Cold it may be, but Kiwis take it all in their stride
The weather has been terrible. The weather has been bad. The weather has been freezing cold and drenchingly wet up and down the country these past few days, leaving New Zealanders to do what New Zealanders do best — go about their business.
Brian Turner lives in Oturehua in the Ida Valley, Central Otago. As one of the country’s finest poets, he writes intimately and sensitively about the great outdoors, the quality of light, the kindnesses and cruelties of nature. He said yesterday: “It’s usually seven and sometimes eight below zero in the mornings.
You want to keep it in your trousers when it’s that cold.”
Excellent advice. He had good tips, too, for evening wear. “I go to bed wearing a balaclava and woolly socks.”
His thoughts turned to a vital subject: Firewood.
“You’d have to be a lazy bugger to spend money on it around here,” said Turner. “I’ve got an eye for it when I’m driving around. A few days ago
I filled up the trailer with falling willows. So I’ve got adequate at the moment,” he said, “but you can never have enough.”
Alan Coull, a lawyer in Cromwell, was also keeping close to the fire. “It’s tried to snow,” he said. “I saw it come over the top of the Remarkables and there were snowflakes in the air. It looked moody and very ominous. I thought, ‘I’ll sit by the fire with a Scotch.’ But that was it. Just a bit of a dusting.”
Further south, the snow was thick on the ground, said Pam van der Watt of the Fouveaux Hotel in Bluff. She drove to Invercargill on Sunday, and said, “That was super scary. The roads were horrid. Everyone was driving very, very slowly. Invercargill was covered in snow.”
Asked if the weather was any better on the Monday, she said she couldn’t really say. “The housekeeper’s been off sick, and I’ve been inside all day, running up and down the stairs, changing the beds and vacuuming the carpets.”
The 6pm TV news was led during the weekend with dramatic pictures of high swells in Westport, and its worrying erosion of the coastal foreshore. “Yeah well all of New Zealand’s eroding away, isn’t it,” said Chris Cooper of Carters By the Sea Motel in Westport. He was very defensive about it. “Yeah a bit of high seas and that. Nothing out of the normal . . . I’ll put the wife on.”
Erica Cooper said, “It’s actually been quite amazing. Extreme weather. Huge seas, with great big tops. But it hasn’t been that cold. Right now? I’ll stick my head out. Hang on.” When she returned to the phone, she said, “It’s raining. Just a bit of rain.”