Invercargill - The dainty Arse of the World
Trip Start
Feb 21, 2003
1
10
Trip End
Nov 21, 2003
Invercargill,
South Island,
New Zealand
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Having been here for 2 months now I'm finally able to uphold a moderately useful internet connection. High time then to inform you of my exciting life in New Zealand's farm country. I will do that without much apology in the swamp-everyone-with-lots-of-more-or-less-useful-information mode. No apologies because I love getting these kind of essays from folks such as Miia, Jax, Jonny, Sonja and the great Gowers. A big thank you goes out to all of you. I have enjoyed every one of your mails!
Yup, I actually made it down here. After having to say goodbye to Edinburgh and all my friends there I had a few days to do the same plus full registration in the old country and was so prepared to cross the equator for the first time in my life. With a few bags of essentials and a laptop full of memories and music the journey could begin
Our front yard, note predominant wind direction...
. After 36 hours in the air, including (uncensored!) screening of "jackass the movie" for board entertainment over the States - the first time I've seen anybody vomit on a plane. It only took a surprisingly short two hours to clear customs and security in L.A. and from there on it went pretty straight to Auckland via Fiji. Auckland is a really nice typical big town with all the entertainment and culture you would expect from a city that a fourth of all Kiwis inhabit. Sorted all my immigration and medical registration there including a guy swabbing my groin. Welcome to New Zealand! To get the right feel for it I went to a Maori show and exhibition at the pretty impressive war museum. Very recommendable! If you get a chance, watch "Whale Rider" a nice look into modern day Maori Culture. Sadly there was not enough wind to witness any of the races for the America's Cup that New Zealand lost 0:5 to the highly renowned seafaring nation Switzerland. So much for New Zealand's sailing pride. But then there's still the rugby... Auckland also marked my last contact with that hardworking sweaty old whore called live rock'n'roll. Thank you, Auckland! That was necessary!
Then I made my way down to a place Keith Richards lovingly named "the asshole of the world" (thanks for the quote, Nathan!) which would be my home for the next 6 months
Our back yard
. It's definitely the end of the world, but doesn't smell that bad. In fact it is a 50 000 people town that strongly reminds me of any old American mid-western town: wide streets, overland lines, single houses, partially wood, old cars, lotsa hicksy farmers and so on. The main industry (and also our main "customers" in my little A&E) are the "freezing works" which are industrial butcheries that e.g. slaughter 4 million lambs a year which, in humans, is the total population of New Zealand!!!! These get catered to by vast farmlands, mostly sheep, dairy and deer farms situated on a vast prairie (again very US mid-west and our second-best "customers"). The other big employer here is an aluminium smelter that sucks up 25% of New Zealand's power. It uses Australian bauxite to produce the metal which again is exported to Australia. So why, for f$£*'s sake didn't they build the whole damn thing there in the first place?!? Invercargill's got a beach you can drive the car on for about 30 km and a port called Bluff that is home to the famous bluff oysters that I new nothing about till I came here and have learned to despise.
I've found a little house right across from the hospital (belongs to same) which is pretty big, has a lovely little yard and only costs my flatmate Kathryn and myself NZ$60 a week each
Sandy Point sunset, along my jogging route.
. The only catch is that we have to heat with coal via a little stove in the kitchen. Hence it's friggin' cold! But heating with coal is an adventure in itself and that's why I'm here, so I might as well enjoy it! Brrrrrrr... We've met a bunch of nice people down here, interestingly all foreigners, mostly from Scotland so there's always someone around to do stuff with. So far I've only had one visitor, aforementioned Nathan, a globetrotting pharmacist whom we used to play touch rugby with in Exeter, and his girlfriend Nicola. In that regard life here does differ markedly from the enormous social life the Thomases are having in Australia.
Kathryn and I have also just bought an old ramshackle car called "Ray", I'm hoping to rename it "piece of shit", though, 'cos that's what it is. We will both be travelling NZ in August and September before we leave.
Work's relaxed down here in our quaint emergency department. I work either a day or an evening shift, 8 hours each during the week and then 1 in 3 weekends. And the workload is really quite easy compared to the manic moments I've seen in Edinburgh or even Exeter (shout goes out to Aidan and Andie)
Invercargill water tower
. We get the occasional trauma, but it's not really that wild. I'm enjoying the exposure to orthopaedic, eye, ENT, gynae and paeds problems, obviously not so much psyche and alcohol related stuff. But since I don't work nights at the moment it ain't that bad. Sadly there's only 2 of us juniors and we only have 2 registrar-type characters and no consultants. So there's no formal teaching and it's all learning by doing or reading which is a bit of a shame. But the real reason we're here is travel and although this place is as detached from civilisation as we know it, is probably the mullet capital of the universe and has only very dubious claims to fame (as e.g. the southernmost McDonald's, Starbuck's and, yes, hospital in the world) the surroundings are absolutely astounding.
To the east are the Catlins, a secluded coastal area with primeval rain forests, stunning waterfalls, a petrified forest and beaches where you can walk amongst seals and sea lions and watch penguins coming home after finishing work out at sea. These little critters are decidedly cute, waddling over the beach to their nests in the dense bushes that line the hills.
In the South there's Stewart Island, the third largest island of New Zealand with beautiful dense podocarp and fern forests, stunning beaches and less mammalian predators than the rest of NZ. Hence it has remained a bird paradise. Where in other parts of the country vast populations of introduced rats, stoats and possums have decimated the endemic bird population, mainly by munching up their eggs, you can still see many birds you would have some difficulty coming across on the "mainland", such as the flightless Wekas (wood hens) and Kiwis
A fitting invercargill Landmark, Giant Umbrella
. The latter are big (about 40cm high) and the only birds with nostrils at the end of their beaks. They fill the ecological niche of moles, digging up worms from the ground. They lay an absolutely humongous and probably very painful egg about a third of their size. Interestingly NZ has evolved without any mammals. Just a few lizards (ancient Tuataras are still around and are apparently the lizards most closely related to dinosaurs) and mostly birds roamed the island, leading to a lot of birds losing their ability to fly as there was no need for it. The predators were mainly birds of prey that would pick their food from the skies or the canopy. Hence ground-dwelling birds knew no predators and were well protected by the trees. The introduction of man and other mammals has since led to extinction (the giant Moa) or near-extinction (Kakapo, Takahe = big flightless parrots) of these unique NZ birds. Enough natural history, bloody smart-ass German... Then in the west there's Fjordland, majestic Fjords cutting their way along the paths of old glaciers into the rugged southern outreaches of the Southern Alps, amongst them the famous Doubtful and Milford Sounds. On the way numerous lakes mirror the snow-covered peaks and mountain ranges beyond. I went kayaking in Doubtful Sound last week. It's a unique experience paddling through the untouched nature beneath sheer majestic rock faces up to 2000 meters high with dolphins and seals playing in the water around you. Pictures cannot relate the vastness of the place. The only other place I'd ever experienced this magnificence before is the Grand Canyon.
2 hours to the north lies Queenstown, the crazy shit capital of the southern hemisphere (says I). I haven't done any wild stuff there yet, but am definitely planning to risk my sanity and retina there at some point
Paula atop her car
. Any extreme sport you can think of is celebrated and probably even originated there. It's a pretty expensive place to be so it caters to an international community of rich and beautiful ya kids. It's even got an international airport. It's the place to be for skiing with four adjacent ski fields. Needless to say I've already got my ski pass and am just waiting for the first snow to fall. There's so much still to do and see down here, it's a shame that the approaching winter won't allow us to do more walking.
It's beautiful to be here, but very cut off from the rest of civilisation. I realised the importance of being close to friends when our family friend Dick Keegan died in a car crash in North Carolina 2 weeks ago. It's an incredible blow to so violently lose someone whose warmth and presence has been a fixture throughout our last 22 years. It was quite difficult to organise leave and a flight to his hometown Pittsburgh as I wanted to be at his wake. And it's a hell of a long way up there. Thankfully the hospital was great in granting me leave and we have a travel agency on site. That way I got my leave approved last Monday at 9 had the flights booked at 10 and was on the plane by 11 am. Thankfully everything worked out alright so that I was with my family in Pittsburgh by 11 that same night, Considering I gained a day and seven hours over the date line that was definitely the longest Monday of my life!
I am glad I could make it and say goodbye to Dick and despite the sad occasion it was good to meet up with my family and friends and it was comforting to feel how we were helping each other cope with the tragic loss of a truly special friend
Hospital Ball
. It was very important for us Wenzels to be there to support Linda and the rest of the Keegan and Kettlewell families. It was also great to see Dick's son Kevin (he taught me English when my family moved to the States when I was 6) who had been sleeping in the car and sustained multiple injuries to his limbs braving his wounds.P.S.: I have to talk about music now. Not having any live acts actually making it down here I can still recommend some New Zealand music. I have to start with Rock'N'Roll: If you like to sweat and pant and get bruised and kick some major backside the best acts to see are the Datsuns and the D4, cutting edge live bands and great records, should be available most places. If you're a girl and like marvelling at lovely melodies get Bic Runga, she makes the Cardigans sound boring (which they undoubtedly are). Haven't been able to witness any new Zealand Jazz as yet.
