This blog allowed me to practise writing while deciding what to do next. Life has changed dramatically since I started it in March 2011. It's now nearly two years and I am happily settled at an eco village in the most amazing environment at Motueka. It's not a commune: we share a hydro scheme and a challenging driveway that wends up a steep hill. Somehow I couldn't write during the time that it took to secure this place. Dad died in the middle of all. He went swiftly which is what he would have liked. It was just like him.

Now I am settled and my writing mojo is returning. I'm editing and writing fiction.

If you are reading this, thank you.

Liz

At the castle

Margaret sits on the wishing chair.

I am a paying guest in a castle full of curiosities at Aramoana. This is Margaret’s home, sturdily and ingeniously built with twists and turns. I met Margaret at the city dump where she rescues items from the pit. She is much admired by Claire and me as having much esoteric knowledge.

In recent history, 21 years ago, there was a massacre in this small seaside village where the bush meets the sea. Margaret was here at the time and her nephew was among those killed.

In my upstairs room there is an albatross suspended by a harness. Stretched to full wingspan the bird searches glassily for a horizon.

I first thought the albatross was real but it is a display model from the peninsula albatross colony that ended up in a skip.

Margaret has a caravan in the garden that was previously up a tree but someone complained and she had to take it down. There are many small outbuildings, one just containing clothes.

The community is as quiet as can be. The windy road out here is enough to put people off coming for anything other a Sunday drive. The community lies against the sheltering arms of a huge craggy cliff that towers above. There is a surf beach where seals and sea lions bask, a breakwater and a spit.

The spit. There was a sea lion at the far end.

The man who lives next door is building an ark. This structure is the subject of a lot of council head scratching: is it a boat or a house? The chief building inspector came out last week and the 

neighbour Doi – full name ‘Just Doi’ – does his best to satisfy the council’s demands. He helped Margaret build her castle; the ark is on her land but Doi is getting ready to shift the ark to its own section.

The castle with the green cliffs in background.

Doi told me that if you see a bird and don’t know if it is an albatross or a seagull then it isn’t an albatross. He shows me albatrosses nesting on cliffs across the harbour. Through binoculars they look like white dots; their wingspan is the stuff of legends and poetry.

I walk to the beach and the people I meet on the road are as friendly as my hosts. One of them invited me in to look at her house and garden. This is a dog town, the next-door neighbour says. There are 35 dogs here. Lily fits in.

While I’m on the laptop in the albatross upper room, the Port Chambers walking group stops by the castle and the members strike a deal to view the house of curiosities. 

Middle-aged matrons with knapsacks rise up the stairwell to exclaim in the albatross room. Above the room is a loft.

The albatross in my room.

Doi says don’t tell too many people about Aramoana. The people here like it just as it is.

I’m staying here for two weeks before wending my way back to Mot via the west coast.

The castle from the road.

The caravan now out of its tree.

The walking group troup to the ark.

The road not taken

Bear with me if you don't like poetry.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,


And sorry I could not travel both


And be one traveler, long I stood


And looked down one as far as I could


To where it bent in the undergrowth;



Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim


Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there


Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay


In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh


Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—


I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost 1915

 ...

Black poppies at Dunedin's Botanic Garden.

The state of uncertainty has a bad press but not embracing it denies the seeds of growth. The alchemy of turning an uncertain situation into ways forward is tackled in the new book by a blogger I follow Jonathon Fields.  The book is called ‘Uncertainty’ and it’s about turning fear and doubt into fuel for brilliance. http://www.theuncertaintybook.com/

Writing my blog is an attempt to deal with uncertainty and consider choices.

My aim is to explore and try to be comfortable with the “stuck” space between choices without resorting to fight or flight.  

Keats called it Negative Capability—the skill ‘of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts’. It is about being conscious and realizing there is infinity of choice.

I’m in the interface between outdated concepts of work and home as I knew them eight months ago and the components of a new life still being tested and considered.

Edyta sent me a text: ‘I trust the process of life. All I need is always taken care of. I’m safe. Repeat till the fear of lack of money is gone.’

Louise at Bluff.

I gave up certainty and comfort to live more edgily for a time. The reorganization of my former workplace left me feeling compromised to the point where I could barely function according to my lights. It was and is time to find a new niche.

Choosing to move from place to place I’ve taken the path less traveled. And I trust that will make all the difference.

 …

There is some to tell on the travel front.

Despite its chilly weather patterns Dunedin is a beautiful city. I love the proliferation of Victorian and Edwardian buildings. There are hardly any monstrosities of conspicuous consumption as in Auckland.  The baches or cribs on the peninsula have been allowed to remain as is where is. So refreshing! But I couldn’t settle here.

On one of my first Dunedin nights we - Claire, Gilbert, Violet, Malcolm, Kate and Dan – ate up large at the wonderful restaurant The Asian.

We three.

Claire and Dan Bell.

Dan’s exhibition was the Rice and Beans gallery’s last show and several nights later the experimental art community marked the event with mean cocktails. The end of Rice and Beans coincides with the gallery’s invitation to exhibit for two months at the prestigious ArtSpace in Auckland. This is a really big thing for the founders of R and B, Claire, Gilbert and Al. I’m particularly pleased for Claire to be taking art to her hometown.

Staying in Louise’s vegan household meant not consuming any unmentionables on the premises. I appreciated the welcoming attitude of this lovely bunch of people. Rory whose parents own the house cultivates vegetables on every possible space. Coriander grows from bathtubs in the front garden and there is a wilderness of edibles out the back.

At the public art gallery I became engrossed in a talk by historian Professor Dame Ann Salmond who was discussing tapu. In the late 19^th century Maori, European and Tahitians consented to have their heads cast in plaster and their moulded likenesses have languished away in the storerooms of a Paris museum. NZ photographer Fiona Pardington’s large-scale photographs brought them back to life.

Salmond marveled that the cast maker persuaded Maori chiefs to have their heads used in this way (they had to be partially shaved) considering the tapu-ness of their chiefly heads.

Louise and Nick: old Taupaki friends.

Louise and I set off for the deeper south in the trusty Pissan Nulsar. At Balclutha we stopped to say hello to our long time Taupaki neighbour Nicholas Pickolas who was on the verge of moving back to Wellington to round off his medical studies. We sat chatting in the main street; vegan Nick scraping dairy product off his sandwich.

Nick has a healthy disregard for the medical model; he says mainstream doctors earn too much, consider themselves above the herd and refuse to accept alternative theories.  He will make a difference somewhere.

Wongy's at Balclutha.

Ate an oyster pie at Bluff in a café owned by a native of Los Angeles. Was not overwhelmed by the general look of southland; the pastoralists have had things too much their own way.

Papatowai.

At Papatowai village we found a perfect rustic cottage to use as a base. The bush meets the sea in this Catlins’ landscape where the population is measured in the small dozens. The bush meets sea aspect is rare in NZ and the bush has the look of being untouched by fire. From Papatowai we roamed around the district.

 Back in Dunedin and after staying again with Lou and a couple of r and r nights in a motel, I’m now staying with Claire at an artists’ community and gallery in the city. It’s called ‘none’ and tonight I’m dusting off my old habit of dressing as a nun for a show tonight. Sunday I go to stay at Aramoana.

…..

Travels with Lilyput resumes

Time for some new experiences. I finally made it to Harwood's Hole with the walking club. Check out this photo of the lake. Yup. It's hobbit country all right. The Hobbit film makers have booked in locally, specifically near this atmospheric place.

I've also enjoyed getting mucky with clay at the Motueka Pottery Club and making new friends at the Mot newcomers' coffee mornings.

Sarah and Laura from Bavaria. 

Then several Couchsurfers turned up. Chris bought groceries for her two-night stay; this was much appreciated. It is certainly not expected and I don't think any the less of the other travellers who didn't. Everytone contributes in their own way to this energy exchange. Luca the man from Rome and I watched some cool black and white movie DVDs; South African Cuan was a real cheer germ/all around good guy and the German girls Sarah and Laura were just so easy to host.

Dad loved to say that I collected these travellers “off the street”, whereas there is a website and a good process of references so you get a pretty reasonable idea of what your visitors will be like.

Ready for a break from Motueka I hung about until the last surfer left and then drove south.

…

Heading for Dunedin to see the girls, I decided not to bust a gut driving long distances, so a mere two hours from Mot, we returned to the Kiwi animal park at Murchison. It’s now a favourite flopping place, especially cosy cabin 13. Lynn who runs the place is so friendly. It was her birthday so I made a card and gave her the book I’d just finished about women travellers. I particularly liked the story about the woman who traded her only pair of sandals for some tobacco leaves. In Africa! Yes, I know how that can feel.

To each his or her own: Murchison ducks go their own way.

Always intrigued by place names, I noted Rainy River Rd, Macbeth and Blackadders Road before the Lewis Pass. The sign at St James (sic) Walkway asked that visitors Toitu te whenua (leave the land undisturbed). All very DOC-PC: pity people who organise the signs can’t do apostrophes.

We stopped at Tophouse, an old watering hole above St Arnaud, famous for someone topping himself way back and for being NZ’s smallest pub. On the pass itself, there is a small settlement of maybe 12 dwellings at the Boyle River Settlement. These were all modest unlike those in the Alpine village of Hanmer that attracts so many campervans and scads of generic young people. By the last statement I mean that they all look the same not just because they’re young but because they tend to favour the same mode of dress.

…

Kate and Ken’s home, an old church at Oxford, was ideally placed for my travels. It was easy to find for someone who is geographically challenged (I find Christchurch a challenge). Lily and I were treated to a beautifully comfortable bed in K and K's big bus. Kate, my ex Jim’s younger sister is a fabric artist par excellence. She was busy negotiating a long-term supply of carded wool for her felting. It’s not so much the wool; it’s the carding process that’s turned awkward for small traders.

It appears that NZ’s carding plants are scarce, since some of the hugely expensive carding machinery has been taken to China. Think brands like Icebreaker that manufactures in Dragon Land. Kate’s home-based business Heavenly Wools is set to go up a notch as a result of this sourcing problem. It’s a wise trader who knows how important it is to fulfil orders promptly.

I was sad to leave after just a night because they had made me so welcome; they even invited me on an excursion to Lake Sumner that I had to decline. Ken said the fact that I could not be flexible with my time means that I am not entirely “free” yet. But then there’s the old adage to keep in mind that visitors start to stink after two days. We all had a hilarious session with artists Mark and Areta. The latter turns out to be the niece of Liz Wilkinson, a good pal from Bethells. NZ is such a village!

Apropos of nothing, Ken makes some mighty fine scary looking knives.

…

Lizzy Kramer's new Doc Martens.

I was welcomed back to the Christchurch Kramer whanau where my sister Bridget, husband Simon and their three children are so hospitable. The Ks have just returned home having their house fixed by the earthquake commission. Number 8 Trent Street has had a fresh coat of paint, new paths and plumbing fixed to the tune of around $40,000.

The family is in thrall to Oscar the Cairn terrier.  Oscar was an inspired buy during the season of earthquakes. He and Lily are pretty good friends. Miss Fancy Pants is getting nastier as she ages, but Oscar is such a force of nature, he eventually overcomes all objections. Lily’s personality is glacial compared to Oscar’s; he thrusts himself about.

Bridget and I shared some thoughts about our Dad’s continued well-being and the pitfalls for him living alone.  What is to be done? When?

…

I’d always heard about the Canterbury town of Geraldine. People say how pretty it is. I felt it was a bit on the “all fur coat and no knickers” side of things: a bit showy for my taste.

I liked Waimate better. Six kilometres from the Highway 1, just before Oamaru this small town hasn’t had the “Resene colour palate chucked at it.” So says my son-in-Gilbert. I found the town’s drabness refreshing in a landscape of tourist trap towns. Waimate the wallaby town says take us or leave us. (Later on I will pass through the “town of opportunities”.  Such breathtaking hyperbole in Milton! But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

Found a superb $10 duvet and cover in the Waimate’s Red Cross shop for Louise. That night's lodgings was another animal park but I couldn’t be bothered paying the $6 fee to see the animals, as I wanted to leave early to see the girls.

It was pleasant to linger in courteous Oamaru long enough to have several passers by asking if I was lost. It’s OK I just look that way. I stumbled into an imposing Oamaru stone building on main street and only later realised it was the Opera House. Down by the sea Bobby Sands lives on in graffiti.

.....

A lone bagpiper plays outside the Scottish Shop in George Street. The night after Guy Fawkes I spot two burned couches in one street. This must be Dunedin! (To be continued.)

 

After several months of no posts, I have become accustomed to not writing a blog. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything to write about. 

The nine lovely souls who committed themselves to cheer me on may be secretly relieved; drenched as we are with other people’s cleverness. So I’m not going to beat myself up over the quitting gene.

I’m just a little played out on the external stimulation of ‘Hey looky here, see what I’ve been doing and here are the photographs to prove it'.

This blog was intended to keep my hand in the writing life. Then the words started asking awkward questions like, ‘is this really what you want to say or are you just going through the motions?’

You can’t fool yourself that the mojo is there when it isn’t.  The spirit moved on from this project when I started to become present to myself. During the Riwaka winter I took time for the breeze to blow between my ears and have done no writing except for grocery lists.

It’s been six months since I walked from a safe job at Auckland’s Super City. Not just the city, but the entity at the heart of RWC discontent, Auckland Transport. I didn’t just walk, I ran. There was something in the air that got up my nose in the way that my previous employer the good ship Waitakere Council didn’t.

I’m still based at Motueka, with my father who is coping with being bi-polar and old.  I'm planning new travels around the south with Lily, the peke-chin. Summer's nearly here and I can't wait to hit the beaches.

Being here is a challenge to help him keep a fresh perspective on his current situation. 

I was sad to see him looking neglected when I returned from a two week trip to Auckland. He was very low when I arrived and then the next day, he bounced right back.

We drove to his favourite fish and chip shop on the Mapua wharf, opposite the ruins of the aquarium razed by a fire that was deliberately lit a couple of nights before.

The issue of whether a rest home is right for him is the current itch. There is a room available at the local one right now. At the moment he’s itchy himself. He’s asking himself, should I go?  Am I ready?

In the thick of all this, I think he should get into a good place before his health gets worse. But it’s complicated.

He needs daily care when he can’t look after himself. I've told him that I'll be travelling and won't always be around. He goes down and up.  Now he’s saying that he still has his driving licence for the next 18 months and that he can’t go to a home because of that!

Camera obscura at Karamea

The beach at Hector.

Yes, snow at Hector!

Folk art cushion at Hector.

More Hector folk art.

Intense weather travel must surely be an obscure object of desire.

You could say that winter’s chilled heart is perfect introvert weather. Let the party types slurp their cocktails in warmer climes!  In the South Island the roads are free and mostly easy and you may or may not see another car for an hour.

After the fiasco with my camera on last month’s trip to Dunedin, I bit the bullet and bought another. There’s some funny stuff going on with me and cameras.

Friend Annette was staying on the west coast at Hector, just down the road from Granity and we were both keen to push on to the end of Highway 6 to Karamea.

Lily and I set off from Motueka in the afternoon rain, along the valley highway to join highway 6, past the Nelson Lakes’ region. Before Murchison, we stopped at Owen River Tavern motels. The overnight tariff was $99, which I, hoping for a more economical night, rejected.  We ended up at a generic motel for $89 with a tiny bit of room to swing Lily by her fancy-pancy tail. For those who don't already know, Lily is a Pekinese with a great toi toi at her rear.

The weather may have been crap but the genuine west coast reception was not: en route to Karamea at every shop, motel and camping ground, smiling folk were ready to help and exchange a few friendly words.

From the women at the ATM in Westport laughingly drawing our attention to headlights left on, to the marvellous Margaret at the Karamea camping ground who did her best to fix our telly at night with a full on cold and a smile, we were warmly greeted by the coast.

By contrast, our encounter with a local bandit came as a shock but the story of thievery, thinly-veiled desperation and the final outcome will live on...

At Hector, the reddish rata driftwood was as thick on the beach as the spume. The beach changes rapidly. The froth disappeared in the super-energetic tide.

Accompanied by the swollen Buller river on the way Murchison, we hardly saw the Karamea bluffs driving through hail, rain and thunder to the ‘last loneliest loveliest’* outpost of Karamea at the end of Highway 6.

I considered stopping for a bite at Mohihinui Hotel, in a ‘blink or you’ll miss it’ township, but it was raining too hard. (Mohihinui’s river and the primeval forest along its banks, is threatened by an 85m high dam creating a 14km long lake - opposed by environmental lobbyists and the Department of Conservation. Court case next year.)

It was a long drive before I reached the hotel at Little Wanganui, ravenous for f and c. Little Wanganui hotel is the birthplace of a famous wild meat sauce. The blurb goes thus:

“Batch after batch, brew after brew, whiskey after whiskey we endured, seeking the perfect sauce to complement the famous wild meats of the West Coast of NZ, that up until that hazy night (in our red eyes), did not exist.” 

Glasseye Creek Wild Meat Sauce was dreamed up during the 2008 whitebaiting season by a bunch of mates that included David White, Little Wanganui's publican who died while stopping a brawl between two women. 

60s style at Karamea.

Karamea, home of the largest and healthiest cabbage trees I’ve ever seen, is the last town before the Heaphy track. We settled into the Karamea Holiday Park before the wildest weather on the first night. Annette thought the roof was going to come off as I snored on. The 60s-style motel unit was roomy and warm. The camp, with many small huts and buildings, is for sale. Whitebaiting and summer seasons see it overflowing, which is why I was glad to be there in the winter.

One of the area’s attractions, accessible through exquisite podocarp forest, the Oparara arch was much bigger than I realized and climbing up into the cavern I had an attack of vertigo, looking down at the swollen tannin-stained river than raced through it. I did a bit of poking around in vain to see the giant carnivorous snails, confined largely to this part of the South island.

I was unable to photograph the arch because the camera went missing from the picnic area where we’d had lunch before we set off. We searched all around, including the car, but the camera was firmly lost.

We had obeyed the sign saying not to feed the wekas but instead, the sign should have read ‘watch out for wekas, they take stuff'.

I went back to the camp trying not to worry about the camera. After all, what was losing two cameras in as many weeks?

The upshot was that we went back the next day and Annette found the camera in a shallow hole quite close to the picnic area. The weka was fussing around it. There was also a small bag and a washing up cloth in the hidey-hole. The fact remains that Weka Camera Club members are gutted by their loss...

Primeval forest at Oparara.

*Misappropriated from Rudyard Kipling's oft-quoted “The Song of the Cities” poem about Auckland, now not at all lonely.

The June bug

Recommended second hand shop on the way to the coast.

I broke my camera while I was away. So there will be fewer photos until I resolve this. It's great to be back in Motueka even though I miss my Auckland buds. If you are reading this...I Miss You!

Lou's antennae detected something rather strange in Haast that I'll tell you about...

The west coast and Otago country on the 18-hour Motueka to Dunedin trip was simply spectacular.

We were entranced by mountains, glaciers, high cliffs, bush and sea, in quite different combinations to any we’d seen before. There were tantalising glimpses of cunningly secreted cribs close to the coast, each with its own little bit of beach. One in particular had many nikau palms surrounding it.

The lights of Jade town Hokitika at nightfall were pretty and welcome. We’d driven down the coast in the dusk to our first night’s stop, having left Motueka late, stopping off at an out of the way and very atmospheric, second hand shop that was once yet another old church. 

Lily was allowed to stay at the motel, so no subterfuge was necessary. We stepped out to the recommended bar Stumpers to find it in full rugby mode with cheers and beers. We stayed maybe 20 minutes. Hokie was a pretty dudie sort of a place; not many women were out on the town that night.

We left early after chatting to some blue-uniformed (not of the police kind) female card players from Nelson who’d come to play Hokitika. Pretty staunch folk. Then it was on to glacier country. OK, so we didn’t helicopter onto the ice, but the view from the short walk was enough. Franz and Fox are spectacular. Hmm, already used this ‘s’ word in the third paragraph. But this is the South Island - OK?

Haast in the late afternoon was a curious business. Firstly, where exactly was Haast? It didn’t seem to be where it was supposed to be, but we finally located the lodge we’d booked through Wotif. This former luxury lodge was deserted because it was about to be turned into a Top 20 Motorcamp. The new managers turned up in a luxury caravan the same time as Lou and me. No dogs allowed inside.

It was “just us” in this empty lodge. A bit like The Shining.

Two stags' heads presided over the fireplace in the luxurious lounge. While Lou was busy on wireless, the manager told me the sad story of the original owners of the lodge. After the wife was killed on the highway by a runaway trailer, her husband never got over it. The place went into receivership and hadn’t been used for a while.

(On the way to Haast, I’d spied a Whitebait for Sale sign at a house and bought 200 grams of the little fish for $20, so there were two lovely fritters for me and none for Lou now a vegetarian.)

We snuck the dog inside as she was freezing in the car. In the morning, Louise told me she’d seen a female with long dark hair and wearing a little cap standing by the window in the middle of the night. When she realised what she'd seen, the figure disappeared. I then repeated to her what the manager told me before bed. 

The third day was flat out driving, apart from a brief stop at the Wanaka recycle shop where I was so thrilled to buy a red thermos that I went and left my wallet behind and we had to backtrack to recover it. Wanaka folk and their visitors seem to dispose of a lot of quality stuff; check out the skis and the boots!

We hotfooted to Dunedin through Otago’s large spaces and small towns, Clyde looked especially interesting with old stone buildings set in a forbidding beige landscape.

And so, to Dunedin! City life, everything within easy reach. The supermarket and medical school just a block away. But first, we have to meet Mr Brown. The first meeting does not bode well for the peace of mind of Claire, Gilbert, Louise and Liz. The much-anticipated encounter between the two antagonists, Lily and Bosco Brown, goes off with a lot of low, brown Burmese growls and apologetic Peke-Chin shivering. All we can do is keep them apart. That sort of farce gets old very quickly in a tiny flat that is Bosco’s territory.

I was so happy to be at Claire's exhibition, knowing all the effort that she and her friends have put into the gallery. http://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/arts/165959/art-seen.

Sad to leave Dunedin, the dump shop, the farm, Port Chambers and so, to the wonderful Leigh, The Bimbles, Violet and Malcolm, Clara and the lost mouse and her sister Emerald, Kate and Rory, thank you. And of course to my darlings who won't be reading this! Nor forgetting the Christchurch honeys too and the little green fingered one in Hanmer.

.....

You can never have too many salt and pepper shakers.

Apropos of nothing, I’m going to set up as a punctuation consultant, specialising in apostrophes. There is just so much potential business! Below, from the Seeya cheap fares site:

FIJI - Auckland to Nadi only $218ow

This great deal is on Air Pacific. This is a full service airline. All economy class fares include a meal, alcoholic beverages and 23 kgs of check-in baggage - thats a lot of bikini's!

When you speak to the world like that, it’s like being naked without realising it.

Further down the road from us at Riwaka: "Life is to (sic) short... to kiss slowly".

If you incline your head to the side you will see the Hokitika town memorial through the wrecked camera lens.

 ...