Siop y Barbwr - A Welsh Haircut

I'm sitting in a chair in a room the size of my bathroom in a village in North Wales. 'Do you do men's hair?' I'd asked poking my head through the doorway. 'I'm a barber. That's all I do.'

The barber is a twenty three year old local lass - born and bred in the village. Never left. Been as far as the Irish Sea but no further.

'What would you like?' She has the lilting accent of a Welsh speaker and the charm of a sheep farmer. 'Can you give me a Welsh haircut?' I ask.

'How much do you want off? Do you want scissors or clippers?' She's not really into light-hearted banter.

On this Saturday afternoon in July the main street of Y Bala is crawling with locals. The sun is shining, Children are swimming in the chilled waters of the lake of the same name. It's summer. Saturday is the big day for the Siop Y Barbwr. The shepherds head to town for a spring clean and the mums drag their sons to town for their monthly shearing.

In winter, Arianwen tells me, the snow blankets the village up to the eaves and the men don't bother with grooming. They'll grow their winter coat and she'll spend freezing days waiting for a customer. 'Mt Aran's peak is snow covered through winter. It's like a picture book' she shares. She's starting to loosen up. She's stuck with this daft tourist asking silly questions so she decides to humour me. 'Which mountain is that? I ask. Arienwen hesitates, pausing mid scissor. She's struggling. 'Is it this end of the lake or the other?' 'This end' she says. I suspect she's wrong. A case of seeing something every day for your whole life and not being able to describe the most familiar to a stranger. 

'Do you speak Welsh?'  'Everyone does.'  'So you're multilingual?' She looks at me confused, her eyebrows arching, her dark celtic eyes piercing mine. My stupidity is reflected in the mirror. 'I suppose so.' Clearly its not something that the locals even think about. 

She's deft with the scissors. She circles my seated head while a photo of Marilyn Monroe laughs at the scene over her shoulder. It's the only piece of decoration in her spartan shop besides a mirror, two chairs, a small number of products and a powerpoint. There is no queue of customers lining up. Nor is there anyone there the next day or the one after that as I visit the Co-op for supplies. Each time I pass, Arianwen is sitting in one of the two chairs, a bored look on her face, a magazine in her hand.

I'd like to report that my "Welsh haircut" was a unique creation perhaps resembling the fabled Welsh Rarebit - an expanse of melted cheese congealed on top of a warm piece of toast, however to my pleasant surprise it is one of the best haircuts I can remember. Clearly superior to the work of my Greek barber back home and more memorable than my disastrous encounter with a French hairdresser in a remote village in Brittany.

I wander over to the local tavern half expecting the boys at the bar to welcome me in lilting Welsh phrases. Rather, they pause mid lilt and stare at this intruder, this newly shorn freckled outsider. 



Siop Y Barbwr = The Barber Shop; Y Bala = The Outlet

Ich bin ein Berliner

'What is this?'
'It's a svimming pool. Do you vant to go svimming?'

I am standing in front of a ten foot high wire fence talking to a security guard. I am surrounded by disused factories and warehouse. One carries the name it has always carried - the Glashaus. To get here I have walked through possibly the most graffitied urban area I've ever seen. Not artist grafitti as featured on the nearby Berlin Wall East Gallery, but old fashioned untidy overtagged urban grunge.

'How much to svim?'

'Fife Euro' the guard tells me.

I look beyond his imposing presence and can see an open area covered in imported sand. I offer him five euros telling him that I've come from the other side of the planet to svim in unusual places so I can't resist. Five euros is twice what I'd pay in Brisbane but this is Berlin and this is the River Spree. Berliners were keen on swimming in the prewar years. There were numerous swimming clubs and enclosures along these reaches. This is an attempt to reinvent the swimming culture.


The guard declines to take my money and directs me to the bar inside the compound. There i find myself in the company of a half a dozen drinkers. Certainly not swimmers. A young woman behind the counter takes my cash and directs me to the change rooms. For an extra Euro I can rent a locker but I must also surrender some form of photo ID. It all seems a bit much but I offer her my Seniors Card, partly by way of a joke and partly because i don't have any photo ID and don't want to hand over a credit card. She smiles, but not at my little joke. She just smiles in what i think is a shated acknowledgemwent that perhaps the high security is a little bit beyond the absolutely necessary.

The change room is a sandy space with a curtain for privacy. The Germans are quite formal about many things. Rules are to be followed but when it comes to disrobing they are relaxed and informal. A group of teenage boys have arrived on their bikes and they are in the water when I emerge in my DTs, my Speedos, my racing trunks. I carry nothing else but my tiny travelling towel and the key to my locker.

The pool is a former canal barge modified and lined with fibreglas and tethered in the river. It floats. It's filled with treated water so it's bright blue alongside the dirty Spree. Rules: No photos. No glass. No sandy feet. The three boys are in giant board shorts. They frolic. I swim lengths. It's a 25 metre pool and heated. The only other people around the pool are a young couple intent on a form of leisure not exactly connected with water - more an exchange of saliva.

My swim is accompanied by a techno beat that broadcasts across the sand. Upstream from the pool is a sad old river boat moored to the bank. There's no one in sight but I'm sure there is another techno beat pulsing from its guts. The river is alive with passing tourist cruise boats built to resemble horizontal missiles. A man in a small cruiser moored at the mouth of a canal waits for non-existent customers to hire his fleet of faded orange canoes.

I do my twenty laps. I collect my towel and exchange my key for my card. I am momentarily tempted to have a drink at the bar but quickly make the decision to continue my journey into Berlin subculture. I am in old East Berlin by a matter of a hundred metres. This is the hiden quarter.

I have swum in, or to be more precise, on the Spree. I have immersed myself in one of the more obscure aspects of Berlin culture.

Like JFK before me I am now in a position to make my claim "Ich bin ein Berliner".

Crying in the front seat

I'm sitting by myself in the seat in the front of the bus. We're crossing the Victoria Bridge, as this bus does every day, and every Monday I'm on board on my way to work.

The trip from Hill End only takes 20 minutes and half of that is filled by conversations with my wife. We have our Monday conversation. "What have you got on today? Busy?" "Could be. The phones usually go mad after the weekend. Everyone's had too much time to think." My wife is a counsellor.

"Sorry about what I said yesterday. I was a bit stressed out. I love you. You know that." I like the adage that one should never let the sun go down on your anger. My version is apologies and reconciliation on the morning bus. At least we're not doing it by mobile phone. Hurling our affections and apologies the length of the vehicle.

She's gone at the half way mark and I pull out my book. I've only got eight pages to go and I'm in a state of suspense. My emotions are on high alert. The woman's lost her child and is in deep mourning. So am I. Her partner's in gaol, charged with kidnapping and perhaps murder. He's written a letter to her to ask for forgiveness, while explaining why he's had to do what he did. She's despatched the letter to the bottom of a drawer. She wants him to suffer. They've lost their daughter forever, but will never be anywhere where she won't be a presence.The river glides below us, a chocholate milkshake flowing silently to the bay.

I read, and as the climax approaches I feel my eyes mist up and then I'm crying. Not sobbing like a drunk, but feeling like a parent. Feeling the loss. Understanding the terrifying choices that any parent faced with loss of a child would feel, and despairing at the thought that they will also lose each other as a result of this horrible situation for which they can blame no one but themselves.

The bus turns into Adelaide Street and crosses the last intersection before my stop. I've still got three pages to read. I could stay on the bus to the Valley and be late for work but I don't, I slip my marker into the book and swipe my GO Card on the machine and step onto the pavement. I usually get a coffee from the outlet at the base of my building but I'm not prepared to sit and sob in front of my favourite barista. I head for the closest coffee shop and order a flat white. There's an almighty din in the background, echoing through the gaps between the multi-story buildings. The BWF are protesting in Ann Street singing songs of protest, telling Premier Newman where he should shove his October public holiday and demanding back their Monday May Day holiday.

My coffee arrives just in time for the last page. There's a death and a reconciliation and hope and, shit, I'm so moved I drink my coffee without sugar, the first time I've done that in years. Some writers just hit the right notes. And this is her first book. I am inspired by this wonderful storytelling and it makes me want to keep writing my novel. Or give up in the face of my mediocrity. And then I'm in the lift to level 10 and I walk in and say "Morning".


The book: "The Light Between Oceans" by M L Stedman. The setting: SouthernWestern Australia , Janus Rock 300 miles west of Albany. A lighthouse.

Skinny dip

We're walking along a path on the northern shores of Sydney Harbour. We pass only three or four people in the first twenty minutes. I'm amazed that Sydney, the largest city in Australia, has extensive walking tracks through bushland set aside as public space within sight of the Opera House.

The harbour looks beautiful. The water is polished to a gleaming sheen, sailing boats glide across the horizon, white sails gently puffed smooth by the breeze. We, all-four, are dressed in long pants, jumpers, jackets and scarves. Nick has brought a picnic which bulges from his backpack. It's a beautiful blue winter Sydney day. Did you bring your togs? I ask Nick jokingly. Yep. I love cold water, he says and goes on to talk about exotic places he's swum and laments the fact that his girlfriend is not as keen on iceberg swimming as he is. There might be other important elements to a long term relationship, I comment. I've had this conversation with Nick many times in our thirty year friendship. He's the perennial hippy; the surviving member of a share house in Annandale for which he has held the lease for over twenty years.

As we round a bend in the track past a string of dingies stacked on the overgrown bank of an inlet, we spy a length of sandy beach below us. Looks like a good place for a picnic. We all agree and find ourselves alone on this point which pushes out into the harbour. It's hard to believe that around the corner we would see the Opera House and to our left we can see South Head dropping off into the Pacific. From here we watch a   Manly ferry push through between us and Watson's Bay across the water.

The beach is sandy but the water hides flat sandstone rocks. There are a couple of thin pathways beween them. Suddenly it looks cold. There's a breeze off the water and Andrea and Lindy find a sheltered spot to sit and enjoy the scene.

You up for it Steve? Oh yeah. I bravely reply. I reckon its a skinny-dip don't you says Nick. I'm game if you are, I say. Nick drops his daks and pulls his layers of warmth over his head. I follow suit. I, too, love cold water and unusual swimming locations. My cold swim stories are of the Atlantic off Brittany in France, the 'mens only bathing pond' in Hamstead Heath in suburban London and deep, still swimming holes in the bush hinterland of Brisbane in winter.

Slippery rocks make entry to cold water excruciating. There's no option but to get colder inch by inch. . I find a hole. The harbour beckons and threatens. I plunge and thrash about trying to survive the first seconds. It's a high risk cardiac moment. My eyeballs threaten to turn to metal, my head and ears scream GET OUT. And then I start to warm up. Nick reckons it's just the body in shut-down mode. I love this - warming up and shutting down. It makes me feel alive rather than close to death. I could stay in the water now for half an hour but Nick is out within minutes and so I stumble across the slimy flat rocks and join him, triumphant, on the beach, in the sun. Warm again. No police boats have arrived to arrest us.

We savor the moment as if we are the first explorers of this place. Brothers in the nude together. Captured on camera forever.

Murwillumbah delight

In the small town of Murwillumbah, surrounded by canefields and banana plantations, sits the Youth Hostel time forgot. Tassie, real name Neville, 'you can understand why I changed my name', runs an establishment from the 70s. Tassie arrived here then, from Tasmania, as a young hippie in his twenties and never left.

Below the rear deck of this ageing relic the Tweed River sparkles and the sky darkens on this first day after the winter solstice. The light is struggling to hold for a few extra seconds to reassure me that summer is again on the way.

In the Vietnamese restaurant in town which serves mainly Thai food, the young girl who waits on our table epitomises what I always hope for in small towns. She is bubbly, cheeky and smart. I ask if the macadamia nuts which the prawn entree is to come coated in are local. 'I don't reckon' she tells me. 'It's all bananas and cane around here.' 'Yes' I say, 'but there are macadamia nut farms between here and Byron Bay' 'Oh' she sparkles, 'anywhere further than walking distance from here is "way off land." That's not local'. She is happy to play with the macadamia nut joke most of the evening until I use the reference one too many times and her blank face tells me the game is over.

By 9pm my mate and I are back in the Hostel dorm. We have the place to ourselves. There's no sign of other overnighters, though Tassie tells us there is another traveller, a woman in another room. As advertised Tassie appears at our door at 9.05 asking us if we'd like some complimentary ice cream. He's wearing an  elaborate multi-coloured jester's hat, all floppy points and pom poms. In his arms is a large stuffed teddy bear. It's Tassie's nightly ritual. It his "point of difference", though this hostel is already remarkably different from any I've stayed in before. Tassie has had thirty years to refine his system. We decline the ice cream. He seems disappointed. We feel guilty. But we sleep well.

We awake to a beautiful day with the sun pouring its charms over the Tweed Valley and into the hostel. My mate goes for a swim at the heated pool over the road and I decide I'll read my book and have a cup of tea. We've only come for an overnight stay so I have brought neither tea nor milk. I have just assumed I'll find a tea bag somewhere in the kitchen and pinch a dash of someone else's milk. Tassie springs me as I examine the fridge, takes pity on me and offers me a half a cup of milk from his own supply. He assumes that, in boy scout style, I will at least have brought my own tea. I then scour the kitchen searching for a tea bag and turn up nothing. At this point I am reconciled to having a half a cup of cold milk for my early morning drink when in walks Elke, the invisible guest whom Tassie has mentioned.

'I don't suppose I could have a second go of your tea bag after you've finished?' I shyly ask. As I say it I can hear how pathetic it sounds, but Elke is not one to judge, it turns out, and graciously produces a brand new one for my use.

On the deck, where the evening before the light had slid warmly behind the majestic Mt Warning we share our tea. The river below is loving the morning sun and winks back at us. 'I'm pretty much semi-permanent' Elke replies to my traveller's question. It turns out she's up here from Tasmania escaping the cold and considering her options. She talks about her background and it transpires that she is not unfamiliar with the area. She arrived in Brisbane around 1969 from Germany, married and stayed, completing her high school locally in her late twentiies and then heading for Uni . I don't get the middle period of her life except to understand that she is, as she says in her honest Germanic way, "multi-talented". She has lost her purpose. We both agree that a purpose in life is important no matter what age or stage you're at. She has artistic skills but they've become dormant, as they can do when you're in a comfortable stage of life and when days slip by without effort. But something has changed and she means to find a new direction.

I like this woman. She is full of life and understands that there is no point in standing still. At some point she asks me my age. I can't remember where that question came from and sometimes I like to think that I'm ageless but I answer. But since she asked I decide to ignore the maxim "never ask a woman her age" and shoot the question back her way. She's 72. I am a little taken aback as I would have thought her more than ten years younger. She has great skin, her hands are those of an artist and her eyes sparkle.

The cafe in town is packed. The food and service is great and the sun continues to share its warmth with us on this midwinter's day.

'Pretty bloody good for 72' says Paul over breakfast.

Rat a tat

I was out-partied this week by a bunch of rodents. Not huge river rats from the Thames but mice sized black coated country rats who like to play.

We were up on the highlands, two hours inland from Brisbane for three Autumn nights post Easter. To get there we travelled south-west through the Fassifern Valley and climbed through Cunningham's Gap. Up and over the saddle straddling the Great Dividing Range. It's short and steep here and on the other side it flattens again into fertile grasslands which canter on mile after brown mile until you get to Stanthorpe.

Stanthorpe is granite country. Huge gray outcrops dot the landscape and boulders emerge unannounced from every surface across the undulating plains. It’s always significantly cooler than the coast and this week, while Brisbane sweltered, we sat around a fire each night and sighed and drank our way towards bed. Drank because, though we are in the subtropics, the altitude is friendly to stone fruit orchards and to grape vines.

Once the province of rough reds made by the a handful of early Italian settlers, the area now boasts dozens of wineries producing ever improving vintages of chardonnay and semillon, shiraz and cabernet. Old names such as Puglisi and Barbagallo live alongside the newcomers, the Tobins and Masons and the 'tree changers' who have arrived in large numbers. Why wouldn't you? Plenty of good wine, five degrees cooler than the coast, a thriving arts community, free of traffic jams and full of city small croppers all willing to give advice and learn from each other.

And its cheap. Half the price of its lowland neighbours.

Our accommodation was shocking. As we rounded the bend along the single vehicle track close shepherded by scrub on either side we all gasped. It was bloody incredible. Our simple accommodation stood before us all ripple iron and raw timber with decks leading off each bedroom and another off the living space. We couldn't believe our luck. Over the years we've tried to find affordable cabins within a few hours drive of Brisbane but our quest has always been in vain. Seems like there are too many people with too much money willing to pay stupid rates for bugger all. But here we were. And as it turned out the fridge was stuffed with home made jams, thick home smoked bacon and pork sausages from the owners free range pigs, milk, cereal and, wait for it - fresh baked bread and muffins delivered each morning with the newspaper. And the rats, or as our host might have preferred, the marsupial mice.

We didn't notice them at first. They're nocturnal. Our host warned us to be ready for the scamper of tiny feet each evening and she assured us they were vegetarian - not at all interested in human flesh. The ladies breathed. I smiled. Why would you be scared of some cute little field mice. Native mice at that. They probably even spoke English.

All was well until the third night. Something woke me at about two in the morning. It was the sound of a party. There was squeaking and dancing; there was flirting and hide and seek and occasionally there was a jealous outburst when, I suspect, one of the boys had cut in on someone elses' dance partner. This was not some party in the distance, in some neighbour's house, but in my room. By my bed. Mistress A. snored on. Oblivious. At first the action came from one corner of the room and then without warning, as if teleported across the room, the party goers suddenly decided to jive in the opposite corner. I was convinced I was surrounded. I swear there were at least twenty of the little buggers.

At first I was amused, but slowly I had this sense that if native rats were comfortable spinning across the carpet in this room and sliding across the polished floor in the living room why would they not be quite relaxed about climbing into bed with a warm human body. What was the distinction between the floor, the benchtop, the ceiling cavity and a bedspread? None of these environments was native. Obviously the human owner had the rats in mind when she commissioned this retreat in the bush. What better way to protect vulnerable marsupials from predatory owls and mopokes, from carpet snakes and foxes.

Nights can be long. and though I am a sound sleeper by nature, in this case I was double bluffed by my fellow tenants. I listened while they caroused, half inclined to join in but sadly this was not my party. I finally fell asleep from exhaustion and boredom. There is only so much partying one can listen to; and only so much waiting for the scamper of feet across one's bedclothes one's mind can cope with.

I expected to wake to a scene of chaos - clothes chewed, toiletries scattered across the room and my mobile phone scarred with tiny teeth marks. In the early morning silence, a silence which had me thinking that perhaps I had imagined all this, I crawled out of bed to inspect the shambolic room.

To my consternation there was no evidence of the night of debauchery. Not even a dropping. I believe I have discovered the rare existence of the tidy mouse. The intelligent mouse which cleans up behind him/her to minimise retribution, to reduce the liklihood of a bloody revenge.

But even native rats and their native rat cunning have their point of vulnerability. On the bench in the kitchen lay the devestating evidence of the evening's party. Two half consumed muffins, our treat saved for our final day, lay side by side, still partially wrapped in their linen cloth, a hole gnawed where once a knot resided.

A Tale of Two Towns

Gotta get this New Zealand experience out of my head so I can move on. My head has been asking to move on since I returned on January 25 but returning to "normal life" has proved a little challenging. I returned to rain and humidity, an unemployed wife and a routine and a rythym from 2011 that I'd lost. It's slowly returning, as is the drive to write. The following posts will be a truncated version of my final week in New Zealand. First a short version of being taken by surprise by unassuming villages in remore places.

Hokitika and Oamaru

Two things caught my attention as I drove into Hokitika on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. The first was the wide deserted streets, a great setting for a western; the second was the billboard advertising the Whitebait Exhibition at the local museum, extended by popular demand! Let's face it, on first encounter Hokitika was charmless. I was happy we'd only booked one nights accomodation.

On the other side of the island ten days later I had a similar experience. Oamaru had one wide main street running dead straight for about two kilometres flanked by nondescript shops and motels hired in from "allthesameland". I was devastated; I had booked us here for two nights and what had been hyped as New Zealand's largest intact Victorian Precinct looked as if it had the potential to flip me into an instant and deep state of depression. My spirits, buoyed by three weeks of New Zealand delights, were going to be tested.
Hokitika and Oamaru shared a similar history though divided by an inpenetrable set of glacial ranges.

In both cases I was guilty of being victim to my instant emotional responses, first impressionism. If they were people I had met for the first time I was making a judgement based on the shallowest of evidence. One meeting, no conversation and on a day when we were both a little tired. My response: Boring, gormless, stupid, a waste of space; Don't want to get to know you; I'll be gone in the morning. I counsel my children on the need to give people a little space. Spend some time with them, let their personality and values emerge. I had committed this very offence.

Hokitika was born of gold fever, Oamaru of a massivly fertile hinterland suitable for grain and sheep production. Each town, ,being completely in love with itself, built a series of public buildings of beauty and grandeur. Hokitika was a little less ambitious than its sister and was satisfied with a couple of buildings in the British public building style constructed from local granite. The rest of the town consisted largely of buildings in local timber and being a gold mining community they concentrated on building pubs - 102 in fact, 84 of them in a mile long street serving a thirsty population of five thousand. And then the gold ran out.

In Oamaru the bounty seemed endless. Grain and sheep don't deplete themselves so the investors were confident of their future. In addition, the nearby cliffs contained readily available building material and so to display confidence in their wealth they built an impressive precinct of beautiful classical sandstone buildings.

Here's a list of the highlights. Remember this is 1870/80 in the back blocks of an emerging colonial country: a five story administrative centre, a giant two story grain warehouse, three two story bank buildings fronted by soaring Greek columns, a massive wool store and to top it all off, an opera house with seating for five hundred. And then came the 1890 downturn in grain prices and the emergence of deeper draft steam ships as the preferred mode of transport. Almost overnight the shallow harbour was abandoned and the export trade deserted Oamaru; the town, in an attempt to block out the pain turned its back on the sandstone precinct and moved its centre half a kilometre north and survived as a secondary regional centre humbled by its experience. The buildings cover two town blocks and due to neglect and their sturdy construction are largely intact. All these first impressions took a mere two hours in each place.

The next day dawned fine in each town and having committed to two nights in Oamaru I decided to give the place a second chance. Surely there must be more than a deep sense of decay here. Hokitika was only two hours drive from our next destination so with some trepidation we checked out of our motel and set off to walk the town and visit the intruiging and self proclaimed blockbuster 'White Bait Exhibition'.

I am pleased to report that in both cases my first impressions were confounded. The secret in Hokitika was the people and the Whitebait. The people, because the locals loved the place and had a strong sense of purpose and confidence in their future. After gold came jade and the town now sports more jade outlets than Beijing. We met a woman who runs a shop called 'sock world'.

She has collected and restored a collection of 100 year old sock making machines and when we were there she had her local mechanic tweaking a tension-screw here and giving a gentle oiling to ancient parts there, and she was happy as a pig in mud. 'Do you make many sales?' I asked knowing the answer was going to be 'no, its a hobby'. I was wrong. She ships socks all over New Zealand and sells them at $35 a pair. 'And people buy them?' 'Too right'.

Another couple, she a born and bred local, he, a blow-in artist, gold miner and whitebaiter had bought one of the pubs and lived and worked in it complete with the original 1880 counter and strong room. They're survivors, digging, panning, whitebaiting in between commissions for his quite sophisticated copper art.

And the whitebait? That's a whole story in itself but, as with gold it's a boom and bust business. Once there was a lot of fish and everyone wanted a piece of the action and pretty quickly they fished out the original northern alpine rivers. So they moved on to the next river and so on. Luckily the southern rivers were so remote that before the hunters could ruin the whole industry the government had begun to regulate things. An example: these days you have to buy a licence; you can only fish by hand - scoop nets of a regulated size and you can't be more than 10 metres from your net at any time. Also outlawed are the building of groynes out into the river to force the fish into the nets. They only run each year for a short time and it's on for young and old. Its not a season without a few fights over bank space. Its an obsession for the committed. And an identity for Hokitika.

Meanwhile back in Oamaru I've read the brochures in my motel room and we venture out. Everything isn't cheap and tacky Victoriana it turns out. There is an excellent Regional Gallery in one of the restored bank buildings; the 10 million dollar refurbishment of the Opera House has created a sumptuous modern facility - new life to a sadly neglected first lady of the town; the local botanical gardens are delightful and the shock of the day - Oamaru turns out to have a thriving underground art movement - post punk combined with 19th Century aesthetics. Oamaru claims to be the "Steam Punk Capital of New Zealand". It's an international art movement and it's thriving in a faded heritage town in the backblocks of the southern hemisphere. I was gobsmacked.

The moral. Well it's a cliche. Behind every door; Every cloud has a ....; Don't judge a book by ....;

I celebrated by getting a haircut in the new end of town - $15 NZ. A southern hemisphere bargain.

Once a five story building. Now the three story HQ of the Oamaru Steam Punk movement. What's that train doing?

Playing with Fire

Barry Lopez has a story in his book "About This Life" which recounts his year experiencing the community of potters in the wilds of Oregon who use an ancient firing technique called 'anagama'. It's a Japanese wood firing process which takes between three and six days. The Japanese seek to make the process as controlled as possible while the lead potter in Lopez's story values the wildness and unnpredictability of the same fire.

I was reading this as we made our way north from Christchurch . In Picton I picked up a brochure on the potters of the Nelson area, our next stopping point. There were more than twenty listed. I was aware that the Nelson area was home to numerous craftsmen and women.

My interest was ceramics. My partner was more inclined to the jewellers. So it was no surprise that when we saw a sign on the Picton-Nelson road telling us a potter and a jeweller were located on a local back road we took the turn-off.

The pottery was closed but a short distance further we pulled up outside a charming house overlooking one of the waterways, part of the Marlborough Sounds, the shoreline of which the road was following.

We stepped from the car and were met by Verena. She was Swiss, having arrived in NZ some twenty years previously. she'd met a Kiwi and stayed. An eighty's backpacker who never went home. Today she would be politely but firmly asked to leave - no job, no skills, no future.

Her jewellery was simple but had the hallmarks of craft made with love rather than driven by the market.

Andrea browsed, I talked, and the more interest Andrea showed in the jewellery the more the conversation flowed. 'What other artists would you recommend in the Nelson area?' I asked. 'What are you interested in?' she replied. It was then I remembered the brochure in the car. 'We have quite different tastes, Andrea likes fine work , I like chunky tough stuff'.'

She looked through the brohure and circled three or four studios and galleries one, in particular, she drew my attention to. 'This might interest you, Darryl Frost, he fires his raku ware in a wood fired kiln. An anagama kiln' she added.

Ninety dollars and a quirky pearl necklace laterVerena bad us farewell reminding us to say hi to Darryl if we looked him up. I was hooked. Andrea was less enthusiastic. She thought his work looked like he'd thrown it at the wall and let fate decide the outcome. 'I would not want that in my house'. She was adamant.

In Nelson I found that his studio was an hour out of town on a peninsula off the main road. It was out of the way, Andrea was the navigator, and I resigned myself to reality. quietly storing Darryl as an opportunity missed in my mental journal.

Maybe Verena was on my shoulder guiding me because I was unconsciously being lead step by step closer to Darryl's lair. That afternoon we took a drive to Rabbit Island - neither the wild beach nor the bird filled forest the guidebook enthused about; rather, a windswept muddy beach backed by an ugly pine plantation. Andrea, still navigating, suggested we travel a few ks further to Mapua, a small seaside village with a wharf area, a former cold store and fish maket, an apple store and a harbourmaster's building converted into cafes and gallery spaces.

Darryl's work was at the far end of the "Cool Store Gallery". There were only a few pieces and the proprietor seemed bemused when I asked if she had any more. When I asked about him she was not flattering. 'He'll give you an interesting time if you find him' she said dismissing me. Andrea was even less impressed when confronted by these rough pieces in the flesh. I hinted that his studio was only twenty minutes up the road but to no avail.

Barry Lopez used the anagama story to explore the idea of community and humanity in its simplest and most grounded form. I was beginning to think that my anagama experience was the opposite. The anagama was not bringing people together but generating tension and distress. I needed to be a little more zen and let my desires go; allow my experience to be in the moment, not find every opportunity to feel thwarted.

Relaxed I can be; zen I am struggling with. Later the next day, after a nine hour day of driving, walking a ten kilometre section of the Abel Tasman (National Park) track and three hours at sea, some in a strong northerly swell aboard a small boat (Andrea suffers from sea sickness), we headed home to Nelson.

A sign that Andrea had regained her land legs came half way on the return journey when she suggested we stop briefly at a local art and craft shop. It was pretty awful but it did give me an opportunity to have a quick glance at the map to discover that serendipity was on my side. Kina Beach, Darryl's hideaway, was close by.

'Do you mind if we just do a quick side trip to Kina Beach?' I asked gently. Andrea was exhausted. I was in luck. Her energy for resistance had expended itself.

Darryl's byline is "Playing with Fire". I pulled into his entrance drive and followed it fifty metres to a point where it petered out in a scattering of junk and the remains of old machinery and timber offcuts. Andrea setttled into her seat for a snooze. 'Won't be long.' I said.

A piece of ceramic art slumped over a metal frame formed a letterbox and signage to the entrance. Twenty metres beyond that I entered an open space. On the left was a door to a studio crammed with art pieces. Straight ahead was a series of large sculptures. and behind all this lay the mysterious ten metre long 'anagama' kiln. Darryl was nowhere to be seen. The door to the studio was open. I entered to find myself surrounded by a hundred ceramic sculptures, some two dimentional, most three and all apparemntly inspired by nature and organic forms. Each one exhibited the furious energy of a man possessed of a will to wrestle with his medium in the most physical way imaginable; a series of giant pieces of ceramic art, many of them combined with recycled timber or steel or boulders were located around a large area where pathways wound through a wild garden.

About half an hour later I re-entered the studio. I was intent on a purchase. I selected a semi-functional piece hoping that it might find a comfortable place in the household. Still, there was no sign of Darryl. I gave a blast on his air-horn as suggested at the door; I considered leaving sixty dollars but was unsure of my ability to make a reasonable estimate of its value. Eventually I wrote a note leaving my email address and headed for the car empty handed.

Andrea groaned and surfaced as I opened the door. My ten minutes had turned into an hour. At that moment a tractor roared up the drive and a balding man jumped from the saddle. I met him mid-stride and followed him. I pointed to the piece I had chosen and, to my embarrassment, discovered it was one of only half a dozen in the room which was not Darryl's. He was happy to sell it for his anagama colleague for fifty bucks but I was determined to possess part of Darryl. It was an awkward moment. I had hoped that my anagama connection with the artist would flow; that we would click; that he would invite me to inspect his kiln; that we would discuss the finer points of his artistic vision and that the communal experience of the anagama firing; of spending six days and nights together stoking the kiln with small mountains of forest timber and driftwood would somehow be seamlessly imparted to me through some mysterious and magical process.

I chose a Darryl piece, a mashed up vase form with lumps and cuts and furrows and unexpected colourings intending to buy both his and his mate's as a package; Sadly, when I put them side by side his mate's looked like a poor cousin. I put the cousin aside. 'A hundred dollars for my piece' said Darryl. And that was that.

or some reason I slid it behind the back seat as I got back into the car, out of Andrea's sight.

'Did you buy something?' Andrea asked when we got back to our motel. I looked sheepish and began to unwrap my monster.

Vanuatu 8 Week's End

This Vanuatu story could go on for many more posts such was the fullness of the week. A funeral; a full on tribal dance finale including a Johnson's Baby Powder surprise ending; more taro on my plate than I could carry in a wheelbarrow; and some fascinating conversations - but I'm going to jump to the end and leave you to imagine the missing bits.

Contrasts

The week is full of bizarre contrasts. A delegate arrives wearing nothing but a woven lap lap. He attaches his name tag to the pandanus string circling his waist. No one takes any notice (except me).
My mobile phone runs out of credit. At morning tea we eat french crepes cooked on the open fire and filled with island cabbage and capsicum while a local chief takes my money and recharges my phone via his mobile. He is a 'Digicell' agent. Digicell is the local carrier.

One of my colleagues has, for some inexplicable reason, decided to do his presentation as a Powerpoint. We have spent the past three days in the training room in, at times, near darkness - there is no power, no power-point. He runs a cable the 100 odd metres from the village generator to his laptop. The power keeps cutting in and out. He has no Plan B. It works

In a village proud of its Kastom ways and commitment to Kastom language and Kastom names the chief's 11 year old son is named Zinadine - after the French captain of the succesful 1998 World Cup soccer team. Pentecost is not even a French speaking island.
The building we are sleeping in has a kitchen, bathroom, and flush toilet all plumbed in. Each morning at 5am, one of the young village girls spends half an hour carting in buckets of water from the water tank nearby to fill the large tub we use each day for bathing and flushing the toilet. The plumbing has never been connected nor a pump installed. We flush and wash bucket by bucket. I love it.

I fear I have become one of those tragic westerners who romanticises the simple life of the native. I have fallen in love with this place. I sit on the porch of our concrete accommodation block and gaze misty eyed at the village green - there a young girl in a dress in need of a wash throws a rock at a half inflated soccer ball in a contented game she has made up.

Chickens and chicks and roosters scuttle about pecking at unseen morsels; laughter reaches me from my ni-Vanuatu colleagues who sit and wave at the odd utility filled with locals passing by on its way up or down the one road.

In the Nakamal men lie on benches, snoozing after lunch. They are dressed in the same shorts they have worn all week. Their chests glisten cocoa brown in the filtered light seeping through the woven walls.

Even the singing of Happy Birthday to our admin worker is suffused with island magic. The group sings the song in 10 part harmony, each person following their own melodic path. It becomes a sacred choral piece as they sing it slowly and with deeply felt meaning. I feel tears welling in the corners of my eyes. I join in with a joy I cannot fathom. I hate this song sung every year in such unattractive variations back home. Slow and rich and harmonic, it feels like a hymn.

I am a convert.

Vanuatu 7 Kava

Monday 26 (evening)
The drum sounds its hollow call again. I hear no difference in the rhythm but everyone knows that this heralds dinner. Its 7:30pm. Paul and I accompany out ni-Vanuatu colleagues once more through the entrance to the Nakamal. This time the building hums with quiet activity. Smoke drifts towards the high roof from the three fires. Women busy themselves over steaming pots and among piles of banana leaves. Groups of men sit on the side benches sharing stories. The kava makers continue grinding.

We sit on the slatted bamboo bench on the right hand side of the building and watch and wait. There are about forty people in the building. Half of us are visitors, the rest, our hosts. Time is not of the essence here. My gaze traverses the scene and I become mesmerised by the slow kava ritual in front of me at the men's end of the building.

Outside two young men with long machetes slice and prepare the thin tubers of the kava plant. Each stroke peels away the earth coloured surface to reveal the pale flesh beneath. Inside four or five men sit on the earth floor, each with an oblong shaped wooden tray before them. A small mound of shaved roots sit beside each tray. The kava preparation continues without interruption. In one hand the craftsman holds a clutch of tubers and in the other a grinding tool. The village proudly follows century old traditions in this ritual. The tool is a shaft of coral about ten centimetres in diameter (a natural handspan) and forty centimetres long. It is tapered at one end. This tapered end sits int the cup of the kava filled hand and, one twist at a time from the right hand, grinds the roots to a pulp. These islands are mountains of volcanic rock and ancient coral deposits. It is slow rhythmic work. If kava is a relaxant this ritual is perfectly suited to the task.

I watch the pulp on the tray slowly grow in size. Then watch as water is added to the tray and kneaded to a wet doughy consistency. Finally the maestro takes a half shell of a small coconut, places it on the ground and, wrapping the kava pulp in a spiral of pandanus leaf, pours another cupful of water through the mixture and directs the filtered juice through the pandanus funnel to the cup.

Kava is drunk every day in these villages. Originally used only for ritual purposes to mark the resolution of a conflict or a significant event (marriage, achievement of chief status, death) it now has a central place in the daily life of the men of the community. It's a relaxant and mild hallucinogen. Pentecost kava is reputed to be the best and strongest. Our colleagues have mixed connections to this ritual, and much of it stems from which missionary group held dominance. The Seventh Day Adventists (SDA) eschew alcohol and intoxicants and decline, others only drink at traditional ceremonies, and others are willing regular partakers. I choose to be SDA for the moment.

I am already in a mild state of shock without the benefit of kava. My experience of travels in India and Indonesia in the seventies with associated stomach and bowel disruptions is still fresh in my mind thirty years later. I have premonitions of medical emergencies and dashes to the latrines and the last thing I need is a gutful of a mind altering substance.

As well as my Indian bowel experiences I am catapulted back to Nepal (on the same trip) where I walked alone to a remote village (having left my now wife to her own devices hovering over a squat toilet for two days - she has only recently begun to forgive me) and foolishly shared a joint being passed around a room full of young overland travellers. Anyone who remembers the streets of Katmandu lined with hashish in those years will understand that this was not a gentle local Australian mix of grass clippings and marijuana. This was a potent brew chipped from a block of refined and condensed chocolate coloured 100% madness. I had succumbed to hippie peer pressure. That night I clung to my straw covered bed, tied my foot to my backpack as I resisted the mad urge to walk out of that hut and traverse the ridges of Pokhara in the pitch black. I was not keen to repeat that episode.

I'm not sure why I'm so fearful. In two days I'll look back on this and wonder why it seemed such a big deal. My colleague Gideon promises to keep tempting me. "you haven't experienced Pentecost until you drink a shell of kava." he says. Tonight I decline.

Vanuatu 6 Death

Monday September 26 (evening)

Bong Bong Bong. A drum sounds across the evening air. It's five-thirty. At six-fifteen it sounds again. I know this slit drum with its low throm will call us to the evening meal but no one moves. I am waiting for a sign. My colleagues will call me, I'm sure. Before seven it sounds twice more.

I'm wondering if the cooks are getting impatient with our tardiness. I crawl out from my mosquito net cave to see what is happening. I wander out to the front of our accommodation, pause and take in the scene of clusters of men in quiet conversation and go back to my room. By now it's dark.

Soon, one of my colleagues comes by to explain that the drum announces more than a call to meals. What we are hearing is the announcement of more deaths in the region. The news has reached us through neighbouring villages and, no doubt via the ever-present mobile phone. The drum marks the arrival of this information. It is a mark of respect.

I am told that a big chief has recently died and that the belief is that this will herald a string of other deaths. The big chief, it is held, should not travel unaccompanied into the next life. A wise man, a magic man, who claims to see the fiture says ten people will pass away over the next week. I am a sceptic when it comes to the paranormal, but sure enough the drum will beat out new deaths each day we are here. I lose count.

I am reminded of my parents deaths, both of which held an uncanny sense of timing. My mother's descent into a coma was slow and painful to watch. The dreaded breast cancer had come back to take her years after her masectomy. Though it was inevitable, the timing was unknowable and yet, she seemed to know. In her final hours she held on until all the family had arrived back from holidays and other out of town activities before offering us her last breath; my father, a man who acceded to my insistent urgings and lived two years more than he would have chosen, eventually made his quiet exit two weeks before my long planned overseas trip with my wife.

He was our big chief. He was also a believer in reincarnation so he knew he wouldn't lack company on the other side - requiring none of us to accompany him. He was always such a considerate man.

Vanuatu 5 Mourning

Monday 26 September (late afternoon)

Our plans for the week have been thrown into some confusion as the mother of the project coordinator has passed away. She died as we traversed the blue Pacific. We unpack our bags and create a rudimentary sense of home in our concrete floored room. We don't have any family photos to hang on the wall but with a rearrangement of chairs and the rough bush-built side table it feels pretty good; despite the fact that our tent style mosquito-proof beds dominate the room. It feels like we should be outside under the stars with these contraptions but, as the area has a reputation for sudden heavy downpours, the locals advise against it.

Our colleagues ask us to follow them to the Nakamal. The village has been summoned by a series of simple strokes on a slit drum, a hollowed out log with a lengthwise cut in the top to create resonance. The length and diameter of the log determine the pitch. Our coordinator's mother lies in Port Vila but there will be a Kastom mourning ceremony here this afternoon as a mark of respect for this well known old woman. She was a Pentecost woman (woman blong Pentecost). I am 'man blong Australia' - 'man Australia' for short.

As we approach the entrance to the large unlit building we are greeted by a wailing and crying which sets my teeth on edge. Our group enters quietly with Paul and I at the rear watching for cues as to what is expected. We join most of the group sitting on a bamboo bench sited along the side of the building. As I take my seat, two or three of my colleagues join the mourning with such intensity and suddenness that I am taken by surprise. A moment ago I had been in conversation with them seeking a little advice as to where I should stand, what was the local custom re head-cover etc.

I can remember being intimidated at large Catholic funerals by rows of elderly women, the stalwarts of the church, chanting the Mysteries of the Rosary from the Sorrowful through the Glorious to the Joyful, from beginning to end, for over forty minutes in the lead-in to the funeral of a local 'big man' of the community. But this was beyond that. Their chanting was just a mumble, a burble compared to this.

I see a woman rocking back and forth and swaying as she sobs and presses a handkerchief to her reddening eyes. One of my colleagues is transformed, transported into another state. Other women, and men, close relatives, are also sobbing and convulsing in a deep and shuddering tribute to the deceased. It is an odd feeling. I am a stranger. I have no real emotional connection. I am intent on being respectful, but at the same time I am a curious bystander.

As the keening settles our host Chief John, invites Paul and I to follow him. He leads us through the mourners to a small slightly built woman standing alone. She looks to be in her eighties. Her eyes meet mine. They carry a deep sadness in their brown and still gaze. She extends her hand. John introduces her as the sister of the deceased and she clasps my hand above the wrist and gently holds on. I know this is a moment of introduction and of expressing condolences but we have no shared language. My rudimentary Bislama deserts me. Sori, I say, and wait until I feel her grip relax and we softly let go, our hands sliding apart, the touch exchanging a kindness that my words are not capable of.

John then directs Paul and I to a rough bench-top table occupying the centre of the upper half, the women's half, of the Nakamal. Paul and I have missed the traditional welcome ceremony earlier in the day and this is our combined welcome, introduction and expression of condolence. We are being invited to share this food first. I feel humbled. I should not be given this status, especially given the circumstances, but John is clear. We must eat. I select something from two dishes. On one side of my plate I place a piece of chicken, on the other a rectangle of lap lap, a ground tuber (manioc or yam or taro) mixed with coconut milk, formed into a slab and baked in coals. It's soft and mild, not beyond my Western palate, but an acquired taste nevertheless. The chicken, highly prized I expect, is bony and chewy. In my stay in this and other traditional locations I will never see chicken breast - I wonder if the nation has a population of wingless chickens, chickens whose wings miraculously grow back, as this is the chicken piece served consistently with rice and in other dishes.

I eat respectfully. I eat everything. After a period people begin to drift out of the Nakamal leaving a team of men sitting on the dirt floor hard at work grinding kava roots to prepare kava for later consumption. Kava is a mild relaxant and hallucinogen, a drink consumed by the men as a sunset ritual. The women exit from the top of the building, the women's end ; the men from the bottom, the kava end.

Outside I learn that the older woman I have met is, in fact, Chief John's mother. John expresses his deep and sincere thanks for observing the traditional customs of the village. I also know that kava drinking is part of traditional culture and I will be faced with a decision about participating in this men's business before the end of the evening. I am conscious of being under observation. It's four thirty.

Vanuatu 4 Ataftabunga Village

Monday 26 September

The trip up the range from Sara airport is a demonstration of the toughness of Japanese 4WD vehicles. Standing and hanging on to the cabin rails Paul and I ride in the back of a Toyota utility seeing ahead of us what looks like a path only passable on foot. A brown strip, graded and cleared of vegetation and then left to fend for itself. It looks like my worst efforts at cooking pavlova. Every peak is outstripped by a trough twice as deep, the roadway ahead crumbling and cross hatched with holes big enough to swallow a small car. I stand bracing myself for every ditch, every bump, every certain roll-over as we inch up the path. I am planning my exit as we approach each obstacle. Will I leap left or right?

In the meantime a few locals in the back with us chat and laugh and introduce themselves. One is a young chief, the other confides that he thinks the whole chief thing is a bit overrated. On Pentecost there are a series of rankings that a young man can progress through. If you can provide the required number of pigs and demonstrate your wealth by hosting a big celebration you can get to the next level. The younger one thinks this is a waste of good pigs and money - both of which are hard to come by in a largely subsistence economy.

Forty minutes later we have travelled about ten kilometres and reached the level road which follows the ridge to our village. When we suddenly swerve off the road and pull up on an open expanse of grass I am taken by surprise. A collection of thatched huts are scattered across a plateau, their browns and ochres creating a rich contrast to the deep green of the grass and the surrounding wildness. Everything is in order. Family huts are surrounded by a cleared area freshly raked free of leaves and sprouting recently planted saplings sporting an array of variegated leaves. They appear to be off cuts which have simply been stuck in the ground. If only gardening were so simple back in my tough burnt off back yard in Brisbane.

A series of rectangular mounds marked out by piles of volcanic rock, sit in front of the concrete building which will be home for the next seven nights. I'm told they are burial sites. Someone has had the poor judgment to build this building (a former kava export business) over a pre-existing burial ground.

Inside the blockhouse I inspect the room Paul and I will share. It has two beds, two mattresses and a thin cotton blanket with each. We've been told to bring an extra if we feel the cold. The building has four former office spaces which are now accommodation. There's a pedestal toilet and bathroom at one end of the building and a kitchen beside that. The kitchen has a sink and crockery and a few pots. Everything is plumbed ready for water but there's no power, so a pump has never been a reality; nor is there any high point or tank stand to create any water pressure. Each morning and afternoon, one of the young women of the village will cart a dozen buckets of water from a rainwater tank nearby to fill a large plastic drum in this toilet/bathroom for manual flushing of the toilet and for beautifully simple bucket showers. A thermos of hot water appears every morning in the kitchen for coffee.

There is a large open space which takes up half the building where fifty people will gather to join our community workshop. No power outlets, no light fittings; John supplies us with a battery powered light for each room. Paul and I set about setting up two free-standing mosquito proof tents in our room and move the mattresses off the beds and on to the floor. I text my wife to describe our arrival and paint a fairly basic picture.

She's joining me for a week after this workshop. She wants reassurance that I haven't planned one of my 'challenging' or 'extreme' experiences. She hates sleeping on floors. She's looking for a relaxing week. She wants to be pampered. I assure her that the bungalows I have booked on Efate will be simple but delightful.

I have no evidence for this save the comments of people I've never met on a website I've stumbled across in the week before leaving Australia. In Australian parlance I'm trusting that "She'll be right mate".