The Water Drains Differently Here

I was planning to write a piece about the five weeks I spent backpacking across New Zealand in the winter (their late summer) of the year 2000. But I’m not sure there’s much of interest to share.

I have one story set in New Zealand called Quicksand and it’s one of my favourites. It’s set in Taupo and was built from slender pickings. A couple of middle aged women who’d approached me in a local park and tried to convert me to Jesus. An incident outside a bar where someone made a passing (unsuccessful) attempt to snatch my belongings. And a train journey to Christchurch spent in the company of a friendly Māori lad wearing a Red Hot Chilli Peppers sweatshirt who shared his bag of crisps with me.

What was most striking about Taupo was the large lake it nestled beside, formed in the crater of an ancient and violent volcanic eruption. I liked the contrast of this vast, largely empty space and the claustrophobia of small town living.

Aside from that, New Zealand was unfeasibly pretty and mind (and body) numbingly far to get to if you lived in England. I had great weather (mostly, although there’s a Goodbye Look song titled Dunedin in the Rain) and got to see a lot of both islands during my stay. On my second night I arrived by train from Auckland to Tauranga. I’d booked a self-contained unit to stay in for two nights, but there’d been a mix up in the dates which meant when I got there the complex was all closed up for the night and I faced the prospect of sleeping outside on a nearby beach.

Luckily I found a bar/ hostel that had a couple of spare rooms. There was a young woman who’d arrived by the same train as me and she was also seeking accommodation. By tacit agreement she got the one remaining single room and I took my chances in a dorm. As it turned out, I ended up with the whole space to myself, so it hadn’t mattered much.

This incident did inspire another story, although in my fictionalised version these two strangers had been forced to share a single remaining room. The plot developed with some surprisingly carnal consequences, but where it eventually led to I couldn’t say for certain. This story is long since lost to time and similar themes were better explored in Lucky Dip (my first published story) and Consolation Prize (a favourite of my unsold stories, that eventually appeared in the collection Treasure Trails).

I’d love to go back to New Zealand, but the length of travel is beyond me. I’m glad I went. Also, it isn’t true what they say, about the water draining the opposite direction down under, but I was having too much fun to bother checking that out for myself.

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I was planning to write a piece about the five weeks I spent backpacking across New Zealand in the winter (their late summer) of the year 2000, but I’m not sure my memory is up to the job. So instead I invented a time machine and went back and got my 34 year old self to write it for me. Please also bear in mind that the world seemed to be a much more optimistic place 25 years ago.

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There's a great book called 'Hostage to the Beat' about the rock 'n' roll explosion in New Zealand during the 1960s. I picked it up in a cut price bookshop in Wellington for $3 - the equivalent of about a pound. The book records the careers of a whole slew of bands that emerged during that era when all around the world pop music - and rock and roll in general - were making their first big impact. Set out as an A-Z of the key bands of the time, the text is little more than an enhanced discography with a few anecdotes thrown in to spice up the entries. What really makes the book so good are the reams of accompanying photographs. From cheesy poses of guys in Hawaiian shirts to proto-prog rockers trying to look serious - a whole milieu is summed up in these images far more accurately than a thousand words could ever hope to. Sure, you'll never have heard of any of these bands. Track down the music and most of them turn out to be producing inferior covers of songs that had already been hits in the UK or America. But it's somehow wonderful to discover that this distant subculture existed. And it's great that someone saw fit to sit down and record it all.

Amongst all the photographs, there's one shot that really stands out. With a wide angle lens five moody looking young men are captured in a grey, rain-flecked street in Auckland. Behind them there's a wide street with a clutch of shops and people hurrying about their business, oblivious to the camera. It's a great urban scene and the perfect counterpoint to the relentless tourist images of New Zealand - all bold blue skies and breathtaking scenery.

When sitting down to try and write a piece about my trip to New Zealand I kept coming back to that same photograph. I don't know why. Maybe writing about the wonders of the glaciers and mountains was too obvious. Probably it was the fact that if the photographs I'd taken barely did justice to some of those places, then writing about them would be even more futile. No, I needed to find something else to write about. So why not urban New Zealand?

A lot of fellow travellers I met during my month in NZ were making a conscious decision to avoid the cities or pass through them briefly en route to somewhere more scenic. Fair enough, it's the wide open spaces and the scenery most people come to New Zealand for. The glaciers and the geysers. The bungy jumps and the white water rafting. There are plenty of stunning locations to experience all these things. But there's something unreal about these places too. You sit in the bars at night talking with other travellers. You meet the same people on the coach the next day. Even the drivers trekking back and forth on various routes are part of the same circuit. Often it seems like everyone's a tourist.

Don't get me wrong. I loved lots of those places. The wilder parts of the South Island have a magic and remoteness that's hard to describe. But I glad I spent some time in the cities too.

Auckland

After nearly 24 hours flying, arriving anywhere would be a relief, arriving somewhere as pleasant as Auckland is a bonus. Auckland airport felt relaxed and friendly after the bustle of Heathrow and the bleakness of Hong Kong. Waiting outside for the airport shuttle bus I suddenly realised how inappropriately dressed I was - it was summer and I really was on the other side of the world. I then spent the 30 minute ride into the centre of Auckland staring hungrily at the scenery. The light seemed different here, a paler yellow that gave the landscape a wonderful spectral quality. It was probably just the effect of being cooped up in a plane for so long, but I was captivated by it anyway. Fuck any worries about jet lag, I just wanted to get out and see things.

It seemed I'd arrived at a time of incredible optimism for New Zealand. A late summer heatwave was just starting to kick in. Team New Zealand had just won the America's Cup. The recently elected Labour government were enjoying a healthy honeymoon period. New Zealand – and Auckland  in particular - seemed to be shedding its past as a remote part of the commonwealth and staking a claim as the capital of the emerging Pacific Rim. The optimism felt almost palpable. On my first full day in the country I sat in the tranquil, upmarket Mission Bay, overlooking golden sand and clear blue ocean while beside me two young men (both in their early twenties) studiously mapped out their plans for a new internet business. The whole conversation - business plan, financing, the lot - conducted in a sun-drenched beachfront, framed by palm trees. It seemed idyllic, local exotic. Only a couple of days before I'd departed from a damp, grey Heathrow airport. A couple of days before that I'd still been stuck in the anonymous office block in the centre of Bristol where I work. The difference was so profound I couldn't fail to fall in love with the place. Auckland - in terms of its actual area - is one of the biggest cities in the world. Viewed from Mt. Eden it stretches for miles in every direction, strung out between a series of volcanic hills, dotted with the blue of the ocean at every turn. Apart from the business quarter at its heart it doesn't feel like a city at all, more a collection of pretty suburbs. The space is what I'll remember most about Auckland. From the central Albert Park, to the vast Auckland reserve. From the myriad bays and beaches to the rambling houses, often squat one-floor affairs, but surrounded by large gardens, overflowing with greenery. It may have been approaching autumn, but walking through these wide suburbs it often felt like spring.

The big story while I was in Auckland revolved around the vexed question of republicanism. At the end of a routine council meeting, a bunch of councillors had gone off for a few drinks. Later that evening, they had sneaked back to the council offices and removed two prominent pictures of the Queen and Prince Phillip. The story, once the media got hold of it, dominated the headlines for days. Councillors were the subject of numerous angry letters in the local press. But behind the schoolboy prank nature of it lay a more telling truth. If they'd quietly replaced the pictures with something more relevant to the modern New Zealand - as had apparently happened in one of the other civic buildings - it's unlikely all but a small band of fervent royalists would've given the matter a second thought.

I spent my last evening in Auckland at a local restaurant in Mount Eden. People sat outside eating in the sunshine. Inside a couple of arty-looking types were having a deep conversation. A sprawling, dubbed-up sitar soundtrack added to the ambience. It seemed a perfect place to eat. Unfortunately the mood of peacefulness was temporarily broken when a Mediterranean looking man stormed in off the street to hurl abuse at two guys behind the counter. For several minutes there was a heated exchange until the man was finally persuaded to leave. The waitress shrugged the whole incident off as a falling out over a business deal from years ago. The guy was always coming over to carry on this relentless dispute, but it never amounted to anything.

Maybe. But while half my mind was enjoying a delicious wood fired pizza, the other half kept thinking that maybe after three years this would be the night the guy finally snapped and came back to napalm the place. The relaxing eastern music continued to send calming vibes in the background, but for once I decided to skip the dessert menu and head for home.

Wellington

Where Auckland is vast, a whole series of volcanic hills to spread out across, Wellington finds itself squashed by the Cook Strait to the south and hemmed in by hills to the north. This lack of space is what gives Wellington its cohesion. The culture isn't defined by a series of suburbs spread out in various directions—everything sits on top of each other. From the business district along Lambton Quay to the counter-culture hub of Cuba Street, it's but a couple of minutes walk.

I spent three days in and around Wellington and at the end of it all I still couldn't make my mind up as to whether I liked the place or not. If Auckland represented some kind of fantasy paradise Wellington  felt more like home. Areas of urban decay, awaiting redevelopment. An arts centre by the waterfront showing alternative cinema. The hills that surrounded the centre of Wellington. Yes, blot out the trams and you might think you were back in Bristol!

It was in Wellington that I finally encountered my first day of cloudy skies. Taking shelter from the weather— Wellington is accurately known as the windy city—I thought I'd made my greatest discovery when I called in at The Malthouse, a bar serving beers from every one of the growing number of microbreweries throughout NZ. It was early afternoon, the relaxed, grand first floor setting offered views across the city and the beer was wonderful. For an hour or so I sat in peaceful surroundings and caught up with the news in the local paper. Suitably refreshed I vowed to return that evening to have some food and sample some more of the beers. Imagine the horror a few hours later when I came back to find the place overrun with hundreds of suited stockbroker-types all engaged in loud and irritating conversations.

Elsewhere though things were looking up. After a night in an anonymous backpacker hostel by the railway station, I'd moved on to a B+B across the city. The owner was an eccentric but cheerful guy called Mike, running the guesthouse like a sort of beneficent Basil Fawlty. At breakfast he would stride around the dining room keeping up several different conversations with his guests. I was happy to finally find someone who shared my passion for cricket (rugby being seemingly bigger than every other sport put together in NZ), although I had to concede, for all that the Australians were at that point steamrollering their way across the country, it was New Zealand who'd triumphed in England during the previous summer. I didn't mind - the guy's enthusiasm was infectious. Mike seemed to sum up the people of Wellington. Maybe it was the wilder climate, but there was an energy here that was notably lacking in Auckland.

One other thing had been troubling me throughout my travels around the country and that was the trains. There was something incongruous about the fact that the train timetable for the whole of New Zealand fitted into a tiny booklet the size of one of those things you pick up for your local branch line over here. Most train services only run once a day between the major cities. 

In Christchurch, capital of the South Island, if you turn up to the railway station after half eight in the morning you’ll have missed the last train of the day. Of course New Zealand does offer magnificent trips to match the stunning scenery. Christchurch to Greymouth, crossing through the Southern Alps is rated as one of the best railway journeys in the world. But it’s all tourist-led. Wide windows, viewing platforms, commentaries given on all the sights of interest. All done very well, worthy of the many tourist awards it’s won, but surely a pain for any native New Zealander just trying to get from A to B. Obviously New Zealand did once have a much wider state run service, but there seem to have been cutbacks and privatisation that would put even Beeching to shame.

Holding out against the tide, Wellington remains the one place in NZ that still has a robust network of commuter services. It seemed too good an opportunity to miss. Suddenly I'd stepped outside the tourist bubble. I was travelling with real people. There was no one detailing the history of every local landmark or imploring me to watch another colony of seals sunbathing on the rocks.

It was on one of these suburban services that I found myself sharing a carriage with a bunch of teenagers who were on their way to see Supergrass - playing a gig as part of Wellington University’s freshers week. They were all still at school. They all had dead-end Saturday jobs at the local supermarket. Yet they had an energy and a sense of fun that was infectious. For all the wild schemes they were mapping out, they were still firmly rooted in the real world. It all seemed a million miles away from the ephemeral conversations of the backpacker set. As ridiculous a notion as it seemed, a part of me wanted to skip the mountain scenery of the South Island where I was headed next and hang out for a few days with these kids.

After three days in Wellington it was time to take the ferry and head South. On balance, despite the people I met there, I couldn't really find a place in my heart for the rough urban landscape of the windy city. But as a balance to the grey of the city, my suburban train ride had taken me on a fifty minute journey north to the Kapiti coast. Here I found another world entirely. Secluded from the main tourist route there are miles and miles of empty sandy beaches. You can walk for hours and never see another soul. The day I was there the sun shone all day and there wasn't a single cloud in the sky. Paddling through clear, warm water, listening to the beautiful ambient music of the Ash Ra Temple on my walkman and marvelling at the vast emptiness of it all. Of all the myriad memories of my time in New Zealand, that will probably outlast them all.