Self discovery in Nelson
Summer Issue: October 2009
There are parts of your personality you will never meet until you're in unfamiliar territory.
You don't need to lug your pack to the ends of the Earth to learn these lessons - all you need is somewhere new. Recently I was poised, feet dangling out the door of a Cessna, four kilometres above Motueka - where I learnt I was afraid of heights.
Back on the ground, skydiving had seemed like a great idea. "Why not?" I asked myself. Now, as Thomas my tandem partner made the last adjustments to our gear, I had all the answers I needed to that question. We were several hundred metres higher than Mount Cook - so high that small fluffy clouds grazed like sheep way below us - and, in a few seconds, we would be travelling at over 150 km/h. Straight down.
"Ready?" Thomas's voice was as sunny as the sky around us.
"Nuuerrk," I croaked.
With that, he accepted gravity's invitation on our behalf and we pitched forward into nothing...
My trip to Nelson and Golden Bay hadn't started this way. My first mode of transport was defiantly sedate, a 1952 Bedford school bus, which took me from the airport to the World of Wearable Art and Classic Cars museum.
Why the decision to mix cars and costumes, I don't know, but apparently the combination is a winner. "Couples," our museum guide explained. "The women come to look at the wearable art, the men the cars; though some men spend more time with the dresses."
I only had to spend a few moments with the dresses to see why. Woven within the wearable art is a magic of sorts. Dreams are spliced to legends, ideas stitched to stories and fables sewn into science fiction. After an hour looking around, it was easy to understand the tale of Russell Sutherland, the retired mechanic from Invercargill who was so inspired by the museum that he entered the awards. His design, an incredibly engineered and uncomfortable-looking undergarment, won him the Bizarre Bra award for 2006. Not bad for someone who was probably only there to see the cars.
After the museum, I exchanged the bus for a car of my own and headed west, over the switchbacks of Takaka Hill and into Golden Bay. By the time I got to Collingwood the wind had gathered grey clouds, folding them over the peaks and valleys of the Kahurangi National Park. I pulled over on the edge of town to consult my map and found myself next to the war memorial.
The story set in stone was the same in Collingwood as it is in hundreds of other small New Zealand towns: a long list of names; some surnames repeated two, three or four times. Families ended and small towns emptied. With the first footprints of rain falling on the windscreen and now feeling as glum as the thick evening sky, I got back in the car and drove off to find a hostel.
The next morning the clouds were gone, but the war remained. As we bumped along the track out onto Farewell Spit, Paddy our guide recounted the story of Jack Ashford, the first person to regularly traverse the spit in a car. Jack had been gassed at the Battle of Passchendaele, his lungs ruined. After the war, as his breathing got worse, he was told he had three years left to live, maybe a bit more if he got a job close to the sea. So Jack found himself the one job that guaranteed therapeutic salt air in abundance - Farewell Spit lighthouse keeper.
Creeping cautiously over the sand in Farewell Spit Eco Tours's four-wheel-drive bus, it was hard to imagine how Jack managed the journey with rattling lungs and a rattling 1928 Chevy. But Jack thrived, living to see his 99th birthday. And I could see how life in one of New Zealand's loneliest places could be curative. Sitting in the shade amongst the sighing macrocarpa - watching as clouds, sand and sea blew by - it was impossible to escape the two things that Farewell Spit had in abundance; space and peace - providing as good an antidote to trench warfare as one could hope for.
The last lighthouse keeper left the spit in 1984. Since then the closest thing to permanent residents are the gannets, which set up a colony on the shell banks beyond the light in 1982. From a handful of pioneer breeding pairs, the colony has grown to nearly 5,000 birds. Gannets are naturally curious and pretty soon we were treated to an up-close display of aerobatic skill as inquisitive birds, their wings bent back like bows, swept by us, checking out their awkward, earthbound guests.
Later, as we headed home along the beach, sand dunes casting shadows in the early evening light, I decided that out there, on the edge of the spit, I had made it as close to the horizon as I was ever going to get. I eased back in my seat, enjoying the particular type of content that comes with having been somewhere truly special, and watched as the sun fell towards the sea.