I was just approaching Durie Hill bridge when Georgie dog shot off and started licking a nice young couple who looked like they were doing a bit of sightseeing on the edge of the Awa. The chatterer in me escaped again. I used to interview people for a living so I just started asking them questions.
As it transpires, this young couple from South Africa came to visit a relative in the Rangitīkei and they all came over one day to have a look around Whanganui. The couple fell in love with the place. They went back to South Africa and decided they were going to pack in their jobs and come to make Whanganui their forever home.
So, on the day in question, they were looking around at rentals. (Clearly they must have won some form of jackpot back home to be able to afford our market rentals at the moment.)
Interestingly enough, the reason I gained a new appreciation of our beautiful city that day is that the gentleman had worked in security back in South Africa and his wife was a paramedic but both were going to be working in different fields over here. I learned that day that there are 40 murders every day in Capetown alone. I do love a good statistic so, on the back of that gem I was told, I checked out how many in the whole country each day: 82. Ye Gods and little fishes.
So there we are standing with nature and they are laughing about the fact that they still forget that they can drive without locking themselves in their car so they can’t get car-jacked at stop lights (it’s prolific in South Africa). All we have to worry about here is the odd window washer who has a bottle of water and a squeegee. I think paramedics are superheroes and I asked the woman why she wasn’t going to do that over here. She explained that when you are used to the level of murders they got over there on a daily basis, it could potentially be a little tame. Joan’s acute angina isn’t going to cut the mustard.
It was all a very sobering conversation really but I drove off with a renewed appreciation of how we are able to live every day in relative safety. I always love driving back to Whanganui after going away. Especially from flat-as-a-pancake Palmerston North for some reason. It just seems so lush in comparison and far more interesting with all the hills that we have to choose from that we can live on. It’s not much more than five to 10 minutes from everywhere to the middle of town and if you, like I used to do, live on one of the streets off Anzac Parade, you can say “just turn at the octopus” and people will know what you mean. They’ll also know that if you get to the Old Lady in the Shoe you have gone too far.
It’s got a laidback, yet artistic, vibe and, in comparison to a lot of other major centres, real estate is marginally affordable. Chatting with these new Whanganui-ites made me delve into the dark recesses of my memory and remember my first impressions when I arrived here six weeks into my fifth form in 1986. I’d come from Foxton; this was massive in comparison. If I thought that was the big time, my world was blown when McDonald’s opened around the same time. Could life get any better? I worked at Dublin Street Service Station on weekends and then started waitressing at the now-defunct Oriental Restaurant and also did some cleaning for a lady who lived at Quaker Acres. If you wanted to go somewhere, you got on your bike. You could really because everything is quite close.
When you have conversations like I did with this couple, you automatically turn into a tour guide, suggesting things they might like to do. It’s surprising how much you actually know about where you live when it comes to it. They love it so much they are trying to get the remaining family from South Africa to come to live here too - and another nice thing is that here is where they have chosen to start their family.
See what a licky little dog and a chatterer can learn in five minutes? My Whanganui gratitude tank has been refilled.
