And then, of course, there is the quiet, persistent notion that as a country, we don’t really have any history worth exploring – a thought usually held right until the moment you find yourself on a windswept peninsula in the Bay of Islands, standing in the middle of a strategic located Māori Pā from the 18th century.
When you grow up in New Zealand, you quickly develop the sense that the world is a pretty big place, and you’re a long way from it. As a child, I would gaze at world maps or spin a globe and marvel at how European cities like London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Geneva, Milan and Barcelona seemed clustered together like sprinkles on an ice cream. The countries of Central Europe looked positively cozy, as though you could hop between Switzerland, Austria, Hungary, and Slovakia on a leisurely afternoon stroll. Beyond that, if you were feeling particularly adventurous, you might venture to the exotic, far away lands of Egypt, Italy, Greece or to Scandinavia, which, on a map to a young boy, seemed tantalizingly close.
Eventually, after spinning the globe several more times and surveying with astonishment the vast far-flung landmasses of Africa and South America, my eyes would eventually slide back to the Pacific Ocean and find little old New Zealand – a faint speak drifting on the edge of the world’s consciousness.
Attempting to locate New Zealand on a world map was an adventure in itself. More often than not, I’d find it tucked away in the corner somewhere looking like an afterthought. I’ve seen maps where New Zealand has been reduced to something reminiscent of an ink blob or a cocktail stain on a t-shirt. Others position us precariously close to Australia, as if we’re one high tidal current away from merging. On the worst offenders, we vanish altogether, as if midway through the design process the Cartographer has gotten bored and thought, “well, they’ll figure it out!”
Believe me, I can assure you that finding a world map that is printed accurately and shows New Zealand’s correct geographical location, with its precise size and shape at its correct proximity to the rest of the world is like finding a White Peacock in the wild, like seeing the Sea of Stars in the Maldives or catching a glimpse of a total solar eclipse. It’s like witnessing a shooting star streak across a perfectly still night sky, or Charlize Theron herself, a rare and beautiful thing.
Anyone who has spent a decent amount of time in New Zealand will know that at some point, you eventually stop questioning the local logic, put on a pair of jandals and simply start going with the flow. We just accept that a mince pie and a cold can of Fresh Up is a perfectly balanced breakfast if eaten before 10:00 AM. We maintain a rock-solid, slightly irrational belief that the All Blacks will thump the Wallabies each year to keep the Bledisloe Cup where it belongs. And, despite the evidence of our own eyes, we insist that last summer was a golden, endless dream – even if the current one has been nothing but a string of southerly fronts from Christmas Eve through to mid-January, with the odd fine spell thrown in.
It was a cold and windy Sunday afternoon in early November, 1978 when I arrived in Dunedin. It was Guy Fawkes and soon the air was to be filled with all sorts of lights and noises that would make it hard to get a 2 year old to sleep.
That year across the world John Travolta and the Bee Gees had set dances floors alight with the disco hit Saturday Fever; the Sex Pistols split up after one album, while across Europe at the Vatican, Pope Paul VI passed away after spending 15 years at the head of the Catholic Church.
In New Zealand the population had decreased to 3.1 million with the Prime Minister at the time being Robert Muldoon (this of course was years before he got drunk in parliament and called a snap election, which he lost!). Across the country people had been delighted with the national medal haul of 20 at the Commonwealth Games held in Edmonton – Canada, the band Hello Sailor produced the album of the year and Kawerau crooner John Rowles had been named vocalist of the year. The AM broadcast band had moved from 10 kHz to 9 kHz, a programme called Fair Go was the best information show on TV and the 85th National Chess Championships were held in Tauranga.
So, while Wellingtonian Craig Laird was winning the crowning glory of the New Zealand Chess world, a Dunedin man called Cliff Skeggs was starting his second year as Mayor of the southern city. That year the spring temperatures in Dunedin had fluctuated between extremes, this was something I was to find out much later was actually quite normal. Heading towards the end of spring that year, Dunedin had been cool and wet, however, the local trolley buses continued to rattle with prams precariously perched on the front and at the local supermarket you could purchase a kilogram of Ham Steaks for $4.50, three 750ml bottles of Coke for $1 and a head of lettuce for 35c. That November in town Hallensteins had a sale on men’s stubbies that featured a half elastic back, 1 hip pocket and came in colours of white, green and brown or fawn for only $5.99 and the once popular Tuck-Inn Burger on Princess Street went into receivership. That year it would hail on Christmas Eve and snow on Good Friday in 1979.
All of this, I wasn’t aware of as being only 22 months old, mastering the art of walking and talking were much more pressing issues in my life up to that present point in time. The move my family made from Auckland that November day I was quite oblivious too and while I didn’t know it at the time, it would affect my life most wonderfully in the years to come.
Decades have a habit of slipping away quietly. The Dunedin of trolley buses and 35-cent lettuces eventually faded into the background, like a sun-bleached Polaroid tucked into a family album. Those first clumsy steps gradually turned into something more assured, yet permanently restless, filled with a need to be on the move, to see what lay around the next headland, and then the one after that.
So it was that nearly fifty years later I found myself one summer evening floating on the tide at a nearby beach as the sun slid toward the horizon, the land glowing in the distance. There was salt on my lips, a soft swell lifting and lowering me, and the comforting knowledge that tomorrow I would be on the road, visiting places I’d had long since forgotten. I’d be driving through quiet country towns with quirky bits of history, listening to stories involving strange, shady, controversial characters from New Zealand’s past. Stopping in small towns in-out-of-the-way places. With daylight fading and plans forming loosely in my mind, I remained suspended between where I had come from and where I would go next.