4am-5am: Work & Play

By SUZANNE McFADDEN

They are called the parachute people. They live at night - or rather, dance all night and into the daylight, without even knowing the sun has risen.

They carry bladders of cold water on their backs hidden inside little backpacks - that's how they earned the "parachute" tag.

At 4 am they are at the height of their night. Clubs and bars, beneath the ground or with their windows totally blacked out, are now packed and spinning.

"There are two totally different societies out there - the day people and the night people," says one clubber. "The night people are like bats - they sleep all day so they can go back and party hard all night. Every night of the week."

Along K Rd, Ponsonby Rd and High St, queues lead to unremarkable doors in the middle of the night, no matter what night of the week.

The line to get into The Bed - no place for a lie-down - stretches 100m down the street on a Friday. And not every dancer in the line is guaranteed a foot in the door.

First they have to get past human doors, like Solomon Kula.

Mr Kula, a bouncer at the Fu Bar in Queen St, does not enforce a dress code as in the old disco days. He is sizing up the attitude of the punters, wary of those who might trigger trouble.

Mr Kula has stood guard outside clubs and pubs around Auckland for 15 years - and he has witnessed a transformation in the character of the crowd.

Alcohol is almost passe. Dance floors all over the country are lubricated with speed and Ecstasy; the drink is plain cold water. A lot of clubs have only warm water flowing through their bathroom pipes to make sure patrons still spend at the bar.

"In the 80s, you could guarantee that every night someone would want a fight. But that's all changed," he says. "You don't get many people smashed on alcohol these days.

"They take other substances and drink a lot of water to keep going and going. And they're not a bad crowd."

Mr Kula cuts a menacing figure, virtually filling the entire doorway, yet almost everyone who walks out past him calls his name and shakes his hand.

"You still get people who are afraid of us. They walk up to the door, look down at the ground and can't look you in the eye," he says. "I guess it comes from being so big."

The clubs are busiest after 4 am. A lot of night workers - from waiters to prostitutes - are only just arriving. Some do not leave until 10 am, ambivalent about the time, and confused when they wander out into blazing sunlight.

You get the same sensation when you leave the Sky City Casino - where it is always night on the casino floor. It is as though time does not exist in the windowless gaming hall, where gamblers are hypnotised by the gaudy poker Machines and the whirling roulette wheels.

At 4 am on a Tuesday there is standing room only at the blackjack tables. Almost every swivel seat at the 1400 pokies has a bottom perched on it.

Gamblers will lose an average $64 a visit. The casino raked in $131 million from gaming revenue in the second half of last year.

Sky City does not disclose any statistics on night visitors, so it's hard to say when patrons part with their money.

It is just as difficult to distinguish night from day down on the wharf at the Port of Tauranga.

Giant spotlights flood the wharves with brilliant light so ships can be loaded and unloaded swiftly. Time spent at the dock is money.

In days gone by, logging ships, for safety reasons, could be loaded only during daylight - a job which could take days. Now stevedores are on call to work at any hour of the day or night, stacking logs on ships bound for Asia.

Tauranga, with room for 15 ships to a berth, is the largest export port in New Zealand - famous for shipping off logs, bringing in salt and sending kiwifruit to the rest of the world.

Back on the streets, St John Ambulance officers wait for the next callout. There is no pattern to the work they can expect between midnight and dawn.

Last Friday, ambulances from Cape Reinga to Mercer were called out 52 times - half of those to life-threatening emergencies. There were two road accidents, assaults, cardiac chest pains, childbirth and drug and alcohol-related callouts. And that was a regular kind of night.

NIGHT FILE


1. Every night, Lion Breweries makes 250,000 litres of beer at its Khyber Pass Rd brewery. During each hour it pours 7000 litres of beer into kegs and fills 60,000 bottles.

2. Seventeen St John ambulances and one duty watch vehicle are on the road to help save lives between Warkworth and Pukekohe every night between 1 am and 6 am.

3. On average, 113 vehicles travel north over Mangere Bridge between 4 am and 5 am.

4. There are 995 fire callouts between 4 am and 5 am every year in Auckland. That equals 2.72 callouts a night.