Fred Frederikse: You're in Wairarapa now, Dr Ropata

Fred Frederikse

MY TRAVEL companion got itchy feet again and we spent Labour Day weekend in the Department of Conservation campground at Mt Holdsworth, near Masterton, having towed DR ROPATA, our 1962 aluminium caravan, over the Pahiatua track.

I should explain that when we bought the caravan on Trade Me it came with a mock number-plate which read: "You are not in Guatemala now," in small letters above: "DR ROPATA".

In Pahiatua some wag called out: "Hey doc, you're in the Wairarapa now."

Pahiatua has a strip of garden down the middle of its wide main street. We discovered this promenade included a well-established native tree arboretum which looked to have its roots in World War I, and there was a poignant little monument to a one-armed returned soldier who had dived into the water from the SS Ruahine in 1916 to rescue a two-year-old girl who had fallen overboard; neither or them was ever seen again.

The DOC campground had changed a lot since we had last stayed there in a tent 30 years previously. It was now bigger, well tended and "dog friendly". The Pipster loved it and did a bit of socialising with various other mutts staying the weekend too.

Dogs had to be on a leash until the bridge at the start of the tracks leading into the ranges - from there on they could run free, which Pip did. The sweet-scented spring flowers of the lemonwood (tarata or Pittosporum eugenioides) and the glades of unfurling shuttlecock ferns (piu-piu or Blechnum discolor) made the bush seem very fresh.

One of the things I like to do when I travel is sketch. The object is usually the same - I try to capture the genius loci of a place, some view that is distinctively of that place.

On Labour Day Monday morning I rose early and climbed a thousand feet to the Mt Holdsworth View and dashed off three pastel drawings in a row of the Tararua Ranges.

I was sitting in the sun drawing and reminiscing about doing the same in the Sierras near Ronda in Andalusia, Spain, when an old man burst upon my view.

Something about the ranges rising above the treeline had reminded me of the Spanish Sierras, but my reverie was broken by an 80-year-old from Masterton, who had got up in three-quarters of an hour from the car park - it had taken me an hour.

It also turned out he had recently returned from Spain, which was still very hot, he said, and where he had been playing with a "Golden Oldies" rugby team on a rapid bus tour of that country.

Yes, he had been to Ronda. Did the ranges remind him of the Sierras, I asked? Sort of, but the vegetation would be different - thyme, lavender, oleander and mountain oaks and pines instead of what we were looking at. And hotter, much hotter, he informed me before bounding off into the mountain beech forest and back to Masterton for lunch.

We had to be in Whanganui for dinner ourselves so I, too, started down, carefully navigating the rough steps made by tree roots folding around rocks, looking so natural as if to be laid by Japanese Zen gardeners.

I passed a regulation one-child Chinese family on the way up.

With DR ROPATA safely parked in Gonville, I was recovering with a power nap when the phone rang - it was Bruce Jellyman asking if the Whanganui Musicians' Club wanted the Damn Raucous Brass to play at next Friday's club night concert. We sure did.

We already have Callum Gentleman, a "blues/folk noir with the odd dash of country" artist from Auckland booked in, so it looks like another good night for the Savage Club Hall.