Graeme Hill remembers being on the road and the characters he met

Driving north from Auckland to Whangārei, alone, I had just experienced a strange thing. When it happens, visitors north may go "ooh", but we Northlanders have something else going on. From Auckland north you grind away at unremarkable geography until you begin the ascent of something called the Brynderwyn Hills.

It's a fair white-knuckle climb of hairpin bends and over-eager SUVs bullying past herds of beefy trucks on the occasional twisting passing lane. You're boxed in by bush and bank. Then the instant you roller-coaster over the summit, "IT" happens, in capitals ALL AT ONCE. A visual "Ta-Dah!"

You're suddenly in the air, a huge sweeping bay, Whangārei's strange pointy Heads and its copy-cat pointy islands dotted in the ocean.

Northlanders sigh involuntarily. No matter how hard you grind your teeth and try not to care, you can't help nor hide it. You don't get it. It gets you. I've cried. First loves and mangled youth screenplay from your memory bank as you crest. It's as though the shape of the headland is somehow imprinted on your DNA or nervous system. Maybe it actually is, because like those spooky portraits where the eyes follow you around, Whangārei Heads perplexingly look the same from every angle. Go out and try it.

A gentle, speedy highway welcomes you downward, like a playground slide, into Northland's arms.
Around Oakleigh, because the roads there are long, flat and straight, way in the distance I could see a hitchhiker. I could sum him up a bit during approach. Twenty-something and doing it tough, or so spoke his clothes. Do I pick him up? I'm alone and he could be trouble. Trouble effortlessly avoided by doing precisely nothing but my right foot swapped from the accelerator to brake. I'll take the gamble. He's taking one too.

"Where are you going?"
"Whangārei."
"Sure. Where exactly?"
"Otangārei."
"OOOOOkay ..."

Growing up in that 2nd division city that is Whangārei, everyone knew what Otangārei meant. Fourth division. Poverty, Kiwi-style. Every town has a poorer suburb but Otangārei was notable for its concentration of want, the result of a planning decision to centralise state housing into a small enclave with really only one road in and out. If you weren't from there, you didn't go there much.
In the midst of a seemingly harmless conversation the man was stuck for a reply. He had to declare that he couldn't read or write. No idea at all but was trying.

We drove through town towards Tikipunga but then veered on to that lesser-taken left turn into the lower plain called Otangārei. At each turn he signalled where to go, the street signs meaning nothing. The very last struggle street still had one turn left in it and that road drooped to a dead end.
"Yeah. This is it.".

It had to be. There was nowhere else to go. We were stopped at your typical state job with its statutory half-dead lemon tree and kikuyu grass yard with a malfunctioning gate squeaking on to a concrete path. Short thanks and he's off.

One can't help but try to join the dots but you can be sorely mistaken. I didn't really know anything about my fellow traveller. Maybe life was good in ways popular social metrics can't measure but you'd be mad not to recognise at least a couple of eight-balls in position for him to get snookered by.

That moment when the right foot moved from the accelerator to the brake was driven by something akin to the Brynderwyn Sigh. Compulsory recall. I'd been a hitchhiker too and some of those experiences came to mind from a time before the hitchhiker became an endangered species.

The Roller
Hitchhiking from Whangārei to Dunedin (with one other person for the adventure) is tedious and for the most part unremarkable, but then you see a thing of interest coming off the Auckland Harbour Bridge on to an elegant left-turning multi-lane curve to the shore of Herne Bay, a gleaming silver Rolls-Royce, the vehicle of choice for royalty and despots. Bending my knees towards this glinting machine, spreading my arms out with a pleading "Oh come oooon!" face, I could see its driver laughing. He stopped. Huzzah! My first Rolls experience. How cool is this? Aside from the fat cat's goodwill and a great deal of comfort, it was distinctly … meh. It was like not being in a car. Comfortable as a marshmallow La-Z-Boy. No engine noise. No feeling of thrust or pace. I'm certain it would have washed and dried my undies if I'd found the right button but is that what you want a car to be, an old folks home for forgotten relatives of royalty? I made a fake-face of enthusiasm for the rare experience and then one of genuine thanks as the driver dropped us off about a kilometre from the Southern Motorway.

The Serial Killer
Getting from Te Kuiti to New Plymouth was awful tricky but it was another prestigious, nay, legendary vehicle that eventually stopped. A 1950s Citroen Light 15. The driver was awful quiet throughout. That's okay but I was glad there were two of us, because after hours of no pick-up, we'd decided to girl-bait. I hid in the scrub as my girlfriend thumbed, pathetically, sadly solo. You do what you have to. I shan't forget his crestfallen look as I unexpectedly hedgehogged from behind the roadside shrubbery to ruin his obviously evil plan. Or maybe he was just lonely. Two versus one means it was unlikely we'd be murdered, so let's relax and talk about the car. The Citroen Light 15 is a fantastic thing. It is maybe the very last car to have a running board on its side that you can actually walk on. The gear-shift is in the glove-box. The windshield is openable by a crazy winding gadget. It converts into a helicopter on Halloween. It's totally mad and the last vehicle to defiantly give the fingers to every sensible convention that was to take hold thereafter, like windscreens that don't open. The serial killer took us to New Plymouth and glumly drove on like one of those dejected wolves who never actually get a kill in "nice" nature documentaries. Nice car though.

Yagarna Aarki?
South Island. Kawatiri Junction. Was it six hours or eight? Was it six million sandflies or eight billion? Both of us from the softy North had never before encountered such an entomological attack (but would see worse later at Spirits Bay). This surely can't be happening. There were clouds of the biting bastards, relentless swarms in a crazed North Korean Army way, mindless and determined. You just can't win. Can you die this way? What is "the end" like? Māori and other pioneers must have been through this. How did they find relief? We didn't.

On the edge of madness, zero traffic let alone any pick-up, a grinding noise got louder. It was a van of some sort. We were desperate and the sun was just about down. The hiker thumb was as pleading as a thumb could be. This brick-shaped machine ground past us at about 32km/h and went over the other side of the hill but then the grinding stopped. We chased to where this delicious silence was coming from and the contraption was there. The door opened and a hunched peculiar man, shirtless and angular, backbones pushing out of shiny caramel-tanned skin leaned off his door to yell,

"Ya Garnarki!?"
Sorry, what?
YA GARNAAARKI!!!???
Wherever the hell Garnaaki is, yep, we're going. The sandflies compelled us.

There was an unfriendly dog in the back that smelled strongly of dog-in-the-back. There was an exhaust fume bonus. Rusty, the leather-backed driver was maybe 55 or a worked-half-to-death 25. It was hard to tell. In the front with him were two young women. Denim for both and a cowboy hat for Darlene.

It turns out we were, in fact, garrnarki, which we soon gleaned was legitimate local patois for "Going To Hokitika". The two women were sisters. They're straight into a domestic fight and at one screaming apex we're challenged to take sides.

"Graeme ... didn't you hear she said I was a wanker? Am I a wanker Graeme? Am I?"

Searching for some Jesus-like obfuscating reply, I replied, "Surely, let he who has not wanked cast the first aspersion." Okay, no I didn't. I don't know what I said. I was, however, thinking, "This van could not or would not achieve a velocity of more than about 30km/h so this is going to take a while." We stopped at Murchison.

Toilet … and back in the van. Darlene had brought along several boiled eggs for this occasion. She shelled each one, ate the contents and discarded the shells on to the road. No great harm but this didn't go down well with leatherback Rusty. I quote exactly.

"Pick them up. Y'don't leave eggshells in another man's town!"
"I don't care," mumbled Darlene through a mouthful of dry egg-yolk.
"Pick them up! Y'don't leave eggshells in another man's town!"
"No!"
"Pick them up! Y'don't leave eggshells in another man's town!
"No!"

A minute's silence passed.

"Pick them up! Y'don't leave eggshells in another man's town!"
"No!
Pick them up! Y'don't leave eggshells in another man's town!"

This went on for some time.

"Graeme. Tell her! Tell her to pick them up!"

Oh Jesus. Having been exposed to every shattered nerve of their harrowing relationship, we didn't dare say anything. Rusty, thankfully, at long last gave in, hauled in the ropes and set sail, a little defeated but with a final in-her-face "YOU DON'T LEAVE EGGSHELLS IN ANOTHER MAN'S TOWN!" followed by a quieter "I told you she was mad!" I thought it would never end.

Hours later and deep into the night, we were now apparently in Aarki, where Rusty dropped off the two women in dark Aarki suburbia. He stayed in the van and after a moment of inner contemplation and a roll-your-own, he opened up to us in a very tender manner. "I know their mum. I try to help them out, y'know, but something isn't right with them."

Bless you, Rusty, and thanks. The next day we got a chirpy lift in a campervan over Haast Pass.

Rae's Junction
Oooh. A pub! We "thank-you'd" and stepped into a thick and hot mid-afternoon nor'wester that carried the bleatings of thousands upon thousands of sheep from close, mid-distance and far away. This quadrophonic multi-bleat came from everywhere, and you could smell them.
We'd been told by mates, when in the South, don't say you're Aucklanders. Anywhere but. Entering Rae's Junction pub the normal chat hushed, along with the obligatory turning of heads in a "you're not from round here are ya?" way.

I whispered to my special fellow traveller, "Don't for God's sake order a Steinlager. Ask for a Speights."

"Can I help you?"
"Two Speights please." Then it happened. The joker of the joint broke the hush by belting out,
"SPEIGHTS? Are you from f***ing Auckland? We all drink Steinlager here!"... and the whole musty room erupted in sustained laughter, at our expense, with a constant nagging backing track of "baaa baaa baaaaa baaa baaaaaaaaaa baaa baaaa". It was, in a way, perfection.

Dunedin
Sitting on a bench on George St we nearly forgot why we even wanted to be there. Ah, friends. That's right. One of the most decent folk you'd ever have the good luck to get to know rolls by, David Pine, at that time of the band Sneaky Feelings (latterly New Zealand ambassador to Philippines and Malaysia). There's an impromptu party at his flat in North East Valley in a gorgeous yard made of weeds, broken seating, black and tans, great music, great conversation and a weird dog obsessed with bricks. We need some smokes. There's a dairy up the road. It's the same as any other dairy in the country except for one thing, a large display of fundamentalist Christian "repent or burn" end-of-the-worldly pamphlets with a swirly display thing all its own ushers your way to the counter. Excellent. This is my sort of thing. I grabbed one with a picture of the Challenger Space-Shuttle disaster and a nicely tanned Jesus peering out of the blue sky and asked the dairy guy, "What's all this about?"

"You've seen what happened, haven't you?"
"Erm ... what exactly?"
"The Space Shuttle! DO! NOT! MEDDLE! IN! CHRIST'S! HEAVENLY! REALM!"
"Ooookidokes. Peter Stuyvesant 20s, thanks. Two packs."
"That's 5 bucks."
"Ta."

Now a few paces from the dairy, stuck in a hedge, something caught our eye. What the hell!? It was a mutilated teddy bear. We pried it out. It had been stuck through with great purpose and bound with #8 wire and it had demon's horns protruding from its head.