Frank Greenall: A Winterless tale

Frank Greenall

I'VE recently had a few weeks in the Far North - the place which people who don't live there cannot refer to without prefacing it with "the winterless ... ". But more on that later.

As indicated last week, I was intending to watch the Super Rugby final live from a safe lounge seat, so that meant seeking out a friend with a Sky subscription. I settled on a long-standing rugby-nut compadre with a spare room tucked away in Pukenui village near the Houhora Harbour.

He's a convivial host, and we take our wine tasting duties seriously. But he's got a maddening penchant for posing impossible questions. One of the latest batch was: "If I wasn't allowed to be myself, who would I rather be: Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?"

Well, I'm not exactly in any rush to become the Donald, but on the other hand being Hillary would involve a gender transformation carrying an additional philosophical challenge all its own. I had to weasel out of that one by pleading the hypothetical is a realm only for professional scientists well remunerated for voluntarily overburdening their heads.

There were more: "If I was allowed to watch only one event at the Olympic Games, which would it be?"

"If I was able to transmogrify myself into a famous historical personage, whom would it be?"

"If I could choose to be present at one critical event that changed the course of world history, which one would it be?"

You see? Utterly maddening stuff.

For the historic figure question, for example, the only ones I seemed to be able to come up with certainly did some great deeds, but invariably suffered sticky ends. I tried to wrest the initiative by making my answer conditional on being able to change the real life endings.

But getting back to the Winterless North thing. When I first lived here many years ago I, too, had been suckered by the beguiling phrase. The only times I had spent here previously were summer jaunts, where the day temperatures were always buoyant, the nights enchantingly balmy, and the land awash with bright plump oranges.

I was puzzled, therefore, during the first couple of winters in this supposedly tropical clime to often find myself reaching for the heavy jumper and beanie, or throwing bigger logs on the fire. Sure, it wasn't quite Siberia, but the winters nevertheless were still distinctly wintry.

What had become of the fabled Winterless North? Was it global cooling?

Other chilling evidence mounted. Neighbours down in the valley reported frosts heavy enough to kill young fruit trees. Soon I too was experiencing frost on the deck and ice on the roof. And a few years ago, the same time Auckland had snow in Queen St for the first time in 70-odd years, a local reported a dusting on the Hihi hills _ and Hihi is farther north than Kaitaia!

Just how had this winterless myth emerged, then? Mystery solved. It seems that about mid last century there was a Far North MP by the name of Allen Bell. Mr Bell also happened, for a while, to be Minister of Tourism. And also, just coincidentally, to own several Kaitaia businesses.

In Mr Bell's ministerial zeal for promoting tourism at large, he came to the convenient conclusion there was no better place to start than at home. For those many unaware of the great climactic feature of the Far North - that it wasn't quite so chilly as most other places in winter - Mr Bell's fertile mind made a wee leap of the imagination, and thus the catchy slogan for luring the tourist dollar was born. Great for boosting local businesses. And could he help it if some of them were his?!

People live in hope, and the Winterless North trope endures to this day. As I write this, at mid-afternoon of Monday of this week, in a Far North bush setting, the temperature gauge shows 7 degrees C.

Now if I was allowed to choose only one sun-drenched tropical resort to winter over in, and I had to do so in the persona of an unattached George Clooney, which ...