A camper’s tale
OUT OF MY HEAD
The heavy steel fence lumbers aside. I feel like I’m entering Paremoremo maximum security prison. Here the crims are four-legged, to be kept out rather than in, protecting the native birds in Tawharanui Regional Park’s ‘‘open sanctuary’’, which will be my home for the next week.
There can’t be many bird sanctuaries where you camp beside a postcard beach, then stroll through bush heaving with birdsong. Sybaritic and virtuous – my Calvanistic mistrust of pleasure will be tested.
Even the long-drops are civilised. That’s all you get by way of facilities at the campground, which is divided for some obscure reason into ‘‘Tents Only’’ and ‘‘All Modes’’ areas. No kitchen, no showers, no worries.
I’m in the tent zone, rolling back the years in a little dome gifted by a Canadian couple ditching their gear to fly home. A vacancy at Tawharanui for December seemed the perfect antidote to the metrotising faciitis (soul-eating bug endemic to big cities) contracted during my year of Auckland. The break will refresh mind and body.
Day 1: God, my back hurts. I roll out of the bloody tent and lie determining the posture of least pain. If I squirm onto my front I can curl legs up into a crouch. Careful of the stuffed knees. Now, heave upright. Easy, easy, oh, sweet mother, easy. Yes – we’re standing. Breathe, breathe ...
Kathmandu will sell a camping mobility hoist. Put it on the shopping list.
I must have a word in the ranger’s shell-like about the dawn chorus. The rules say no amplified music, but those birds make an unbelievable racket. You can’t tell me they’re not mic’ed up to a stack of Marshall stadium-rock speakers.
I’m grumpy. My $5 fleamarket stretcher is a medieval torture rack, even with three topper pads, and I have no cuppa for solace after a hat-trick of misfires on the gas cooker front. Everyone offered theirs, and no-one could find it in their stash of camping gear. They did find the gas canisters, though. I have three.
On the way up, I dived into The Warehouse to buy a cheap stove. Elbowing through the herd, I scored the last one at the back of the shelf, but they’d sold out of the canisters to fit it – and my trio won’t. I panicked and fled.
Ah well, cold meals it is until my planned trip to Warkworth midweek. I drink too much coffee anyway. A fast will flush out the tubes.
Hours later I’m sitting in a classy cafe in uber-trendy Matakana, sipping a comfort caffeine. I have been dispossessed of my shady campsite by a huge family of teenagers who moved in next door while I was on a beachwalk.
‘‘Hi, neighbour. Hope you don’t mind,’’ said the cheery matriarch. I smiled weakly.
Another family then sandwiched me from the other side. I admitted defeat, picked up my nylon home, plonked it down across the paddock, jumped in the car and fled 10km for solace.
Readers of fashionable home magazines will be familiar with Matakana, which has gentrified so quickly that you step across open stormwater drains to enter swank designer stores.
The ‘‘covetables’’ have been curated for you in such establishments; your ‘‘furry friend’’ is welcome to enter a nearby cafe; Hula Fitness classes await; children Oliver and Beatrice run wild over the bespoke furniture; you can buy a smoked