An old chestnut from the past

Nostalgia is like an allergy of the mind: it can strike at any time. I was going out for a coffee this morning when I passed by a grand old chestnut tree. I saw a bunch of chestnuts deposited on the ground and was transported back.



My family moved to Germany when I was three. By the time I was 10 they were worried that, without swift intervention, I would become permanently German - not that there's anything wrong with that. Except, of course, from a language point of view. I couldn't really write in English.

So I was exiled to the halls of a Scottish boarding school. Arriving there with little exposure to Britain was, to say the least, rather strange. Rugby and cricket were alien to me.

And there was this savage game called Conkers. Completely bizarre. Boys would drill a hole in a chestnut, thread a string through it and then take turns whacking each other's nuts - if you'll pardon the expression. Until one of them was obliterated. The nut, not the boy. The winner added another kill, another notch.



I wanted in. So Mum and Dad would send me chestnuts from the outside. A sort of jail care package. I'm told they spent hours looking for them and baking them until they were hard and "unconquerable."

The game was deadly serious and quite upsetting to some kids, who would burst into tears when their prized Conker - numbered by the amount of kills to its name - were shattered.

I can't say I ever had a master Conker, but these diversions helped while away the long and basically miserable hours. Apparently they don't go in for Conkers in New Zealand, but I must say I was tempted to see if I could start a club of some sort.

But the whole nut allusions and potentially unending puns quickly brought me back to reality.

The Island of Dr. Matiu (Somes)

Yes, surprise, surprise, it was windy atop Somes Island.


Familiarity breeds contempt, they say. I can't quite admit to having contempt for Matiu/Somes island. But it sits on the bay that I pass on the way to work every day and, therefore, was a little mundane to me. We've taken day trips almost everywhere around Wellington but Somes island because, well, the grass is always greener.

But today we headed out on The Dominion Post ferry to the little spot in Wellington Harbor. And what a fascinating little place it is. It was first discovered by the legendary Maori navigator/explorer Kupe some 700 years ago, who named the place after his daughter Matiu. Since then it has variously been a human and animal quarantine center, an internment camp, an anti-aircraft battery and is now a scientific and historic preserve.

The Department of Conservation is trying to maintain the island as a unique bio-preserve. Visitors have to begin their tour in the "Rat House," where they try to insure that no soil, leafs, and especially rodents make it onto the island - though how many folks are carrying rats around in their backpacks I don't know.

The island is now the only place in the world where the Giant Weta, a truly revolting insect too fat to jump and too small-jawed to bite, can exist in the wild.

During the first and second World Wars, the island was used as an internment camp for "enemy aliens." Coincidentally, there were a couple of Germans on the tour with us who asked, in German, while we were in the "Rat House" whether we were about to be gassed.

Slightly awkward, though not entirely inappropriate. We were informed by the guide that humans in the quarantines were "smoked" to contain infectious diseases. Substances such as arsenic and sulphuric acid were used. Unsurprisingly, some of the smokees didn't make it. There's a little graveyard for them on a bluff overlooking the water. (I guess that ended the problem of infection.)



We were warned that it was birthing season on the island and that there were "vicious" pengiuns, dive-bombing brown gulls and terretorial Canada geese. But the wildlife didn't belong just to the animal kingdom. On the ferry ride we were forced to endure an acting crew - one of whom had, literally, filled in her eyes with some sort of cottage cheese-like substance and was pretending to be blind - doing their play rehearsal in bold and theatrical voices.



Despite it's semi-spooky history that reeks vaguely of Dr. Moreau-like experimentations run amok, the island is dramatically beautiful and affords soul-touching views of Wellington and the Cook Strait. We'd packed a picnic, which was good as there are no facilities other than some pretty basic toilets on the 50-odd acre island.



The Toetoe plant, above, is about the only thing in nature that can rival Morgan, below, in striking photgenic poses. The lighthouse on the island is now automated, but still guides ships into Wellington every night. It's been around for more than 100 years.

Gridiron in New Zealand

I was driving home today, thinking American thoughts, thoughts of home and friends. Lost in a reverie, I heard a familiar sound: the clash of helmets. I looked out of the window and thought, "Oh, a High School football game," and carried on driving. I was vaguely lamenting the fact that Ewan wasn't with me; he always likes to stop and watch sports. Then it hit me: Holy Georgia Bulldogs, an American football game in Wellington, New Zealand!

I swung the car around and pulled over. I was immediately struck by the size of a couple of Maori defensive linemen standing on the sidelines. These guys were huge. I sidled up to a Maori gentleman to find out what, in the name of Dan Carter, was going on here.



He told me that it was a couple of club teams duking it out. The Hutt Valley Spartans vs. North Wellington American Football Club, to be precise. He was a large man, but a gentle soul, with all the peace his size afforded him. He took me through a little history lesson. He began by lamenting that Gridiron took off in New Zealand about 17 years after it did in Australia. (It's astonishing how deeply into the soul of New Zealand the rivalry with their Trans-Tasman brothers runs.)

American football arrived in Wellington in 1987, he told me, playing two years without equipment, which sounds like a painful exercise.

I watched for a little bit. The hits were big and the enthusiasm even larger. It was a little sloppy, to be sure, with a lot of after-the-catch lateralling going on - the Rugby influence, no doubt. I've always wondered why there wasn't more of that in American Football. Then one of the laterals was dropped and the other side recovered. Question answered.

Anyway, it was a nice - and unexpected - little reminder of home on the weekend before the Super Bowl.

Freedom campers get the best views

Call it petty jealousy if you want. Call it grown-up resentment of the young-and-free attitude. Or call it just plain rockin'.

But everywhere I go, whether I've spent $200 a night on a sweet hotel room or whether I'm just running around the most gorgeous bays of Wellington, there they are: The freedom campers. Right beside the beach. Right on the cliff overlooking the oceans. Stealing from Mother Nature.

As much as I sometimes get annoyed by the folks who seem to pole vault from the cheap seats to the penthouse, I have a grudging respect for them: they get the best views at the cheapest prices. And there's nothing wrong with that. I've done my fair share of tramping in my time and am delighted that New Zealand understands the spirit of traveling well enough to not institutionalize and over-regulate the fine art of shoe-string travel; it would be against the culture.

I guess I hate them cos I can't be them, and that's as honest as I can be. But there are pigs that make the resenting a little easier. In addition to these shitty Israelis, two Italian tourists were just sentenced to community service - picking up poop - for being caught defecating on the side of the road. Just don't do that.



There is a growing tension between locals and the travelers in the campers. You're best not to even try pulling up your rent-a-van in a town for the night. Most urban centers forbid it. But there is still a great permisiveness about where you can camp out in the countryside, and I like that.

To be honest, the best views in New Zealand are to be had in a campervan.

You can rent one of these no-muss RVs for less than 60 bucks a day in this country and pull up to thousand dollar views every night. And that's great.

As long as the visitors behave like decent human beings. While it's true that these camper vans are the ubiquitous means of transport around New Zealand, they are also not exactly universally welcome any more.

Messy freedom campers who trundle around the country in sleeper vans without toilets or self-contained utilities should be "shot", the president of the New Zealand Motor Caravan Association said recently. That's drawing the battle lines, to say the least.

So it's fair to say there's a little bit of friction.

You would hope that these tourists respect the whole sense of laissez-faire in New Zealand and don't spoil it for future campers. Because it's a lovely idea: to be able to rent a little camper and head off into the sunset and then pull up wherever you might be when nighttime comes and enjoy the views that New Zealand has to offer.




But, even in the short time we've been here, we've read about some troglodytes who've misbehaved in the most shocking of ways that threaten to spoil it for the rest of the travelers.

To be honest, it doesn't seem to be that much of a problem at the moment. There's plenty of country to go around. That doesn't mean it's always going to be that way, if folks continue to misbehave. I hope they don't. The great joy of New Zealand is the splendid isolation and glory of the country you can just happen across. The government is trying not to over-regulate that experience. But as more and more people head to New Zealand, the risk arises that the Kiwis are going to feel put out and start to control just where visitors can pull up for the night.



People in sleepervans could be fined if they do not stay at campsites, under proposals to combat freedom-camping problems. The point is that, with a little bit of planning on the part of the tourists, New Zealand makes it easy for campervaners to have a good time. Most towns have immaculately clean public facilities. Use them. Most bays or tourist sites have public parking lots with clean restrooms. Use them.

The bottom line is that New Zealand is remarkably tolerant and welcoming of their foreign visitors who wish to become hippies for a couple of weeks. People shouldn't take adavantage of that. Because there would be nothing to soil the spirit and feel of New Zealand like "No Camping" signs every 200 yards - something that could very well happen.

The rules are not onerous, and therefore should be respected. Don't camp in town. Don't crap in people's lawns or on the side of streets. Don't dump garbage in the nature you are here to enjoy. How hard is that?

Freedom camping, as it's called, is permissible in more places than it's not. Respect that. Don't dump garbage where it shouldn't be dumped.

In other words, don't spoil it for other folks. And don't make those folks who are already jealous of you, resent you. 'Cos you wouldn't like me when I'm mad.

Together forever? Kiwinglish 5

A term that, I suppose, is meant to limit confusion, instead confuses the heck out of me. It has tripped me up and left me flat on the floor of embarrassment.

That word is "partner." I know, how hard can that be?

Well, the Kiwis, as I've often pointed out, are a very egalitarian and, generally, open-minded lot. As long as you're not breaking the law, they don't really care what you are up to or with whom. Accordingly, they like to use non-judgmental words for many situations, conditions, preferences, likes or dislikes.

That's all fine and good. But when it comes to the word "partner," which, as it is supposed to, can mean many things, this English-speaking foreigner needed a bit of training.

My run-ins with Kiwi English are nothing new - you can read about them, here, here, here or here - but this word has been fraught with awkwardness. (Sounds like a great name for a teen-aged band.)

Within my first week in New Zealand, I had lunch with a very nice young(ish) couple. She introduced him as "her partner." I stashed that away for later inquiry and we got to know each other a little better. When there was a lull in the conversation I asked them how long they'd been in business together. There was a strained silence. (I am delighted, for once, to have been the inducer, not the inducee of such speechlessness.)

"What do you mean?" she said, with a look I've come to understand a little more now that I know prostitution is legal in the country.

"Well, you know," I said.

"Know, I don't," she said - a tad unhelpfully, I must say.

"You said you were partners." Finally, a laugh. A laugh laced with relief. Not in business - of any sort - together. Boyfriend and girlfriend sort of partners.

A week or so later, I met a much, much older couple. This time he introduced her as his partner. OK, I was smart enough to know that money was not exchanging hands - well at least not in return for favors. Come to think of it, I didn't know that. What I'm trying to say is that I presumed they weren't working together. Oh, never mind. What I did think was that perhaps he had been fairly recently widowed and this was the woman who would bring him back from the depth of despair and make him want to live again.

"Great," I said. "So how long have you been together?"

"Forty-eight years," she said proudly.

Don't you think it's about time you took the plunge and exchanged vows? were my admittedly judgmental and old-fashioned thoughts.

When I asked somebody about them - in a I'm-a-stupid-foreigner-kind of way - they told me that, yes, they had been married for more than 40 years. So why not husband and wife? That's confusing, right?

Just recently I met two guys who introduced themselves as partners. Fair enough. Then one of them added that they were brothers. Oh, I almost blurted out, business partners. That might have been seen as slightly socially incompetent.

Even the official government definition of the word partner is a little vague: "A partner of a principal applicant (for citizenship) is someone who is legally married to, or in a civil union or de facto relationship with, the applicant. A partnership can be between people of the opposite or the same sex. The partnership must be genuine and stable."

OK, so what the hell is a de facto relationship? And, more important, what is a genuine and stable relationship? (And no horse jokes, please.)

I'm not being obtuse for the sake of a giggle. I find this genuinely confusing. I understand that partner is a good democratic word. I think it's great that civil unions carry similar rights to marriages. But it takes some getting used to.

Next time I'm in a bar in South Dakota and a cowboy comes up to me and says, "Howdy, pardner," I'm afraid I won't know what to do.

Circumlocutory, blustery or twisty

The problem with reading English is that there's room for misunderstanding. I always thought it was Windy Wellington. Looking at this, perhaps it's Windy Wellington.

The young man by the sea

I don't know how he died or why. I know only that his memorial overlooks a bay and is well-tended by his friends and family. I've seen their tribute videos to him on-line. He seemed like a life-lover, full of energy and smiles. Now his school tie flaps in the wind on a cliff above Cook Strait. He died two years ago, aged just 18.

He's kept me a strange sort of company these last couple of weeks. His lugubrious little memorial sits atop one of the few climbs along my run around the bays - at just about my turnaround point. So he and I meet when I'm at my most exhausted and weak and always feel like giving up or slowing down. Of course, such thoughts seem feeble in the face of a memorial to a kid who died when he was not yet 20. So he always peps me up, puts things in perspective, and I move down the hill on the other side feeling stronger, but always a little melancholy.

The kid seems to have left a lot of sadness in his wake, judging by the notes and poems left for him still, though he died almost two years ago. (I don't want to mention his name here, not wanting to upset his family.) Every time I've noticed something blown away from the memorial, it's replaced by the time I next come by. I've tried to find out how he died, but can find no newspaper article. And, in the tributes I've read, death is almost always the great unmentioned presence; as it usually is, especially when it claims someone so young.

I can only presume, because of the location of the memorial, that he either crashed his car over the cliff and into the water, or that he drowned in the bay. I could be wrong, and it might just have been his favorite spot. In any event, he is in my mind and in his solemn corner of the world, linked forever to the ocean.

Last Friday, I'd risen in the dark to get a good start on the day and to make time for a long run. As you runners know, some days are harder than others, some days the biorhythms are off and everything is a struggle. Sometimes the darkness is your friend, sometimes it sits like a monster on your back. This Friday was a bad day. I labored miserably. It being around sunup, there was nobody around, nobody off whose energy to feed, nobody to be buoyed by. It was just me and the ocean.

As I rounded the last bay before the climb up to the memorial, I was hurting. And ready to quit. I was dispirited as I headed up the little rise, when something truly unsettling caught my eye.



A trail of damp foot prints, as of someone recently coming out of the ocean shoeless. They were leading up the path to the memorial, fading quickly in the rising sun. I looked around and saw no one. I stopped and listened and heard nothing. I ran more quickly, easily reaching the top - where the foot prints ended. There was no one there.

I can't - or, rather, won't - describe the uproar of emotions in me. I can't - or, rather, won't - describe the stream of thoughts that raced through my mind. I don't believe in the sort of things you're thinking. I know only that I ran home fast and thought strange thoughts of the young man by the sea.

Black Swan - more than a pub name

My fauna knowledge is about as good as my flora knowledge, which is to say almost non-existent.

And yet here I am preparing to talk about swans. The swans in New Zealand confused me to begin with. They are black, when everybody - well everybody not from these parts - knows they are supposed to be white. In fact, in the very old days a Black Swan was proverbial for something that was very rare.

"Squire Rochester-Jones has a Black Swan's chance to win the joust." Or something like that. The point - whatever it is - is lost when there are Black Swans everywhere, as there are in New Zealand. It's like living in a place where there's a blue moon every month.


Black Swans are everywhere when they are supposed to be nowhere.


I know some of you believe that this post topic is merely a pathetic attempt to raise traffic by tagging the name of a new ballet thriller - an oxymoron, surely? - starring Natalie Portman.

Actually, I'd never heard of the movie until I began "researching" Cygnus Atratus.

But, while I'm there, here's a trailer for The Black Swan:

Also coincidentally, I discovered a rather spooky but weirdly wonderful "themed" Black Swan is located in Pocatello, Idaho. The only thing I know about that town is that my friend Ian lives there. I hope he's never been to this Inn; the video for it is just plain creepy. Ian, any thoughts? Please comment below to let us know how bad the place is.

Come to think of it, if Ian has visited this establishment, perhaps this would explain why I haven't heard from him in more than a year. Ian, have you disappeared into the coffin of the Pharaoh? Ian, please leave me a comment so I know you are OK. Ian?

Anyway, back to Black Swans. They seem to have a mystical pull on people's imaginations. There are establishments called "Black Swan" literally all over the world. Most of them are pubs.

That was apropros of nothing. Here's a little book knowledge, for those of you who have remained with me this far: There used to be a subspecies of the Black Swan, known ingeniously as the New Zealand Swan (apparently even before New Zealand was named New Zealand), but it was apparently hunted to extinction by the Maoris.

So they brought in the Aussie Black Swan in the 19th Century. I have no idea how they know this, but most of the large population of Black Swans in New Zealand are descendants of the imports - even though some of the swans have since flown here independently. Somebody obviously has a little too much time on their hands.

Anyway, the Black Swan is as elegant a creature here as elsewhere and, thankfully, a little less aggressive than its Scottish cousins.

This frisky large bugger always used to attack me if I ventured too close to him on Loch Ard. For some reason he thought our loch was his.

Retreat from Taupo

Coffee - a triple shotter - first; decision time later. The weather beat us.


The rain pounded Lake Taupo all night and, by morning, had grown only stronger. Loathing cancellation fees, the thought of simply going home hadn't even crossed my mind.

The coffee shop man kindly informed us that this was the first bad day they'd had all summer. He added, with a knife, that the rains were slated to last for two days.

But there was kayaking to be done; there was fun to be had. Clark Griswold would have been proud of me. Amy, ever the realist, suggested Plan B: a graceful retreat under pressure. "But won't we still have to pay?" I asked. "And if so, shouldn't we just, by God, have fun at Lake Taupo?"

"Well we could ask," Amy said.

What a novel concept. I'm used to hoofing it out back windows and then contesting credit card charges by inventing preposterous stories. Companies are always such sticklers for rules, after all, and we'd been told 48 hours notice for kayak cancellation and 24 hours notice for the hotel.

In my mind we were screwed. If she'd made me call, I would have been aggressive off the bat, perhaps even blaming the operators for lying to us about the weather. Amy just called up pleasantly, explaining the situation (the young children wouldn't want to be wet and miserable, she said, not letting on that it was really the adults she was concerned with). There were giggles and some laughter.

"Good news," she said upon disconnecting. She'd finagled us out of both fees and we received our money back. Wow. So that's how that works?


When Amy started giving us a preview of the entertainment to be had should we have stayed in Taupo, we decided to leave.

We were not alone in our thinking. The Desert Road looked like a mass evacuation before an apocalyptic event - perhaps a volcanic eruption? At one stage we could see cars for three miles ahead of us.

Beaten, we made it home. The rain never looks as bad when seen through ones own windows.

A good day not imagined

This is going to sound like I'm bitching. I'm not. For we were travelling in New Zealand, and that is a no-bitching pursuit. I am merely pointing out that nothing today went according to plan.

We left late, drove through a desert that wasn't, didn't see our second marvelous volcano, and arrived expecting a quiet day by a pretty lake only to see, instead, a jet boat race filmed from above by three helicopters and a crowd that would have done Daytona proud. Oh, and it rained.

And it was a good day. For we were together and giggly and had a long weekend. (Happy Wellington Anniverary, whatever that is, to everyone.)


The Desert Road, a place not as imagined.

Turning northeast out of Bulls we were in new country. Soon we were on the Desert Road, expecting camels and sand dunes and belly-dancing maidens beneath the palm trees of oases. Not so much. It was deserted all right, but in a sort of high-plains bush country sort of way. A powerful landscape, but no camels.

Having not seen the postcard view of Mt. Taranaki - though we were trapped on that impressive volcano for nearly eight hours, we were looking forward to seeing Mt. Ruapehu. It is an active stratovolcano. Actually, it is one of the world's most active volcanoes and the largest active volcano in New Zealand. Despite being around 9,000 feet, we saw only its very shapely foundation, like kids watching dancers at a wedding from under a table. (I'm not sure that works. I'll let it percolate a bit.)

Not to worry, we were heading for our quiet batch on the beautiful shores of Lake Taupo.

Or not.



Actually it looked like a cross between a The Fast and The Furious movie and some NASCAR-on-water nightmare (without the Budweiser or the funny accents - well, without the Budweiser). The shore was crowded with people watching these power boats shooting around the lake, helicopters in hot pursuit. The noise was staggering, though the below video does not do it justice. There were beer stands and hot dog stands and para-sailers, holes-in-one golf shots onto a fake island in the lake - a loud and rowdy carnival, in other words. Just what we didn't want.



We adapted and recovered, heading to a nice little family friendly spot north of town called Puzzle World. There was a maze there and other calming games and we had fun and now I'm listening to Earl Klugh after a decent meal at The Jolly Good Fellow - my weather channel music, as Morgan calls it - and, despite the rain and the alternative shape of the day, all is well.

And, in the bursts of good weather on the way up, we saw nice things like this:

The party nobody told me about

An early morning boot camp of some sort. People running suicides in the sand at sun-up.


I admit to putting on virtuous airs. After all, I was leaving the house at 5:30 a.m. on a brisk Wellington morning for a run and a bike ride along the promenade.

I never run there during the week, so heading into town I imagined the pleasantness of having the vistas and the morning breezes to myself. What I got reminded me of doors-opening at a Wal-Mart on Black Friday. There were people running everywhere.

It was quite extraordinary. Far from feeling a little superior, I felt judged. These runners, bikers, skaters, swimmers, kayakers, boot campers weren't exactly checking their watches at my arrival - but it was implied.



My sense of self-worth changed. One minute I was feeling like a hard-core training machine, up at the crack of dawn to do two parts of a triathlon. The next minute I'm feeling like the fat kid nobody invited to the party. In more ways than one.

These Kiwis are hard core: It can't have been much above 50 degrees, and yet there were people in the water - one guy not even in a wet suit. There was some sort of boot camp on the beach. Suicides in the sand. Another bloke was running up and down the stairs that headed straight up the mountain. With a backpack on. People were stretching against walls, on benches. Just a few hours before their darker-angeled counterparts were using these same streets for other excesses: mini bottles of Johnny Walker Black and empty cans of beer told the tale of the night people.



It didn't much matter after a while. I joined the party of the limber, not the limbo. This time. I'm sure the view is just as nice at night.

When I was talking about the great armies of exercisers to someone later in the day, they said it was no different in Los Angeles. That may be so. I'm not saying it isn't. But this blog isn't called "Life in the Land of the Long Smog Cloud," so I'm just writing about what I see here. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen anywhere else. Just means it happens here.

It makes perfect sense, of course. The Wellington Bays are gorgeous and a sun-rising view shouldn't be wasted.

And by the time I arrived at work, the virtuous airs were back.

Ten Pound Poms

Long-ago immigrants to New Zealand on a long-ago ship.

I met a fellow Scottish emigrant last night. We marveled at how well we’d both maintained our Scottish accents. We were both lying. He sounded like a Kiwi with an attitude, and I sounded like a cross between a constipated Irishman and a North Carolina hillbilly. Still, we each understood how important the little illusion was to the other.



Turns out we were both born in Glasgow. For a while we danced around the most important subject to our kind – which team did we support. We talked about how much the city had been cleaned up since we left. As an opening shot, I said that even Govan wasn't Govan anymore. Not like in the old days, leastwise.

“Oh,” he countered, “there’s a nice little football team there too.” Bingo, we were on solid ground – both Rangers supporters – the secret handshake of membership completed. Red, white and blue. Not green and white. We could move on to the less important stuff - how long we’d been away from the Auld Country, how we’d ended up at this particular point at this particular time, which clan we belonged to, did we have children.

You wouldn’t want to chat too long to somebody – maybe even come to like them – only to find out they supported the wrong team. I am, of course, joking a little.

Anyway, we spun our tales. By the time we were finished we’d both persuaded each other we even pined for Glasgow a little – a proposition that either one of us would have found hard to believe upon boarding planes that took us to our distant shores. Scotland we missed, but Glasgow had always been a hard and gritty place and difficult to be romantic about.

He told me that his father had travelled to New Zealand while in the services and had sworn to come back to live after he got out, "but no as a Ten Pound Pom."

He moved on, but I had to bring him back. "A ten-tonne Pom?" I was thinking of over-weight fruit for some reason. This, in turn, was funny because the term Pommie for an Englishman was said to have come from Australian rhyming slang where immigrant rhymed with pomegranate. I still prefer the thought that Pohme stood for "Prisoner of Her Majesty's Empire.

"You know, Ten Pound Pommie?" he said, as if I was missing the most obvious thing in the world.

I'd never heard of the post-war scheme (that is not a word with nefarious baggage in New Zealand) under which Australia - and also New Zealand - helped immigrants with their passage if they had a certain skill. Immigrants could travel to Australasia for ten pounds, their children free. (The fare was usually 15 times that amount and prohibitive.) The government would organize jobs, provide housing.

Things didn't always turn out as rosily as advertised. My new friend's father had decided to save up the money for full passage, so that he could do as he wished upon arrival in New Zealand.

Between 1945 and 1972 more than a million Brits left for these parts, and helped their new homes well on the way to boom times in a number of industries.

After a year of residence, these new arrivals could become citizens. Interestingly enough, the new Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was a Ten Pound Pom. Her family made the journey from Wales to try to counter her lung condition.

Not only did I learn about the migration project, but I'd had no idea that a Scostman could be considered a Pom. Nor a Welshman.

The Silver Fern - more than a plant

I'm not a botanist. In fact, at the risk of sounding like a heather heathen, I'm just not that interested in plants.

Still, no blog about New Zealand would be complete without talking at least once about the silver fern. It is the country's iconic symbol, featuring in the alternative flag and in just about everything else - including the name of the highly successful netball team. (No, having already declined to explain the rules of cricket, I'm certainly not going to talk about netball.)

When I first arrived in New Zealand, I thought the silver fern was just like Scotland's bracken. But these plants can grow to 30 feet, with silvery fronds of up to 12 feet. It is everywhere in the nature and the culture of New Zealand. The silver fern was first used as a military insignia during the South African war at the turn of 19th Century.

The fronds unfurl like a lizard's tongue as they grow. Known by the Maori term Koru, this spiral shape of the young frond is a symbol of rebirth, of new life and strength. It is another image that is deeply imbedded in the culture of the land - not to mention T-shirt world.

As you can see from the photos, the silver fern is a magnificent plant and the ultimate symbol of New Zealand. And, as that other famous botanist, Forrest Gump, would say, "That's all I've got to say about that."

New Zealand-Pakistan cricket test

Taking an American teen-ager - all hopped up on "Call of Duty" and other non-stop video games - to a cricket match might seem like an exercise in futility; particularly a test match, an international that lasts five days and more often than not ends in a tie.

Still, it was worth a go.

It began ominously, as we saw people bringing pillows, blankets and books into the ground. They were apparently anticipating levels of excitement considerably lower than a college football game in overtime.

"So where are the food stands?" Morgan asked almost immediately after we had found a spot on the grassy embankment. Good, I thought to myself, I have his interest. He wandered off in search of a steak and cheese pie and I lay back to enjoy the gale-force winds and the gentle chatter of the Kiwi cricket aficionados.

This was the second day of the match. New Zealand had scored 240-plus runs for six on the first day. (Too much jargon? Probably. I'm not even going to begin to explain cricket. There's not really enough space or point.) The New Zealand batsmen came out to finish their first inning and the game was under way.

Morgan shuffled back with a vat of chips. "So how long do we have to stay here?" was his opening gambit. Not precisely the father-son bonding experience I'd been imagining. He saw it more as a sentence to be endured - hard time at that.

But then a guy with a hammer walked past. "Why does that dude have a hammer?" Morgan asked. It being an obviously rhetorical question, I let it go unanswered. "Dad, why does that dude have a hammer?" Apparently not rhetorical, but still unanswerable. As you can see by the photo at right, dude had a hammer.

"I don't know, Morgan, perhaps he works here," was my most informed response. "Well, why's he sitting down over there in the crowd?"

"Can we stop talking about the guy with the hammer, Morgan? You're missing all the action."

"What action?" He had a point. Pakistan had begun by bowling two maiden overs, meaning no runs had been scored. I tried to get him to focus on the grace of the game, the skill of the bowlers, the timing of the batsmen.

"Why's that guy lying on the ground?"

"I believe he's stretching, Morgan?"

"In the middle of the game?"

The bowler was hurtling toward the wicket now. "Watch this, Morgan." We watched. It then became apparent to me that I couldn't actually see the ball being bowled.

"I can't see the ball," Morgan pointed out. An object, obviously, was being thrown, for the batsman ducked and the wicketkeeper jumped and caught something. The Pakistanis all applauded. Great, I thought, an invisible ball. It struck me as something from Monty Python, trying to explain a game with an invisible ball to my already skeptical son. (Due to my brilliant photography skills, you can clearly see the red object in this picture.)

"Do you want more food?" Transparent, perhaps, but it was all I had. The Kiwis had scored three runs at this stage (a decent test score is northwards of 400) and we'd been in the ground 45 minutes.

"No thanks, I'm stuffed." Damn, I was in trouble.

"Let's watch the game for a bit," I said.

Five seconds later: "Dad what two languages do you think are spoken most by bilingual people?" OK, I'll nibble. "Maybe English and Spanish," I offered.

"Yeah, I thought about that, but what about Hindi and English? Or English and French?" he replied.

"Maybe," I said. "Let's watch the game, shall we?"

"What are they doing now?"

"They've stopped for drinks?" I admitted, wincing.

"All of them? In the middle of the game?"

"Yes," I admitted defensively.

"Seems like now would be a good time to leave," Morgan said. If the bloody cricketers couldn't be bothered to play, he was saying, why the heck should he stick around?

"Yeah, you're probably right."

"We could come back later," he offered as a concession to his old man. "They'll still be playing this evening, won't they?"

"Yes, after lunch and afternoon drinks, they'll still be playing."

"OK, we'll come back then."



As we left the grounds, I took a look around, knowing I would not be seeing it again any time soon. It's a pretty stadium.

The Scots in New Zealand

A Celtic cross on the promenade at Petone, looking over the water to Wellington.


There is much in New Zealand that reminds me of Scotland, the land of my birth.

It can be little, unexpected things, like the smell of the damp wind on top of a treeless mountain; or the sight of old men in baggy woolen sweaters sitting around a fire in a carpeted pub, their wind-reddened faces in animated discussion; or the sudden smell of vinegar as I pass a Fish & Chips shop.

But you don't have to look hard for traces of Scotland in New Zealand. They are everywhere. Fully a third of all emigrants from the hard days of Scotland headed for New Zealand, and by the mid-19th Century Scots made up a quarter of the population of their new home at the edge of the world.




Like many migrants, they left for a myriad of reasons: religious, financial, to flee oppression. An implosion in the Church of Scotland in 1840, caused by resentment of the entrenched system of patronage, spurred a huge exodus. Many headed to Dunedin, the Edinburgh of the South Pacific, and formed the Free Church of Scotland there in 1843.

(Someone asked me the other day why the Scots would have chosen the south of the South Island with all its rain and wind. Wouldn't they have chosen someplace with a nicer climate than home? he asked. The weather would have been precisely the point, and would have made the Scots feel at home. They don't do well with prolonged spells of sunlight. It spoils the sense of pessimism and fries the pale blue skin. Besides, do you think it's an accident that the Norwegians ended up in Minnesota or the Russians in South Dakota? I think not. No, the climate in New Zealand was just the trick.)


Dunedin was in fact founded by the Scots for the Scots. One of the driving forces behind the city was Thomas Burns, nephew of the famous poet Robert Burns. He helped to found the University of Otago, its architecture inspired by the main building of Glasgow University. Locals like to say that, landwise, Dunedin is the largest Scottish city in the world. They also established the first girls' high school in the whole of the British empire.

But it's not just Dunedin or Invercargill that show their Scottish roots. The Scots spread throughout New Zealand. Street names, place names, shop names - the Scottish references are everywhere. You bump into reminders everywhere: a cairn to Scottish settlers in Kaiwharawhara park; little cemeteries and churches. The Scots are part of the fabric of New Zealand.

The influence became diluted fairly quickly - Gaelic didn't survive long at all - as the newcomers and their children became Kiwis first and of Scottish heritage second.

The Te Ara Encyclopedia notes that in many cases, the distinctive features of Scottish settlers were often wiped out in a generation or two, and replaced with a British identity which consisted mostly of English culture.

Still, there are lots of first-generation Scots making the journey to New Zealand and refreshing the old traditions as well as the accent pool. To this day, Scots make the journey because they feel boxed in by their lives at home or the weather or just want a change. Many of the Scots I've met here are retired military or merchant mariners who like the sea-feel of the country.

The Kiwis obviously respect the Scots heritage. The Scottish rugby team has been scheduled to play most of its games in Dunedin or Invercargill. A nice touch.