Kiwi Experience

I’m walking up Queen Street on a Tuesday morning in August. Winter has come to Auckland with a bang and the rain is sweeping in horizontally while a wind that found its energy in the Antarctic is finding its way into every gap in my clothing.

Winter came as a bit of a shock to me.  I had been seduced by the story that Auckland sits on the same latitude as Southern Spain. Then I remembered that no one in their right mind would visit that corner of the Iberian Peninsula in January.

I came to the junction with Shortland Street and noticed a gaggle of millennials huddling under a canopy from the rain. Their stylish clothing and backpacks marked them out as Europeans tourists and I wondered why they had chosen to visit New Zealand when the weather is at its foulest. Then I remembered that most of them will be on a ‘gap’ year. That period between University and the real world, when in return for mediocre grades, their parents hand over a wedge of cash and tell their offspring to go off and discover themselves.

 Most will be disappointed with the discovery, which will highlight their inability to drink as much as they thought they could and prove that they are just as unattractive to the opposite sex abroad as they are at home.

But for some, they will realise a joy of travel, of meeting new people and trying new things and that feeling will never leave them.

Logistically, this group probably worked all last summer on the fruit farms of Queensland, travelled around Australia in autumn and then pitched up in New Zealand as the winter winds start to pick up speed. They should have done it the other way round, of course. Come to New Zealand in autumn and then visit Northern Australia in winter, when the humidity has passed and the temperatures are in the high twenties.  But the young have to learn to make their own mistakes.

As I was passing them, a large green bus pulled up and the backpackers scurried forward and formed an orderly queue. “Kiwi Experience” was painted on the side and I was transported back more than twenty years to January 1996 when I first came to New Zealand and boarded that same bus. Well not the same one exactly. The company has obviously made a lot of money since then and invested it in a modern fleet. Back in my day they were driving buses that looked like they had been rescued from the Solomon Islands after the Japanese abandoned the place in 1945.

I started my adventure in Christchurch and spent a month travelling around the South Island. I arrived at the pickup point on a chilly Monday morning, clutching my pristine copy of “Lonely Planet’s Guide to New Zealand 1996”. I cast a wary eye over my fellow travellers. I had turned thirty that year and noticed that I was almost ten years older than anyone else, apart from the bus driver. I contented myself in the knowledge that at least I was paying for my own trip.

They were all carrying the same book but theirs were dog eared and well thumbed. Most had already travelled around the North Island and so while I was the oldest on the bus, I was also the least experienced in the mysteries of back packing.

I learned later that afternoon, when we pulled into a hostel in Kaikoura, that is recommended that you bring a sleeping bag when staying in shared accommodation. Luckily, Kaikoura had a number of shops geared for this sort of emergency. I purchased an overpriced bag and waltzed back to the hostel with the air of somebody who had researched sleeping bag options and had made a conscious decision to wait until visiting that shop in that town before buying one.

I went on to have one of the best months of my life and still have the scars to show for it. When the old green bus pulled back into Christchurch four weeks later, I said goodbye to the Germans, Danes and English people that had shared my journey. I kept a journal and the back page is full of messages from those fellow travellers. One message, from a German friend I shared a few drinks with, stands out.

“To the only man I know who thinks beer is more important than oxygen.”

That kind of summed up that whole trip.

It was on that trip that the first seed was planted. I came back to New Zealand many times since before finally achieving my dream of living here.

I gathered my scarf tighter as I passed by the group on Queen Street and made my way to work. I didn’t envy those backpackers. I didn’t pang to join them. Those bus trips are for younger people and even at thirty; I was already pushing the envelope. I admired them and wished them well and liked the thought that they would discover the majesty of New Zealand and would bore their friends back in Dresden or Leeds with endless photos of waterfalls and snow-capped mountains on their Facebook page.

Every generation gets to discover the world for themselves and to wrap themselves in that delusion that they are first to see that hidden beach or rare bird. These kids were no different to my fellow travellers back in 1996. Although I noticed that none of them were carrying a copy of “Lonely Planet’s Guide to New Zealand 2016”. No doubt that’s all online these days and they can find it all on their hand held electronic devices. I had a new CD Walkman with me on my travels in 1996 and thought I was surfing on the cutting edge of technology.

I wish them all safe travel and hope that they enjoy themselves as much as I did. I will always have my memories and the smug satisfaction that I started my trip in January and everywhere, even New Zealand, looks better in the sun.