PART ONE: CHRISTCHURCH & GREYMOUTH

For the past fifty years I’ve lived an expatriate life, having left New Zealand in 1963, a year marked by a much more momentous event -- Kennedy’s assassination. This lengthy  absence has been punctuated by occasional visits, the last about ten years ago.   On the current occasion, encouraged by Nora, I was to make a visit ‘while you can still enjoy it’, since long haul travel and advancing years don't always make a good match.

When, after a long journey via Melbourne, I finally arrived in Christchurch, it was to be the start of three weeks visiting a combination of the unfamiliar, such as the Marlborough area of the South Island, and of the relatively familiar, such as Wellington, my native city, and Auckland, where I went to university.    In the process, I would meet some cousins – one of whom I hadn’t met for sixty years --  and old friends, as well as have an opportunity to reflect on the changes which had taken place in my native country and myself over those fifty years.

Christchurch was in some ways an odd place to begin, since it had been badly wrecked by serious earthquakes in 2010 and 2012. At first, the arriving visitor is not aware of this, since the new airport is very smart, traffic is flowing and there are no obvious signs of damage, until on skirting the CBD, the route passes abandoned and damaged commercial buildings and eventually, the dramatic wreck of what was the truly ‘iconic’ Anglican cathedral.  In fact, although I didn't visit the CBD, being driven around the perimeter at night revealed a lifeless cordoned off area, truly a ghost of its former self, while empty sites scattered at intervals elsewhere showed that the quakes had a widespread and serious impact.

According to my cousin Lorraine, this impact is still being felt, while in the local press I read reports on the plight of people still living in temporary accommodation, unable to return to their wrecked properties.  Likewise, the commercial and tourist life of the city has been affected to the extent that the daily train service from Christchurch to Picton is now suspended during the winter months for lack of demand.    Elsewhere I learned of the ‘Christchurch effect’ on the economy and on decisions which, while motivated by sympathy for the city, may be disadvantageous for other parts of the island. A frequently cited example is the long mooted proposal to replace Picton as the main interisland ferry port with a newly built one nearer to Christchurch. Needless to say, the people of Picton, and latterly of Nelson, are not very happy with this plan.

One of the most interesting outcomes of the destruction has been the effect on church life, because not only was the cathedral destroyed, but many other places of worship were damaged irreparably.  It seems that various denominations have been forced to share premises and are now realizing that maybe rebuilding their old places of worship isn't  such a good idea, so why not continue sharing?   This seemed to me to be an excellent example of ecumenical spirit combined with Kiwi practicality which might be usefully adopted more widely among people of all faiths.

The brevity of my stay in Christchurch meant it was more efficient to make use of taxis rather than buses to get around, and this introduced me to that part of the service sector which universally provides a first step on the economic ladder for immigrants.  In fact, I had already been introduced to the immigrant presence at my motel, whose manager/owner is Korean.  His daughter is studying medicine at Otago, making the second generation transition into the professions.   I wasn't able to establish whether this kind of trajectory was typical of the families of the immigrant taxi drivers I met in Christchurch and elsewhere, but what I did find was considerable diversity in their places of origin, from China to Ethiopia and many Asian countries in between.  Quite unexpectedly,  I also encountered a disturbing instance of racism on the part of a middle aged native Kiwi taxi driver, who in the course of our chat while en route to the railway station referred to the Prime Minister as a ‘bloody Jew’. 

On this occasion, I was going to catch an early departing TransAlpine train for the first of three train journeys I was to take, having decided that train travel would be a better way to see the sights than by driving a hire car, which has been my way of getting around on previous visits.  It turned out that the railway system reflects many of the changes which have taken place in New Zealand during the past fifty years.  When I left NZ, jet travel was in its infancy, and flying, either domestically or internationally, was a luxury.  Travel between main cities, such as Wellington and Auckland, was mostly by train, despite the length of the journey and the discomfort.

Today mass use of the railways seems to be confined to the urban networks, and the inter-city system appears to be pretty much in terminal decline, except for tourism, as air travel has replaced rail. Visitors like me are encouraged to buy rail and bus travel passes which provide combinations of travel and a fixed number of rail or bus days.  I had elected to buy a rail pass which gave me 3 ‘rail days’ over two weeks, starting with the return east-west TransAlpine journey from Christchurch to Greymouth.  The utilitarian rolling stock of 50 years ago has been replaced by smart, comfortable – even luxurious – carriages made in Dunedin, and the rear carriage of the train is a open sided observation car so that travellers can enjoy to the full the sights and smells of the passing landscape , while capturing the scenery on their cameras and mobile phones.

The first part of the journey, lasting about an hour, goes across the Canterbury Plains, a vast area of flat land devoted for generations to the raising and fattening of sheep.   Huge hedges provide shelter, and the impression is that of moving between vast outdoor rooms.  In fact, as we moved across the landscape, I realized that we were passing through a huge agricultural factory devoted to the efficient production of first class protein, much of which is exported, mostly to markets in the Middle East and Asia which were unheard of fifty years ago, when the UK was the main market for chilled and frozen lamb and mutton.  Now slaughtering is carried out according to Muslim rites and consumers in Iran and the Gulf states eat Canterbury lamb for dinner.

 Once the train leaves the plains, the route meanders through increasingly hilly, even mountainous, terrain which, as elsewhere in New Zealand would have been a challenge to the railway engineers constructing the lines and building the bridges and viaducts.  As the route travels further west and higher and higher, the hills become more spectacular and the dry landscape of the eastern side of the island gives way to the wet and forested western side because both islands of New Zealand have distinctly different  east-west coast climates. 

The interior of the South Island is sparsely populated. Farmsteads are isolated and few and far between.  The two townships at which the train stops – Arthur’s Pass and Otira – have never been large, and Otira in particular gives the impression to the railway traveller of being very down at heel, although apparently it is popular with those pursuing an alternative life style. Overshadowed by mist and bush covered hills, the colourfully painted cottages, probably relics of the days when the railway was a significant part of the Otira economy, are now part of the life style choice. 

The journey continued through misty valleys, where power lines disappeared into the misty distance. Maintaining the infrastructure in such an environment must be a constant struggle and will call for the rugged tramping (i.e., hiking) skills which are an important part of the recreational attractions of this region of New Zealand.

 Having passed along the shore of Lake Brunner, the train eventually arrived in Greymouth, the end of the line, where quite a few of the international tourists – Chinese, Japanese, Russians, Germans among them -- joined waiting coaches destined for Nelson or Queenstown.  Those of us returning to Christchurch had about an hour to explore this small town, which had evolved as a port for the coal from the mines which formerly provided the basis for the local economy.  Consisting of two parallel streets running along the banks of the river towards the port, Greymouth is named after a 19^th Century colonial servant, whose presence is also commemorated in the eponymous Greytown in South Africa, and in the river and town in New Zealand, where he eventually became Prime Minister.   

It was Saturday, so most of the shops were closed, and the town was largely deserted. As I wandered down the main street, I passed the town library where, much to my surprise, I found a plaque commemorating a local son, Bill Pearson, who over 50 years ago had been one of my English lecturers at the University of Auckland.  Bill was also a member of the archaeological group to which, as a student of anthropology, I also belonged, and my recollection of him is in that context rather than the lecture hall, where he was a less than charismatic performer, although he was a kind and helpful tutor.   The plaque very properly celebrates his other virtues, while also demonstrating how much New Zealand has changed in half a century, since his sexual orientation, then suppressed, would now be openly acknowledged.

 Greymouth, like many parts of the South Island, is attempting to reinvent itself. There are souvenir shops and even the odd gallery, the former Bank of New Zealand building having been artfully repurposed – and renamed. Here as elsewhere tourism is replacing extractive industry. 

This kind of repurposing was, in fact, to become one of the themes of my tour. As the economic and social fabric of the country has changed, so too has the function of many buildings, and the 'New Land' gallery in Greymouth provides an unexpected example of this change of use and decoration.  Greymouth also provided an unexpected example of another contemporary development: the impact of the corporate franchise on the local high street.  In Greymouth, Robert Harris, a very good national chain of coffee shops appears, in the manner of Starbucks in other countries, to have put a small local chain out of business, the Smelting House café having brewed its last cup of coffee, reflecting an identical development in far away Henley-on-Thames where a comparable local chain has put up the shutters.  So, although New Zealand is a Starbucks free zone, national corporate power has exactly the same Starbucks effect on small local businesses. Different hemispheres, same outcomes.

There was one novelty, for which the Greymouth Evening Star deserves credit.  The walls of their car park are covered in murals depicting the history of the region from its earliest days of settlement.  Here was an acknowledgement -- indeed, a celebration --  of the hard slog -- and not a few tragedies, such as mine explosions -- that had gone into the development of the area.  A trio of Japanese tourists from the TransAlpine found this an irresistible photo opportunity.  The adjacent premises of the Evening Star continued the originality of the murals.  The street sides of the building were completely glazed so that the passer-by could see into the print floor where the presses are located, making it possible to see the day's paper actually in production.  This is a bit of newspaper theatre which is normally out of sight, yet here in sleepy Greymouth, the local paper has made a feature of it.  As Bill Pearson's roman a clef (at least as far as people in Greymouth were concerned), Coal Flat, had revealed, there is more to Greymouth than are hinted at by its prosaic town centre and the riverside warning of sewer outfall.

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