Seeing my new home for the first time
At the age of 26, Lewis Taylor, an Australian teacher who has been working towards his dream of being a journalist, has started as a reporter at The Timaru Herald. He checks out his new home.
It was a sleepy afternoon at Christchurch Airport. The sun’s rays through the windows coated the arrivals hall in a deep shade of orange.
I was fresh off the plane, a refugee from the perilous ‘‘hellhole’’ known as Australia. And I was in New Zealand, a country I had only really heard about through news of rugby matches and ‘myths’ of snowpowdered slopes. Now it was to be my new home.
I picked up my bags from the carousel, then made my way to the EziCar desk, did the paperwork, and grabbed a set of keys.
Tired from bad sleep the night before, I trudged hastily through the arrivals lounge, eager to get to my car.
The doors of the terminal swung open, and I was greeted with a cool wind.
New Zealand: the land of pavlova, Phar Lap, and Russell Crowe. At least according to New Zealanders. But what would living with Australia’s ‘‘Little Brother’’ really be like? First impressions: The first thing that struck me about New Zealand was how green it is, and how much farmland seems to dominate the landscape.
Only a few kilometres and 10 minutes out of Christchurch, I was among emerald green fields filled with horses, cows, and sheep. The fields were well manicured, and there were lots of hedges. New Zealand seems to have a real love of hedges.
The countryside strikes a sharp contrast with that of Australia; green and verdant, compared with brown and dry.
I drove through country towns, one after another. They appeared a lot more prosperous than those of a similar size in Australia. Functional, happy communities, with people and open shops. They seemed almost the exact opposite of the foreboding, derelict ghost towns I have seen when I have taken the wrong turn off the Pacific Highway back home.
I drove through the countryside at a snail’s pace, undoubtedly causing no end of annoyance to other drivers. At one point, I saw mist clouds swirling around mountains in the distance. The beauty of it left me speechless, and I knew I was not in Brisbane anymore. Arriving in Timaru: Around 6pm, I reached the outskirts of my new home. I had done a little research, and knew it was around the same size as Lismore, the capital city of my home region in Australia. But it seemed a world away from Lismore – prosperous, wealthy, functional.
Lismore had looked like a warzone when I left it two weeks earlier. Recent flooding had left it littered with trash, debris, and waterlogged furniture. Thousands of people’s homes were ruined, including my brother’s. Countless small businesses will never return to Lismore.
It was a sad thing to see a city I had grown up around turned upside-down, and sadder yet to leave it like that. But time and life wait for no one. And New Zealand was calling.
Timaru seemed a prosperous city as I drove in. I was amazed by how clean everything looked, and the beauty of many of the older buildings.
I drove right through Stafford St, the main street in town. Parking my car at number 63, I grabbed my bags and headed into The City Boarding House, my first New Zealand home. Kerry, the manager, showed me around and we chatted about skiing and snowboarding.
I unpacked my stuff, drove off for a beer and some gourmet felafels, before returning and falling into a deep, 12-hour sleep. A quest to Rohan: I woke to a cold, cloudy morning. Going out for a cup of tea on the back deck of the boarding house, I looked out towards the ocean. Beyond the container crates and the cranes in the port behind me, I could see the pale blue of the South Pacific.
There’s something epic about looking out at that ocean, a feeling I have never experienced before. In Australia, America, and Fiji, I have looked at the seas and oceans and imagined the human cities and human cultures across the vast blue expanse.
In Timaru, I look at the pale blue seas and know that, thousands of kilometres distant, lies the icy and windswept continent of Antarctica. No more cities, just ice. And whales, and seals, and penguins. But back to the main mission. There were a few things I had decided I wanted to do before coming to New Zealand. And I only had two days with a car. I hit the ground running, deciding to take a trip to Mt Sunday, aka Edoras, the capital of Rohan, aka the home of those dudes who ride horses heaps in Lord of the Rings Part 2. It was a gloomy and misty day, with more rain predicted.
Keen to see those sights, I persisted nonetheless. The rain and wind steadily picked up as I drove through the morning, but I would not be deterred. I continued driving over unpaved roads and through hillbound valleys, my excitement building as the land around me began to look more and more ‘‘Lord of the Rings’’.
But time dragged on and the rain kept getting heavier. Driving at around 20 kilometres an hour on the unpaved roads, and starting to get a bit uncertain over whether I would see my mission’s end, I eventually decided to stop at Lake Clearwater. It looked like the tourist pamphlets, with its picturesque lake and rolling hills all around it. Lake Clearwater looked like New Zealand.
I was excited. I took off my leather shoes and replaced them with some bright blue hiking boots I had bought that morning. I sealed my grey windbreaker and walked out into the rain.
Lake Clearwater was everything I imagined New Zealand would be. A beautiful lake, surrounded by massive hills. Cold wind and rain that I didn’t feel at all. This was New Zealand, proper and real. This was the exact image I got drinking those green bottles of ‘‘NZ Pure’’ beer on hot summer days back in Australia.
I hiked around the lake, the large rocks and pebbles making me zig-zag along the route. The rain whipped down. But I didn’t feel it. My windbreaker was worth the money I had invested.
Around 40 minutes into my walk, I mounted a small hill on the west side of the lake. I looked across towards the mist and the mountains across the water. Then the mist began to part, revealing a large, sloping object, and as I watched, I realised something.
It was that hill from Lord of the Rings; The Two Towers; the hill where Gandalf confronted Grima Wormtongue. Nice.
I headed back to Timaru soon afterwards, dropping in at a pub named The Jolly Potter, in the nearby town of Temuka, around nightfall. The pub was nice, the beer was cold, and a fire was roaring. Not a bad way to end the day. Mackenzie Highland Show: I spent the next few days eating Timaru’s ridiculously cheap steak, going to the gym, and watching Netflix.
By Monday morning, I was ready to get back into action and a workmate and I went to check out the Mackenzie Highland A&P Show, the South Island’s largest one-day agricultural event, in nearby Fairlie.
There were rides, there was food, there were stalls, and there were farm animals, similar to country shows in Australia. Except for the notable differences in wealth between the two rural communities. New Zealand farmers are a lot wealthier than Australian ones. They dress in more expensive clothes, drive newer cars, look more secure and happy. Australian rural communities, sadly, are in a state of stagnation and decline. This is very apparent when you see a New Zealand agricultural show.Around 2pm, we departed and drove to the nearby town of Lake Tekapo, the most amazing thing I have seen to date.
Nestled among mountains and on the shores of a lake that shimmers bright blue, Tekapo is truly stunning. It brought back fond memories of my trip to Lake Jindabyne, in the highlands of Australia, around two years ago.
As the sun shone down on Lake Tekapo, I reflected on how lucky I was to be in New Zealand. It’s one of the most amazing places I have ever been, and will be a great place to call home.
I’m very excited about my new life in Timaru.