Back to Black

World affairs take a back seat to the war on vermin when incommunicado at the Buller bach.

From the deck of our family bach here in a remote part of Buller, you look out to the distant vista of the local river hugging the far side of the valley until it turns out of sight on its slow run to meet the Tasman Sea.

You also look out on the much closer vista of healthy, regenerating native bush with the sweep of green broken only by the blood red of southern rātā and, just off the deck, the little patch of brown where the corpse of a dessicated rat hangs in the top branches of a kāmahi.

The former, I point out to visitors; the latter, not so much. The rat was already long dead when, a couple of weeks ago, a friend hurled it from the deck but misjudged his aim so the rat landed in the tree.

Nothing has yet dislodged it, so there it remains, a grotesque symbolic pennant waving in the breeze to remind us that in New Zealand’s bush, rats are everywhere. There are those who say, “Remember to look up”. Occasionally, it is best not to.

From time to time, all of us read cheerful stories about local communities that hope they are making headway as part of the Predator Free 2050 goal. But down here, trying to protect from predators the few birds that we occasionally see on our modest plot feels hopeless. Rather like parenting, the thanklessness of the task is relieved by occasional wins – this week the South Island robin, not seen flitting around our driveway for a year, is back.

We lay bait traps, set mechanical traps and lately have added two gas-powered self-setting traps that fire a bolt through a rat’s head when it reaches for the bait, while also clicking over a counter. We arrived after Christmas to find that in one trap, a rat had chewed through the plastic casing holding the counter, which was still on zero.

Meanwhile, a herd of goats parades up and down the driveway as if they are in an A&P show.

In Buller – which roughly comprises the northern end of the West Coast – if you oppose the use of 1080 poison you say so in letters 1m high painted on a piece of corrugated iron in your front yard. If you support it, you shut up. I support 1080 but only until there is something more efficacious. Without wishing to sound like US President Donald Trump, sometimes I think I should build a wall.

Our bach has no means of modern communication. By modern, I mean no landline or postal delivery, much less the internet or mobile phone coverage. I miss my phone only on waking, when I normally check to see whether “anything” has happened overnight.

This is a Cold War hangover. Pragmatic, even back then, I would listen to the radio as soon as I woke because if a nuclear exchange was imminent, I was not going to waste my last hours going to school.

My husband and I go every second day to one of the local hostelries for data and a beer. I note goings-on between the US and Iran and marvel that this time last year, I was living in Washington DC and gripped by every utterance from the White House. Now, it seems so far away, and not only geographically. It impacts not one iota on the rhythm of life at the bach – going for walks and doing the washing in good weather, and lighting the fire and reading when it’s raining.

All too soon, positions will be reversed and I will make the mistake of being bothered, in every sense, by international affairs.

A year ago, I was living in Washington DC and gripped by every utterance from the White House.