Morality, eh

You forget about Canada's dark side, eh? Their national image is so friendly and polite and sensible... so it was a proper shock to learn about all this ghastly stuff back in 2013 when we had an unscheduled day in Kamloops because of a freight derailment interrupting the Rocky Mountaineer schedule. Flown in to the town for a hastily-arranged famil, we were shown around by Tara, who took us first to the Wildlife Park, where I was delighted to get up close to lots of their iconic wildlife.

Afterwards, she drove us through the Badlands to show us something even badder, and totally unexpected: the Secwepemc Museum and Heritage Park. We heard the bleak story of how so many thousands of young native people - "Indians" - were uplifted to be "civilised, Christianised and assimilated" and, inevitably, exploited and abused. It's a horrific story, but what makes it so much worse is that it's so familiar. 

I'm relieved to report that nothing along quite those lines happened to Maori here (apart from, er, the Land Wars, the near extinction of their language, the horror of Parihaka, and the fact that even today Maori dominate poverty, poor health and imprisonment statistics), but we only have to cross the Tasman to hear pretty much identical stories about the Aboriginal people. In so many of the countries I've been to, through the Pacific, Indonesia, Africa, the US, indigenous people have been subjugated by colonisers with boundless, and entirely misplaced, confidence in their own superiority. It's hideous.

Though, of course without wishing at all to diminish the awful treatment received by those so-called inferior peoples around the world, I'm wondering now if my pleasure in getting so close to all those poor, incarcerated wild animals was equally wrong.

Happy just to have been in the running. Honest.

Heading into the city for an evening meeting earlier this week, I was a) surprised to see these huge and eye-wateringly expensive container cranes actually in use for once and then b) inevitably reminded, because of the hint of sunset in the clouds behind them, of the start of the best day I've ever had in London.

It was August 2019 and I'd got up early for our arrival on Silversea's Silver Wind into the heart of the city, through Tower Bridge to moor alongside the Belfast. It turned out I'd actually got up an hour too early, by mistake, so I was on deck to see dawn behind the cranes as we passed Tilbury docks - which was total compensation, it was a beautiful sight.

Of course, most things, however prosaic, look dramatic in that light, but as it happened, the entire day that followed was 100% gorgeous and everything looked at its best. That made everyone else be in their best moods too, so it wasn't just the surroundings, but also the overall ambiance that was brilliant. I loved it all. So I'm not letting it get me down that this evening it's the Voyager Media Awards and my entries for the Travel section, which included a description of this cruise (as well as an actual piece of proper reporting) didn't even earn me a finalist place. (This time.)

But at least the Firstborn is in with a chance. Good luck!

Papped!

While I would, naturally, have preferred a better - in fact, any other - angle, it was still a bit of a thrill to see myself on the front page of the NZ Herald* last week. The initial pleased Oh! was, though, immediately erased by a puzzled Huh? For two reasons: my story inside the Travel section was about Waiheke walks, while the photo was of me doing a Segway tour of Devonport back in January to write about for the SST; and I had no recollection of that photo being taken, let alone submitted to the Herald.

The Segway lady had no clue either, so I asked the Herald's Travel editor, who told me, with some surprise since she hadn't (I'm happy to say, given the afore-mentioned angle) recognised me, that it was a stock image randomly taken by one of their staff photographers. Who just happened to be up on North Head at the same time as me. Once she'd said that, I did in fact remember seeing a young man mooching about up there with a big camera as I was gliding around.

So, there's a coincidence for you - and, unlike most of the so-called coincidences I've claimed in this blog, it is an actual, real coincidence and not what is officially termed Frequency Illusion (or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon**). It's cognitive bias - where if, for example, you've just discovered you're pregnant, you suddenly see pregnant women everywhere. They were always there, but it's only now you're one of them that your brain is selectively registering them all. 

The more you travel, the more you notice those places you've visited cropping up in the news, on TV, in conversation and so on - so, being fortunately in that category, that's why I'm always tripping over references to countries, towns, even buildings, that I've been to. It's fun. Even if, sigh, these days it's a bit sad too.

* I would like to disassociate myself completely from that grammatical error in the tagline on the banner.

** While not disputing the phenomenon, I have to note that, having read all the way through the Wikipedia article, I personally cannot find a single link between me and anything to do with Baader-Meinhof. Which is a good thing, of course.

Goghing... gone

Naturally, going to the Van Gogh Live show that came to Auckland recently was always going to remind me of Arles. The show is a multi-screen projection of a good selection of his paintings, from early to last, with a bit of modest animation in some of them. The screens are all around the arena, at different angles and heights, and there are several paintings projected at once, so you have to keep looking around - including on the floor (though clearly not everyone felt that responsibility).

Each set has an accompanying quote from his letters or diary, in a handwriting font that takes a bit of effort to read, and the pace is brisk enough that it's far from a relaxing experience. It's good, though, and his paintings, especially the starry night ones, really benefit from the large-scale, super-bright treatment. It's fairly short, so I watched it twice. Overall, though, the story is sad. Poor man. He sold only one painting in his (self-shortened) lifetime. 

Regular 😀 readers will recall that I went to Arles back in - sigh - 2012, beginning a river cruise there with Uniworld along the Rhone, which finished in Lyon. Arles is where Van Gogh spent his most productive, if dramatic, years, and on a tour around that lovely, and appealingly lived-in, town, we visited a number of the scenes that he painted, most memorably the yellow Café la Nuit. 

Incidentally, the self-portrait with the bandaged ear confuses a lot of people: it was the left ear that he sliced at (possibly off) with the knife, but the picture shows his right ear bandaged, because he was painting his actual mirror image. 

Anyway, it was several days later, when fishing the next clean coffee mug out of the drawer, that I saw it was decorated with one of his swirly cypress paintings. I'd forgotten all about it - and also, where I'd bought it. So that occupied me on and off for a few more days, until the mug reappeared in the morning coffee cycle. I suddenly remembered then that I'd bought it at the National Gallery in London, where I'd gone on a Silversea cruise in - sigh - 2019. 

Shamefully, despite having lived in England for years and going to London many times, it was my first visit to the gallery - it was always one of those 'next time' things. If nothing else, recent events should have taught us not to put stuff off, don't you think? Just made that one in time.

That was a chastening lesson, but I was still quietly triumphant about having remembered where I'd bought the mug. Turns out, though, that all I had to do was turn it over.

Trans-Tasman bubble, yay!

Well, thanks for including Tassie, Scott - but, the Apple Isle aside, you’ve left out some of the best bits. Victoria, yeah - but what about South Australia, and the Northern Territory? I’ve had some of my best Aussie fun in those states. 

Both my home town, Christchurch, and sister city Adelaide owe some of their history to the same dubious character, Edward Gibbon Wakefield (his page on nzhistory.govt.nz begins with the throwaway sentence: Wakefield developed his theories of colonisation while serving a term at Newgate Prison for abducting and marrying a teenage heiress. They don't talk about that in SA when they're telling you, as they always do, that they're not convict-settled.) 

So I felt comfortable there, with the grid road system, heritage buildings, central square, all that - but it's outside the city that I've had the best times. Riding a camel, herding cattle on horseback, glamping, hiking through the Flinders Ranges, sighting an enormous feral cat, swimming with tuna and sealions, spotting koalas and being wowed by cuttlefish on Kangaroo Island, sleeping underground in Coober Pedy, surviving a dust storm, eating sheep's milk haloumi, cuddling a roo joey, being awed by amazing ancient rocks, lying on my back in the grass waggling my legs in the air to - successfully - attract an emu. And people think SA is just about the wine!

And then there's the Territory. Where to start? With Darwin, the frontier town? Japanese bombing, Cyclone Tracy, a-dingo-ate-my-baby court case, NT News headlines, rough and ready citizens. Really, though, it's all about the Outback - gloriously empty mile after mile of red soil and blue sky, and a flicker along the edges where the colours meet. Uluru, Kata Tjuta, Kings Canyon. Aboriginal culture, ancient and modern art, music and stories. 

Even rougher and readier Alice Springs, where the annual Henley-on-Todd regatta involves people holding boats around their waists as they run along the dry riverbed. Opals. Road trains. School of the Air and the Flying Doctor. Stone curlews screaming like murder victims in the night, dingoes howling, bats ticking past like clockwork toys. More water than you'd expect - lakes like mirrors, waterfalls, rivers below towering canyon walls, or between sandy banks draped with untrustworthily sleeping crocs. Barramundi on every menu. 

I could go on, and on, and on. I've had so, SO much fun in the Territory and South Australia. Terrific places to visit, and guaranteed to deliver great stories. Go there! You can, Kiwis, now...

To be not disappointed

 Although I had two pages in the Sunday Star-Times travel section all to myself yesterday, the triumph was somewhat mitigated by the cover story being about the Southern Lights flight. This is a special organised by Viva Expeditions with Air NZ, to fly from (and back to) Christchurch in a Dreamliner on a 10-hour search for the aurora australis. The plane flies in the dramatically-named stealth mode, all external lights off, internal too, so everyone's eyes can adjust and fully appreciate the aurora.

They found the lights quite quickly, and they were pretty spectacular, according to the photos and video. But - and this is a HUGE but - not according to most passengers' actual eyes. The trouble is, our eyes, and especially older eyes, aren't very good at picking up the colours, so what almost everyone saw were swirls of white - the green and pink only showed up via cameras.

Now I would have found that deeply disappointing, to put it mildly. Seeing the aurora is one of my top wants, but to pay all that money, fly all that way and only see white? Nah, Instagram has spoiled me for that. I want proper colour, end of. And if I have to go to Finland, or Norway, or Alaska for my chance to see it, well, that's just icing on the cake. Or actual ice. Whatever. Even if it turns out my eyes can't do the business, at least I've been somewhere interesting and not just been squashed into a plane for ten hours, flying from A to A.

Travel should not be about disappointment, especially when it involves world-famous spectacles or landmarks. I'm happy to report that right up there with cast-iron guarantees of satisfaction (for the locations, tourist throngs notwithstanding) are the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands, Easter Island's moai, the Eiffel Tower and Tower Bridge. There are lots of others. As further proof, most of those listed I've been to more than once, and been 98% thrilled to see them again. And, for today's connection, two of those - Machu Picchu and Galapagos - I visited the second time courtesy of Viva Expeditions. Thanks, Rachel.

Another first for New Zealand

I remember when Daylight Saving was first (spoiler alert: or so I thought) introduced in New Zealand. That was back in 1974, to help with the energy crisis of the time by reducing the demand for lighting and heating. It has been periodically lengthened since then, after surveys indicated the public wanted more of it - or maybe they were just keen to postpone the depressing transition back to standard time in autumn, which happened early this morning, and tonight will inflict darkness upon us at what will feel like an ungodly early hour.

But it turns out, not only has NZ played with DST previous to that, but, the whole concept was invented by a New Zealander! Of course I knew we were first with the jetboat, plastic syringes (sorry, environment), electric fences, powered flight (sorry, Wright Bros), bungy jumping, Zorbs, jogging (thanks for the guilt, Arthur Lydiard), the jetpack, the egg beater, the referee's whistle, Sealegs amphibious boats... the list goes on, honestly. But I didn't know about Daylight Saving.

Back in 1895, Post Office clerk George Vernon Hudson presented a paper to the Wellington Philosophical Society, suggesting changing the clock by two hours in order to give people more free time in summer to pursue outside interests - for him, collecting insects. His enthusiasm wasn't catching, however, and the idea was ignored until 1927, when it was suddenly recognised as an excellent plan, and introduced.

In 1941, because of the war, it was extended to last the whole year, and in 1946 became NZ Standard Time. Eventually, the idea of summer time was revived again and it restarted in 1974 and has continued ever since, with modifications. Meantime, the idea had been suggested in 1907 in Britain, liked by Winston Churchill but rejected by those in power, and finally adopted, following Germany, during WWI. It was actually a little town in Canada that officially started it first, in 1908.

Today some countries do, some don't. And within countries - well, I haven't googled that far but I can confidently report that, in Australia, the Northern Territory is the only state not to change its clocks. How do I know? Because my 1975 epic rail trip itinerary that I booked in Sydney had me turning up at the station in Alice Springs to catch the train down to Adelaide, to find the gate locked, the tracks empty, and the train already departed. Idiot clerk. I was almost out of money and had to live on peanut butter sandwiches for three days until the next train.