Graeme's buddy Ian is like a character
from the outback: dirty flannel shirt, weathered, wide-brim hat
peppered with feathers, and plenty of loud stories about the animals
he's hunted. On his land, there are pigs and deer and sheep, but it's
his father-in-law that has the real farm. Paddocks and paddocks of
deer, and a bunch of them had to be tagged and given an inoculation
to help with worms and all kinds of gross stuff in the stomach.
Through the jigs and the reels, I got
asked to come lend a hand. What that entails is getting in the pan of
a truck driving across some 600 acres nestled in the shadows of the
Remarkables and forming a line with a couple of other guys to herd 60
deer (mostly females, the hinds, but a few male stags as well) from one paddock to the barn at the other end of the farm. It
doesn't take much to make the deer skittish, so all you have to do is
get behind them and start walking – if they change their mind and
start coming back, even holding up a stick is enough to make them
reconsider that.
It took about half an hour of opening and closing gates to bring them to the field next to the barn (a bit longer than usual, since these lot were relatively young and untrained). They couldn't all go in at the same time, but the operation ran like clockwork: one guy moved the herd to one end of the field (have you ever seen 60 deer gallop past you in a line in the autumn sun? You should), another guy was waiting to move them back, and a truck (with a yelping guy in the back, waving a stick) was parked in the middle, to drive forward and break up the line so that a manageable number could be brought into the barn, which was a maze of walls and gates to separate the deer.
Again, something
like clockwork, bringing a few deer into a tiny enclosure, where the
stags got a hose down their throats for a squirt of medicine and
every deer had something like a rivet gun squeezed on their ear to
apply a little circular electronic tag. Some deer weren't fussy, but
others kicked up a real stink – literally on the kicking part,
figuratively on the stinking part.
At the end, they
were brought to another open field, relieved to be let loose. It's a
side of the industry you aren't usually privy to, but as cool as it
was, it wasn't all pretty – while being herded, it wasn't uncommon
for one of these otherwise graceful creatures to try to escape over
the wire fence and thrash their bodies around painfully, and while
waiting to be tagged there were more than a few that were shaking out
of absolute terror. And of course, there's the fact that the deer
aren't being tagged so that the farmer can keep track of where Bambi
is out grazing – it's if the meat has to be traced back to the farm
after the deer has been slaughtered.
If you're going to
be a carnivore, however, that's a fact of life. At least they get to
spend what life they have in the open fields outside of Arrowtown.
The first frost of the year decorated the lawn yesterday, and it was cold on into the mid-morning. The trip to Glenorchy didn't happen after all because of a medical appointment (not mine, I'm still healthy as a horse), but I still headed to Queenstown, to pitch for a few nights in the bustling epicentre of New Zealand fun.
Remember Base, from way back in Auckland? That feels like a long way away now. Anyway, that's where I ended up, back in a dorm room of backpackers. I've totally noticed a change though – a few months ago, the exploits of these kinds of strangers were intimidating and otherworldly. Now, it's a lot easier to relate.
Like
the German girl who hitchhiked to Queenstown from Milford yesterday.
Before, I might have said something like, “You went into the middle
of nowhere on your own, with no ride? Are you insane?” Now, it was
something more like, “Cool, did you have a hard time finding a
ride? Because when I did that same thing last week . . .”
I had the full day to explore Queenstown, which is surprisingly easy to do on foot, since it's so compact. First impressions were pretty much exactly what I thought they'd be: a menagerie of restaurants, bars, sports apparel stores, and booking agencies for bungy jumps, paragliding, boat cruises, and any other extreme sport that a Kiwi mind can concoct. Queenstown is, first and foremost, a business – it's fun (maybe too much fun), but it costs.
That's just the
downtown cluster though – outside of that, you're on the shores of
the lake and in the cradle of the mountains. It's a pretty special
place, and though I wouldn't be able to keep up with the bustling,
border-pushing lifestyle for too long (I've met a bunch of people who
plan to spend most of their year abroad here – I'd think the party
hardy atmosphere would get exhausting when that's all there is, but
what do I know?), I'm glad I get a few days here to soak it all in.
Along the Queenstown Gardens, a forested finger of land sticking out into the lake, there's a nice
walk for a chilly morning, but also a golf course – a disc golf course. Ever hear tell of
it? Me neither, but orthodox is the last thing to stand in the way of
someone from Queenstown. Take a Frisbee, start at a number tee, and
aim for a chained basket further along the path. And it's a
legitimate thing: this is a permanent marked course (New Zealand's first)
with scorecards and everything. I checked that out and had a few
pieces of homemade fudge for lunch (hokey pokey fudge is totally a
thing, praise these Kiwis), not consciously trying to be quirky, just
trying to fit in.
The Queenstown Hill is a grassy knob with a view. 360 degrees of views, in fact, from Lake Wakatipu to the Remarkables to rows and rows of mountain heights trudging on into the distance, wrapped around the Basket of Dreams, a sculpture to mark the millennium. People came to Queenstown for the gold 150 years ago, but it couldn't have taken too long before the early residents got sick of all work and no play and decided to have fun in this awesome playground here at the bottom of the earth.
After
settling in and having some noodles for supper (back to that song and
dance for a few more days), I was at a bit of a loss. Wednesday night
in party city – what to do? The reputation of this city is
something I've been very, very aware
of, long before I even left Newfoundland. And it's like I said
earlier – I wouldn't be able to do it for a long chunk of time, but
when you're only spending a few nights in Queenstown, you might as
well do it right and hit the town. Hard.
I managed to fall
in with a group from the hostel who were going to Cowboys, a
Western-themed spot with a mechanical bull, a paua-decorated shuffle
board table, and giant mugs of beer. I'm not bad at shuffle board, it
turns out, and when a group of strangers you don't want to irk have
only ten minutes to get to the next bar and you have a full mug of
beer . . . well, it turns out I'm not terrible at getting rid of that
in a hurry. There's a right and wrong way to do Queenstown, and
sometimes which one is which isn't what you'd expect.
Altitude, the
hostel bar, was dead, so the bar hopping continued on to Searle Lane,
a bar of polished wood and pool tables. I suppose we could have ended
up at a thumping dance club for some more life, but that ended up
being the cap off to the night, a bit of fun that didn't end up with
too heavy a head this morning.
Do
something different every chance you get – a caveat of that goal is
to do something that scares you every chance you get. There's a guy
who volunteers at the summer camp where I used to work named Art. Art
is the closest thing I've ever met to a crazy old man – a born
again fundamentalist who used to be a heavy drinker and a street
fighter. I've never asked Art if he's ever killed anyone, maybe
because I'm legitimately afraid of the answer. Anyway, I like Art. I
remember, vividly, the day a kid's Frisbee got stuck on the roof of
the bunkhouse, and it came to the dynamic duo of Art and me to get it
down. No need to bother with the ladder – it's up on Art's
shoulders. And as I stood there on the wobbly human stepladder,
barely clinging to the rooftop and slowly getting raised up to that
weird limbo point where you can't turn back but you're not really
sure how to get any further, I turned and called back down, “Art .
. . I just realized I'm afraid of heights.”
Fast
forward to today. Bungy jumping is a Kiwi sport, one of these things
that you just have to do, especially in the adrenaline capital of
Queenstown where A.J. Hackett perfected the idea. The Nevis Bungy
isn't the highest in the world, but it is the highest Down Under –
and I really mean it when I say that 134 m seemed like nothing back
home. Somehow, over the course of a few months, that height has been
enlarged an absurd amount. The highest building back home is less
than half of that
height. The human body has a response system that says to not
jump off of something that big.
And yet, tomorrow morning, that's precisely what I'm doing.
I've heard from
people who have gone skydiving that they would be afraid to bungy,
because of the fact that the airplane height doesn't seem real, whereas with
the bungy jump, you're at the kind of height that you can vividly
imagine the fall. From a comfortable couch, I've tried to imagine
that height, and tried to imagine free falling from it. It makes me a
bit sick, and I think that the five seconds where they count “5 . .
. 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .” might well be the worst five
seconds of my life – at least at the time. I sure hope, springing
back up, that I'll realize it was the five seconds that led up to the
biggest thrill of my life.
Multiple
people have told me to be careful when it comes to the bungy jump. I
appreciate that concern, but literally the only responsibility I've
got is to jump off a 134 m platform.
I'm not sure what the difference is between doing that safely and
doing that unsafely. I'll make sure they have the elastic tied around
my ankles at least.
Assuming
I land everything alright, it's hopefully on to Glenorchy after all
this weekend, and then up to Wanaka. When I made a tentative roadmap
plan at the beginning of April, I pencilled in Wellington for
mid-May. That's still two weeks away, but it's not looking likely,
with more than a few planned stops in between – for the first time
the other day, I ruled something out (spending time exploring Central
Otago) for a good reason, but it still shocked me as soon as I heard
the words tumble out of my mouth: “I don't have time.”
It's
impossible to do everything, and I knew it from the day I stepped on
that plane in Deer Lake, but I'm still realizing it – just make
sure that the things that you do do are worth remembering, rather
than regretting all the rest. That's another goal of mine.
Cheers,
rb
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