Tales of a Female Nomad (38 page)

Forest and Bird is a national organization devoted to protecting the delicate ecosystem of New Zealand. Introduced plants and animals are the enemy. Up to twenty thousand kiwi chicks are eaten by predators each year. Rats, mice, stoats, all introduced animals, are decimating the native birds. It has been estimated that seven out of nine hatchlings are killed by stoats (a kind of weasel).

The possum is another introduced animal that is causing trouble. The first ones arrived from Australia a century ago. Today there are 70 million of the pests eating twenty thousand tons of foliage every night. There are so many of these nocturnal creatures that “possum trapper” is a respectable occupation.

Every Friday morning I make an appearance at the Bizarre, formerly called the Bazaar, a secondhand store (“op shop”) that benefits the community. It’s run by a group of women who are nearly all past seventy. They sell plants and vegetables, clothes and knick-knacks. The locals show up before nine, which is when I run into my Forest and Bird friends, fellow book clubbers, and neighbors.

Coromandel is a real community. I like the people and the size and the mix. I have met descendants of old pioneering families and newly retired city folk, fishermen and marine farmers, businesspeople and weekenders, sheep farmers and orchid growers, ministers and yachties. And the Maori community of Manaia.

I still haven’t met the “alternative” segment of Coromandel, the artists and writers and potters that drew me here in the beginning. But I’m just going to live. It’ll happen.

And it does. I’m having trouble with my computer. Not too long ago I saw an ad for “Cyberplace” in the local newsletter. It’s time for a visit.

Early one morning Old Blue and I drive into town, past hills dotted with cows and sheep (there are more than 47 million sheep and around 3½ million people in New Zealand). We drive between fields filled with white daisies, yellow thorny gorse (the curse of farmers), and Queen Anne’s lace. I stop for a family of pukeko, big black birds with long red legs, that are ambling across the road. En route I count four dead possums, flattened by tires while on their nocturnal eating frenzies. And in the water on the left, just beyond the mangrove trees, are hundreds of sticks coming out of the water . . . Greg’s oyster farm. At low tide, you can walk out and see the oysters clinging to the wooden frames, waiting to be harvested.

When I park Old Blue outside the post office, a woman is getting into the car in front of me. There is a big CYBERPLACE sign on the side window.

Christine and I talk on the street for the next twenty minutes. She’s a writer and a computer whiz. We make an appointment for the next morning. When our conversation is over, she says, “Come to my birthday party tomorrow night.”

I do, and another part of the Coromandel world opens up to me. Christine and her partner, Henry, are building an earth house, brick by clay brick. The party is on a dirt-floor living room with a roof but only one wall. There is singing by a bonfire (several of the guests play guitar) and a potluck dinner. And writers and artists and actors and potters and musicians.

Gradually I slip into a rhythm, writing, teaching, going to meetings. One Wednesday, after I spend the morning talking with the three classes in Manaia School about Borneo, orangutans, and books, Vicki, the principal, invites me to come to “Pit Day” on Friday. I have no idea what “Pit Day” is, but I tell her I’ll be there. I am fairly certain it must be what the Maori call a
“hangi,”
where they dig a pit and cook meat and vegetables over hot rocks. I’ve been wanting to try a
hangi
meal ever since I heard about them.

On Friday, I arrive to discover a playground filled with calves, lambs, dogs, horses, birds, rabbits, and even a spider in a cage; not a pit in sight. “Pit Day” turns out to be “Pet Day.” The short Kiwi
e
is pronounced like the American short
i
. Pet is
pit
. Seven is
sivin
. Kevin is
Kivin
. The next week I tell the kids my mistake and we discuss the different ways languages and pronunciation develop.

There are “heaps of” Kiwi words and expressions that we don’t have in the U.S. “Good on ya” instead of “Good for you.” “Buggered” means exhausted. “Chuffed” means pleased, and “dodgy” means bad, unreliable, spoiled. “Bickies” are biscuits. “Rellies” are relatives. “Presies” are presents. And a “bach” is a weekend/holiday home.

A “cobber” is a close friend. A “chook” is a chicken. You buy a “punnet” of strawberries at the market. “In the nick” means naked, but “in good nick” means in good shape. “Shit ay” means fancy that, bit of bad luck, reckon. And a “fly cemetery” is a sliced cake filled with raisins.

If you’re invited for a “cuppa,” it’s usually tea in the afternoon. But if you’re invited for “tea,” it could be dinner.

There are also a heap of Maori words that have crept into people’s everyday speech. Newscasters and telephone operators say hello with
“Kia
ora” and good-bye with “Haere ra.” Your mokopuna are your grandchildren, your whanau (wh is pronounced like an f ) is your extended family group. Your
whakapapa
is your family geneology. A
waiata
is a song. A
paua
is an abalone; a
pipi
is a kind of clam.

And then there are the “blokes,” as in, “He’s a good bloke.” The
Oxford
New Zealand Dictionary,
quoting
Review of 1959,
says a bloke is a “practical, unimaginative, adaptable, prejudiced, smug, kindly, resilent, casual, slangy, independent, open-hearted she’ll be right New Zealander.”

One week I ask everyone I meet what defines a “bloke.” Some of the answers are: Blokes drink beer, not wine. They wear black wool singlets (sleeveless shirts) and dark green shirt-jackets, gum boots, and rugby jerseys with sleeves cut off. They eat stews made with carrots and onions and potatoes and dumplings. At a “barbie” they favor the grilled sausages over the salads. They’ll eat cold mutton sandwiches for lunch and maybe fried eggs, sausages, and bacon. Meat pies. Fish and chips. Things like asparagus, cauliflower, peppers (called “capsicums”) are suspicious. So are foreign foods, like quiche and even pasta. If you can hunt it, like wild duck or rabbit or pigs; catch it, like fish; or pick it, like watercress, it’s OK.

I have fun playing with the differences in our languages. And I am shamelessly stopping people in midsentence with “What was that word? What does it mean?”

As a word-person, I love listening to and discovering the differences in our speech. I find myself saying “Good on ya,” and “tomahto.” And asking whether the “chooks are laying.”

I’m feeling very much like a local when I get an e-mail from the kids. Mitch, Jan, and Melissa are coming in February. I can’t wait to see them. We’ve been e-mailing practically every day since I got here three months ago. I feel as though they’re very much a part of my life. Also, calls between New Zealand and the United States are easy and not that expensive, so we talk often. But even daily e-mail contact isn’t the same as face to face.

The kids begin their visit in Auckland with lunch at Barbara and Ray’s house and a drive around the city. I feel as though I am introducing family to family. They are all fascinating individuals in their own right. Mitch, and Melissa are hyphenates: each is a journalist-writer-editor. Jan is an executive producer for a new media company, having recently shifted from the editorial to the business side. They are all teaming with technical crews to break new ground in an industry that changes by the minute. I find it incredibly exciting to talk to them about their on-line jobs, where there is no past and a limitless future.

Ray and Barbara are fascinating as well; they have been an integral part of the literary history of New Zealand, guiding, encouraging, and discovering literary talents. My greatest pleasure for the past months has been reading the novels and stories of New Zealand authors, many of whom Ray has represented or published.

While the kids are in Coromandel, Mitch plays golf on a course that is built over old gold mines where, today, hundreds of sheep graze on the greens; and Jan goes scuba diving and comes home with forty scallops for dinner, doubling the twenty-scallop limit when her dive partner contributes his catch to us. I sauté the scallops, both the white part and the succulent sweet pink roe, in butter with a little garlic, a touch of parsley, chopped green onion from the garden, and a few squirts of lemon from our neighbor’s tree. We begin the meal, of course, with mussels and oysters (which I can now open by myself).

One afternoon I have a chance to relax with Melissa, which is always great; she’s so easy to talk to. There’s something about my daughter-in-law that is so much more than just a single addition to a family. She adds a depth and a dimension that makes everyone bigger and better and more relaxed.

After a week, we take off for the South Island in Old Blue. En route we soak in the sulfur baths of Rotorua and bike along the Marlborough Sounds. In the magnificent Abel Tasman National Park, we tramp, swim, and go kayaking. What a beautiful country.

The kids fly to Auckland for their flight home, and I drive to meet Christine (my writer and computer friend from Coromandel), who is taking me to see D’Urville Island (20 miles long and 6 miles wide), where she grew up, one of five children of a sheep farmer and a nurse. She and her parents left long ago, but friends of hers, Percy and Gill, are still there. They own 1,700 acres of land, rolling hills, sandy bays, rocky cliffs, and about three thousand sheep. They’ve invited us to stay with them.

Our timing is perfect. Tomorrow, the sheep are going to be mustered and brought to the barns for crutching (shearing their rears) and drenching (giving them medicine). The day after we arrive, Percy piles us and two dogs, a black-and-white one and a brown one, into the pickup. We start out on a dirt road and turn off into the paddocks, bouncing and rocking up hills, across fields, down slopes. Then he stops, opens a gate, and lets the dogs out, shouting directions to them as they bark and eye and run the sheep through a complex series of gates that open up and close off paddocks. The dogs direct the flock along paths, across and up and down hills, until they all end up, miles away, at the barns.

The whole farm is a brilliant series of spaces that move into other spaces through strategically placed gates that eventually lead to the barns. When one paddock has been cleared, Percy gets back in the truck or runs up the hills to open or close gates.

The whole farm is a fabulous maze that is constantly changing by a flip of a board and a shouted order to a dog. And the water and rocks and hills that these sheep look down upon are postcard-perfect scenes. By the end of the day, most of the sheep are down by the barn.

The shearing gang arrives the next morning for the crutching and drenching. The shearing sheds are as well planned as the paddock paths. There are two floors with ramps and doors and pens and fencing. When the sheep are crutched, they are slid down a slide to another area, where they line up for medicine. There are four men and two women, well-practiced teams, delivering the sheep, shearing the rumps, sweeping the wool, shoving the sheep down the slide. It’s hard work and they barely stop all day. Tomorrow they’ll be at it again. A shearing gang eats and sleeps on the farm until the job is done.

Yesterday, Gill, Percy’s wife, complained that she hated cooking for the gang. I volunteered. Now, a couple of hours before dinner, the potatoes are boiling in salted water, enough for two nights’ worth of mashed potatoes, and I’m sautéing onions and beef (from home-grown cattle), and tossing in carrots and celery and tomatoes. I have decided on stew because my bloke research said that blokes like stews, and these guys are definitely blokes.

The only way on or off this island is by boat. When our visit is over, Percy rows Christine and me out to the mail boat, which will drop us on the mainland. People get their mail by rowing out to meet the boat. There are lots of sheep on D’Urville Island, but not many people. Most of the children who live here are home schooled.