The Coast: no breakfast, more ram

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 16

The Coast: no breakfast, more ram

A curious adventure. After arriving at Otira the night before, wet, cold, and exhausted, we had warmed up beside a pot-bellied stove, then crawled into bed before the night was properly dark.

Later I describe the incident to a colleague in Greymouth, who doesn’t seem in the least surprised. “You’re on the West Coast,” he said. As we leave Otira fresh snow covers the tops above us, and it is bitterly cold — if this is summer, what is winter like? Our gloves and shoes are still sodden from the day before, and in seconds our fingers and toes are numb. 'We are hungry and shivering. Every kilometre we stop, flap our arms, and cram our fingers in our armpits to warm them.

At 6.30 we awaken to a commotion downstairs — voices, dish-clattering, the noise of people moving about. We stay in our beds for a time, dozing; a sign by the bedroom mirror says, "Breakfast, 7-8.30 a.m.” About 7.30 we Hse, shower, and dress; about 7.50 we go downstairs. The dining room is empty. No places are set. We peek into the kitchen. It, too, is deserted. The bench is as clean as a whistle, the coal range is banked and clamped down. The whole place has an air of Marie Celestism.

Whose stupid idea was this trip, anyway? Everywhere is water — falling from the sky, pouring in streams, cascades, waterfalls and torrents from the bush. The smell of the bush — an evocative mixture of sweetness and the acridity of decay — is overpowering. The rain eases to a drizzle; the temperature rises a fraction, and we can feel our fingers again. No vehicle has passed us for miles; the only sounds are the. whirring of derailleur gears, and the small bush noises of birds and running water. We disturb a family of shaggy, longtailed wild sheep, which disappear into the bush. A falcon, underside palely flashing, circles overhead and the bush noises

We wander about, trying doors, calling. No-one answers. We look in the outbuildings. No-one — just a dog and a goat. After a while we shrug, go upstairs, repack our panniers, take them downstairs, and go out to load our bikes.

Before leaving we have a last look about. The stove is still clamped down, the bench still empty. No-one is in sight. I write a cheque for our night’s lodgings (minus the price of breakfast), leave it on the kitchen table, and we depart into the drizzle.

DERRICK ROONEY and his son continue their bicycle tour of the West Coast, after an overnight stop at Otira. His first report was published last Saturday.

cease abruptly. The drizzle has almost stopped, and the temperature continues to rise, but just a little. Two wild goats, black and white and moulting, appear from the bush to feed on the roadside; as we whirr past they bound away, and are swallowed up by the treeferns. Suddenly, our trip is coming alive for us.

At Jacksons, after an hour's riding; we are out of the drizzle, but still under cloud and still riding into a light headwind. We stop to eat luke-warm pies at the back door of the pub, which hasn’t yet opened, toss the crusts to a friendly dog, then pedal off, through more bush. The wind slackens, and the riding is easy, but breakfast time is long past, and the pies weren’t enough. At the first likely spot — a layby in a scenic reserve — we stop, light up our cooker, and heat some canned food, refuelling ourselves and lightening our load simultaneously. Wild bush, clinging to impossibly angled slopes, still surrounds us, and if the sun were out the scene would be achingly beautiful. But it’s raining again, clouds blank

out the hilltops, and patches of misty fog swirl above the bush. Then suddenly we are out of it and, for the first time since we crossed the divide, cycling through farmland. But what farmland for a Canterbury-acclimatised eye! The pastures look coarse, rank; streamers of lichen wave from the fence posts; stunted tussocks and gorse bushes grow out of the tops of some posts, their roots feeding in cracks and splits where tiny amounts of humus have collected. Sodden sheep stand in pools of water — how do the farmers get them dry enough to shear in this climate? It must be possible; we pass a freshlyshorn mob. Maybe they were shorn wet. Many of them still have their tails.

Water drips, seeps, oozes, pours from the soil. We’ve been counting the rivers, but we give up. There are too many. Poor sheep! The farmhouses, too, look beaten down by the rain. None of them have gardens.

Near one stream we stop for a yarn with a- cockey, who has bulldozed a huge drainage ditch around a

through the bush. Suddenly we are approaching Kumara, and in a different plant community — scrubland, with fern, manuka, and kanuka. At the roadsides we begin to see exotic wildflowers — a Dorothy Perkins rose, nasturtiums, alstroemerias, montbretia, and agapanthus, alas not yet in bloom. On one slope the hillside falls sharply away from us, and we seem to be riding on the tops of giant glowering kanuka, with trunks as thick as two men’s thighs. We are on a roller-coaster road, the rain stops, and we both burst into laughter — we’ve made it.

soggy-looking scrub paddock, and is now pushing up mighty heaps of manuka, gorse, and flax. We have heard his enormous machine from miles away. He climbs down for a chat. Next year he will have cattle grazing there, he says. Does it ever stop raining, we ask. Oh yes, he says. Last Tuesday was a beaut day. Mind you, it was the first this summer.

“Like the bush, do you? I call it a bloody nuisance. Mind you, I make a few bob out of the possums. Anyway, don’t forget to stop for a look at the big kike down the road. It’s a beaut.”

I say we will, and we ride on, past paddocks that have less and less grass and more and more scrub, not knowing what to look for — what the hell is a kike, anyway? But we find it: a venerable kahikatea tree, left by the roadmakers or a farmer between the fenceline and the carriageway. Its top is winderoded and rain-battered, but the giant, buttressed trunk looks good for a fistful of centuries. We ride on, into fresh drizzle, and are among hills again, rising and descending as the road bumps

Then we are among houses, and for the first time since we left Canterbury we see a garden — around a cottage, and gay with shasta daisies and coreopsis, a dazzing sight after the rust-red and brown-green of the bush. The smell of the bush is gone, too, and as we ride on across the plateau and into a stiff headwind, we catch a new smell — the sea. The sun comes out as we turn north and descend to the Taramakau bridge, and as we pedal up the coast road towards Greymouth, with our first tailwind, we are sweating inside our windbreakers. At the camping ground a surprise awaits. We have just

unpacked our bikes, and are tackling our fish and chips when two cyclists pass our cabin window. They stop at the next cabin. “I think I know them,” Seans says. And he does: they are a fellow pupil and his mother, touring also, but in the opposite direction. What an extraordinary coincidence! Over a cup of tea we compare notes; they had left a day earlier, turned back from Springfield when they saw the weather over the mountains, and headed through North Canterbury for the Lewis Pass.

Like us, they had cycled through two cold, drenching days; like us, they had put up for a night in an hotel. But they had been given breakfast. Next morning they plan to head back to Canterbury in the rail-car; Sean and I will spend the morning in Greymouth, seeing the sights and doing essential shopping, before turning north for Punakaiki — and possibly the most beautiful • cycling country on earth. But in the meantime there is still a balmy, eminently tourable evening to explore. Seen and I ride to the town, establish our bearings, wander on the wharf, look at the carnival, and finally pedal back to our cabin with a technicolour West Coast sunset in your eyes.