Show me the way to get to Milford Sound by Naomi Arnold

— THE NELSON MAIL Saturday, February 23, 2013

OPINION

Show me the way to get to Milford Sound Naomi Arnold

e had to buy his first passport to get to New Zealand. He was 28, from a Minnesota town of 600 souls, and my friend Lauren picked him up on Raupara Rd at midday last Sunday. She pulled over when she saw the lone bloke, assessing him as harmless – and then, as they always do, another hitchhiker materialised from the undergrowth. The boy, Mike, had flown into Auckland four days before, and somehow made it overland down the North Island and across Cook Strait. He’d met the girl, 19-yearold German Nadine, in a bakery, and agreed to hitch together to keep her safe. They had been waiting for an hour and a half when Lauren pulled over, and when she did, Mike looked surprised. He said: ‘‘I’ve never done this before.’’ In the car, he explained that his mother had made him vow not to hitchhike in New Zealand. ‘‘I told her, ‘I can’t promise that, Mom’. I didn’t want to have to lie to her,’’ he said. His friends back home in Minnesota said ‘‘What do you want to go there for?’’ when he announced his plans for New Zealand. But he was determined to see Milford Sound: the Mecca of the Pacific, the best place in Aotearoa. He’d almost been to another country before; once, when he was fly fishing back home, he’d seen the Canadian border across the lake. On the way home to Nelson, Lauren stopped at Pelorus Bridge for a swim. She led the hitchhikers down the path to the place where the green river slices the rocks in half and the sun warms them, and Mike gasped at its sudden beauty.

‘‘Oh my gaaard’’: Could there be a nicer place on a summer day than the Pelorus River? Photo: FAIRFAX NZ ‘‘Oh my Gaard,’’ he said. She jumped into the water, and he stood on the rocks, shocked. ‘‘Oh my Gaaaard,’’ he said, gaping at her audacity. ‘‘I have never done anything like this before.’’ That night, the hitchhikers camped out in the spare room at Lauren’s flat, and the next day Nadine left for Motueka. Mike got up early to catch the NBus, hoping it would take him somewhere

interesting, but it took him to Richmond. He got off and asked at a shop where the West Coast was, then walked to the roundabout at the foot of Gladstone Rd and stood there, thumb out, hoping some kindly soul would pick him up and get him closer to Milford Sound. After four hours, he shouldered his pack and returned to Richmond, where he caught the NBus back to Nelson for a look

around town. Later, his heel rubbed raw by a blood blister from all that hot, lonely walking, he flagged down a taxi driver. They fell into conversation, and the driver said he’d show him a good time for $100. The pair spent the afternoon driving around the region together, the driver showing him old childhood haunts and Tasman School, and pointing out the golden sands, blue water, green bush and yellow sea kayaks of Tasman Bay. They visited a craft shop, where Mike bought a ring for a girl back home. But he avoided visiting Abel Tasman National Park. No time. He had to get to Milford Sound. The taxi driver dropped him home at 8pm, just in time for Lauren to dish him up some lentil bolognese for dinner. He ate it, bravely, just as he’d eaten the spicy jambalaya the previous night. He’d never had that sort of food before, he explained. Back home, he ate mostly peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, turkey breast, steak, and Kool-Aid, to which he’d add a cup of sugar for the taste. But when he decided to go travelling in a foreign country, he told himself he’d stay really open to new experiences, including the food. The next day, Nadine returned from her trip and asked how she could get a job here. When she left, she wrote a note that’s now posted on a pinboard in Lauren’s flat. ‘‘Hi, thank you very much for picking us up, showing us that amazing river and hosting us so friendly,’’ it said. Mike, having visited the iSite and finally figuring out his passage to the West Coast, left a note, too. ‘‘Thank you so much for your hospitality and generosity,’’ he wrote. ‘‘I’ll never forget an experience like this. If you’re ever in Minnesota, I’ll be more than happy to show y’all around.’’ By now, he should have made it to Milford Sound. ❚ naomi.arnold@nelsonmail.co.nz

Sustenance for writers other jobs to pay the bills. His most famous poem is about the breakdown of a boring and repressive society, but in real life Eliot Sarah Dunn was a very content employee at Lloyd’s Bank ecently, my of London for a long time working life has after his work became been improved by famous. a new mug. It’s one Maybe this is where the of the orange-striped unassuming, kindly J Popular Penguin mugs, Alfred Prufrock of his with ‘‘Nineteen Eightyfamous poem came from, Four’’ and ‘‘George Orwell’’ with his ‘‘rich and modest’’ written on it. The Virginia necktie and rolled trousers. Woolf model featuring ‘‘A Interestingly, poet Ezra Room of One’s Own’’ would Pound set up what could have suited me better, have been one of the firstreally, but they only come ever attempts at in lilac. crowdfunding in order to This mug is significant try and free Eliot from the because it’s the first mug bank. He named it Bel I’ve purchased specifically Esprit or ‘‘a fine wit’’. for use at my desk. It’s the Through Bel Esprit, perfect size, shape and Pound and other writers colour combination, and tried to find 30 people to the rescue orange makes it promise Eliot £10 per year stand out nicely against the for a modest £300 annual mess of discarded papers salary. Unfortunately, and bits of writing. The evidence implies Eliot Inspiring: Happiness is the right mug at work. embarrassing amount of probably pulled in more moneyed member of the satisfaction I get from the Orwell like £500 each year from his work aristocracy with ongoing nervous mug got me thinking about the at the bank by the time Bel Esprit problems, Woolf was not expected ways famous writers behave in was attempted in 1922, and he their day jobs. Perhaps Orwell had to work for her living and would rejected the offer on the grounds have had a lot of trouble doing so, a Work Mug of his own? that it was too uncertain. but she and Leonard ran their In fact, George Orwell, or Eric Eliot made a graceful exit from small letter-press with great Blair by his real name, was a the bank in 1925 to work for the success. policeman before he was a writer. publishing firm that became Faber She found that the process of As he was born in India, Orwell’s and Faber. He stayed there for the typesetting and printing helped family sent him to train for the rest of his career and eventually her think about writing in a Indian Imperial Police in Burma became a director. different way: ‘‘Try to understand when his marks at school failed to The lesson here seems to be that what a writer is doing. Think of a impress. writing is a side project for just book as a very dangerous and By all accounts he was an about everybody except those who exciting game, which it takes two unorthodox but good policeman, can afford not to work. Poet to play at. Books are not turned learning Burmese very quickly William Carlos Williams and the and getting on well with the locals. out of moulds like bricks. Books Russian short-story writer are made of tiny little words, There’s even a rumour that he got Chekhov were both well-respected which a writer shapes, often with blue circle-amulets tattooed on his doctors in their time, and even the great difficulty, into sentences of knuckles to guard against bullets wild and furious poet Charles different lengths, placing one on and snakebites. Bukowski worked for the top of another, never taking his In 1927, he returned to England American Postal Service for more eye off them, sometimes building after a bout of dengue fever and than a decade. them quite quickly, at other times quit the force to concentrate on Bukowski once said he was knocking them down in despair, writing. His first full-length novel, ‘‘horrified at what a man had to do Down and Out in Paris and and beginning all over again.’’ simply in order to eat, sleep, and London roughly describes how After the Woolfs printed a cokeep himself clothed.’’ I wonder if that turned out, but he also had a written collection, Two Stories, he would have been happier if he more comfortable time teaching at and other work by Virginia, they had a Work Mug. a private prep school in West took on work from other writers ❚ Sarah Dunn’s blog, The Baby London. within their group of friends, such Seal’s Book Club, is published on Just a few years earlier in 1917, as T S Eliot. nelsonmail.co.nz Woolf and her husband Leonard Eliot is a bit special within this Steve Braunias has taken a break founded the Hogarth Press. A list of writers who had to take and returns next week.

Appendix 1.1

Floundering in a godless and lost world A mug’s view Russell Harding

n an effort to write informed columns that make sense of our complex world, I stay close to the news. I listen to the radio and watch television. I read widely on the internet. I’ve even dabbled with social media. As a result, nothing makes sense, and I’m beginning to worry about my mental health. I worry for my health because to swim in the sea of current events is to swim in a sea of effluent. These past couple of weeks, I almost drowned in the stuff. Kicking off the headlines over the past fortnight was NZ First MP Richard Prosser’s Middle-earth writings about troglodytes from Wogistan. According to Mr Prosser, a ‘‘Wog’’ is a Western Oriental Gentleman, and a term not to be offended by.

I learned from Google that, amongst other things, a troglodyte is one of a race of humanoid monsters from the game Dungeons and Dragons. This was all I was going to learn from Mr Prosser’s writings. His wisdom born out of pocketknife rage swept local news before launching itself on the eagerly waiting wider world. Much was written and spoken, but nowhere did it state that New Zealand’s standing in the world had increased, or that international travel had become safer or more efficient, because of the wisdom Mr Prosser shared with us all. So what other items were floating out there in the current events sea? Well, we learned that Coca-Cola kills. A coroner’s report says so. Which set Bob Jones off. ‘‘What absolute tosh!’’ he wrote. He threw in a ‘‘totally absurd’’ with a ‘‘damn silly suggestion’’, and topped it off with a ‘‘not content to simply do their job’’. Coroners ‘‘suffer from Gareth-

morganitus’’, according to Sir Bob, ‘‘namely, an obsession with seeing their name in print’’. The following night, Sir Bob could be seen on Seven Sharp talking about women. Apparently, he employs a few and is well qualified to speak on their behalf. This was on the back of his previous week’s column in New Zealand’s largest newspaper, where he talked of ‘‘hogwash’’ and ‘‘unadulterated world-class nonsense’’, followed by more ‘‘infantile nonsense’’ and a ‘‘capacity to spout garbage . . . familiar to us all’’.

He seemed to have covered it all. Was there any subject left untouched for a columnist like me to get outraged about? Perhaps not. I continued my forlorn search for subject matter in the 24-hour news cycle sea. Unfortunately, Richard Prosser kept floating back to the surface. Political commentator Matthew Hooton said: ‘‘I feel sorry for poor old Prosser; all he was doing was articulating the beliefs of his political party. If you’re a greenie, you spread the green message; if you’re in NZ First, your job is to promote hatred.’’ All this ‘‘news’’ was making me feel unwell. My doctor did say I should try more greens. I turned from the writings of one shock jock politician to another. Not Michael Laws, but former ACT leader Rodney Hide. Perhaps he could guide me on this week’s subject matter. Rodney didn’t muck about. He

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gracefully danced his way into the current education debate. ‘‘The teacher unions? They’re the baddest and the maddest.’’ Teacher unions ‘‘dictate education policy, destabilise duly elected ministers of education, and present themselves as the arbiters of right and proper schooling’’. Nothing about Hekia’s own righteous high heels destabilising her, Rodney? He finished with another charitable thought on unionised teachers. ‘‘They’re rich, powerful and unassailable . . . their driving concern is their own power and their own budget.’’ Rodney gave me an ice cream headache to go with my current events heartache. I bravely continued my voyage into what Colin Hogg calls the ‘‘godless and lost world of New Zealand current affairs’’. And there it was again. Richard Prosser’s bobbing head – this time handed in on a plate, in a quote from a NZ First board member. According to the board member, Mr Prosser is ‘‘prone to

CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS

hyperbolistic feats of expression’’. The quote exploded on my computer screen before I went searching for meatier subjects. Meteors in Russia, I hear you say? I reckon they were a Russian tourism publicity stunt. Horse meat in Britain? That’ll teach them for joining the European Union. Oscar Pistorius? A story with legs, but too sad for words. What about Telecom’s email security? How about writing about the Living Wage? What about the Salvation Army’s State of the Nation report released last week? What about the release of longdelayed semi-legal auditorgeneral’s reports into issues that are mostly moral? Followed by a neat policy release on beneficiary fraud to divert the media’s gaze. The truth is, I’ve waded through so much news effluent it’s got into my brain. I may have to wait for Seven Sharp to give these subjects a go before I can understand them. Their graphics always help. With any luck, someone will tweet about it to further enhance clarity.

ACROSS: 1 Coach, 4 Take a second look, 14 Suave, 15 Stops, 16 Harbouring, 17 Crest, 19 End, 20 Handgun, 21 Traveller, 22 Felled, 25 Put on show, 27 Saturn, 28 Notion, 33 Balloonist, 35 Tea, 36 Assign, 37 Beer, 39 Rib, 41 Biscuit, 42 Tablet, 43 Consulted, 44 Upset, 45 Bad dream, 50 Up, 51 Tabulate, 55 Scrim, 58 Blackmail, 59 Biased, 60 Allowed, 61 War, 63 Ergo, 64 Sermon, 65 Apt, 66 Skateboard, 68 Caddie, 69 Rescue, 71 Out of date, 76 Seller, 77 Stopwatch, 79 Ostrich, 81 Tot, 84 Nests, 85 Arithmetic, 86 Goods, 87 Egypt, 88 By hook or by crook, 89 Stack. DOWN: 2 Outlaw, 3 Cupid, 5 Afar, 6 Embargo, 7 Scurvy, 8 Chill, 9 Neglect, 10 Lack, 11 Obeyed, 12 Dazed, 13 Deadpan, 14 Stilton, 18 Automobile, 23 Astir, 24 Trisect, 26 Unlaced, 27 Start-up, 29 Inertia, 30 Marina, 31 Still, 32 Agenda, 34 Team, 36 Abyss, 38 Ridge, 40 Guru, 45 Bible, 46 Dragged, 47 Rake, 48 Abates, 49 Crown, 50 Umbrage, 52 Balderdash, 53 Lookout, 54 Theory, 55 Slimmed, 56 Paste, 57 Sees, 62 Canon, 67 Violent, 68 Clutter, 70 Catwalk, 72 Unclear, 73 Measly, 74 Cathay, 75 Acidic, 76 Stays, 78 Prior, 80 Roost, 82 Oslo, 83 Silo.

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