Our summer’s strange,
Roll out those days of summer. Lazy, hazy and definitely crazy, writes Jonathan Milne.
As a potential tropical cyclone bears down upon New Zealand this week, there are those (Wellingtonians, in particular) who will bemoan a miserable summer. Don’t. For as Aristotle mused (while slapping sunscreen on the skin left exposed by his beach toga): The whole is greater than the summer of fits and starts.
This has been a mad, bad, beautiful season. 2016 was the hottest year in more than a century. And it culminated in a 30cm snowfall at Cardrona Skifield, floods on the West Coast and hailstorms in Nelson.
The New Year dawned and brought with it a weather bomb in Wellington, freak gales in Auckland, drought in Northland, and the inauguration of Donald Trump.
There were highs, and there were lows. Such is weather.
The season started on September 25, the day we turned our clocks forward for daylight saving and summer. The supermarkets restocked the chillers with salad greens and replaced shelves of red wines with sauvignon blanc. And in central Auckland, our photographer Chris McKeen came across a 4-year-old princess named Sophia Williams, pink umbrella aloft, splashing in the puddles left by a wintry downpour.
In sunny Nelson, we sent his colleague Braden Fastier down to the beach to take pictures of families frolicking on the sand. Instead, he cowered in his car as he emailed through startling images of the grey rain smashing against his windscreen. ‘‘Looking for a bit more colour,’’ he emailed. ‘‘If I find a kid running through daffodils, I’ll let you know.’’
In Mapua the following month, Henny van Laanen took a similarly colourful photo: It was all white. It was hail.
And in a small office at Parliament, an MP sat alone beneath a mop of hair uncannily reminiscent of another politician on the other side of the Pacific. Peter Dunne, the leader of the oneman United Future Party, had a plan. He would give back summer to the kids. Peter Dunne was going to shift the school holidays back to February– that, he believed, was when summer really started.
On December 15, astronomers, astrologers and a few asthmatics gazed to the heavens at a large golden orb, the biggest supermoon in nearly 70 years. And in Milford Sound, a few tuatara watched perplexed as the Ovation of the Seas, the largest cruise ship to ever visit New Zealand, motored majestically up the remote fiord. Its visit to Dunedin was cancelled due to a bad weather forecast– as we say, weather brings its highs and lows.
Christmas Day dawned sunny, and the last of the Oamaru Jersey Benne potatoes lined up with the best of the asparagus and the first of the summer’s sweet corn to make for the perfect Kiwi festive lunch.
With the New Year, though, came the wrath of the gods. The thunder roared, the once golden heavens were rent asunder, and the horses and jockeys at the Roxburgh trots got quite muddy.
In Wellington, Paige Kilduff, 13, had been enjoying the Lyall Bay waves with her dad when dark clouds blanketed the sun. The wind tore her surfboard from her hands and hurled it down the beach.
And on the hill above the city, Peter Dunne nodded knowingly. His time had come. Gather round, he murmured, for I am Ra, the sun god.
At the Motueka dragway on January 7, a race car burst into flames. Then in Cust in north Canterbury, the hay bales on the back of a farm truck spontaneously ignited. At Mangawhai, the water tanks ran dry. The townsfolk tapped the fire reserves, leaving the firefighters no water with which to fight their fires.
Angry fires fuelled the protesters at Waitangi, too, as they awaited the arrival of Prime Minister Bill English. Unfortunately, he couldn’t make it, so instead they threw fishing lines off the one-way bridge to the Treaty Grounds as they enjoyed the warm weather that embraced the entire nation.
In sunny Wellington, Peter Dunne considered whether he might be the inspiration for Crowded House: ‘‘Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you,’’ he hummed.
He dialled Mike Hosking’s number: ‘‘Mike,’’ he said. ‘‘I have a dream. I have a dream that my children will one day live in a nation where school and Parliament rise in February, and they can go to the beach when it’s actually sunny.’’
This weekend, Air New Zealand is rushing to fly tourists out of Fiji as a potential cyclone brews. It will hit Fiji first, and then New Zealand could be in for a battering.
Again with those highs and lows ...