Come to New Zealand when the moon is high

New Zealand is known as Aotearoa in Maori, which means, “Land of the Long White Cloud”. Although it should be called “Land of the Long Flat White” as they seem more obsessed with coffee than even the latte sipping classes of Melbourne.

I’ve been to New Zealand on ten occasions; mostly it must be said to the South Island and the parts of the North Island where white people go for their holidays. This Christmas we were a bit more adventurous and travelled West to the black sand beaches south of Auckland. It’s a beautiful part of the world, but then all of New Zealand is. It’s a country that would be spoilt by tourism if it wasn’t so far from the parts of the world where tourists live.

Two days after Christmas we loaded up the borrowed twenty-year-old Nissan and pointed her west. With the mountains of the Coromandel in the rear view mirror, we rolled gently through the lush farmland of the Waikato towards Hamilton. It’s a boring town with a boring name, but to an Irishman like me it was relief to find a place that I could pronounce. Unlike the South Island with its quaint English and Scottish names, the North Island clings proudly to it’s Maori past.

We passed through Karangahake, Tirohia, Te Aroha, Waitoa, Waihao and Tatuanui with tongue twisting speed and the thought struck me that spelling must be the first thing Kiwis learn at school.

Hamilton at least is easy to pronounce to a foreigner like me. It boasts a University that looks like it was built by a bunch of 1960’s Soviet engineers on an exchange program and a Rugby Stadium that has been tarted up for the upcoming World Cup. New Zealand is about the only country on the planet where you can mention the World Cup and not make people think about soccer. That being said, the Kiwis are proud about the round ball game these days as well. They have two notable achievements from South Africa 2010. They are the only team to go through that tournament unbeaten and they won the bravery award for sending a team called the “All Whites” to Johannesburg.

Our next stop and home for the following five days was Raglan. It’s a surf town and presumably it was endowed with a western name because nobody lived there before the white man arrived. Like Charlie in Apocalypse Now, it seemed that Maori people didn’t surf.

Raglan, for those who are not keen followers of English military history was the General blamed for the disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade. The town was founded in 1854 before that fateful day in the Crimea and maybe by the time news reached New Zealand the name had stuck.

We reached Raglan as the sun was setting and you have to be on the West Coast of New Zealand to really appreciate it. The shore was lined with Pohutukawa trees, otherwise known as the New Zealand Christmas Bush because they are covered in vibrant scarlet flowers in the weeks leading up to the festive season. I was reliably informed by the horticultural expert in the car beside me that these blossoms would disappear before Christmas Day but thankfully she was proved wrong and they were still on display when I left in early January.

The West Coast, as in most countries, is wilder than the East. The odd thing about New Zealand is that the West faces the Tasman Sea and the East looks out into the vast Pacific. The Sea in this case throws up wild waves and a huge swell while the Ocean for once lives up its name and is peaceful and calm.

Raglan developed as a surf resort when Kiwi’s, Aussies and Americans came to test that mighty swell. Some of them are still there but it’s mainly filled with Maori families on holiday and Waikato farmers trying to forget about milking cows for a few days.

We checked into a boutique apartment on the waterfront and headed out to check out the town. The first thing I was pleased to note was the presence of a pub. This is not to be taken for granted in New Zealand where the cold hand of Scottish Presbyterianism still stalks the land. Surfers like their coffee, so the main street was littered with baristas and shops selling billabong and quicksilver products.

The next day we headed to Bridal Falls, a spectacular waterfall that cascades down the side of an old lava flow. Its not the only evidence of volcano’s in the area. The black sand that marks out the beaches of the North Island are the result of eruptions that happened millions of years ago.

In the harbour the sand turns to black mud, which the kids love playing with. When they weren’t jumping off the little bridge across the harbour, they were busy making mudballs in the shape of cannon balls, which they would drop on fishing boats that dared to pass under the footbridge.

At night, we ventured out to sample the live music scene. I wouldn’t say I’m the
coolest cat in town when it comes to live music. The last couple of gigs I’ve been to in Melbourne involved artists that wrote music before I was born and had to be led out on stage in wheelchairs and with oxygen tanks on standby.

So we decided to see what the young people are listening to. First of all we stepped into a bar playing reggae music. The place was full of young Maori, which was in line with my experience on previous travels around the world. From Cuba to Indonesia, indigenous people everywhere love the sound of Bob Marley.

Across the road, the pub was hosting a grunge band, a style of music that peaked in Seattle in the mid nineties, but appears to have found a home among the young Pakeha (as white kiwis are sometimes known) of New Zealand.

We finished the evening sitting on the pier watching the full moon rise over the Tasman. The words of Ava Gardner seemed apt. If this isn’t the end of the world, you can certainly see it from here!