"Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world."
Hunter S Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
The Northland of New Zealand is windy and forested, rich with birdsong, devoid of much in the way of other noise, scattered with wooden slat huts, painted with an appealing sort of frayedness at intervals to form tiny villages with dogs, barking curiously at the side of the road, cautiously twitched net curtains and a sense of welcome which somehow manages to mingle excitement with a sort of friendly distrust.
It's possibly the best way to start a journey like this, and the majority of the day passes pleasantly on curving silent roads as we get the feel for the little van which will be our home, and for the flora and fauna which decorate New Zealand.
The views range from dense and darkly lush forests and enormous, ancient Kauri trees, to wide open landscapes dotted with sparsely populated settlements, and beautiful brush ferns which manage to be white, pink and yellow, not just as a collection of separate colours, but subtly, as though, turning your head a different way, they might change from white to hint at mauve, or from yellow to suggest something nearer to ivory.
We stop at the Kauri museum. We are, today, on a little bit of a mission of memory, dedicated to the Mother of my Kiwi friend Roxi (pseudonym), who passed away shortly before we arrived and who I sadly never got to meet in person, but met, nevertheless, through Roxi's anecdotes, pictures and memories. I will call her Beth. Beth has a line of history stretching back to early settlers in the Northlands and, I believe, once worked in the Kauri Museum.
We take a picture outside it, in honour of her.
The Kauri myself itself is beautiful, both in the way it is laid out and in the choices it makes about how it represents its history. The main subject matter, other than the Kauri tree itself, is the early pioneers who settled in New Zealand and proceeded to farm the Kauri timber. There were countless Kauri trees at the time, with timber which is uniquely beautiful, durable and marketable, and producing resin ('gum') which is amber like in colour and quality, and which could be found both on the tree itself and, more usefully, hardened into lumps in the ground having fallen there over hundreds of years.
Both Kauri timber and gum kept the early pioneers in business for quite some time, risking, literally, life and limb to obtain them with limited tools.
Of course what the pioneers did not then realise, is that Kauri wood was even more valuable than they thought, because a Kauri tree, takes literally thousands of years to reach a reasonable size. A hundred year old Kauri is, comparatively, a sapling. By farming them with the enthusiasm they did, they were both increasing the worth of their produce, and doing themselves rapidly out of a job.
Nowadays, less than 14% of the original Kauri forests are retained, with less than that being fully grown trees. The farming of healthy trees is now restricted. Too little, perhaps, too late - but we make new mistakes in each generation and hindsight is a wonderful, but unobtainable thing.
The most recent threat to the trees is rather more biologic, though it has possible been spread by the new 'farming' of New Zealand in the firm if tourism. A disease called Kauri Die Back disease is killing the remaining trees and much effort us being made to cease the spread of it.
What really strikes me about the Kauri Museum though, and the reason that I have such a vivid impression of it, even now, writing this nearly two months later, is the sheer heart of it. The models in the museum, which demonstrate the use of tools or timber techniques or which populate the reproductions of the 'boarding houses' for timber buyers and tradesmen, are all modelled on real people. The first hand accounts you can hear by pressing certain buttons, are narrated by people for whom these are real memories. New Zealand is still young enough (at least in terms of western settlement), for people to trace back their lineage to the settlers' year zero. Real inhabitants of Northland are celebrated in the museum. And it isn't limited to the trees. A lady who collected bottles, is honoured through the housing of her bottle collection in the museum, carefully reproduced so that the bottles are displayed in the same, painstaking and rather beautiful order as they were in her house. A young army captain from the area is celebrated for his thoughtfulness and kindness to his troops. By the time we leave, (and we spend much longer than we had intended), we feel we have been introduced to people, and not simply taught a few facts about trees. In fact the trees are so revered, so ancient and so awe inspiring, it seems that they too, have their own identity, and we visit, the next day, Tane Mahute, an awe inspiringly huge and religiously significant (particularly for the Maori) Kauri tree, which, quite fittingly, even has its own name.
We have one last stop on our little tour in Beth's memory, however, and that is a drink in the pub close to the road named after her relatives, who once owned the farm there. The pub is populated with staff and locals, who look up curiously, though without hostility, when we come in. A game of pool, played by staff and punters, is underway, and has an air of such importance we feel a little apologetic insisting on buying drinks. I order a wine in Beth's honour, though think better of striking up a conversation about the farm or the road named after her, looking at the bar tender's longing glances back towards the pool table and returning the still curious stares of the other drinkers with a slightly nervous smile. We raise a glass to Beth. Remembering this, I realise I have tacked on a new memory, because at the time I hadn't seen this photo, but in my mind the image I drank to is of her beaming smile and the mischievous twinkle in her eyes, beneath a shiny white bob, holding up in one hand an enormous crayfish. Her favourite food. The implication is that she intends, immediately, to eat the whole thing with great gusto.
To Beth. And to the warmth of the Kauri museum, with its understanding that not just the powerful people, but all people, are worth remembering.
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