Peter Williams: Sojourn in Central widens appreciation of curling

There's this bloke called Stu. Runs Wedderburn. You know, just over the hill from Oturehua. Gets so cold there in the winter even a brass monkey feels a bit of pain.

Stu's got this mate called Lenny. Reckons he once propped against Keith Murdoch. Yeah, well. Anyhow we're on this rail trail bike ride through Central Otago and we stop a night at Wedderburn. Stu says Lenny wants to take us city slickers curling. You know, that Scottish game on ice, a bit like bowls, what the old codgers play in the cheese ad on the telly.

But I said, hang on, it's summer, it's 25 degrees. Lenny says no problem, because round these parts you go curling anytime.

Seems they've got a flash new indoor rink over at a place called Naseby. So Lenny herds us into his van and off we go. It's about 20 minutes from Stu's place and only about 150 people live there.

But there's this super smart new building on the outside of town. Cost more than $2 million. The World Curling Federation kicked things off with half a million and the local cockies raised the rest. We're told it's the only place in the

Southern Hemisphere just for curling. No skating, no ice hockey, just curlers with their stones, their brushes, their balaclavas and their sliding shoes.

You shouldn't knock it. They play this game at the Winter Olympics and apparently the Korean team comes here to train. Tell you what, Naseby ain't much like Seoul.

When Lenny gets us there, they show us a video about how to play. And there as the frontman is Shaun Becker, local hero. Captain of the New Zealand curling team, went to the last Winter Olympics in Italy and hopes to go to Vancouver next year.

So Shaun tells us how we should play the game. Just slide the stone down the ice, he says, over a mark called the hog line and onto a target painted on the ice called the house. Nearest to the centre of the house wins the end. And so on, for 11 ends.

Seems pretty simple. So down we go to the rink. Jeez it's cold. But it would be, wouldn't it. It's an ice rink. It's just that you're not used to cold, red, runny noses in the first week of March.

Then this joker called Fred explains a bit more. No flashy names down here. Anybody called Sebastian might stand out a bit. So Fred tells us not to walk backwards. Apparently it hurts more when you fall over. He shows us how to brush in front of the stone. That makes them slide easier into the house.

So we have a go. Bloody hell, these stones are heavy. They weigh 20kg each and a pair costs as much as a set of golf clubs. To get it sliding, you have to put the left leg forward, dip down in the hips and then rock back a bit to get some leg drive. This is beginners' stuff. The hotshots, like Shaun, somehow slide down the ice on their front foot, but with their back foot toenails down. Tell you what, you need a bit of flexibility to play this game.

Anyway, I'm hopeless at it. Can't get a stone in the house. But I do find out why the game is called curling. If you give the stone a bit of a tweak when you let it go, it can curl down the ice around the opposition's stone and into the centre of the house.

After an hour or so, most of our stones are like naughty kids on a hot day - outside the house. So we say goodbye to Fred and Lenny takes us back to Stu's place. The next day we get back on the ale trail, I mean the bike trip.

They say life's about experiences. Doubt if I'll ever go curling again, but when I see that joker Shaun and his mates on TV at the Olympics, I'll appreciate what they're doing a lot more.