The Big Opinion

Woody glade, Moeraki, May ‘13

I wanna go to the seaside, Moeraki, May ‘13

Lone tree, Moeraki headland, May ‘13

The Moeraki Boulders, May ‘13

Lone shroom, Moeraki, May ‘13

Dust, Moeraki, May ‘13

Goodbye summer in the North; hello winter in the South.

Onwards to the valley

Collecting together my belongings and packing them into the little red car takes most of the morning.  A prolonged cuddle with Dinks, an affectionate whisper of ‘we love you, you know’ and I’m on my way. State Highway 1 and the Great Desert Road stretch out before me into the distance. The latter, which winds its way from the Tongariro National Park in the North through to the country town of Taihape in the South, as closely resembles a desert as is possible in a country as brilliantly green as this one. Miles and miles of scorched grasses, purple heather and long swaying reeds blanket the weather-beaten landscape, stretching out from the roadside as far as the eye can see. Just visible in the distance are the fringes of the Ruahine Ranges, whose cloud-topped mountains, dense with native bush, cover a vast area of the central North Island.

By the time I reach Taihape, gone are the mountain-edged grasslands; here, the land is altogether lusher. Like a more geographically extreme version of the English countryside, this area is all rolling green hills, sheer white cliffs of Papa (my learned fact of the day) and wooden fenced farmland. My eventual destination is the Kawhatau Valley and the home of Bunny and Kris Gorringe, distant relatives from my grandmother’s side of the family and, so I am told, of a very hospitable farming type. As I follow the little yellow signage and head down a snaking country road, a deep gorge becomes suddenly visible. Cut out of sheer rock by the turquoise river below, the gorge winds its way through the Kawhatau Valley from North to South, the road following several hundred feet above. Sheep amble around as Lola & I creep up the gravel driveway, which is surrounded by luscious paddocks and fringed with great trees. I wander around the outside of the house to the sound of a hoover: I’m early. The clock in my car is bust.

‘Manston’ is idyllic rural Kiwi living. The old white wooden house, which has been in the family for years, is covered with roses and edged with pastel-coloured flower-filled borders. Trellises, a vine-covered veranda and trimmed lawns make the garden a picture; there’s even an extensive veggie and herb garden. Inside, the decor oozes old money, a mixture of what I imagine my paternal grandparents’ houses were like and what I remember my maternal grandfather’s old house to be. Kris & I drink plenty of tea and talk of family before Bunny comes in from the farm. He isn’t at all what I expect, but he seems familiar after a short time. That’s family, or so I’ve found.

Daughter Alex’s attractive horsey house- our next tea stop- has the most stunning views over the valley above which it sits. Her charming girls- Connie & Hettie, together with Goddaughter Matilda- head off to ride. Do they need to be accompanied, I wonder out loud? “We generally wander over after tea..” Right then. After a while we go to see what the young girls are up to. We watch them ride and play out in the paddock; they’re having lots of fun competing with each other to see who can navigate a row of old oil drums fastest on horseback. Alex’s horse Romper comes to greet us and the smell of his smooth, thick hair reminds me of times gone by. My sister and I used to feed horses in the fields behind our adoptive grandmother’s place when we were both small children. Pushing carrots through the fence to the greedy great things was our favourite part of the walk we regularly took around the woods, and the smell of Alex’s beloved old boy takes me straight back to that place. The power of smell to unearth nostalgia is just remarkable.

Alex’s husband Allan has the most wonderful workshop out behind the paddocks; my father would be very envious. An avid car enthusiast, he and another fanatic are together building a racing car; the various parts lie higgledy-piggledy around the place. Lovely old Lancias from many a bygone era sit side-by-side in the mechanical haven, all waiting to be given a bit of TLC and restored back to their former glory to once more grace the open road. Land out back is strewn with more cars of all shapes and sizes, from clapped out old bangers to muddy but still very tidy looking Land Rovers; we must be in farm territory here.

Alex herself is a warm, fun-spirited woman: a real Kiwi. Her parents are of old farming stock: a warm, traditional pair with clipped accents that sound far more English than of New Zealand origin. I see a thread of similarity running through my grandmother’s side of my family. Younger son Ritchie is ‘a hoot’. I love that word: it’s a real favourite of my grandmother’s. He loves to shoot; it’s an interesting, controversial subject, and one we linger on for a fair while.

We enjoy a supper of meat and three veg, followed by fruit, ice cream and a flick through of some of the old family photograph albums, which Kris has dug out of a dusty corner. I find it fascinating. I’m becoming so interested in all this family history malarkey- I must be starting to get on a bit. I’m shown a book written by yet another distant relative, which talks of the Stapps, the Todds and the Tukes. Now I finally know where all these family names I’ve been hearing mentioned for so long come from! I pore over the book for an hour or so and fill in more of Dad’s sketchy family tree, which I’m slowly editing and adding to to create a rather fuller picture of the New Zealand side of my family. Dad pencilled this rough diagram for me a mere day or so before I left the country, thinking that it was probably about time he filled me in on the more ‘interesting’ snippets of his family history. I’m glad he did; this trip may have been rather embarrassing had I not known whom wasn’t talking to whom and which parts of the family hadn’t had contact with others since way back when.

After a night under many layers of blankets (Kiwis don’t simply do one thick duvet), I’m woken up with a ‘good morning’ and a hot cup of tea from Kris. Breakfast follows after a short doze: homemade museli (I nabbed the recipe!), thick, creamy yogurt, crispy streaky bacon and vogel’s; bliss. Soon after, Kris takes me on the back of the quad up to Ritchie’s place- a farmhouse which pioneers country chic, surrounded by fields and old broken down farm machinery. We take his truck- a battered old Suzuki ute- up and down the twisting roads which hug the cliffs on one side of the gorge and head towards his farm, which lies on land bordering the Ruahine Ranges. Through gate after gate, up over farmland, through rock-strewn mountain streams, up steep, barely-there tracks peppered with thistles, right to the top of the farm and to three hundred and sixty degree views over the surrounding countryside. Two and a half thousand feet above sea level and out comes my trusty Canon. Ritchie grabs his binos and scans the mountain-sides eagerly for deer. A very keen hunter, he has stories a-plenty to tell of treks up into the bush- a wild, inhospitable place for all but the seasoned bushman. Plenty of hunting expeditions, he says, have been brought to a swift end due to the treacherously unpredictable weather which prevails up in the Ranges. Even as we survey the dense forest for signs of movement, clouds begin to roll over their peaks, obscuring the high summits from our view. The wind bites up here, and I find myself buttoning my Barbour right up to the collar and stuffing my hands deep into its pockets; about time to head back, I think.

The journey down is just as eventful- and bumpy- as the ride up, especially as I spend the latter part of it being thrown around in the open back of the ute with the dogs: my choice entirely. I enjoy stunning views of the ranges behind us as we fly round the narrow roads back to Bunny and Kris’s place. A quick lunch and it’s off on the back of the quad for a jaunt up to the highest reaches of their farm and its spectacular views over the land below. The scene stretches for miles out over the surrounding farmland to the Ranges in the East and the Tongariro National Park in the North. I can even see the snow-topped peak of Mount Ruapehu from up here; again, we’re pretty damn high. A steep, twisting descent down to the lower farmland precedes plenty of warming tea back at the house, before preparation for another country feast begins again. If my time in the tranquilly-beautiful Kawhatau Valley is anything to go by, to be a farmer seems to be living the life.

Wilderness, Sandy Bay, Coromandel Peninsula, Summer ‘12

Through fog and thicket

After frothy coffee and a prolonged goodbye to my grandmother, I leave Auckland enveloped in torrential downpour; pale grey clouds hang heavily over the city, blanketing everything in a layer of drizzly misery. My destination is the Coromandel Peninsula, a jut of land one hundred ks in length, dotted with quiet towns and studded with tranquil beaches on its Eastern coast. The heavy, stormy atmosphere keeps true as I weave up its rugged Western side, the zig-zagging, coast-hugging roads looking as if they will disappear into nothing but thick haze as they wind stealthily out of sight behind the cliff faces.  

The road from Coromandel Town up to Port Charles- a hair-raising 34ks- is an interesting drive to say the least. Warning signs pepper the road sides before I hit the (usually) dusty gravel road: do I have enough petrol? Am I happy to drive the steep, weaving, unsealed roads? Why, yes I am; I’ve thus far managed to safely navigate through a pretty healthy dose of New Zealand’s famously unpredictable weather without much more than a quick pit stop for supplies. I speed off North, only to soon be reminded by a stomach-lurching skid that my hap-hazard driving style doesn’t befit this country’s rougher roads. What the attention-stealing signs don’t warn you is just how far 34k feels when you have to pay almost constant attention to the road ahead in order to prevent your car from veering off into the oncoming fog. I’m sure the views are exceptional; I saw nothing but ashen white my entire journey.

I weave hither and thither for a good hour and a half- skirting valley edges and creeping up mountain sides-  before the rain eventually begins to ease. Passing Point Charles, I head along some (finally) tarmacked road towards the originally-named Sandy Bay, arriving just on the cusp of dusk. Remembering something about a track and a sign warning me that this is a ‘Kiwi Zone - No Dogs’, I head off down a dirt road which trails off through a battered metal gate. Parking Lola up and deciding to do the rest on foot, I come out onto a farm strewn with ramshackle outbuildings, rusting tractors and heavily pregnant grazing heffas. I pick my way through the cow shit, cross the trickling stream over one of the numerous planked bridges and carry on up the lane. This place already intrigues me: I can tell it’s far-out hippy-ville. Past the glass house (I was imagining a modern monstrosity, not a huge old-school greenhouse) and then a glimpse of a host of wonderfully shabby buildings, all peeling paint, faded wooden cladding and weather-beaten corrugated iron. I try the house beyond the gate, but to no avail; eventually I find Chris’s place nestled amongst workshops, sheds, and even a pottery. Wild bush and overhanging trees threaten to engulf the little two-storey dwelling, so much so that it appears to be growing from the very earth on which it stands. 

As a virgin CouchSurfer, my first ever solo jaunt into the intriguing world of the intuitive traveller is looking promising. The man himself is all banter and easy Kiwi charm, singing and joking from the first moments after my arrival. Neither of us holds anything back, and a sharp rapport is soon established. We sit on the shaky bench outside the back door, surrounded by grape vine heavy with ripe perfumed fruit; I am accompanied by my old friend Sauvignon Blanc, and Chris by a tankard of his own yeasty home brew and a fairly steady stream of cigars (another product of my recent pit stop for supplies). Brenna, Chris’s boisterous but good-natured puppy, plays in the untamed grass as the two of us exchange stories and snippets from our lives, both drinking in the smell of the surrounding bush, fresh and earthy from the recent storms. High mountains guarding the sleepy valley are thick with forest and lost at their summits in soft, low-lying white cloud. The colours are wonderfully vivid. The whole landscape is awash with a palette of brilliant greens and the deep blue sky is peppered with stars. We wander down to the sheltered bay passing a local on our way; he sits at a bench on the tufty grass side with his nearly empty bottle of red wine and flushed rosy cheeks. We find a dead penguin on the beach and Chris pulls its wings off- apparently they are beautiful when dried? He stinks of rotten flesh for the coming hours.

Supper preparation begins in Chris’s shabby but well-stocked kitchen. Bottles, packets, jars, tubs and plates are piled high on the dusty windowsills; I love this kitchen’s grubby charm. I slice and dice and carry on with the wine, making pretty damn good squid rings, if I don’t say so myself, which I serve with hot dipping sauce. Chris declares them “probably the best I’ve ever tasted”; his second course is just as tasty. We have road kill: wild rabbit freshly run over and home butchered, slowly cooked in pig fat with sweet garlic and onions; just how food should be. We sit down to eat in our fingers, grease running down our chins, just on the right side of pissed. After supper I’m treated to flamenco guitar and many, many wonderful stories. I especially enjoy hearing some of those from the nine years Chris spent travelling around the world, living an almost nomadic way of life. I recall are the boat bought with friends that set on fire; the gibbons and his lover in the rainforest; the stint as a stow-away chef on a boat bound for America; the air strip he run before being sacked when found ‘stoned as hell with a needle hanging out of my arm’. It all sounds like a lot of fun. We talk of our families, our lovers and our pasts as the night wears on. We could go on forever, it seems.

The following day begins with tea, toast and freshly ground coffee in the morning sun. Talk strays to our mutual love of photography, and I’m given some great advice on the imminent purchase of my first film camera; I end up staying the whole day. I leave enlightened by Chris’s wonderful stories and contagious enthusiasm. We part with ‘Well, that was fun’ and a big, long hug.

I head off at the latter end of seven o’clock, completely underestimating how long it will take me to get to my next couch; it’s nearing ten when I eventually roll up in Matarangi. It’s good to be back in civilisation, but I sure loved the Northern reaches of the Coromandel. With its eccentric characters, hidden settlements and rough-around-the-edges beauty, it’s New Zealand at its most fascinating, and certainly a collection of journeys I won’t forget in a hurry.