Rugby World Cup Road Trip: When keas attack!

No, honestly, the keas did it. Photo / Matt Johnson

One moment of madness and the tour was almost over.

It may be necessary during the course of this entry to mention the good people of the Top 10 Holiday Park in Hanmer Springs. Their tolerance and understanding passes exactly that... all understanding.

Everything had been going so well.

I had made contact with the truckies, the cabbies, the camper-vannies - those modern-day nomads who live and breathe our tarsealed arteries; slumber at night dreaming of keeping left. I'd even started to become one of them. Picked up that point/wave combo from 12 o'clock on the steering wheel truck drivers are so good at.

I was a modern-day BJ & The Bear, only with monkey and man combined into one, all-new... super... monkey-man.

Work was going well, too. IT had given me a log-on and a password - as well as a sexy new pair of high heels for my Avatar. I was happy with the stories the two children I had locked in the Campervan's shower unit were churning out for the paper. They lived on pineapple lumps and drips of fresh rainwater... that hungry, writerly look in their eyes.
Then came the crash.

Not the stockmarket one. The one into a lamp post at the Top 10 Holiday Park in Hanmer.

One old-timer said he thought perhaps it hadn't been on. The lamp. His wife scolded him for a fool. From the safety of their well-lit interior, a van-load of Japanese tourists took pictures. Whispered "banzai."

The good people of the Top 10 Holiday Park in Hanmer stood under their newly leaning lamp post and rubbed their chins. Not together, with their hands. Instructed me to stay calm. The old-timer gave it a rattle: next time, walk to the hot pools young fella. Kea were tremendous, offered to send out a specialist team. Navy Seals with spanners.

I rang the editor.

Told him my Kea Campervan had been attacked by... keas. Also, it had slid forward into the post on the dewy grass. Plus the lamp post had been drinking. Excuses poured out of me the way they pour out of most people: as words. Futile and easily discarded. There was only surface damage. On the bits of surface that were left, anyway.

This morning, outside a service station, a couple of Australians stared at my gaping hole.

Said they had been there. At the Top 10 Holiday Park in Hanmer Springs. Heard me arrive.

On the road, nobody waved.

I had lost my big-rig credibility.

* Follow Matt across New Zealand at his RWC Road Trip blog or on twitter @KeaKaharoadtrip.

* Bid on Trade Me for your chance to win pieces of the Kea Kaha-Mobile, with our WHEN KEAS ATTACK auction.