Benemma

Corroborating notes and photos, checking the calendar, looking over five weeks in New Zealand, it’s all too much. There’s just masses to cover and we’ve been so distracted by the company of our extended family that there’s been no opportunity to write about it all. I’ll try now, try to get some pace and push through the lot. Reading over the weeks it will become clear that New Zealand’s greatest attributes are found in its natural environment but, as is often the way, it all begins in a city. Firstly though, a bit of context for you. About fifty years ago my dad’s brother Alan moved to New Zealand, followed a few years later by younger sister Wendy. Since then, large families of cousins and second-cousins have sprouted and spread themselves over North Island. I’ve met several of them before but mostly a long time ago, and Emma’s met a few. And in thirty years I’d never made it over to see them. This was the primary reason for pushing our voyage that far.

Emma and I walked through the arrivals lounge of Auckland Airport at 23:00. We were looking ahead to a five-week stay in the country but knew only two things about what lay ahead: 1) cousin Ben would pick us up from the airport on arrival, and 2) cousin Sarah was going to take us to cousin Mark’s wedding three days later, on 12 December. That was it. Emma was mildly distressed by the near-total absence of any effort on my part to communicate with my Kiwi family prior to arrival. We couldn’t just turn up on their doorsteps, could we? They have jobs, we’d never met most of them, we should have arranged to visit each part of the family, surely. Well, actually, no. While Emma was right that the one part of our trip which was rightly mine to organise lay blankly before us, if I knew the Kiwis as well I thought I did, everything would just work itself out. Gracefully, it did.

MONICA, LACHLAN AND BEN BLAND #2!

New Zealanders operate an open-door policy which has vanished from most of the British Isles. It is neither unusual nor rude for a Kiwi to receive a phone call from a friend-of-a-friend-of-an-uncle’s-friend’s-nephew from the phone booth down the road, looking for a place to crash that night for an unknown period. It makes sense, New Zealand has about 20% more landmass than the United Kingdom but 1/15th of the population. But I digress…

A familiar face appeared from the crowds at the airport. I’d only met my namesake Ben Bland once, briefly when I was 14 but vague memories and family photos combined to present someone I recognised immediately. It was late on a weeknight and Ben had gone well out of his way to get us. He seemed quiet as we loaded our bags in his car and set off but soon showed eagerness to answer my volleys of ignorant questions about life in NZ. We weaved through suburbs, taking only urban roads as there simply aren’t any motorways. Ben pointed out the government’s efforts to avoid the council estate culture of Britain, by mixing “state housing” equally with private homes. This has led to some run-down homes, with rusted cars in the gardens, next to multi-million-dollar piles. It makes the place feel safe, somehow more inviting.Ben’s home is in an inner-city suburb called Meadowbank, an area of low-lying residential properties which is only a stone’s thrown from the central business district. The house is like so many in NZ: spacious, new and very livable. Most of the house is spread over one floor but there is a separate guest section below-stairs, where we were able to hide ourselves and sleep-off our travel fatigue. There is a smallish garden at the back with a large deck, a lawn, various edible plants and a treehouse for the kids. Everything in it was blooming.

Rising on the first morning and mounting the stairs to the kitchen I spotted two pairs of round blue eyes watching me from above. The kids, Fraser (6) and Lachlan (4), were being uncharacteristically quiet in respect of their new guests. They had finished breakfast and Lachlan was watching his big brother playing Maths games on the computer. Fraser was sitting upright, eyes glowing like full moons, listing his knowledge of world geography to impress me. He could recall the populations and capital cities of several major countries and his mind raced to swift answers on questioning. Lachlan was hiding his face behind his stuffed puppy, sucking his thumb and standing as straight as a ruler. No doubt he was wearing his favourite shoes too, a pair of plastic high-heels which made a satisfying click-clack noise on the kitchen floor. He spoke less than his brother but, when engaged, had a habit of pulling his thumb and teddy away to unleash a smile which exploded like a supernova across his face. That smile was instantaneously disarming, I suspect it could be used in future to calm wild tigers and violent criminals. He seemed to search you for a return smile and then show deep satisfaction on receiving one. Those two boys are absurdly cute. It was quite hard at first to see through to their naughtier sides. Both boys frequently tried it on with Mum, sneaking down from the table when she wasn’t looking, avoiding Bath-time and so on. They occasionally fought too, with Fraser leaning on his much smaller little bro, but for the most part they were supportive of each other.

On our first day we were left at the house alone and only ventured as far as the local shopping complex. Auckland’s city towers were visible nearby over the rooftops. In the opposite direction the peaks of a few green hills could be seen. Around us were leafy streets with detached houses. It was all rather pleasant. Auckland, the capital of New Zealand, has about a million inhabitants, sprinkled lightly over a large area. Like Sydney, Auckland is a new city and it sits amidst natural harbours in a pleasant climate. After three months of rarely-interrupted sunshine we were ready for New Zealand to be much cooler but we stepped out on our first day blinking into a 30-degree, sun-kissed, verdant city. The first thing I noticed was the smell. It was late Spring and every street in the area was crawling with randy flora, throwing mesmerising scents into the hot, still air. Then the noise, nothing but birdsong. There was barely a hint of traffic of smog, in fact the air was so clear that lichen grew thick on every patch of exposed wood.

We played with the kids in the evening. Their favourite game was Pictureka, a high-speed, pattern-matching game like Snap. After Fraser’s astute show of fact retention, Lachlan shined when it came to visual wits. He was a Pictureka whizz and loved the attention of being ahead. When he thought he was slipping, however, the cheeky side emerged as he cheated and whinged in an effort to win. We put them to bed and read each of them a story. I had to be dragged out of Fraser’s room after the pair of us couldn’t pull ourselves out of a book about submarine creatures. I kept explaining facts about each of the animals drawn in the book and Fraser ascribed the information to memory like a hard-drive. Cousin Ben was out “networking” all evening. We sat-out the late hours in the living room, getting to know Mum, Monica, “Mon”, and the challenges of young parenthood. She was thoroughly sweet and interesting to talk with. Having two boys can be like keeping rabid monkeys but Mon shrugged-off the strain and found a good balance between giving them a healthy lifestlye while letting them loose to be the little firestorms that they could be.

Mon took us and little Lachlan out the next day for a brief look at Auckland before our bus out of town. Parks nestled among the tracts of housing, surrounded by water in every direction, with the towers of the city centre squeezed into a tight isthmus. The centre itself, crowned by the Sky Tower, resembled many other modern cities, especially Sydney, but as we drew closer to it the truth of its scale became apparent, as suddenly we were in it, then back out the other side. It is tiny. It’s quite cute in that way. There didn’t seem to be much to keep anyone occupied in town for more than a day or two but it was clear that the area abounded in opportunities for good living, albeit small-town living compared to the cities we’ve known. The shops and services were unquestionably western and familiar. The prices were similar to Australia but with the edge taken off. But we didn’t have much chance to familiarise with Auckland before our coach was ready to leave.

LACHLAN SNEAKS A SNACK