On the road: Stepping out boldly in Bluff

By TONY WALL

Where can a guy get an oyster around here? We're in Bluff, the oyster capital of the world, but wouldn't you know it - they're all out of the local delicacy.

Apparently it's not the right season; you can get the slippery little devils only between March and August.

This is the start of a two-week road trip from Bluff, where State Highway 1 starts, up to Cape Reinga. It's a chance for me to say farewell to New Zealand before the big OE.

I was sent on the road with little instruction, but a couple of pearls of wisdom from my editors.

One said, "You are not Hunter S. Thompson and this is not Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," and the other, "You are not Peter Fonda and this is not Easy Rider."

So I can report that I found no hallucinogenics in Bluff (just some strong Speights) but I did find the Bluff Ladies Walk Group, average age 60. We run into them at Stirling Pt, the lookout with the signs that tell you it's 15,008km to New York and 6km to Dog Island.

When the ladies hear we are from a newspaper, they giggle like schoolgirls but then become suspicious.

"You're not going to write about our haircuts, are you?"

Haircuts are a big deal in Southland. The province has just made an infamous appearance in the Lonely Planet travel guide as a destination renowned for bad haircuts and checked shirts.

Unfortunately, these women are not in much of a position to dispel the myth. One wears a red and black checked shirt and another admits, jokingly, that she's had her hairstyle since "about 1925."

Every Friday for the past 20-odd years they or their predecessors have gathered at this spot for a stroll along the Foveaux Walkway. They even walk in the snow and hail, they reckon. They tell us their nicknames. There's the Silver Bullet (that's Betty, she's 75 but, boy, can she walk quickly), the Duchess and Mrs Bouquet.

As I stand talking to them I am being eaten alive by the swarms of sandflies. "That's because they like new blood," they tell me ominously.

During a 4km walk with the ladies, they defend Southland from the public relations hammering it has taken over the years.

"There's nothing wrong with Southland. Don't you believe everything that's in the paper," one says.

When another hears I'm a crime reporter, she helpfully points out: "There's no crime around here - all we do is disagree with our husbands sometimes."

After the beautiful scenic walk in perfect weather, it's time for a quiet one at the Bay View Hotel, with its view of the, er, coolstores across the road.

Over a Speights, old-timer Wattie Key tells me about a trip he once took to Auckland.

"I gave a taxi driver two bottles of oysters and he took me everywhere for free."

But he doesn't think much of the big smoke - "too many cars zooming everywhere" - and reckons Northerners have got it all wrong about Bluff.

"A lot of people think there's polar bears and icebergs in the harbour." Maybe not, but that looked suspiciously like a polar bear by the side of the road as we drove out of town.

Up the road in Invercargill, I decide to see for myself whether the bad haircut rumour is true.

Hair 2000 owner Bernadette Pope takes to me with a pair of scissors and some clippers. The result is best left undescribed.

Bernadette Pope reckons Southlanders are trendy when it comes to their hair. They're into extensions at the moment, and even like dreads and blue and green dye jobs.

Resplendent in a new Invercargill haircut we hit the road. Next stop the bright lights of Gore.

Feature: On the road with Tony and Mark