong way from Raglan. She was visiting her very sick partner, who was at some voodoo medicine place up there. Organising her new tenant was the least of her priorities at this point of time, and considering the situation, I don’t blame her. However it was all becoming increasingly awkward for me, as I started work in Hamilton at 9am the following Monday. After much text-message-tag I finally got an address and description of the place. ‘982 Waitetuna Valley Road, the green gates.’ ‘Oky doky,’ I thought, ‘we’ll find out when we get there won’t we?’ I was still a bit nervous about the whole thing, but it was nearing eight ‘o’ clock at night and I had a party to go to. In my experience, partying is a great way to forget about things.

It was the 21st for an old school friend, which basically fronted as a big family reunion for my high school year group. I spent the evening catching up with people I hadn’t seen in years. It is always interesting to see where people have ended up. I only really remember one of the conversations. It was with one of my oldest friends. We talked about the awesome history we shared and where we were heading. As it turned out, we were both about to embark on adventures into the unknown. He was two days away from boarding a plane and flying to Canada for a winter of snowboarding, then heading on to the States to carry on his adventure. His point of difference from any other young kiwi doing the stereotypical OE thing was that he was going to film it. I have been watching the results, and am impressed with his escapades that have so far included partying with sorority girls in a Mexican mansion and somehow managing to commandeer ‘Tony Sapronos’ super-yacht (insert lame Lonely Island/T-Pain joke here). It made my little foray to Raglan almost boring in comparison. I said almost. Please keep reading.

We were interrupted by the call for speeches. After about half an hour, and a half dozen highly inappropriate friend-speeches, (along with a couple of emotional/boring family ones), it was time for the Yardie. The Yardie is a time-bound tradition in Thames, (and probably most other booze-saturated New Zealand towns). It involves the victim having to scull a glass of beer that is literally a yard in length. There is enough alcohol in the bastard to drop an elephant. If you actually absorbed it all into your bloodstream you would soon be heading straight to the accident department at your local hospital to have your stomach pumped out three of four times. The truth is, this is never a problem (as far as I’ve heard anyway), as there is too much liquid for even the fattest person to keep down. And that is why there is always a bucket the size of an oil drum close at hand during the exercise. In all my days I have never seen it left empty. I left the birthday boy to empty his stomach (and other assorted organs) and wandered outside. The party was being held at the Tararu Yacht Club, which is situated right on the waterfront just north of Thames. It was nearing 9 ‘o’ clock, and being near the equinox the days were at their longest, which meant the sun had not yet gone down. I watched its steady descent past the Hunua ranges, and pondered the next few months as the sea began to light up with golds and hues of fire. I had no idea where I was going or what was going to happen. I knew deep down, however, that it was going to be incredible.
****
A day passed by, and once again I found myself entranced by the western horizon. The van had been packed, and all my worldly possessions barely made a dent in its spacious interior. My parents had given me lease of the vehicle for the summer, and it looked just like a van should, when driven by someone’s mother. It was one of those space-ship-shaped bubbles, that looked as though it should be busy taking kids around on soccer trips, which, incidentally, it had done many a time over its life. The machine had the charming factory name, ‘Emina,’ which is very similar to another word. You’ve got to hand it to the Japanese; they really make a hash out of naming things. This summer, I would be driving what sounded like a discreet cleansing maneouvre. Put more bluntly, the process that literally blasts the shit out of you. Something had clearly been lost in translation. That, or some cheeky summer student with a good knowledge of English wanted ToyotaCorp to get caught with its marketing trousers around its ankles. The gaffe had been a running family joke since the day we had bought it. (Note to reader: sticking the nozzle of the waterblaster up the exhaust pipe may be a clever attempt at high-end humour, but it is unlikely to leave you with any brownie points from your dad. You may find yourself mowing lawns for the next two years. And you are far too old to be getting a smack on the bottom from your father.) Obviously she, (yes, this make and model was most definitely a she), was going to need a new name. It was about that time leading up to the US presidential elections, so I re-christened her Sarah Palin, in homage to John McCain’s politically awkward running mate.

I travel light. I always have. Too many possessions weigh you down. All I needed was the essentials. Clothes, guitar, surfboard, laptop, cigars. All of which would be extensively used on the trip (apart from the last, which are still sitting in my drawer, and which I have future designs for). One thing I had opted out of taking was my bicycle. I had owned it since I was about seven and it was certainly showing it. It had led a very interesting life and was standing on its proverbial last legs (read: wheels). Everything that could be wrong with it was. The front wheel was rather bent, and both tyres were as bald as a busload of granddads. The ‘Rock-Shocks’ had stopped absorbing anything heavier than a couple of hapless snails and the silver sheen of the handlebars had been discoloured by a bad case of rust. The seat had been ripped apart by a couple of cheeky keas at the Fox Glacier on a family trip, a few years earlier. And it now acted as a sponge, which would absorb the Auckland rain, and then redistribute it into your pants when you sat on it, leaving you with a very soggy bum. I managed to temporarily remedy this issue thanks to our society’s addiction to the plastic bag. Both the brakes barely worked, and when it rained, not at all. I clearly remember one time cycling down Symonds Street and actually having to hug a traffic light to stop myself being run down by the stampede of cars trying to get onto the motorway. The gears were also a problem. I had twenty-one of them, but only about three seemed to work. Both the chain and the cogs were completely corroded, which meant every pedal created this embarrassing graunching noise that would cause dogs to go off with frenzied barking, and young parents to hide away small children. The chain used to fall off constantly, and you could audibly hear me mutter ‘shithouse piece of shit’ every five metres (too hot and too pissed off to get creative with my cursing). I must have looked a sorry sight. In its younger days the bike used to have a bell, which I would ring at every pretty girl I passed. It would always get a smile and would, for the record, make me feel like the absolute man. But alas, the top part of the bell has since been lost, leaving my bike with no flirting capabilities whatsoever. The bike was in such a bad condition that for a year, I never locked it once at university. If anyone had wanted to steal it I wouldn’t have worried, because I knew the minute someone took it, the law of the universe would make sure the whole thing fell apart then and there. When I was at home, I left it outside in the front garden, where it had to endure the Auckland region’s temperature climate, which no doubt helped in its deterioration. The helmet that came with it was so useless that I have given up wearing one at all. Just the other night I had a transvestite inquire into the whereabouts of my head protection unit. It was a fair question. And it did leave me with a small measure of comfort knowing that a street worker with identity issues held my road safety in such high regard. All in all, the bicycle was highly un-roadworthy, aesthetically displeasing, and downright dangerous to myself and those around me. There was no way I was taking it to Raglan. To be honest I didn’t really care what happened to it.

I jumped into Sarah Palin. There was enough legroom for a Chinese basketball team, so I fiddled around with various knobs and levers till my feet could reach both pedals comfortably. Ah, the joys of an automatic gearbox. No need for your hand to get distracted from steering, or any use of rational thought whatsoever. Push. And go. Driving for dummies. I opened the window and went to say a goodbye to my beloved family, but was cut off by my mum, who was clucking away as only a mother can. She asked if I had an umbrella, the five different map books for the region, and my slippers, amongst other things. My response was an emphatic ‘no’ to most of them, so she hurried inside, and came back with the offending items. The side door was slid open and an assortment of rather unrelated belongings was heaved into the van. One’s mother is always right in such situations, so I just sighed a little, before giving her a big hug. I turned the ignition, and the behemoth lunged up the drive and onto the road. This was it. I was off. The unknown was waiting for me.

Like a sea captain, I steered the ship-like machine as it sailed across the Hauraki Plains westward. In less than an hour I was at the entrance of Hamilton, self-described as ‘the city of the future’, a phrase which causes light mocking nationwide. We passed the Pink Flat, which sits adjacent to the first main roundabout. My mind drifted back two years to the flat warming that I had once attended there. The thing that drew me to the flat in the first place, (other than the people of course), was their swimming pool. What they don’t know, is that I used to skip lectures and swim in it when they weren’t home. Hamilton is unbearably hot in summer. Anyway, this particular party was a complete cock-fest, with only about three scared-looking girls present. Someone had brought enough sparklers to light up a small village and the perpetrators were building ‘sparkler bombs’, which I believe are the same devices used by terrorists to blow up grounded aeroplanes. The buggers were then placed into old plastic bottles, which were taped to bricks. The incendiary device, (simply another sparker that protruded from the rest) was lit, the cap screwed onto the bottle, and the whole contraption thrown into the aforementioned pool. What happened next was a surprise for everybody. There was silence for about ten seconds, enough time for people to believe it was a dud. A deep groan dispersed from somewhere in the watery depths, and suddenly, a dull, muted explosion shook the entire property. I actually thought the pool was about to crack and cave in, causing the flooding of half of Hillcrest, the city’s only suburb on a hill, (genius naming I have to say), but luckily, for those downstream of us (ie the whole city), no such disaster happened. In the event, a large stream of bubbles erupted out of the water, along with a plume of thick, blueish smoke. There was a moment of stunned silence, immediately followed by the crowd sending up a great cheer. Those were incredible days. Come to think of it, Hamilton wasn’t so bad after all. But things have changed. People have moved on. All that remain are the photographs and memories. Only a few months after that party, the pool and back garden were demolished, leaving only a great pile of mud. The flatmates have since moved, and that pink little townhouse now serves as little more than a monument to an outrageous first-year filled with fun and friends.
****
I indicated left and passed through the city of Hamilton, the towering buildings at the university, the beautiful city gardens, and across the mighty Waikato River. Then finally onto the bypass that would take me to the city’s western limit, and the road to Waitetuna. Well that was the plan anyway. I took what I thought was the correct turn, and ended up in the countryside. So far, so good. Suddenly an ominous white object appeared in the distance. It grew closer, and spookier, until I found myself staring upward at a bizarre monolithic structure. Then it registered. I had taken the wrong road and ended up in Temple View, home of Hamilton’s inexplicably large Mormon population. Mormonism is a religion that is largely foreign to me, however I do know one thing about this curious little settlement, nestled in the idyllic western Waikato farmland. Apparently when Jesus Christ (of the latter day saints) returns to earth, His first choice of destination is Salt Lake City, Utah, (which, coincidentally is the Mormon capital of the world, no surprises there). However, one little known fact is that if, for whatever reason, Jesus decides that the climes of the Midwest are not really his thing, the tidy little suburb of Temple View will be his second choice of call. Of all the places in the world, the Son of God may quite possibly stage His Second Coming in the dirty old ‘Tron’ (local slang for Hamilton), an insignificant town, in a little known country. In the occasion, His greeting party will most likely consist of a herd of curious diary cows on their way to their morning milking (or evening one, ‘no one knows the day or the hour’ etc), and the elderly, and rather deaf Temple caretaker. I personally would have chosen the Mardi Gras in Rio Janeiro, or anywhere in the Mediterranean, but as I am not the redeemer of all creation, that call is not up to me. As they say; God works in mysterious ways.

Realizing my error, I went to pull the van around in a U-turn. As the beast had the turning radius of a Boeing jumbo jet, I ended up doing a three-point turn on the busy highway. Slightly bemused, I said a silent ‘good riddance’ to the landscape-dominating tower, along with the entire cultish enterprise it represented, and thundered back into town in search of the correct turn-off.
And there it was. The five-armed roundabout, along with its familiar petrol station, (which I hastily made use of, due to the ‘E for Empty’ light screaming ‘feed me’). I had been at this intersection many times before, but this was the first in nearly two years. It was a joyful re-acquaintance and sparked many nostalgic memories. I first learned to surf at Raglan, in the chilly waters of mid-2006. The place had immediately taken a unique hold of me. This journey had been a long time coming, and I was looking forward to experiencing the beauty of it all over again.

‘Raglan 45km’ read the sign. And I crossed the invisible border that divides surburbia and the rolling western Waikato. Suddenly everything changes. The air is sweeter. The landscape is more colourful. Life is simply different. This was the road to Raglan. State Highway 23, the road on which I would spend many waking hours over the next three and a half months. It would actually begin to define my life. But right now the newness of it all was leaving me a little heady. Like most centres in New Zealand, the suburban sprawl was encroaching onto the countryside, the so-called lifestyle blocks marching off westward into a war with what was once the wild west coast (there was a ridiculous amount of words starting with ‘w’ in that sentence). This continued for about ten kilometres until I reached the small blink-and-you-miss-it settlement of Whatawhata, which basically serves as the crossroads for Taranaki, Auckland, Hamilton and Raglan. And for this reason, it is a surprisingly busy intersection. I crossed the bridge that spans the murky waters of the Waipa River. This particular waterway finds its headwaters deep within the Rangitoto Ranges, and flows through both Otorohonga and Pirongia, before joining the Waikato on its slow moving journey to the ocean. It also acts as the border between the somewhat civilised classic-farmland-look of the Waikato Plains, and the ruggedness of the West Coast.

It is here that I must note some of the history of the road on which we were driving. The previous day, my mother had strategically place a book called Baches in Raglan or something similar next to my morning coffee, and from it I had gleaned a fair bit of information. Apparently merely fifty years ago the road from Hamilton to Raglan was nothing more than a dirt track. Nobody went to Raglan, except for a few hearty souls who were willing to make the trek over the harsh environment. Then all of that changed. The coast became cool and people were more and more interested in making the trip. Since then the road has been upgraded and hundreds of people use it daily, with those numbers swelling into the thousands over the summer months. However, because the terrain is so rugged, the road is in constant need of upgrading. There are several parts on top of the range that are actually slumping and beginning to fall down the hill. And there is nothing anybody can really do to stop it. If a mountain wants to take off somewhere, it will do so despite your best wishes or whatever million dollars the authorities are willing to throw at it. There has been talk of actually building a new road through the valley to avoid the problem completely, but that solution, if, indeed, it actually happens, is eons away. In the mean time we will all just have to cope with the never ending fix-up jobs, lazy lollipop men, and the annoyance of crawling at 30kph for no apparent reason.

I blinked, missed Whatawhata, and trundled on towards the approaching mountain range, the final barrier separating me from the magic that lay beyond. The incline steepened dramatically, and I planting my foot firmly on the accelerator. Sarah Palin had a motor that seemed as though it originally had been meant for a mobility scooter. To call it gutless would be an understatement. My foot was trying its darndest to push the pedal through the floor and into the undercarriage, and the toy-mota (see what I did there?) whined away like that annoying child actor from Jerry Maguire (you know, that spiky, wimpy one, with glasses?). It was no use. I could literally feel the petrol being drained away at a rate that I had no desire to inquire about. I felt better knowing that I had an income to foot the exorbitant gas bill. Well, only slightly better. I looked in the rear view mirror and noticed the small queue that had begun to form behind me. Just ahead was the slow lane, which had somehow anticipated my arrival, and told me in no uncertain terms that All Slow Traffic Must Use This Lane. I surrendered defeat, and made Sarah slip into the Lane of Shame, tail squarely between her legs. What passed was the most unlikely group of ‘vehicles’ I had ever seen. First, a tractor passed, with a trailer in tow. On the trailer was the most terrifying contraption I have ever seen. There were nasty looking blades, as tall as a man, protruding at all sorts of bizarre angles. In it centre was some kind of rotating wheel-me-bob thingy, also silvery sharp. The trailer hit a pothole in the road and the monster started swaying about, threatening to leap off and decapitate me. In reply to this I did the near impossible job of making Sarah drive even slower, bringing her to a near crawl. The sunlight glinted evilly off the metal objects and there was a red lining on each of them. I hoped to God that it was just paint. It was hard to believe that this medieval-looking torture device was simply a means to harvest grain.

Next in line were two obviously European (probably German) cyclists. I have never really understood people who attempt to travel the world by pedal power. I mean, it just looks like hard, and rather unnecessary work. Cyclists the world over seem to pack just about everything onto their two-wheeled sweat-machines. The first of the pair was carrying a tent, twenty pots and pans; a fold up bicycle (go figure) and a queen sized mattress. The second had about 37 individual bags tied firm to any and all conceivable areas of his bicycle. Goodness knows what he was keeping in them (I’m guessing overdue library books). He also had a cage holding what appeared to be a scared looking pet ferret, and to top it off, he had a fucking double bass strapped to his back. Well not really, but you know what I mean. The bus fare from Hamilton to Raglan is $4.60 (which, incidentally, is less than the price of your average bike-over-a-mountain energy drink). I wasn’t sure if pedaling half their household items up this bastard of an incline was really worth the effort. In saying that, they were doing better job of it than the Sarah Palin was.

Next to pass in this curious little troupe was a middle-aged woman riding a middle-aged-looking horse. I gave her a forced smile and bottled both my inward fury at the situation, and the urge to give her a rude hand gesture (it is simply wrong to give the finger to what could potentially be someone’s grandmother). This made her reaction even more unexpected. She rolled up her fist and gave me ‘the bird’, the same one that I had so politely restrained myself from giving her only moments ago. The nerve of it, and then she yelled at me: ‘Get off the road you (expletive) moron’. Lovely. As if to somehow exemplify this point, her mount then lifted its tail and proceeded to unload its well digested lunch onto the bonnet of my poor van. I was at my breaking point.

And then it happened. The last straw. With my new favourite jockey trotting off into the distance, the last in the queue began to pass me. You are not going to believe this, but a family of ducks waddled their way past. One mother, followed by about six little fluff-ball children. They were all quacking away in a rather congenial manner, and I listened intently to their banter, trying to decipher what they were saying. This is what I managed to translate:

Fluff-ball #3: “Mumma, why is that man driving so slow?”
Mother: “Don’t stare little one. It is quite rude.”
Fluff-ball #5: “Mumma, that man is pulling the fingers at me.”
Mother: “Well be the bigger man son, he can’t help it that his car is a piece of shit.”

And so on and so forth it went. One by one they waddled past, quacking incessantly about the shortcomings of my ‘ride’. I felt like running the little buggers over. With Fluff-ball #6 bringing up the rear, I slipped back into the lane for normal people, my male ego utterly deflated.
****
I made it. After much huffing, and puffing, and cursing, and flipping of the ‘bird’, I made it to the summit, known locally as the ‘divvy.’ Situated there is a rest area (much needed for both of us), a picnic table, and oddly enough, an old rooster (more about him later). It also serves as the entrance way to a myriad of bushwalks in the region, and more importantly, it was the point that indicated to Sarah that she could ‘take it easy’ and ‘chill out a little bit’. It’s all downhill from here baby! As if to make up for lost time, she shot over the crest and down toward our destination at a health-endangering rate. As well being quite steep, (the western incline was even steeper than what we had just experienced), the road has a series of badly centred hairpin corners, the type that have that endearing lets-get-all-the-kids-to-throw-up quality to them. Did I mention that Sarah Palin had handling that could not exactly be described as ‘amazing’? I would be fair to say that even a hippy campervan (of which there are many in the region) could have taken these corners better than her. At every turn she would just about tip up on two wheels, and either nearly throw me into the solid rock wall to my left, or down into the vertigo-inducing ravine to my right. After about five minutes of this (though it seemed much longer), we managed to make it to the bottom with both our lives intact. We didn’t have far to go now. Earlier on, during my little scenic tour of the bizarre universe that was Temple View, I had fished out two of the five maps my mother had most helpfully supplied me. Using these, a compass, scale rule and sextant, I went on to determine the correct route to the Waitetuna. It turned out that all the study had been unnecessary, because, looming in the distance, was a sign the size of a house. It read: ‘Waitetuna Valley. To Your Bloody Left. If You Can’t Read This Massive-To-The-Point-Of-Comical Sign, You Should Not Really Be Driving’. I turned left.

So here it was. The final stretch before I started my new life as Old Macdonald’s apprentice. It was all a rather pleasant setting. With farmland rolling in all directions, surrounded by brooding distant mountain ranges that spoke of hardship and adventure. I passed through the settlement of Waitetuna, which was about one kilometre off the main road. It consisted of a school, an art/pottery gallery, and a sprinkling of 1950’s townhouses. Anita’s text message had read 5km, so I still had a little way to go yet. Thus far the road had been sealed and was in generally good shape. That was about to change as all of a sudden the van jolted heavily, and we were skimming along over gravel. We were going far too fast for the conditions and the van started losing traction at the most inconvenient times (ie on a corner, or a hairs-width from a power pole). I slowed down and brought her under control. There was no point coming this far, after all that we had been through, to end up side-on in some farmers paddock in the middle of nowhere. On the hill ahead of me was a cute little cottage, which looked suspiciously like the one in the Trademe photos. This was it! And there they were. The green gates, as per the text message. I was still going far too fast and had to plant my foot firmly on the brake. This caused Sarah to swing around wildly in an unintentional power slide, leaving a trail of dust and a perfect, almost artistic arc on the gravel road. The near accident lined me up perfectly with the driveway. I rolled through the gates, up the drive, and was immediately smothered by an avalanche of chickens.

All rights reserved by the author. 2009.