Shanty town or ‘tribal revival’?
risk. A few weeks ago, he stopped briefly to observe a group of barechested River Tribe men working hard in their garden in the blazing summer sun.
‘‘They appeared to have some organisation going amongst themselves,’’ Rose says.
Earlier this year, river access and a large portion of the car park were blocked by gates erected by the council, following a barrage of complaints from residents. Residents hurried to find solutions, installing compost toilets and rubbish bins.
Then, Golden Bay residents were upset and angry when whole campsites, rubbish and even cars were abandoned as the River Tribe and other freedom campers cleared out for winter, following a severe flood that destroyed their camp and swept rubbish around nearby terrain and into the waterways.
In November, a large, disorderly party in the Reilly St carpark resulted in the council seeking an amendment to the traffic bylaw to block off all vehicle access indefinitely.
Some in the town have tried to chase the River Tribe out with threats and violence, but the camp remains, and some are angry that more has not been done to move them on. One said: ‘‘It’s a joke, nobody wants these ‘river scum’ in our town.’’
‘‘User pays — everyone else pays rates and rent, so why should our taxes pay for them to live for free?’’, said another. **** After some convincing, Murdoch decides to take a quick dip in the river instead of making the trip to town for a shower. He’s had a big night and needs to revive himself.
He leads me through the length of the barren car park, past a lonely wood burner sitting misshappenly in the centre. We move into the cool shade of the trees, and through winding paths bordered by river stones and vegetable gardens.
We pass a dog, and structures made of tents, plywood and tarps, some raised on wooden poles and built between trees. We walk through a communal area with a fire pit. The camp residents are welcoming, all except one who is obviously angry at my presence. It’s so tidy in here now; a shocking contrast to the last time I visited eight months ago, after the flood destroyed everything.
Murdoch hoists himself up on his hut, which is made of a tent pitched on a platform of discarded pallets, and held together by bamboo. It looks out on to the river with a view of the gushing rapids, rolling green pastures and dark mountainous backdrop. I wipe the dust off an old wooden box and use it as a chair, sitting down to face him.
As Murdoch lights a vape and inhales, he tells me it’s finally peaceful again, since the gates went up to block vehicle access to the river. The transient travellers no longer stay in the carpark overnight and leave a mess, and the drunk local ‘‘rednecks’’ don’t drive down in their utes to abuse them.
He’s an ex-punk rocker from the streets of Wellington, so he’s not scared. He doesn’t own a cellphone, and only just sold his car. He’s been living on-and-off in Takaka for years, where he put on dance parties around the top of the South Island. Over the winter, he worked as a painter while he rented a room in a place in town. When his lease ran out, he moved back to the river, and he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
A young man walks into Murdoch’s camp. ‘‘Pete, got any meat for the hangi?’’ he asks. ‘‘Na man, only dog food.’’ Murdoch claims the River Tribe is part of an ‘‘archaic revival’’ and has elements of an emerging ‘‘neotribalist’’ culture. He closely follows the philosophy of Terence Mckenna, who postulated that society will revert back to an earlier form of tribal culture when it finds itself in ‘‘some kind of trouble’’.
‘‘I’ve seen it on the rise. Carbon emissions, consumerism — there’s a collective feeling in the new generation that us humans are just trashing the planet and living meaningless lives,’’ he says.
He admits the River Tribe may appear to be the ones guilty of those things. They’ve made mistakes, but says they’re learning from them.
‘‘Now that we have some organisation going, we are becoming a more tightly-knit group, a more well-oiled machine.’’ He lights his vape again, and cocks back his head to exhale.
‘‘It was mainly the people that would just come through and trash the place. They would just come down here [in the carpark], drink and leave their s*** everywhere, then go. The locals have confused us with them.’’
Murdoch says the carpark at Reilly got out of control last summer, and even they didn’t know what to do about it. It caused division between them, whom they disdainfully called the ‘‘selfcontained road maggots’’ and the people in the carpark the ‘‘highway community’’.
He dangles his bare feet around in the air, white from the dusty gravel road. In the event of flooding, Murdoch says they now encourage new people arriving at the camp to build their structures above ground. He and several other senior residents have taken on leadership roles, handing out rubbish bags and making sure everyone’s ‘‘zones’’ are kept tidy.
They’ve worked hard to instil a sense of community; sharing their beers and cigarettes, and holding communal dinners around the campfire every night. Sometimes, they forage and hunt for their own food. Last night it was paua, and the one before that, wild goat.
There’s a flood policy, a s*** in town policy, a rubbish policy, and a no stealing from town policy. They’ve asked some to move on who haven’t followed these rules.
‘‘No playing Redemption Song, or Stairway to Heaven. We are trying to tell people to keep it original. Don’t just come down with your dreadlocks and guitar and play us that bullsh***, because no one wants to hear it.’’
An ex-street kid from Christchurch, with small tattoo shapes around his cheeks and eyes, walks into the camp and sits down. His tells me his name is Bushy, and that he chooses to live at the river simply because ‘‘it’s peaceful’’.
‘‘I do this all around New Zealand. They’re everywhere, just like this. The one I was last in was hidden away really good, in Taupo, in the bush. It only started with me and three other friends, but it’s probably got more now this summer.’’
Bushy and Murdoch both tell me there’s also another one on the West Coast of the South Island.
‘‘Honestly, it’s way better with the gate up,’’ Bushy says ‘‘because the locals can’t drive down and threaten them. They get away with it because they have generations of families here. They can do it; but we can’t. I’ve had them come down and pull a cricket bat on me with animal blood smeared all over it.’’
Murdoch says not everyone living at the river is looking for a ‘‘free ride’’, maybe just an alternative to the consumer-based society. ‘‘What people don’t know is, how nice it actually is being a part of a small community living at the river.’’
‘‘New people turn up and they see that, and it draws them in. They feel like staying because they feel like they have found some sort of alternative to the current state of the world.’’ When they leave five or six months later, they’re completely changed people, he says.