Ask yourself this: how has New Zealand changed in the past 20 years? Here are a few random answers: the way te reo is now sprinkled through our conversations, and the many places with Māori names as well as, or instead of, their English equivalents; the popularity of women’s sport; more ethnic diversity, and not just in the big cities; the plague of homelessness; the way the dairy boom transformed the countryside; craft beer; earthquake devastation in Christchurch …
You’ll have to come up with those answers for yourself, because you won’t find much about them in this portrait of New Zealand.
Time for an explanation: in 2003, a London publisher commissioned veteran author Joe Bennett “to paint a picture of New Zealand for readers who hadn’t been here”.
So he packed a bag, stuck out his thumb and hitched his way around the country, describing the places he visited and the people he met.
Twenty years later, he took to the road again, visiting some areas he missed first time around (the South Island north of Christchurch) and updated the text.
So what portrait do we get – one showing New Zealand as it is, or one painted two decades ago? Apparently, it doesn’t much matter: “The New Zealand described in these pages persists,” says Bennett in his introduction. No doubt, but by definition, the added layers that have developed since 2003 are pretty much absent.
And that gap between past and present can be jarring. For example, Aramoana, near Dunedin, is described as the “scene of New Zealand’s largest mass murder”. In 2003 it still was; today, that sad record goes to Christchurch. There’s a claim that this country has never seen itself as a multi-racial society; true once, but hard to credit, given the recent tsunami of immigration. A $495,000 section at Tairua is presented as a thing of wonder; now, it sounds like a bargain. At Waitangi, a man brandishes a Handycam; today, he’d whip out his cellphone. There’s the assertion that we like to think of this – wrongly – as a classless society; I’m not sure we still kid ourselves about that one. And back in yesterdayland, John Mitchell is still the All Blacks coach, and Carlos Spencer has just made the World Cup squad.
If you’re in the market for a look around New Zealand the way it was 20 years ago, with lots of jokes and a bit of an edge, this does the job. I’m not sure the publisher should wait for a bulk order from Tourism NZ, though, to use in its next promotion; Bennett has a keen eye for bleakness, and he finds plenty of it. Nor is he a fan of many of the activities we fondly think of as tourist attractions.
If the present is largely missing from this description of New Zealand, there’s another omission: Auckland. Bennett passes through the Big Smoke twice, on the way north and back again, and doesn’t get out of the car either time. There’s a page of potted description, and that’s it.
There’s no law that says he has to like the place. But if you’re setting out to describe this country, it seems perverse to avoid the place where one Kiwi in three makes their home. Any foreigner relying on this description of New Zealand will feel decidedly puzzled when they set off up Queen St in search of a country last seen 20 years ago.
A Land of Two Halves: A Hitchhiking Tour of New Zealand (Updated edition), by Joe Bennett (HarperCollins, $45), is out now.
