Benemma

NZ PART IV (13-17 Dec)

Chapter 1 – Over the Paddocks

Let’s pick up after Peter and his bulging, expectant fiancée Kylie have dropped us at my Auntie Wendy’s farmhouse just outside Tokoroa, a little above the centre of North Island. I’ve mentioned the Teletubby-esque landscape of grassy hillocks which pervades the Waikato region of the island and that’s exactly what it’s like around Toke (as the locals call the town). The old main road from the north to Taupo comes through Toke, it’s a fearsome thoroughfare heaving with about one car every twenty minutes. Off that busy highway is a back-road servicing a few disparate farms, off that another smaller road still. Halfway down that road is a turning into a gravel driveway which rises in a string of steep arcs to a flat, square plot of land where Rod and Wendy made there home a quarter of a century ago. I’ve wondered all my life what their house looked like, how different life could be on the opposite corner of the world, and I was shocked at just how idyllic the reality was when we found it at last.

The house is L-shaped and on only one floor, as is usual in such a low-populous western nation. Unlike most buildings, Rod and Wendy’s was built from stone. It’s a local stone called Himuera with a warm yellow tinge. It was hewn from the cliffs of what was once the banks of the Waikato river before it abruptly changed course over 200,000 years ago. The front door is approached between ranks of roses in many colours, and the back opens onto a large square lawn surrounded by many more flowers, small trees and vegetables. The sun was out when we arrived and the garden stank of fecund plants. A Union Jack had been hoisted above the house in our honour. Inside, the walls were all lined with panels of wood varnished to a mid-brown, giving the place the feel of a hunting lodge by comparison to our red-brick properties at home. The main living area was spacious and homely, flooded with photographs of the family from all over the world. From the kitchen sink or dining table, you could look out across the lawn and see the farm rolling away beyond, catching the last light of the evening sun on the crests of endless hills within the farm boundaries. The elevated position of the house gave it the advantage of a strategic view over most of their extensive farm and made us feel on top of the world.

We made ourselves immediately at-home. Then, in his booming voice, amplified by a lifetime working on the land, Rod announced his need to do something with the “Run-off” so I volunteered with neither hesitation nor knowledge of what running-off was. Peter and I sat virtually on top of each other in the passenger seat of the ute, with Rod in his leather stetson, rugby shirt and gum boots at the wheel, and the dogs leashed on the flat-bed at the back, tongues to the breeze. We climbed through a cluster of nearby paddocks in low gear, bouncing on the off-road suspension. Peter leapt down with his working dog Warz – a Kelpie-Eyedog cross, black and sleak as oil with two thin eyes hung under a sharp brow. Warz bolted over the top line of one steep paddock and put The Fear into the 60 calves populating it. The calves panicked and spread out but Warz was thinking ahead of them and sprinting to the back of the paddock to cut them off. A couple of cows became separated from the herd. Peter yelled, “Back Warz! Oi, back! Noooo, go BACK!”

The young dog worked it out in the end and snared the straggling cows. To my eager new eyes Warz seemed impeccable but Peter wasn’t so impressed, “He has his good and bad days, he’s getting there.”

With all the herd now in a column making there way along the run-off (a track between paddocks) at the most south-westerly reach of the farm, Warz suddenly changed course as if bolting from his Job. Peter didn’t react, he knew what was going on. Then the dog graciously leapt into a large concrete water tank and vanished with a huge splash. “Don’t worry, he’s just thirsty”, Peter said.

Without further instruction Warz was back out of the water seconds later and putting terror into the heels of the cows at the back of the column. His coat shined with dampness, giving him the look of some glimmering demon as he flew over the grass. We watched from high above, in the tray on the back of the ute, with the shadows of clouds slithering over Rod’s grazing land, wind and sun catching our skin. Both lads looked at me a little strangely when I told them we were in paradise, I guess they were used to it. You could, I guess, get very used to that kind of scene.

I won’t bore you with the details but I took copious notes whenever Rod had us out on the farm, as he tirelessly explained the detailed mechanics of dairy farming in this part of the world. We even joined his share-milkers – the guys who help run the farm – and a local farming consultant, as they examined the herd. The consultant nodded slowly as we looked over all 600 cows for the first time, “Good herd, this, a real healthy herd”.

One morning Rod woke me at 05:00 and took me down to cousin Mark’s farm, which by astonishing luck backed onto Rod and Wendy’s. I was clad in head-to-toe thermals, a wooly hat, and plastic overalls covering the lot. Mark lead me into a concrete pit which runs down the centre of his milking shed for its full length. Hanging from a rail above our heads were thirty pipes, each leading to a cluster of four suction cups for extracting the cows’ milk. On either side of us were two aisles, caged-in with steel railings to keep the cows in position when they arrived. All that metal and concrete was glistening and making complex patterns in the hazy dawn light. Cathy switched on the radio and the first members of the herd stated to arrive of their own accord. Filling a circular pen at one end of the shed, the cows were throwing up vapour from their hot breath and from the piles of poo they were ejecting with great frequency. This steamy ensemble added further to the beauty of the dawn.

The gate was opened at one end and thirty cows took their stations along one aisle, facing out so their arses hovered threateningly above our heads. Then another thirty were brought into the opposite aisle. Under Mark and Cathy’s supervision I put the cups on dozens of cows. It wasn’t difficult but required faith in Mark’s assurances that the cows were unlikely to kick my arms to pieces, as long as I showed them who was boss. The front-runners of the herd were generally more placid than the later ones, as cows keep a strong pecking-order and the older ones go first. As I got faster and more confident I got a feel for it. It’s actually easier not to look sometimes, especially for someone very tall like me. I just reached under the cow’s bulging udders with one of the cups up-turned in one hand and when my fingers found a teet the cup leapt onto it under the force of its suction. As one aisle of teats was drained dry the cups would fall off automatically, and retreat to the centre above the pit, awaiting one of us to move it across to the other aisle. Then that first aisle of cows would be released and another thirty let in to replace it. Thus we milked about 280 cows in around one and a half hours. Then, as Mark filled the morning’s books, Cathy and I took to power-hoses and cleared the incredible piles of shit out of the yard.

Milking was a deeply satisfying and enjoyable experience. I felt a slight anxiety at the notion of working with real animals since, unlike the pieces of paper I was used to pushing around in my jobs, they were live and vulnerable. I imagined this feeling extending to Mark and Cathy, who had chosen to take responsibility for every life in the herd. What’s more, a spot of labour on one early morning once was invigorating, but to have to do it twice a day every day seemed monumental. And they really had to do it. I thought about how if I hadn’t turned up to any of my old jobs one day nothing would have happened but the same couldn’t be said for a farmer.

Emma usually stayed with Wendy while I went on these agricultural escapades. She supplemented them with hearty stuff like feeding the pigs and assisting with the local food bank. She also chose to stay away when Bryan took me out one evening to indulge in something I’ve always wanted an excuse to try. To explain, my brother and I were raised in the countryside but our interaction with the land rarely extended far beyond flattening crops to make play areas, and teasing pigs onto the electric fences. I had always been drawn to the thrill of hunting but, as childish sadism made way for a mature conscience, I could never justify killing something for enjoyment. In New Zealand this argument falls apart due to something they have that is of no major issue in Britain – pests.

New Zealand has been separated by thousands of kilometres of sea from any major landmass for the last couple of hundred million years, allowing life there to get pretty comfortable. Mammals didn’t exist in New Zealand before humans got there so birds got to be the most fearsome creatures in the food chain. At the apex of each food pyramid Africa got lions and elephants, Asia got tigers, Britain got, err, badgers and New Zealand got birds. But wait, we’re talking about some evil birds here. No, seriously, the largest bird ever to exist was native uniquely to New Zealand and only became extinct about 600 years ago. The Moa stood three metres tall and had a wide, curving beak and talons the size of bananas. Nothing messed with Moa. Nothing, that is, except its sole predator which died-out shortly after its favourite meal did. Haast’s Eagle had a three-metre wingspan, making it twice the size of a modern eagle.

I get quite emotional when I think about remarkable creatures which lived so recently yet vanished so soon after humans found them and their plentiful meat. However there is still hope for several NZ species which suffered from our disturbance as they are not quite extinct yet. These include some fantastically pathetic freaks of evolution. Left for millions of years free of predation, it’s touching to see quite how defenceless creatures can become. Perhaps the most prominent example of such run-away uselessness is the Kiwi itself, which dispatched with the ability to fly out of a lack of need for it. Imagine its regret when European settlers turned up, saw the virgin landscape lying before them and thought, “Hey, it’s dead pretty here but you know what this place needs? I bet it would look lovely if we put a handful of furry little mammals here and there…”

In short order New Zealand was suffering from a catastrophic infestation of possums, rabbits, stoats, weasels, ferrets and a few others including, to our great surprise, Hedgehogs. Some were introduced for fur, some for food, some to kill the ones which had already been introduced and run riot. It’s a sad story but it’s also a fantastic excuse for blood-sport. The idea is basically thus, if it’s on the list of introduced pests, the best thing to do is kill it. And I’m sticking with that. If you’re not convinced, or at least if you’re squeamish, I recommend skipping ahead to Chapter 2 below.

Rod gave me a lecture on the rules of gun management and checked that Bryan and I were sober before reaching for the keys to his gun cabinet. Bryan handed me a pile of thermals to dress in. We took the 12-gauge shotgun and stuffed a bum-bag full of cartridges. Bryan took the helm at the handlebars of Rod’s powerful quad bike and I sat in a kind of awkward side-saddle position on the metal rack on the back, with the shotgun slung over my arm. Once we were moving and clear of the house, Bryan plugged a spotlight into the cigarette-lighter socket and deftly surveyed the paddocks with the light in one hand, while driving the quad with the other. We searched on one side all the way to the back of the farm without sight of anything but a couple of native birds which took flight at the sound of us. My excitement began to drain away, which was probably a good thing as I had a shotgun on my arm and I’d never used one before. Bryan fuelled my growing depression with his surprise at how empty the farm was.

We turned into a paddock in the far corner and investigated some pine trees on one side of it. A pair of red dots appeared in the spotlight about 30 metres away at the base of the trees but it immediately vanished. “Oooh, good stuff mate, we’re in luck. That’s a possum. They might just be the worst of all the pests”.

Possums were imported from Australia, where they are sparse now. There are hundreds of millions of them in NZ. They monopolise ecosystems and strip whole forests of their leaves. The ironic thing is, possum numbers were under control until animal rights activists put paid to the possum fur industry. This is all digression, back to the farm and the vanishing red eyes.

“Damn, that was so close but we’ve lost them”, I said.

“No, no, don’t you worry mate, he’s not gone far. I bet you he’s a couple of metres up that tree, just there, watching us”. He bloody well was too. We fixed him in the spotlight once we’d drawn closer, maybe 12 metres away. Then Bryan got excited as a second pair of dots appeared behind the first one, “Oh this just gets better, she’s got a joey on her back!”

Oh no, I thought. I’m about to murder a mother and child. Still, we didn’t come all this way for nothing. I took a couple of steps off the quad towards the glowing eyes and peered into the cluster of trees with the shotgun half raised. I could see one pair of eyes but nothing else, no body shapes, no joey, it would have to be guess-work. I raised the barrel, dug the stock into my shoulder and tried to steady my nerve. I knew better than to take too long or think too much so I just started to squeeze, then BOOM! The red dots vanished but there was no rustling of falling possums, no squeal, nothing. I prayed that I had either missed completely or hit true, anything but the horror of injuring them and having to finish one or both of them off. Bryan put my fears to sleep – “Woh, shot! You got both of ‘em mate. Blahdee hell. They’ll sometimes take four or five shots if you’re unlucky, they’re big buggers”.

Mother and child had stayed in their branch but been thrown backwards against the trunk of the tree. Their heads slumped downwards and they died immediately. They were too far into the trees for us to get a closer look so I just got back on the quad and drove off, which felt brutal and wasteful. But what else were we going to do, give them a funeral?

After that, targets presented themselves in abundance. The next challenge was a pair of rabbits, lying still in the spotlight glare over the brow of a small hill. Again, I couldn’t see them clearly but aimed at a suspicious-looking lump and let off a shot. I didn’t realise until afterwards that the lump was actually both of the rabbits, maybe half a metre apart in a line directly away from me. One was dead, the other was still moving. We rounded in to get a close look and my worst fears were presented to me. The injured rabbit at the back had lost the use of its back legs but was well alive. It dragged itself with its front legs, in a series of pathetic hops, over to its companion and began pawing at its dead friend’s side as if trying to wake it up. I could imagine it thinking, “Hey Sarah, get up, humans are here. Get up, come on, we’re in danger. Why won’t you move? Sarah? Sarah?” Why it would be called Sarah I don’t know. All the tear-jerker scenes from Watership Down started to flash in mind and I began to feel my heart attempting to eject itself from my chest. I think my heart was trying to disown me, partly for what I’d just done but mostly for what I was about to have to do.

Bryan said, “Do you want me to do it?”

“No”, I replied, sullenly, “This is something I have to experience. And it’s my fault, anyway.”

There was a long pause. Bryan must have been wondering why I wasn’t getting on with it for the sake of the poor animal. Then he must have realised what was going through my head and spoke up, “Do you know what to do?”

“Errr, nope.”

He instructed me to put my boot on the rabbit’s body, get a firm grip around its neck with both hands and pull hard. “Make sure you give it a damn good yank though, you don’t want to have to do it several times”. It sounded easy but I was staring at this squirming little beast and imagining it scrabbling to defend itself by clawing my hands to ribbons. Bryan assured me that wouldn’t happen but I couldn’t escape the thought. Expecting to be savaged and spend the rest of my honeymoon being treated for Rabies, I gingerly lowered my foot onto the rabbit’s hind legs. It crawled free immediately and I had to try a couple more times before it stayed still long enough for me to get hold of it. I could only get my thumb and forefinger round its neck with any purchase – it was a young rabbit, to add to the travesty. I pulled hard. The rabbits eyes bulged and it kicked its front legs in the air. I leaned back to pull harder, then harder still until I felt two or three pops between my fingers. Oh mercy, its neck must be broken now, I thought, so I let go. It lay down for a moment then half raised its head and tried in vain to drag itself away. The situation was getting ridiculous.

I rallied myself, as by now adrenaline was shaking me into a useless lump. I stood on it again, this time covering much of its body, got the same two-finger grip and hauled at its head. There were three more pops as its neck stretched to nearly double its length. That must be it. I dropped the head again and stepped away. Not only was it still very much alive but the pressure of my boot had flayed its skin off from its front shoulders to its ankles. The wretched mite was trying more than ever to move away but now it had a dislocated neck and half its body was pink and raw. I’d had enough so I turned pathetically to Bryan and begged his aid, “I’ve done my bit, surely, I’m just making it worse now. Go on mate, show me how its done”.

Bryan clumped over to the murder-scene-in-progress and stood on the rabbit. He grabbed its neck with the full area of his palms, sprung his spine and heaved.

Its head came straight off and landed in the grass a little way off. Bryan backed away in silence and came to my side. I watched, dumbfounded, holding the spotlight on our headless victim below. “Wow”, he said quietly, “That’s never happened before”.

Somehow I lost my aim after that, although emotionally I got over it instantly I must admit. Four kills from two shots turned to five kills from six shots, as the next rabbit ran in stupefied circles around my feet while I blasted the turf beside him. When the same thing happened with the next rabbit, Bryan took a moment to calm me down for the safety of both of us. He told me to stop and think about what I was doing wrong so I stepped to the side, loaded the gun and calmly got back into the feel of it. It is often said that there is something deeply natural about firing a gun and that’s hard to imagine unless you’ve done it. To be a good shot, you don’t need the same attributes of most sportsmen, you just need to find your nerve. I got mine back and the next attempt, at a rabbit which was cowering half-obscured behind a fence-post, was perfect.

Entering one paddock Bryan caught sight of a hare bolting away from us. The chase was on. Bryan floored the throttle and the quad rocketed up the steep hillside. I had been sitting in a contorted position and the sudden acceleration uphill sent me sliding off the back. I clung on with my free hand twisted behind my back and dug the heel of my boot into the wheel arch. The other boot swung up into the sky. I saw the shotgun barrel wheel over my shoulder and sway amongst the stars. I just managed to hold everything together and heave myself back onto the rack without Bryan noticing. I peaked over his shoulder as we cleared the crest of the hill and saw the needle pass the 45km/h line. It was ridiculous, we were soaring over the paddocks chasing the flickering image of the hare’s rump and I had come within a breath of falling off the back with a shotgun in my hand. The hare lead us the full length of two paddocks, zig-zagging to shake us off, before making a turn so sudden we didn’t see which direction he went and lost him. Bryan drove us to the highest point in the paddock and stopped. He turned off the engine and suddenly it was apparent how much noise we had been making, roaring the engine, barking directions to each other and letting off shots. Now there was no sound and no light, and I was made profoundly aware of just how beautiful the night had become. Orion was hanging upside-down at one end of the fuzzy arc of the Milky-Way and, at the other, the Southern Cross burned glaringly over the treetops. Neither of us spoke for a long time until Bryan finally put his arm on my shoulder and said, “I always stop to look at the stars when we go for a shoot”.

For the rest of our escapade we swapped roles. I drove the quad and Bryan had the gun, although he took the spotlight too, as I had never helmed a quad-bike before. He picked off a couple of rabbits then we turned back for home. We made one last stop at the nearest paddock to the house and spotted another rabbit there. I stood on the quad, holding the torch while Bryan side-stepped round to get a better angle. He killed the rabbit with the first shot. Then something moved to my right so I threw the light onto it. Two green dots, moving in loping bounds along the line of the garden fence. Different colours betray different species. “Bryan”, I shouted, “Green eyes, over there!”

“Green means cat. Could be feral but it’s probably the neighbours’. We should maybe avoid killing their pet pussy, don’t you think?”

But something didn’t fit. I answered, “No no no, look, it’s not moving like a cat”.

Bryan stepped closer and peered towards the beam. He was at least ten metres away. As it ran across our view the creature came side-on and suddenly we were able to see its shape. It sure wasn’t a cat. It was long, slender and moved in a series of light-footed pounces. We couldn’t work out what it was but – BOOM! – Bryan blasted it out of existence. It was the shot of the night, broadsiding the animal at full sprint and sending it straight into the air, dead. We stood over it in wonderment for a long time before gaining the courage to pick it up by its tail and hurl it onto the front of the quad to take back to Rod for inspection. We had the honour of showing our prize off to the whole family for days after that as it slowly rotted on a compost heap in the garden. It was an adult ferret, a monstrous thing weighing a few kilos and, according to the books we’ve read since, one of the greatest threats to the poor kiwi bird. We’d slain that beast in the name of conservation, for the greater good of the world, not in any way for our own entertainment, no sir, uh-uh.

Chapter 2 – Bubbling Under Their Feet

Bryan put himself forward as our tour guide for the duration of our first stay in Tokoroa. On the first day he drove us to Rotorua, less than an hour to the East. Rotorua – “Rotovegas” to the locals, for reasons not relevant to this post – was the number one must-see for North Island. Kiwis seem to be fond of must-sees, and they will no doubt list an impossible number of them to you if you ask them which parts of their country you should visit. They can be forgiven for this, New Zealand is busy with things well worth seeing. Rotorua as a town isn’t much but it sits on the edge of Lake Rotorua which in turn happens to sit right on top of one of the world’s most concentrated volcanic zones. The lake fills a dent in the ground which is actually part of the flimsy roof of crust over one of the region’s three calderas. If you don’t know what a caldera is, it’s worth detouring via that hyperlink to find out. In short though, it’s a silent, subterranean time-bomb. Next door to Rotorua there is a string of geological activity along a buried fault-line called Whakarewarewa, including 500 hot springs and 7 geysers. The crowning geyser is Pohutu which, erupting every hour at up to 30m high, is the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest. It used to be bigger but lost pressure as an increasing number of people tapped the hot reservoirs to heat their pools. This practice was greatly reduced and restricted in the 70s and the natural pressure since then has been stable, if a little lower than it could be.

Te Puia is the name given to the new park built around Whakarewarewa. For our 50-odd bucks we got the full show. On entering, a wrinkly skinned Maori lady with a charming smile gathered us and another thirty or so guests by the gates. She was dressed traditionally, in a short dress with a reed skirt. She welcomed us to her Marae (meeting house) and requested that a male over the age of 18 volunteer himself as chief of our group. I didn’t need persuading. I was instructed to step a short way forward and await the chief of the Hapu (sub-group within a tribe), not to show any disrespect such as by laughing, and never to break eye contact with him. I was to pick up the gift offered to me and back away. Four huge Maori men sauntered out from the marae, all brandishing different weapons. One of them locked onto me with his 1000-yard glare and strutted left and right, slicing the air with his spear. He gradually approached then, holding eye contact, performed a string of blocks, sweeps and strikes to demonstrate his skill. He reached down and placed a silver fern on the path in front of me. Duly holding an unfazed expression, I knelt down, took the fern and sprung eagerly back up again. I don’t think he was expecting such enthusiasm. Part of the show was to sweep the spear lightning fast over my head but I was already well on my way back up when he moved so the blade-like spear head missed my eyes by a whisker. I was then asked to gather my two companions behind me and call my guests to follow us into the the marae. At the entrance a Maori woman asks to see our tickets on entering. We didn’t have any tickets. We had bought the wrong package, which didn’t include the Maori show. Oops. There was confusion amongst the women so a staff member joined in. She tried to give us a stern telling-off for our mistake but the group was piling-up impatiently at our heels and, besides, she was talking to me, our chief, no messing around! They had to let us in.

I was brought to the stage and invited to greet all the Maori men with Hongi, a firm handshake and a double touch of my nose against each of theirs. They were big, barely dressed boys so it was not a procedure for anyone less secure with their sexuality. The proceeding show was a series of songs and dances with various instruments. There was a dance with throwing sticks which resembled Morris Dancing but wasn’t quite as camp, and there was some blindingly skillful poi dancing. The men performed the Haka and did plenty of the foot stamping, tongue sticking and weapon swinging. But I was most taken by the women’s singing, their harmonies, backed by the deep voices of the men, bounced around the marae’s walls and shook us through.

We were then passed to a comedic, slightly bizarre tour guide with a pony tail and shades. He did a commendable job of explaining aspects of the Maori culture such as music and art. He took us into the craft school, which is a kind of academy for only a handful of people each year. They must have something like 1/8th Maori blood to qualify and then train for years in either woodwork or reed-work. Then we were lead through to the Kiwi House. In almost pitch darkness we shuffled into a dome shaped hut with a smaller glass dome inside, which housed two kiwis. The birds were quite active, snuffling about in the foliage, and we were surprised by how big and quick they were.

The main attraction of Te Puia was left until last. A large loop of walkways circles through the active geothermal gulley covered in rocks, dense thicket and occasional splashes of red from flowering Pohutakawa trees. There is a mud pool which permanently slops and bubbles away, forming nipple-like piles of mud which spout droplets from their centres. At various intervals there are gaps in the rocks from which further bubbling can be heard, and steam rises up from the surrounding landscape. At the furthest side of the loop is a small bridge to the highlight of it all. There we came across a pile of milk-white rock terraces, graffitied with orange and luminous green splats of goo. Every few metres steam clouds fleed from cracks running through the terraces, casting shadows which raced away across the extra-terrestrial scene. We waited for about twenty minutes, watching the most vigorous steam jet build slowly until it erupted into a geyser. A continuous column of water rose in a barely arching line then fell slowly as searing rain, carried away with the wind to form a rainbowed veil across the terraces.

In Rotorua town we treated ourselves to a dip at Polynesian Pools. The entrance to the place had the feel of a sterile health club but, emerging from the changing rooms in our swimming togs, revealed an attractive array of small green pools sunk into the ground on the periphery of Lake Rotorua. Each pool was hot but a different temperature and the water was full of natural minerals from the local springs. The pools were placed right against a protected part of the lake which served as a bird sanctuary, with rocks covered in noisy sea birds. Rain clouds pushed in front of the sun and sent a light dusting of cool water over us as we baked in the pools. Bliss.

We returned to geological wonders the next day, this time heading a similar distance southeast from Tokoroa, to Taupo. En-route we stopped in a small car-park by a lake and followed a path a short way into the wooded hillside. The path ended at a small viewing platform overlooking a gorge, with the lake at the top end leaning against a damn which plugged the gorge entrance. An alarm bell sounded and the damn gates opened, filling the gorge and turning the stream at its base into deep white-water. We then explored a steam power station nearby, driving amidst a maze of metal pipes which cut through the hillsides for hundreds of metres.

Taupo was a little disappointing, as the weather failed us. Normally the view across Lake Taupo from the town would end with the sight of three volcanoes jutting into the sky on the opposite bank. But the lake just vanished into cloud when we were there. We would be treated to that view on returning in bizarre circumstances many days later but we couldn’t have known that at the time.