ZEALANTICS LIVE! episode the second

The water seemed to leap up like a land-borne wave as the transport truck shot by the malfunctioning hydrant at the edge of Greymouth’s southern suburbs, and, after a brief but unsuccessful bout with gravity, it came crashing down over my newly-laundered clothes. Normally this would be a source of consternation, but I wasn’t that bothered as I had already done about 6-7 km of unsuccessful hitching on this day and it was strikingly hot. The New Zealand sun hits you with a force entirely unlike anything I’ve experienced before visiting: the locals say it’s because of a deficit in the ozone layer over New Zealand (possibly caused by livestock.. emissions), and don’t seem to be bothered by it in the way pansy North Americans like me can be. Whatever the cause of the sun’s angriness it is a real thing, which is why my catching an inadvertent wave beside a highway wasn’t as bad as it could have been – though it was a little grimier than your average tsunami.

At long last a small pickup truck pulled over and I cheerily hopped in, with the goal of making it to the greenstone (pounamu, a local variety of jade) carving capital of Hokitika. The guy was willing to drop me there on his way south to Pukekura, an outpost I knew only from kitschy advertisements on tourist map corners, where he managed the inn/hostel and the nearby pub. After a glance at a map revealed this to be some 50 kilometers further south than Hokitika – with my goal being to hitch down the entire coast to Queenstown – I asked if I could set up a tent on the grounds for some nominal fee, and a short call to his girl later it was agreed upon. I was going to stay the night in Pukekura.

Now Pukekura is famous for two things: having a permanent population of 2 (two), and having a rather distinct hate for possums (and Aucklanders, for that matter). We chatted about the area as he drove, which led me to ask about the local fishing prospects (I had been carrying my fly fishing gear this whole time); this was a fortunate question as it immediately led to me being invited to join him and his friend that evening on a surfcasting trip. As there is only one real answer to such things I immediately agreed, and a short turnaround/setting up of camp later we were bound for the coast.

The lines went out into the waves (in roughly the direction of Tasmania, I was cheerily informed) and, with the aid of some beers he produced from the back of the truck we three set to chatting. Fresh off my backwoodsy experience (I suppose fresh is a relative term, but my clothes were mostly clean) I asked them about the area’s approach to possum extirpation – which turned out to be a hot-button topic. It seems that the government, which usually makes a lot of noise about protecting indigenous species (especially songbirds), thinks the best way to kill possums is by dropping an aerial poison, referred to locally as ‘1080’. The problem, my hosts explained between checking lines, is that 1080 tends to kill absolutely everything else as well, leading to a woodsy walk a week or so after an aerial drop being littered with bird, deer, and all manner of other corpses (families are directed to keep children inside during and immediately after a drop). This is all in the name of protecting the local dairy industry (the significant taxpayer) from the terrors of bovine tuberculosis, a disease possums can carry which manifests in sores all over the possums rather than the expected cough, which neither guy (both lifelong possum profiteers) had never seen on a single possum. Predictably, Pukekura is rather against the government’s plans:

In the end we caught nothing (no elephant fish! I was so disappointed after hearing there was such a thing) but the attention of a marauding swarm of local sandflies, and so eventually retired to the Puke pub for snacks and more chat before bed. It was here that I saw the most grizzled old man imaginable trading tips for maximizing profits from possum fur sales (such as those he had with him in a stack on the wooden bartop) – apparently a savvy move is to float them in a tub of water for some time so the felt side gains moisture weight and can be stretched – with the conspicuously attractive bartender, a girl who drives in nightly to relieve the pregnant girlfriend of my host in her time of need. As the semi-knockout knowingly swapped secrets with the octogenarian in battered gumboots (sounds like the worst pub snack ever), I couldn’t help but privately marvel at the differences between this and my urbane, if shabby, existence in Wellington. That being said, both residents of Pukekura were marvellously generous (a theme among West Coasters) and also surprisingly politically aware. Alas for them that their part of the country, which comprises 9% of the total land area, only contains 1% of the population; it’s not surprising that the farce of 1080 aerial dropping can be put over on them against their will.

Turning again to the road the next day, I wasn’t more than 2 or 3 kilometers out of ‘town’ before a car mercifully pulled over to take me south. The driver brokenly said that he was headed for Franz Josef, my goal for the day, and I happily hopped in for the ride. After a brief grace period in which I chatted to another passenger (a Canadian who had also been hitching) we fell silent, before being treated to the driver’s music as we climbed the hills – King Crimson’s ‘Hall of the Crimson King’ in true epic ear shattering style – en route to the small village near the foot of the world-famous glacier. From the back seat I hadn’t even yet discovered the generous driver’s name before the other Canadian jumped out towards a local hostel and I was able to move to the front, but I wanted to see the eponymous glacier, just as the driver did, and so we kept traveling. It turned out he was named Jonathan (or Yonatan, as I later discovered), and he was an Israeli maybe 2 years older than I. I immediately took a liking to his adventurous spirit, his humour, and his halting way of speech: my real South Island travel supergroup (apologies to my murderous Murchison pal) was born.

We took the much more manly (and sweaty) 5 hour round trip walking route to see the glacier, eschewing the little ants far below as they easily crawled up the riverbanks towards the wonderful view that awaited us all. After a very long-seeming hike replete with endless p.u.d.’s (pointless up and downs) we arrived at the wooden viewing platform, and were met only with a picnic table and this view: ladies and gentlemen, I give you Zealantics live #2.