Autumn in New Zealand

northern rata flower - a relative of pohtakawa

I went across ‘the ditch’  for a visit to my homeland - just came back last week. Here is a rough sketch, in haiku, of my time with family and friends. From Auckland, where I’m from, we went up north to a place on the coast below the Bay of Islands.

the sound of waves

slapping the land

lipping the sand

my brother snoring

in the room next door

tuned to the sea

One of the best things about this part of the world is the pohutakawa trees. 

They love the coast, have masses of red flowers in summer, and are great to climb in. We had a large old tree in our garden when I was a child. My sister tells me that I used to climb into it with my dolls and read to them from the Bible.

I went down to Kawhia, south of Auckland. It being autumn, we thought we might go mushroom-picking in the paddocks behind the sandhills.

no mushrooms today

the sheep watch curiously

in the fading light

Mt. Pirongia beyond Kawhia harbour

While New South Wales was being slugged by torrential rains and hailstones, the weather in this west coast village was fine most of the time (unusually so). We decided to go for a walk on Mt. Pirongia, which rises a little inland of the harbour at Kawhia and is a volcanic mountain, like Mt. Taranaki down near New Plymouth ( called Mt. Egmont when I was young). You can see Pirongia from a long way off.  Our friend L. remembered seeing it from the army base at Ngaruawahia where he lived as a child.

There were some really wild blue fungi growing beside the track - and others less gaudy - white ones. The blue ones are hallucinogenic - don't try this at home, kids!

the epiphytic northern rata - vines climb the host

But the tawa forest we walked through, on a very good track, was rather quiet. We heard bellbirds - the odd tui - and a whirr of wings.

kereru sits through

the peak of our interest -

what a snowy breast!

Possums, stoats, rats and humans have had a huge impact on the native birdlife of New Zealand.  There is a major conservation effort in removing or excluding these pests. We think possums are cute - not so in New Zealand. They are also responsible for the ‘silent forest’ as it is called. The Acclimatisation Societies in the nineteenth century, which thought it would be cute to have bunny rabbits and other foreigners hopping about in Australasia, did a lot of damage to biodiversity. This forest has been peppered with bait traps, and we were thrilled to see the northern rata flowering. Normally the flowers are just what the possum had in mind for its meal. We were there just at the right time to see it - autumn.

As we climbed the last bit to Wharauroa lookout, another pest manifested.

goats hurtle down

the rocky hillside

goat smell follows

The rock hillside they descended was almost vertical - no problemo! They were so fast.

At Wharauroa lookout, Raglan in the northwest behind us

For the first time ever, I attended the Anzac ceremony at Kawhia to pay tribute to the sacrifices made by many, in times of war. I marched for my grandfather, Percy Levy, who went to World War One. It was very moving, without making any statement about the rightness or wrongness of war, any war. In this tiny town, there was a huge turnout, people had gathered from all around. 

A pipe band from Te Awamutu played and gave dignity and emotion to proceedings.   

something so lovely

from something so ugly -

wreaths on Anzac Day

We marched to a cenotaph outside the library, where I was standing next to a man, and a friend came up to greet him. They rubbed noses: so intimate, to hear their breaths mingling like that. What is this form of greeting called? I don’t know. But I always come away from New Zealand / Aotearoa having learned a new Maori word or concept. This time, I learned “tangata whenua” which means, “people of the land”.