Guy Williams

‘I don’t know New Zealand like I thought I knew New Zealand’

I’m travelling the length of New Zealand incredibly slowly. My family is from Dunedin. I was born in Christchurch. I grew up in Nelson, studied in Wellington (OK, ‘‘attended a university’’ in Wellington), and now I work in Auckland. I just have to retire to Kaita¯ ia and I’m done!

(How ‘‘retire in Kaita¯ ia’’ isn’t an official Northland slogan, I will never know. Kaita¯ ia is the perfect retirement location: warm, affordable and drivable. But it’s not drivable enough that you have to visit whomever you’ve stuck up there more than twice a year. Perfect.)

I considered myself well travelled domestically. I’ve done stand-up in every almost town. (Except Whanganui, you lucky buggers). I’ve driven almost every major highway in the country. This is a very unusual brag, but I want to make the point that I thought I knew New Zealand.

My eyes have been opened while I’ve been filming New Zealand Today. It just finished its first season on TV3 on Friday (plug: it’s still available on YouTube and threenow.co.nz), and I admit I don’t think I really knew New Zealand as well as I thought I did.

Making this show, I was forced to walk the streets and meet the freaks. It opened my eyes to a new side of the country. Kiwis really are hilarious people. I don’t think we pat ourselves on the back enough for that. I’ll never forget the man on a motor scooter I flagged down doing 15kmh down the main street of Gisborne.

He told me he was ‘‘heading home from town to do some banking, then I’m going to the beach for a surf’’.

He wasn’t joking, but I was already laughing. He looked at least 60 years old.

I had to be rude: ‘‘I’m sorry but you don’t look like much of a surfer.’’

‘‘Why’s that?’’ he shot back.

I couldn’t stop laughing. ‘‘I assumed you weren’t super mobile!’’

‘‘Oh, I’m doing great,’’ he said, and he jumped out of his scooter as though he’d just been healed by Jesus. ‘‘The only thing holding me back is that I am missing an arm.’’ I hadn’t even noticed that.

I was there to ask locals what they thought of the Mongrel Mob.

He told me: ‘‘They do bad and they do good.’’ ‘‘What’s the good?’’ I asked.

‘‘Helping out in the community,’’ he said. The bad?

‘‘The beatings.’’

The influence of gangs in New Zealand is not something I’d really experienced until this year. I’d covered the bizarre healthy-eating Facebook page, set up by the Mongrel Mob. And it felt like almost everyone I spoke to on the street had a connection to one of the two major gangs in town.

I quickly learnt that while a politician like Simon Bridges promising to be ‘‘tough on gangs’’ sounds good, it’s incredibly difficult in reality.

People explained to me that gangs were a product of a tough environment. If you’re not in a gang before you go to jail in New Zealand you

If you’re not in a gang before you go to jail in New Zealand you probably will be when you come out. Joining a gang is like getting a Koru membership for jail.

probably will be when you come out. Joining a gang is like getting a Koru membership for jail.

Another driving force behind gang membership seems to be poverty, and travelling well off the tourist trail opened my eyes to struggles I’d never seen in New Zealand.

Poverty can be glamorised in New Zealand. We picture the kid from Boy – it’s summer and he’s running barefoot to the dairy. In reality, it’s winter. Not Auckland winter. The central North Island is at altitude and winter is brutal.

And town didn’t look like Boy either. It was like something I’d never seen in New Zealand before. The shops were boarded up. It looked more like what I imagined in Eastern Europe than the North Island.

I think a lot of Kiwis are like me, oblivious to how a lot of our country lives. Ads and television paint a sanitised picture of who we are.

Sometimes my expectations were distorted the other way. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t walk down some towns’ main streets just waiting for racism or homophobia, or a small-town country hick to come out swinging. But I was pleasantly surprised at how awesome most Kiwis are.

They were open, honest, hilarious, and kind.