A life well-travelled

Hannah Harte Patreon: HRMNZ | @hannah_harte_

Kiwis are largely regarded as people who love to venture far beyond their backyards. The post-high school ‘Big OE’ culture that flourished in my parents’ generation is still well and truly alive today. As of 2022, a study revealed that despite the pandemic, 85 per cent of those polled planned a trip within the next year, with 29 per cent intending to head beyond our shores and the rest travelling within Aotearoa’s boundaries. In fact, the number one destination for Kiwis is our own home turf, with Australia a close second. Yet, I’ve met people in Ōtautahi who have never left their home city and barely explored beyond their own suburbs. There’s a surprising number of people who are happy to stay put, beyond taking a holiday to the Gold Coast, or flying up to Auckland for an event.

As a child of Christchurch in the 1980s, your experience of life outside of Aotearoa could be somewhat limited unless you had a wealthy family and immigrant friends. My perspective on the world may have been fairly narrow, except for the two years I spent in Bangkok, Thailand, as a child of missionaries.

Khlong Toei, the crowded, humid slum with winding muddy paths tucked next to the biggest motorway in the world, could not be more different from the quiet, tidy, grey concrete, and deciduous treed neighbourhood I left behind. Yet, I adored the novelty of this entirely alien environment. The heat, smells, incessant mosquitos, surrounded by people speaking a language that sounded like a lively river flowing more than mere words, monks in saffron robes, gold leaf and fragrant garlands plastered on massive trees with roots sprawling into fractured roads, formed the greatest adventure of my life. It inoculated me against racism and introduced me to the Eastern way of thinking and being, which has enhanced my life in endless ways.

To me, travel is more than a holiday and dipping your toes in another world. Travel can open your eyes to a greater human experience and broaden your mind, especially if you go far outside your comfort zone and completely embrace a local perspective. Learning some of the language, customs, and values of the place you visit is a way to acknowledge the immense privilege some of us have to be able to fly to far-flung places, and it enriches the depth of the experience you can have. I wish everyone could spend a period of time in a place like Bangkok, especially when young and impressionable, with the hope that true immersion in a different land and culture can help remove the illusion of division between us all.

1965 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport

OWNED BY Nelson Classic Car Museum

DRIVEN BY Mike Wilson

Acasual glance at this Chevy Impala, which now resides in the Nelson Classic Car Museum, would not make anyone imagine it was once buried in a musty, derelict barn deep in banjo country, USA. Nor that it was riddled with bullet holes, rust, varmint scat, and scars from a previous life lacking in love and care. As beautiful as it now is, it’s also hard to picture what drove its new owners to drag it halfway around the world and create, with generous amounts of blood, sweat, and tears, the car you see today. Understanding comes when you get behind the wheel, settle into the metallic blue sea of embossed vinyl, fire up the mighty LS V8, and with a squeeze of the accelerator, the Impala transforms you into the OG, the Don, King of the Road with a soundtrack that can only have been made in Detroit.

“I’ve been here for 75 years.

“My family’s from Normandy, France. They came in a ship – Comte de Paris. And Captain Stanley was there to meet them with a bottle of champagne, probably. Well, that’s my job. And I’ve done every job in the books.

“When we were young, we had to work on the farm, reap cocksfoot with all the returned servicemen; get the froth of the beer. And then you’re a billy boy, and then I left school to go whaling; there was still whaling in the Tory Channel when I left school, but my old man wouldn’t let me go. I worked at that bloody post office – two pounds 10 a week, seven in the morning, five at night, six days a week. I’ve done everything – you name it; professional hunter, cheese factory, wood cutting. I worked for the Power Board for 17 years. God, it’s been a hard life.

“See – I like getting dressed up. When we were young, I was Robin Hood and everybody. We started the French Festival 30-something years ago; I was getting dressed up for the French Festival. I did a re-enactment like it was – on the main beach here.

“This [uniform] is Napoleon’s era: Napoleon, 1815. It’s jazzed up to get them moving.

“When you meet the cruise boat, they come off and up the ramp. And then you talk with them. I was getting a bit pissed off with them; they were a bit slow getting up the ramp. I said to the guy, ‘we’ve got cows that walk faster than you!’

“But when you’re famous, you don’t realise it. You just gotta keep doing it.” facebook.com/humansofchch