Wellington in February (1)

“What have you got in your bag?” the man asks.

“Nothing that would interest you,” I reply innocently with a smile. On either side of me bags have been opened and people are pouring water from their plastic bottles into containers placed there for the purpose.

He gives me a half-smile back and I walk through, one hand reassuringly pressing my shoulder bag with a bottle of spring water and other sustenance, into my side.

That you are not allowed to take alcohol into the ‘Cake Tin’, as Wellington’s 34,000-seat rugby stadium, also used for concerts and one-day cricket internationals, is popularly known, I was well aware of from past experience. Commercial food isn’t allowed either — in neither case out of consideration for the comfort and well-being of patrons, but solely to ensure they consume nothing but the beer and the junk food on sale inside. But water!!

I suppose those who won’t accept such gangster-like demands, or won’t put up with the disco music played at every opportunity, or the rising level of inebriation among many, mainly young males, in the crowd, vote with their feet and stay away. The New Zealand ‘Black Caps’ were playing England in the first ODI of five, but the ground was far from full.

Anyone who thinks all New Zealanders are cast in the quiet-spoken, modest, unassuming Hillary mould should be in the world’s most southerly capital in February. It starts with the two-day International Rugby Sevens tournament, which is turned into a raucous, fancy-dress, beer-swilling, disco, carnival party, with not too much attention paidto what is going on on the field of play.

People come from far and wide to join in, so there are no unsold tickets for this event, yet the stadium may look half or more empty at times. Play may be in progress, but in town you can see little knots of multi-coloured pirates, mini-skirted policewomen, cudgel-carrying Flintstones, escaped prisoners, overgrown babies, suspiciously masculine women and female-like men, dubious-looking clergy, representatives of unknown religious orders, a band of Polynesian Islander ‘doctors’, or Doctours, and many other outlandish figures in the streets and pubs. It’s almost a relief to note there are also normally-dressed people going about their normal business.

The stadium regulations were tightened this year. Dress standards were introduced: no bare bums, minimalist male Boran costumes, fig leaves or potentially harmful accoutrements, although most inflatable swords and the like seem to have made it inside.

The final consumption tally was impressive: 30,000 litres of monopoly-sales beer, 20,000 stadium hot dogs, 21,500 pies and 10,000 hamburgers. Nobody has kept count of what was consumed at the bars, pubs and fast food outlets in town, but it could hardly have been less.

When it was all over there were congratulations all round on the success of the event. Naturally, the organisers were happy, but the police also expressed satisfaction with crowd behaviour. Only 30 people were arrested inside the stadium during the two long days, a further 76 ejected. The party doesn’t stop when play ends, however, and another 32 were taken into custody in town by seven o’clock the next morning, mostly for being drunk and disorderly.

The prelude is a parade through town the day before the real business starts, with teams from all the competing nations on floats, flags flying, bands playing, drums beating, people lining the street and office balconies, hanging out of windows, waving, clapping, cheering, and ending with presentations of each team in a crowded Civic Square.

The cricket is a pale imitation. There’s no trouble at all getting tickets, much less fancy dress, but lots of bottled ale and a growing volume of noise as the day wears on. One young man, standing a little unsteadily in the aisle just below me tries to coach a group of his companions in the kind of protracted, rising call to make as the bowler runs up to bowl. A greatly overweight young gentleman, briefly absent on urgent business, brushes past him with a fresh supply of bottled beer peering from his pockets.

“Give us a smile Ryder,” one wag booms at a New Zealand boundary fielder, who turns and obliges. Jubilation. (A newcomer to the team, he is later to put his international career on the line as a result of his own drunken antics.) Meanwhile, the England players perform as though in a collective stupor, giving the home crowd even more to hoot and howl about.

There are fewer Mexican Waves than I have seen here in the past, less assorted rubbish thrown into the air as the wave goes round. But I leave the Cake Tin with one thought uppermost in my mind: if it’s the cricket or sevens you’re really interested in — watch it on the box.

Taupo

"Come on in," a white-clad figure with broad-brimmed hat calls out. He has seen me with my camera looking on from outside the low fence.

Imagine a giant billiard table 37 or 38 metres square, at ground level and in the open air. Replace the green cloth with equally green, incredibly fine, close-clipped grass and you have the setting for lawn bowls.

The Taupo Lawn Bowling Club has three such greens. Only one is in use, but there is a row of men and women at either end of it, mostly of mature years and all dressed in spotless white. I enter and am beckoned closer.

"I can explain the game," the man says, automatically assuming I know nothing about it. I stand separated from him and his opponent, a woman, by the shallow ‘ditch’ surrounding the green, which is divided into six strips, playing areas called ‘rinks’. Their partners are at the opposite end.

Six matches are in progress. This is a club tournament for pairs, I learn between bowls. Each team can consist of two men, two women, or one man and one woman. I am concerned that my presence may put my informant off his game, but when he explains the scoreboard to me I can see that he and his partner are far, far in the lead. His lady opponent remains silent.

On the way south to Wellington, I spent several days in Taupo on the volcanic central plateau of the North Island, by the shores of Australasia’s largest lake, of the same name. Look across the blue-green water on a clear summer day and standing out in the distance is the snow-capped peak of the island’s highest mountain, Ruapehu (which also has the best ski slopes), together with its slightly shorter and slimmer neighbour, Tongoriro. A third mount in the Tongoriro National Park, Ngauruhoe, shares with Ruapehu the distinction of being the only active volcanoes on the New Zealand mainland.

The lake covers several former craters. The country’s longest river, The Waikato, enters to the south and leaves from the opposite shore, flowing north-west to the Tasman Sea. There are several power stations along it and you can soon see why. Follow its winding course for some kilometres — and there’s a good, though undulating, walking track from the outskirts of town, past where the bungy jumpers plummet screaming from a height towards, or into, the water — and the river suddenly narrows very sharply. The water now froths and fumes as it is forced through the gorge at great speed until hurtling over the not-so-steep Huka Falls.

Back at the bowling club, other players say hello and offer snippets of information between spells of less hectic activity. The jack must be rolled at least 23 metres I’m told, and the bowls are not weighted as I had previously believed, but can be made to swing in from either direction solely because they are flattened on one side.

I am now sitting on a bench outside the large club house. The lady opponent of my original informant suddenly appears and offers me a cup of tea inside, where large windows reveal impressive views across the lake. "That’s very kind of you," I say. She stays only briefly, however, before returning to her game.

When I go back to check on its progress I see that she and her partner have made up their huge deficit and to judge by the way she is bowling, will soon be in the lead, while the gentleman beside her has clearly lost the sure touch he had earlier. I comment on the change of fortune.

"It’s because I was kind to you," she says. And smiles broadly.

Coromandel

Most of the last entry was written in Coromandel, the name of both the tiny township and the scenically attractive 110-kilometre-long peninsula on the other side of the Hauraki Gulf from Auckland. It was named after a British ship which visited the area in 1820, and thus only indirectly after the coastal plain in south-eastern India.

From Auckland you can get there by road, first travelling south to Thames, the gateway to the peninsula. But a fine alternative is to take the catamaran ferry across the island-studded Gulf (Hauraki = ‘north wind’), with only the last stretch of the two-hour journey over open water. In some small way it is reminiscent of the Stockholm archipelago, although the islands are fewer and the yellow rock or volcanic scoria which sometimes rises steeply from the sea, the vegetation, the grass burnt beige by the summer sun, the sparkling turquoise water and special light of the South Pacific, are all very different.

The first discovery of gold in New Zealand was made near the Coromandel township in 1852 by a saw-miller. He immediately claimed the £250 prize offered for discovering what was termed a ‘payable’ goldfield and which it was hoped would stop people from leaving for the diggings in Australia or California.

The heyday of the community, which grew to be several thousand strong, was in the 1870s, but the difficulty and expense of extraction meant this was not a site for the little man dreaming of great fortune. Instead, large companies were formed, making much money for a time, before operations cost more than they produced, declined greatly in the 1880s and ceased altogether in the 1930s. The population dwindled and there is little to remind you of the golden past except for the former School of Mines, now a museum, a few other buildings and some (rather dangerous) mine shafts.

The other major economic activity in post-European-settlement days was forestry. As in many other parts of the north, this was once a wooded area dominated by that magnificent member of the pine family, the kauri tree. Slow-growing, it can reach a height of up to 45 metres and be as much as seven metres in diameter. It was greatly prized by the Europeans — the Coromandel came here in 1820 to acquire kauri spars — and alas there are few of the trees left. Kauri gum, dug from the ground where they once grew, was also much sought after, the resin being used in varnish, lacquer and linoleum.

Today, the peninsula lives by the holiday trade and farming. I am told there is gold in the seabed, but too difficult to get at.