Up, Auckland, and Away

I don't know what I was expecting to feel when I got on the morning bus from Kamo to Auckland on Friday morning. New Zealand, for me, is about the mountains, the lakes, the coastlines, and the Kiwi hospitality – nothing against Auckland, but the city of 1.5 million is none of that. It's a vibrant city, a clean city with a definite beat, but a city that could just as easily be in the United States. So, when I got on that morning bus and made the three hour drive into the heart of the city, I effectively left the New Zealand I came down to see. This, as someone very correctly pointed out to me, is a liminal time, where I'm not really here but not really there, either.

I felt excited. But I felt sad too – I loved the mountains, I loved the lakes, the coastlines, and of course the Kiwi hospitality. But the thing I loved the most was who those things let me become – I don't hitchhike with strangers, I don't sleep in the back of cars, I don't jump out of airplanes. And yet, down here, I did, and it felt right. Now, I'm leaving that. I just hope that that willingness to trust other people, and to believe (no – to know) that this world is a good, exciting place that I'm fully capable of mastering doesn't go away when I go home.

My final adventure in the New Zealand wilderness was to the west coast of North Auckland, to the Waipoua Forest. The rigid, towering kauri trees once covered northern New Zealand, its sub-tropical climate being most suitable for their growth, but their numbers have been drastically depleted. Going through this green space on a road that winds more than a corkscrew is a slight glimpse into what the ancient world might have looked like, before humans tried to tame Mother Earth.

The Four Sisters are four kauri trees shooting up through the canopy of the forest in a tight circle. Don't come on a walk like this expecting to get a picture of yourself hugging one of these giants – the roots grow close to the surface of the soil and are incredibly fragile, so that one too many tourists ignoring the signs on the boardwalk are more than capable of killing one of these magnificent survivors from a time outside of time.

You really have to crane your neck up to see the tops of these things. For a little perspective:

Pretty cool, huh? But as impressive as these trees are, they're nothing compared to Tane Mahuta, the 2,000 year old kauri further down the highway whose name, when translated from the Maori, means “Lord of the Forest.” The largest tree in New Zealand, its name comes from the Maori god Tane, the son of the sky and earth who ended up separating the two and planting the seeds of the world's vegetation. It's one thing to read that it's more than 50 m high and has a girth of 13 m – it's quite another to stand a few feet from its trunk and take in the sheer enormity of it. I was used to seeing tall trees, but I've never seen something this gigantic before.

It would take a dozen of me to wrap around the trunk. You could fit a house in its branches. Jaysus.

I drove back in the afternoon via Dargaville, through intermittent patches of torrential rain and sunshine. The green, rolling country opens up on both sides, a little slice of Paradise whatever direction you happen to look in.

And now, back to Auckland. Back to the city that I flew into nearly 6 months to the day and set out on these shenanigans. Nomads Fat Camel, the hostel I'm staying at until Wednesday morning, is just off Queen Street, a short walk from Base and the SWAP offices.

After I put my bags down and had a coffee, it was off to Britomart, the central bus terminal, to figure out how best to get to Browns Bay and the City Impact Church just north of Auckland CBD, on the other side of the harbour.

I've never been a big fan of those televised talent competitions, but reality TV is popular down here in a big way. As a result, I watched the scattered Masterchef episode, and ending up following the finals of the The X Factor: New Zealand (mostly because it was the least creepy way to follow Ruby Frost). When an opportunity came up to be in the audience for the auditions round of New Zealand's Got Talent, and the dates roughly coincided with when I should be back in Auckland, it was a no-brainer.

This country has a lot of things going for it. Let's see if talent is one of them.

Which is why I caught the bus to Browns Bay and ended up in the queue outside of the lavish, contemporary church. I was expecting pews – inside, it's like a stadium setup, with seating for several hundred and a polished stage, the LCD screen in against the back displaying the glistening New Zealand's Got Talent logo and the signature neon X's dangling from the ceiling (they're about the size of a couch).

The format of the show is pretty straightforward: people, some individuals and some in groups, audition in front of a panel of three pseudo-celebrity judges. If the act is overly heinous (and that happens a bit – they're making a TV program after all, and feelings and dignity aren't a chief concern to a producer), the judges can give them an X midway through – after three X's, the act abruptly ends. If not, they're not necessarily in the clear – the panel gives feedback, and decides if they're going to give a yes or no for the act advancing to the next round. You need a majority of yes responses.

This was the initial round of auditions in Auckland, the second session for the day. Supermodel Rachel Hunter and Jason Kerrison of Kiwi rock troubadours Opshop both returned from last season – the third judge was newcomer Cris Judd.

“Who is that?” The guy next to me asked, taking out his iPhone. “Huh, he's an American. And he used to be married to J.Lo!”

“Wait, what?” I spun around. Shat, I know that name! He totally danced in “Love Don't Cost a Thing!” Oh dear God, please don't tell me I just said that out loud.

He also danced with Michael Jackson before, so whether I consider him an E-list celebrity or not, he probably knows a thing or two about when people bust a move on stage.

If you've ever been to a television taping before, you know that there is a lot of disillusionment that goes on, to create a final, slick product for TV. When the audience claps, there's a decent chance there's a stage hand just out of sight of the camera, edging everyone on. The camera stops between acts to redo makeup and prepare the stage (there was a great comedian interacting with the audience at these times), sometimes having to make slight adjustments between when an act introduces themselves and actually performs.

Before the show even started, the camera did a few sweeps of the audience, doing a mild clap, an enthusiastic clap, a fervour clap, and an ovation, to be edited in later if necessary. Similarly, once the spectacle of the judges coming in and mingling with the audience was finished, they did takes of them all pushing their buzzers with just the producer on stage (they're very loud), just so they would have filler material to use later. So, the next time you see Simon Cowell scowl at some monstrosity on stage, it might just be at a guy with a clipboard who's telling him when to do it.

The talent show took about three hours, a mixed bag of over a dozen acts. That included a kid with diabolo sticks, a few dancers and musicians with acoustic guitars, Japanese drummers, colourful Indian dancers, and a cabaret burlesque dancer that got the dude judges good and flustered.

A lot of the talent was good. Some of it was godawful, exactly the kind of stuff that makes you cringe when you watch it on TV. Poor thing, I got the impression she was a returning contestant, and obviously didn't care that they brought her back just as a joke. Or maybe infamy is just as good as fame, if that's all you can get.

A word on the judging. Last year, I went to a benefit show in St. John's that was hosted by Lynda Boyd from Republic of Doyle. Turns out she's alright when someone is feeding her lines, but when she has to dip into her own imagination, it sounds something like this: “Wasn't that awesome? That band sounded awesome! This is awesome! The talent here is awesome!” By the third act, you wanted to hand her your phone, tell her there's a thesaurus app on it, and have “awesome” typed in the search bar.

The reason I bring that up is because watching the judges come up with a response to some of the acts felt something like that. Some of the acts were bad, but none as bad as the ones who were getting paid to be there. A Michael Jackson impersonator came on and did a dance, and Cris Judd had some meaningful commentary – beyond that, he sounded like he didn't have a clue the whole night. Saying something is cool loses its meaning pretty quickly, so that even when they were singing praises, you didn't know if it was genuine or just because they couldn't think of anything else to say. None of the judges disagreed with one another, but just fed off what the others said – it would have been nice to have seen some original thought. Hopefully when they have to edit it for primetime, they'll be able to make it look like they know what they're talking about.

Actually, it would be an improvement if the producers could just make them look like they're interested in what's happening on stage. A hypnotist invited Cris Judd onto the stage, and he was hesitant to the point where I legitimately thought he wasn't going to go for it – for God's sake, the producers came out and told the audience to make sure they're having fun, but people watching at home are going to see the judges a long time before they fixate on the blurry faces in the background. Same thing for Rachel Hunter. Before each act she introduced, she always said, “I'm excited!” At no point in the evening did I believe that she was excited. I think she would have rather be anywhere else in the world than in Auckland last night.

Huh, I didn't realize the judges did as shitty a job as that until I started writing it. Anyway, it renewed my distrust in the machine that Hollywood entertainment is, and how superficial and fake it is. Thankfully there were some great things on stage – you'll have to watch it when it airs.

The dude and his girlfriend next to me snuck me some fruit snacks and gave me a ride back into Auckland, where I took an evening stroll before retiring, the sounds of a downtown Friday night drifting up from the street.

The hitchhiking, the sleeping in cars, the escape from reality – it's really and truly over now, the concrete the last trail to trod. What a ride it's been – the best thing now is to find a cafe, a flat white, and a flaky mince pie, and think back on the whole thing.

And smile, glad that it happened.

Cheers,

rb