Aotearoa (an intro)

Here I am at probably my favourite place in Aotearoa New Zealand – Arthur’s Pass, the highest village in the country. It’s the middle of winter and I have returned after a visit last year when I was invited to come and be an artist in residence at the hotel up the road. That starts in a week; in the meantime I am here at the YHA where the owner asked me to do the same thing.

The journey began in Christchurch, a town I had avoided last year because I didn’t want to see it after the earthquake of a few years ago. I had loved the city back in 2003, when I first visited Aotearoa and couldn’t bear to see it ruined, but this year it suited my travel plans to fly there to pick up my hire car and begin my trip. So I spent a night in the YHA – very comfortable – after chancing upon the Art Gallery which I had a couple of hours to enjoy before closing time.

There was an interesting installation on Bridget Riley, in celebration of the new wall painting for the gallery, including some video footage of her working in her studio and discussing process. I also enjoyed Kushana Bush and some of the permanent collection on display. Sorry I was too early for Len Lye, who starts in August. I loved the gallery in New Plymouth, home of the Len Lye Foundation, when I was there last year.

It was raining, and I had forgotten to pack my umbrella, so I made my way between shipping containers – used to house the shops temporarily while new buildings are being constructed – to try to find a reasonably priced one that might withstand the strong wind that was also blowing. I also found, on the recommendation of someone in the gallery shop, a restaurant that might have some vegetarian food – Pot Sticker Dumpling. It was a fair walk in wet and blustery conditions (I decided to mainly not bother with the umbrella I finally settled on on because it seemed inevitable that it would blow inside out) but very warm inside the restaurant, where I chose the vegan dumplings and tofu salad, pretty much the only options on the menu for a non-meat eater. Fried dumplings were the popular choice, but you could also have them steamed, which I did. They were quite good, though slightly rubbery, but I would have enjoyed them a whole lot more if they hadn’t been so loaded up with chilli. The tofu salad was excellent, and I then went for a vegetarian bao, which was more tofu and vegetables in a sort of sweet bun, folded over. It was delicious.

The next day my breakfast was a meagre serve of some of the muesli I had brought in a cup with water (I had not yet stocked up with provisions) and of course, coffee, which I had brought with me, along with my trusty stainless steel plunger, bought just prior to my 2003 trip to this country and taken with me everywhere since. As I approached the car, which I had to park a couple of streets away as there is no parking at the YHA, it started to snow, and it proceeded to get heavier as I drove south, stopping only after a couple of hours. It made for a very testing journey, as I had barely driven the car by this time and as always there were many other road users who didn’t seem to feel that any care was needed, let alone a reduction in speed to suit the conditions.

I had noticed that “the longest bridge in New Zealand” was marked on the map and realised I was on it as I was travelling over it. It would have been more enjoyable in better conditions but nevertheless it was quite a thing to be on it. The Rakaia River bridge is 1757 metres long.

And now it’s days later, so I thought I might start at the very beginning.

It all began back in 2003 when I visited Aotearoa NZ for the first time ever, as mentioned above. I had just had an exhibition back home so was able to afford the trip, and used public transport everywhere I went, which was around much of both islands over a period of five weeks. I am not going blog about that trip here other than to say that the 2003 trip was during April and part of May; the point is that Arthur’s Pass was part of my journey back then and is what brought me back last year, and as a result of that, this year too, on both occasions during winter.

It wasn’t a long stay at the Pass in 2003, but it was enough to make me want to return, as a priority, the next time. Back then, I got off the train and made my way in the rain to the YHA, which at that time was on the railway side of the road going through the village. It was a quaint, old-style YHA and from the window looking east there was a wonderful view of the almost vertical mountains, shrouded in rain, forming gradually lighter layers. That view was what formed the subject of my first painting of Aotearoa and is perhaps what sewed the seed for one of my most enduring subjects for painting – fog and rain.

Rain, Arthur’s Pass, oil on canvas, 2003

I vowed that the next time I came to Aotearoa I would hire a car, and that’s what I did last year, when I returned after a thirteen year absence. That trip was a bit of a fluke; I had planned to go to Broome but it was way to expensive, and a bit far for a girl and her swag to venture in a vehicle, so I ended up going to New Zealand, also for five weeks. Arthur’s Pass remained as pretty much my favourite place so I booked in to the YHA again, to discover that some years ago it had moved to the opposite side of the road. When I mentioned to the manager that I was an artist and had painted the mountains back in 2003, he told me that the Alpine Motel had started an artist-in-residence program, so to cut a long story short, the owners of the motel invited me to come this winter, and when I told the owner of the YHA, who arrived a couple of days after I checked in, she said she would like me to do it there too.

So here I am again, at Arthur’s Pass (twice) during a four week trip to Aotearoa New Zealand. Yesterday, my first full day since the weekend away, it was raining. Rain is how I first came to know Arthur’s Pass, so I am happy when it is wet. I love it here in all its moods. I don’t care what the weather does.

Tonight I am doing a workshop with locals, using watercolour pencil to look at light and composition. It took me until yesterday to get out my own watercolour pencils to start on a series I had an idea for, and I probably should get back to some art before proceeding much further with this.

But just briefly, after the first week here at Arthur’s Pass, which I will describe in more detail later, with some photos, and with something about the other places I have been too, I made a weekend trip to Okarito, a very secluded village on the west coast, near Franz Josef village. I was staying at Code Time Lodge, the owner of which lived at the front of the two lovely units he had built as a B&B, and I arrived a day early from Arthur’s Pass because gales and snow had been predicted for the day of my scheduled departure, and I didn’t want to risk being snowed in, as I had been last year. Not that I minded then. At that time I wasn’t going anywhere anyway, and it was somehow rather thrilling to be snowed in to a place, especially when you are all stocked up with food, which is important here as there are no supermarkets and the one restaurant is rather expensive and doesn’t comprehensively cater for vegetarians.

I stopped at Hokitika en route to Okarito, a town I had stayed near last year, and dropped in on The Possum People, a couple for whom a friend back home had been best man many decades previously. I then had a most delicious lunch at The Hub, a vegetarian cafe (oh joy) in a side street, which I also remembered from before. That was after stopping at the bookshop then looking in another couple of second-hand book venues for some more by Laurence Fearnley, an NZ author I discovered in that same bookshop last year. Luckily I had managed to pick up two of hers second-hand at Oamaru, but I wanted more. $40 is a bit much for a new paperback though, so I resisted.

It’s exciting to drive along New Zealand South Island roads and see the Southern Alps, and that’s what you see for much of the journey. I arrived at Okarito in daylight, and there was just time to venture through some gorse (looks exactly like Scotch Broom from afar, until you get up close and see and feel the spikes) to get close to the beach. There was a channel from the lagoon separating me from the ocean, so I saved the beach till the next day.

The next day, Friday, I was a bit late getting going as I had an arrangement to skype with a friend back home at 10am so I hung around waiting for that to happen for a while but it didn’t, so I wandered out. This time I made it to the beach by heading south to the end of the village and then onto the sand. The sand is a very dark grey, and in many places covered in stones. I can’t help myself – I have to collect – but have taken to photographing some instead. Nevertheless, I picked up quite a few, and wrote a haiku.

Pockets filled with stones

walking towards towards wild waves

not really caring

That mood hung around for quite a bit of the day and all night. In the afternoon I went on a walk up to the trig. It was a steep climb, and took a couple of hours at least I think, and I was accompanied by the Lodge owner. I would have preferred to be alone but it was OK having some company in the end. I certainly needed some space and quiet time by the time the evening came though.

When we returned from that walk, which afforded wonderful views of the lagoon and the village to the north and the Alps to east, there was time for me to go down to look at the wharf. It’s a beautiful old weatherboard building and at that time of day there were some very good photo opportunities. It was annoying to see a dog coming towards me though, albeit with a frisbee in its mouth. There are signs everywhere saying no dogs – kiwi territory, but some people seem to think it doesn’t apply to them, and this was a local no less. I had trouble smiling when she greeted me.

The next day I did a walk around the lagoon, following the stoat trap track indicators. It was a bit hairy at times, as it’s not a proper track, and where it veered away from the lagoon it would have been easy to get lost, but I made it in the end by going against an indicator which was pointing up when I felt like I needed to be heading down by then, and arrived at a rise above the road, which I could reach by negotiating a wet channel. Not far along I picked up a plastic bag with some disgusting smelling squid bait which someone had decided to dump on the middle of the road.

After a camera recharge, and lunch, it was time to set off again with my host, who had suggested we do the pack track, coming back along the beach. High tide was at 4pm, so we needed to time it around that. It is ten kilometres return, and the first part of the route follows the trig track, but while the trig branches off the to the left, the pack track continues. It is the original road through towards Haast, and there are old timber bearings evident under the gravel and dirt in a number of places.

More soon.