Karl du Fresne: A pilgrimage to the deep South

My wife Jolanta and I are fond of road trips – so much so that we’ve pretty much run out of new places to visit. There isn’t a town in New Zealand that we haven’t been to, most of them several times.

In 2023 we drove to Cape Reinga. On our latest peregrination we drove as far as we could in the opposite direction, ending up in Invercargill. (Jolanta soon tired of me lamely joking “We’re taking this car to Invercargill”, a line readers might recognise from a certain popular film.)

Why Invercargill? The ostensible reason was that I was curious to visit the grave in Riverton Cemetery of a great-great uncle who was buried there in 1889. James Quin arrived in Southland from Australia with his older brother, my great-grandfather, in 1863. They both farmed at what was then known as Limestone Plain, north of Riverton. James stayed in that area but my great-grandfather later moved to Taranaki. (The family suspects there may have been a falling out between them, which would be no surprise given my great-grandfather’s highly disputatious nature.)

James Quin's grave in Riverton cemetery. The Aparima River, lined with whitebaiters' stands, is in the background.

James had no children, but a couple of years ago the Quin whanau learned that his grave had fallen into a state of severe disrepair. There was a whip-around, or the digital equivalent thereof, as a result of which the grave site was restored – although not before a family dispute arose over the proposed removal of an ancient yew tree whose roots had damaged the grave. Yews are considered culturally significant in Irish tradition and some family members passionately argued against its removal. In the end a vote was taken and the tree went.

Jolanta and I hadn’t been to that part of the world for 20-odd years and the idea of a pilgrimage to view James Quin’s restored grave, even though I’m not descended from him, was all the justification we needed to hit the road. By the time we got back after detouring through Central Otago (on the way down) and Nelson (on the way home), we’d covered more than 3000 kilometres.

It wasn’t intentionally timed that way, but our two weeks on the road enabled us to ignore most of the unedifying hullabaloo surrounding the election – the hype, the posturing, the bickering, the snarling, the pontificating, the point-scoring and the beat-ups by comically over-stimulated journalists. We tuned out.

But it did occur to me more than once that no matter what transpires after election day, some things about this country – notably the wondrous landscapes – will remain immutable. That’s some consolation as we contemplate the dismal range of potential outcomes, none of them appealing, from tomorrow’s vote.

New Zealand will remain a glorious place to travel through. I call it the biggest little country in the world. There could be few better antidotes to toxic politics than a visit to the lovely Howells’ Point at Riverton, or the view from the top of Bluff Hill (where the wind was so ferocious I could barely stand, let alone take a picture), a drive through the spectacular Catlins or a detour around the unexpectedly beautiful Karitane coast north of Dunedin – the only place on this trip that we hadn’t seen before.

Another reassuring thought was that New Zealanders will remain essentially the same fundamentally decent, open, friendly people. We deserve better than whatever rebarbative hybrid (could I use the term Frankenstein?) government emerges from the post-election argie-bargie that we have come to expect under our deeply flawed electoral system. (Or do we? To those admirable national qualities listed above, I might add that we are passive and gullible. There is an argument that we get the politicians we deserve. We allowed ourselves to be suckered into MMP under the promise that it would improve political accountability and we’ve been suffering the consequences ever since.)

One more thought relating to politics and the election: We have been told repeatedly throughout the campaign that New Zealanders are doing it hard. As a nation we are supposedly feeling dispirited and demoralised. But this is strikingly at odds with what Jolanta and I observed.

I’ve been to towns that felt crushed and beaten – mostly in America, but in Britain, Australia and New Zealand too. As a visitor, you pick up that mood instantly. But it’s not what we detected in our South Island travels. Quite the reverse: people seemed happy and positive, possibly reflecting the fact that parts of the South Island are booming. And I’m not just talking about the wealthy playgrounds of Central Otago; growth in Canterbury, even since we were last there just two years ago, is remarkable. The new satellite towns around Christchurch are going gangbusters, whatever that means.

Perhaps the Wellington-centred media, who have been promulgating the idea that New Zealand is stuck in a slough of despond, need to get out more. The world’s always going to look miserable from a dyspeptic capital that is itself mired in the doldrums.

Karl du Fresne, a freelance journalist, is the former editor of The Dominion newspaper. He blogs at karldufresne.blogspot.co.nz.