Letter from the New Zealand surf, by Richard Price

Black pebbly sand crunched under my feet as I looked out across the cold, kelp-ridden sea. I gritted my teeth and plunged in. My skin was numb as I turned to see snow capped mountains on the distant horizon, stark against an overcast sky. This was my first experience of surfing in New Zealand.

We had flown into Christchurch on the south island, hired a car and headed up the east coast to our first destination Kaikoura. Besides the threatening weather and the unknown waters, it turns out we’d found a quality, consistent point break - barely forty-eight hours afters arriving in the country. From Kaikoura we drove to the tip of the south Island to a town called Picton, and then travelled along the west coast until we reached a spot called the Taranaki region. There we scored some amazing waves.

We found a beach along this stretch made up of tiny black rocks that made a squelching sound as you walked along. We’d heard rumours that there was a really good break around this area and decided to explore—hoping to chance upon it, but not really expecting to find anything. Eventually we came to a stream of fresh rainwater from the neighbouring mounting ranges. We decided to jump in taking a free ride down the river towards the ocean.

At the end of the stream we were greeted with a medium sized wave peeling perfectly along a smooth rocky point. The snow-covered, massive Mt Taranaki was the backdrop in the distance. This is what we had came to see, awesome landscapes and uncrowded, perfectly breaking waves. The only other surfers we encountered were two local guys. They were a bit grumpy, but seemed impressed that we had found their secret spot. They mumbled replies to our greetings and vacated the waters soon after we arrived.

From the Taranaki region we travelled to the world-renowned surf break of Raglan, first exposed to the surfing world through Bruce Brown’s movie ‘Endless Summer’ (1966), which highlighted its unbelievably long breaking left point. Raglan was a chilled-out town with a similar vibe to Byron Bay, with a focus around surf culture. We waited three days for a swell, and then decided to try our chances elsewhere.

Our next destination was back on the east coast of the north island, in the prosperous town of Mt Mounganui. The settlement is looked over by the mountain of the same name. The beach there was full, and we had to fight to get a wave. Heading southwest we came to the little town of Gisborne. This was Captain Cook’s first stop in New Zealand in 1769, and is one of the first places in the world to see the New Year’s Day sun. We were lucky enough to observe it, too.

The author: Richard Price is a student in Creative Writing at QUT.

Postcard from Stirling, by Lee McGowan

Gather your hankies and prepare yourself.

The following is true and like the last flight of the haggis is no less disturbing for it. With the weight of a Victorian legacy and hundreds of years of history, it travels from a small town in Scotland to the big screen, through Hollywood’s corridors of power to the New York doorstep of a mover and shaker. It has already attracted hordes of deluded international travellers looking for a photo-opp, a real life distillery and a B ’n B with hot running porridge taps in every room.

The statue of Mel Gibson at the Wallace Monument in Stirling has been removed.
The ‘lease’ ran out. The truth is: they had to take it away.

Put there by a well-meaning local council wishing to tip its fluffy tammy, or bonnet, to the excessive success of the ‘Braveheart’ movie (and the gratefully accepted tourist dollars rolling in on the back of it), the statuesque celebration of the hero of the Scots was to capture the essence of Sir William Wallace. Not the real Wallace you understand, the Oscar winning, publicity shy actor/director film Wallace. The one the world had come to recognise.

That’s right, through fear, greed or stupidity, or all three, the boffins round the big table commissioned a local sculptor to fashion a sandstone work of wee Mel. Replete with blue face, mace in hand, and at least one severed Englishman’s head, the chiselled lump was unveiled on September 11 1997, as near as exactly 700 years after Sir William’s victory over the English at Stirling Bridge. Importantly, a single word had been inscribed at the foot of this stone homage, the now famous, oft-repeated battle cry, (stretch your lungs and roar it with me…) ‘Freedom’.

These days the movie (Irish pipe music and all), its overly-stretched artistic license and wee Mel’s braids and face paint have become as synonymous with Scottish kitsch as ‘500 miles’, orange haired tartan bunnets and Nessie shaped soft toys. And we, the Scottish People, can live with it. We’ve made a fortune off it.

Now, long before the short antipodean with his close but no cigar efforts at the accent got into extra-marital girlfriends, Britney Spears and DUI’s; long before he made the bloody crucifixion or apocalyptic tales in the jungle; long before he got hold of our wee piece of history, the Victorians had paid their respects to Wallace by erecting a 400-foot high Monument on a crag over-looking our fair town. The locals are very fond of it.

But the wee man’s statue is a different story. People were unhappy about it. Very unhappy. Someone took the face off it with a hammer. The literal and figurative defacement pleased the locals no end. The sculptor was happy too. The fluffy tammies paid him even more to apply the sandstone equivalent of botoxed, reconstructive rhinoplasty. It didn’t improve things. The face changed, but the affront, like the acrid taste of bitter disappointment and shite on purist tongues, remained.

Knowing this and fearing another assault, the fluffy tammies decided to do something very similar to the nobles in Wallace’s day. They kept the people away. The contemporary version, a fortified blue cage, was hastily constructed around wee Mel’s lookalike. They neglected, however, to remove the ‘Freedom’ from his feet. And made him, and themselves, look even dafter.

Last year, the fluffy tammies poured more salt on self-inflicted wounds and tried to sell the stone-faced wee man. There were no takers, not even real wee Mel. Mind you, he’s had his hands full of late – changing nappies on the fruit of an illicit affair.

The statue has since, apparently, been passed to the Trump organization. The man with the shredded wheat hair wants it for a hotel lobby. A fitting end? It certainly brings us neatly back to the stupidity.

The author: Lee McGowan is a doctoral student in Creative Writing at QUT.

Hildigunn

Reception called her Ladybike #4, but I knew I was in the company of a warrior princess. Her name is Hildigunn, and she is my bicycle for the day.


Together we braved the local wildlife.



The ancient paths, with fences like ritual burial ships.

And a correction. Yesterday, I spent some time on the matter of Uppsala’s perfect level of fullness. Today, as I rode along the river, I noticed that all the friendly-looking youth had in fact come from a reggae rock festival, which has now been packed up. It has to be said that this evening Uppsala is a bit quiet.

Perfect Uppsala

First impressions:

1) Size & good order. Uppsala seems exactly the right size for itself. There are just enough tables outside the coffee shop for it to seem full, and yet someone always leaves just before the next customers arrive, and so it never feels crowded. The botanical gardens are the same. It's 27C today, reportedly among the few good summer days they've had this year, so I expect everyone is out. But fullness doesn't make a crowd here, just a steady flow of active, sunny people wearing just the right thing on their charming, one-gear bikes. It's like the 1950s. Even the tough kids collect their rubbish after them.

2) Costs. It's bad form to go on about money when you're travelling, but I can't help myself on this occasion. Entrance to the pool facility--again, busy but pleasantly so--was 85kr, or about AUD15, while a little later I got a very respectable local beer in a riverside bar for 42kr. I always thought the Swedes had inverted this equation, making fun things expensive and good-for-you things affordable. Last time I was here, I paid AUD12 for a beer, some 50% more than today. Hooray!

3) Good order (again). There can be no accountants in Sweden. Everything seems so ordered already. The gardens are informally divided into ages, with the first bit set aside for groups of young drinkers, the second section more family-focused, and so on. There wasn't a part set aside for jet-lagged, slightly lonely academics trying to stay awake until at least 8:30.

4) Forthrightness. Who can beat the Swedes on this? Consider this item on the back of my tourist map: "The Linnaeus Garden, laid out in about 1655, is arranged in accordance with Linnaeus's sexual system."

5) My bike hire (see two posts earlier). The hotel lends bikes. Yes, as in for free.

6) Bottle shops. I had mistakenly thought that Sweden was more enlightened than Iceland on the matter of state-run bottle shops. Nope. There are no bottle shops open after 3pm Saturday. In fact, I haven't even seen a bottle shop. And I've looked. Trust me, I have looked.

7) Viking Heritage.

The epic world made real: locals going for a swim in Viking helmets

8) This is a very pretty place:

Five things you might expect to happen during an hour in Zurich, and which indeed did happen to this traveller

1) As you make the descent into Zurich, the flight attendants bring Swiss chocolates instead of suckers.

2) Look out of the window and observe the sordid pastiche of Swiss-style chalets and then remember that you are landing in Switzerland.

3) Be told by the attendant opposite that the reason we are circling is because the runway doesn’t open until 6:04am. ‘This means we can begin the final approach at 6:02,’ she adds.

4) As you take the rail link between terminals, enjoy a soundtrack of cowbells and yodelling fed through the railway p.a. system.

5) And as you dash to board the connecting flight, expect to hear your name announced urgently. Despite the fact that you had barely half an hour to cross terminals, ride yodelling trains, and go through passport control, do not be surprised that your luggage was ahead of you and safely stowed before you even reached the boarding gate.

If an airport is going to live up to national stereotypes, these ones aren’t bad. But there must an alternative to cow bells.

Ikea bicycle trailers

I'm going to Uppsala in Sweden in a couple of days. The university there is hosting the Thirteenth International Saga Conference, at which I'm presenting a paper on the representation of Swedes in the Icelandic sagas. (I promise this is not a gathering of Viking role-players, but the meeting of a rather conservative field of philologists and historians.)

As a first step in my planning for the trip, I looked into hiring a bicycle in Uppsala, and came across this: a bike hire company that will kit you out for a ride (with trailer) to buy up big at Ikea. Here's the pitch:

"Going to IKEA without car? Riding with four grocery bags or a bed as cargo? It's easier than you may think to transport cargo by bike, and quite practical. See the bike trailers page."

I hope the company won't mind me pasting in the demonstration photo:



You can't fault the Swedes.

(See for yourself here.)

Letter from Sacred Mountain, by Richard Carroll

The 24^th June is a special day in the small village of Flassan, which nestles on the flank of Mt Ventoux in the Department of Vaucluse in the south of France. Every year, the villagers gather at a chapel, located about 600 metres higher up the mountain and some kilometres from Flassan, to celebrate Saint Jean, the village patron. According to tradition, you are supposed to walk/climb to the chapel, but many of the older folk, the frail and those who have tired of the ritual, go by car.

We set off in mid-morning. The last houses gave way to scrub as the hills on either side closed in around us. The bitumen changed to a stony path that wound gently upwards following the groove of an ancient watercourse deep into the folds of the mountain. We walked Indian file on the narrow trail, mesmerised by the scent of wildflowers, the rosemary, thyme and chevrefeuille in particular, that grew haphazardly across the rocky landscape, splashes of colour in the golden sun. Butterflies danced before our eyes while the ubiquitous cicadas drummed us up the mountain.

We followed the dry bed for more than an hour before coming to a spring, a slow trickle of pure water from the rock surface, a small miracle. So far the going had been easy. Now we started climbing the steep side of the canyon following a barely visible track through the undergrowth. Higher up we could see the first of tall pines, like sentries on a battlement surveying their realm, ready to repulse invaders.

After half an hour we puffed our way to flatter ground to a forest of majestic trees, a fairyland.

A stone chapel appeared to one side; it looked ancient, almost as though it had grown as part of nature itself. Further along in a clearing stood the altar, a huge stone slab, waist-high. As we watched, two women covered it with an immaculate white cloth on which they arranged flowers, an elaborate chandelier and a pewter wine goblet.

People were gathered in groups catching up with old friends, discussing the cherry market, the competition from Italy, the weather, the latest births, deaths, weddings, divorces, scandals and a thousand other things.

Today was extra special as the Archbishop from Avignon would lead the Mass instead of the village curé. He arrived late, which was an Archbishop’s prerogative; besides, it took time to climb the mountain miles from anywhere. A refreshing pastis was called for, duly disposed of, and the ceremony began.

The highlight of the religious part of the show was the grand finale when some of the locals emerged from the chapel carrying an effigy of St Jean on their broad peasant shoulders. St Jean sat stoically throughout, his rough-hewn features indifferent to the ways of mortals. He allowed himself to be toted to various parts of the forest and then to the edge of the canyon where the Archbishop gave blessings and thanks, an archetypal figure on the mountainside. The audience listened piously as they soaked up the scrubby ridges and ravines that plunged down to the village and the mosaic patterns of the “gardens of Provence” stretching to the horizon. Away to the right, the moonscape summit filled the sky. When finally St Jean retreated to his refuge the party got under way.

The summit of Mt Ventoux as seen from the chapel

While the women set up tables and chairs, the men gathered around a well a few metres from the chapel. They had removed the cover and were now drawing the first bucket of blessed water to the surface. “Venez prendre l’aperitif,” they called, and eager hands pressed forth glasses already well-endowed with cloudy liquid pastis, home-made, bien sur. Everyone enjoyed this part of the ritual where all and sundry (no young children) were invited to share the imbibing of such a heavenly spirit.

A game of volleyball had started in the clearing, the net strung between two giants of the forest. Others played petanque, the silver balls slicing through the air to thump into the damp earth. People claimed favourite spots faithfully returned to every year, near the exact same tree. I wondered if these places were handed down from generation to generation, a sacred inheritance that guaranteed one’s place in the sun. The tables groaned under the weight of countless goodies, the smell of food hung like perfume in the air, bottles popped, knives and forks chinked as they attacked the feast.

Our little group joined a couple who had forgotten how many times they had made the pilgrimage. Jean-Pierre went off by himself at one stage and came back brandishing a bottle of wine like a trophy. “Hé voila,” he cried, “la bouteille de l’année derniere.” Apparently every year when he came for St Jean he would bury a bottle of wine in a place known only to him. He uncorked the said bottle and poured us all a measure. With chins and santés we clinked our glasses and savoured the contents. It was a good wine, even that was apparent to my uncouth palate.

The day passed in a murmur of voices, a guitar in the background, the plunk of metal balls, the sudden outbreak of laughter, and good company shared in the freshness of the mountain.

The author:

Richard Carroll is an Honours student in Creative Writing at QUT.