Accursed Tourists

This morning, Chris and I provided feedback to the Queenstown Lakes District Council (QLDC) on their Freedom Camping Bylaw. This is the second round of feedback requested. It is a good thing that QLDC asks for feedback, but it is quite a time consuming process to respond to the relatively frequent requests. We responded in the first round of feedback. We were particularly spurred to do so when we found that a verge on the lower part of Coal Pit Road is proposed as a specified Freedom Camping area, because there is a toilet block nearby. The verge is steeply sloping, right by the road, on a blind corner and adjacent to multiple houses. It seems like a really bad place to encourage people to park and wander around.

However, the feedback that the QLDC got initially can’t have been too discouraging, because in the new proposal, Gibbston Community Reserve is still on the books for Freedom Camping. We noticed that all the proposed Freedom Camping areas near Queenstown and Arrowtown and Wanaka have been deleted, but more far flung ones like Gibbston, Glenorchy and Hawea have remained; maybe those are the places with fewer people to protest.

We are not over being heartily sick of hordes of tourists yet; COVID may have stretched time strangely but the scenes of people everywhere is not yet far enough beyond the horizon to have let our psyches bounce back. What people in campervans forget is, although they are only in a place one or two nights, there are hundreds of thousands of such people. So a Freedom Camping site can be constantly occupied all year round. Therefore it would be quite horrific if you lived in a rural area for the peace and solitude and found a Freedom Camping area proposed near your house. And, on that note…

Accursed Tourist…a future glimpse

“Hey Randy, isn’t the view just sooooo beooootiful?” I said. I admit my voice was ringing a little false, even in my own ears. There is only so enthused one can get about looking at the view through a windscreen, day after day. OK, OK. Yes it was me that wanted to come on this holiday. I thought it would be fun. We could see another place, have a break from home, because we were locked down for so long that I knew every little speck of dust that I hadn’t bothered to dust off the dresser.

Randy was dubious. He pointed out all the rigmarole around travel and insurance these days. Not to mention the horrendous cost. I pointed out we hadn’t saved for all those years just to sit on our butts and wait for our money to disappear as inflation runs rampant. Sure, we should have got on with the travel sooner, before the COVID. But later is better than never, so we should take our opportunity and go. And you never know when COVID-20 or whatever will come along.

So we booked to come to New Zealand, the whole 12 hour flight and all. We signed up for a Sani-Tourist package with Maui Rentals. I got quite interested reading about those old Māori stories, how Maui pulled the North Island out of the sea and his canoe turned into the South Island. They weren’t very inventive, those Māori, were they – calling the two islands North and South? Anyhow, we committed to a 2 week trip, which would have been the whole of our annual holidays before we both retired.

We flew into New Zealand in the early morning and it wasn’t all that spectacular. Low green hills and a harbour and a big city. It was a bit cloudy, too. The flight crew made us put weird suits on once the plane touched down, then we were sprayed as we walked into the airport. We were told our luggage would be transported straight to the Maui depot and put into our campervan, we wouldn’t have to touch it. There were a whole bunch of extra forms to sign, non-contact of course. They wanted to make sure we understood we couldn’t get out of the vehicle for any reason. Of course I understood, did they think I couldn’t read? Finally, we got into the campervan, thankfully took our suits off and trundled down the road.

The way it works, you see, is you must be truly self-contained. Our campervan holds 3 days of water and waste at any time and we are booked in at sites that top us up. We buy all our food online through Maui and when we reach a replenishment site the staff put the package into a little hatch thingummy on the campervan with a double airlock door system. We cruise the country from north to south along our designated route, looking at the scenery on the way. Some clever person has designed a system you can put your phone or iPad into and it gets pushed outside the campervan taking pictures without them looking like there is smeary glass in the way.

By the time we got here, down the south end of the West Coast of the South Island, Randy and I were heartily sick of each other. I hadn’t thought how much like lockdown it would be, stuck in a campervan for 2 weeks. Randy apparently had thought about it but he says I didn’t listen when he told me. He is quite the know-it-all a lot of the time so it is possible I was ignoring him when he said it. The mountains and forest and sea down here really are beautiful, but we’ ha’ve seen oodles of mountains, and forests and sea now, and I can’t remember where any of them were.

After we screeched at each other about nothing for the nth time, Randy suddenly wrenched the wheel right and sped us down a side road with a No Entry sign. We aren’t supposed to stop anywhere other than designated campsites but I was beyond caring. There were no vehicles or people in sight as we bounced down the track between towering trees to reach the beach. The huge sun was slowly settling into the sea on the orange horizon. The cobbly beach stretched endlessly away in both directions. The trees showed where the prevailing wind comes from, sloping steeply up and away from the beach. “I guess we are stopping here” I said. “Guess we are” Randy replied.

We cooked and ate our dinner watching the last of the pink light fade from the sky. Then I went to pull down the blinds and saw the closed gate behind our campervan. When did that happen? It’s a big gate in a big fence. I hadn’t noticed the fence when we drove through – is cleverly disguised by vegetation. “Randy, did you notice that gate?” I asked. Randy wasn’t listening to me, as usual. He was staring at something outside the vehicle. A group of people were walking along the beach towards us dragging a big log.

The group waled right up to our camper and dropped the log beside it. They don’t look in the window and say hello, they don’t look at us at all. They are a bit unkempt in long khaki tops, black shorts and big, black gumboots with messy their hair. I think they are all men. They head back down the beach and return with another log, which they drop next to the first one. I waved, trying to catch their attention. How can we drive out of here with logs under the camper? Our insurance excess is huge if this thing gets damaged.

By the time there’s a pile of logs beside the camper we were getting worried. If we could have got out to talk with them, we would have. But we couldn’t. That was the deal, you see, the camper is sealed up tight so you need an axe or a crowbar to break out and the camper doesn’t come with an axe or a crowbar on board. We banged on the windows and doors but it didn’t affect the camper and the guys didn’t notice. It was when we see them chopping kindling that we get really worried.

To cut a long story short, I’m recording this message on my phone in the hope it survives the fire, and someone will know what happened. I can’t get a message out because there’s no cell reception here. Tracey, we love you lots and can you please look after the cat, even though he is old, and has no teeth, and needs pills every day. This holiday was a damn mistake, I admit it, but you only live once, right?

One of the guys is lighting the fire with a flaming torch and I can see all the others holding signs that say “f-ing tourists, we hate you”, although some of them are spelled wrong. My vision is getting blurry and it’s hard to breathe. It occurs to me that even frogs in a pot may sometimes leap out before boiled and bite the chefs with their little froggy teeth.