Waiting for the night ferry

The “nasal clairvoyant” – Lily - collects her messages from the dog world as eagerly as we do email. She pushed through long ornamental grasses beside Te Papa with determination verging on obsession. 

Inside Te Papa, news reports played from the 70s and 80s on the Springbok tour, abortion law reform, Bastion Point and the homosexual law reform bill.  Was it just so recently that these issues bled over our screens? And yet, they’re more than our children’s lifetimes in time, now passed into history.

Come evening, we sauntered through the grounds of the old timber government building that looks like an Italian stone palace. As the Beehive’s lights winked, I kept an eye on the Bluebridge building to meet the eight o’clock deadline of squeezing into the freight ferry.

 Performances worthy of the trucking Oscars were enacted before our tired eyes. From the milquetoast Nissan Pulsar, I watched monster rigs avec trailers bearing massive earthmoving machinery back into the bowels of the ferry. Now who cannot back a trailer! Once oil tankers, stock trucks, and heaven know what else, had been tucked in for the voyage, we made our timid way.

The night freight ferry over Cook Strait is a good option if you don’t like crowds and enjoy travelling at night. There is space to sleep just about anywhere and the very few passengers attempted to do that while trying to ignore Thunderdogs followed by Wilson and Hooch barking it up on the big screen. Ms Lily had to stay in the NP.

The freight ferry is slower than the usual three hour crossing so it wasn’t until 1am that we were let out at Picton. It was a somewhat ghostly ride through vineyard country, punctuated by moving over for the rigs, lights ablaze like Spanish galleons, streaking towards us slow movers from both sides of the road. Even though I hadn’t slept much due to “never fear, Thunderdogs are here”played at high volume, I was able to keep alert until Nelson, where I bought a coke and chocolate bar from a highly uncommunicative petrol attendant. No wonder he prefers the graveyard shift.

The highway to Mot has been souped up with many new cats' eyes to guide the unwary motorist and so, gratefully, at 4am, I pulled into the father’s driveway. The house was locked.