Fast Post to the Shipwreck Coast
Gordon Wyeth is easy to spot on the quiet streets of Featherston, not just for his bright red and yellow vest and friendly manner, but also the pronounced ‘Wairarapa Lean’. South Wairarapa locals, who frequent the legendary Palliser Bay coast (the jawbone of Maui’s great fish), display the tendency to lean into the ‘Old Man’ southerly wind. It takes a hardy breed to survive the foam-flecked, wave-lashed nether regions of the North Island. I want a first-hand experience of their private world.
Gordon has devoted ten years to the 220km, six-hourreturn mail run and has the delivery routine off pat. As we trundle down the Martinborough-Lake Ferry Road, often diverting into gravel side roads, he tells me, tongue-in-cheek, that his trusty Toyota van knows the route by heart.
‘It’s programmed like an automaton and guided by a magnetic field,’ he says. Sure enough, the van angles into driveway crossings, stopping mere centimetres from each letterbox. ‘So you just feed out the letters, papers and parcels into the ravenous letterboxes?’ I say, entering into the spirit of the journey.
‘We have letterboxes of every hue and character, from the smartest to dumbest, the prettiest and plainest,’ Gordon says. On the route we spot milk pails that give a musical sound. One disgruntled wooden box snaps back like Arkwright’s grocery store till. Rustic mini-sheds with mould-encrusted boards are common. A nesting thrush shoots out of one like a rocket.
We pull into the charming 1882 vintage Pirinoa Store for a delivery. I notice Gordon the Mailman’s 2013 calendar on