Around New Zealand

Spending 48 hours in scenic town with a head cold isn’t so bad, Susan Strongman reports

Through the crosshairs of a .300 Magnum, he traced the outline of his neighbour, who sunned himself on a lounger in his backyard. He could see the finest details of the man’s flabby gut and the thin blue veins of his arms. He wondered what it would feel like to pull the trigger.

The room was captivated. Gasps rose from the audience of several hundred grey-haired people clumped together in a hall in Wanaka on a Sunday morning, as American writer David Vann spoke about his childhood.

Vann never shot the man next door, but he did take out streetlights in entire neighbourhoods with his father’s rifle, about which he spoke animatedly to a captivated crowd.

Wanaka’s Aspiring Conversations festival brought a diverse group of writers, politicians, scientists, journalists and academics to the South Island resort town.

Vann led a talk about suicide — he had struggled for 10 years to get his critically acclaimed book, Legend of a Suicide, published. The book is a work of fiction, loosely based around the death of Vann’s father, with a narrative revolving around an ill-fated father-son adventure to an isolated Alaskan cabin.

I had flown down on a Friday morning in late April for a whirlwind visit crammed with talks, visits, and a boat trip to a small island to meet a rare weka. Along the way, I had developed a head cold, and was dosed up on Codral and caffeine.

Flying into Queenstown, I watched the plane’s shadow scoot along a frighteningly steep mountainside as it followed the Kawerau River. DETAILS festivalofcolour.co.nz