After leaving Stewart Island, we hopped on a bus the other side of the ferry and were driven into the city of Invercargill. Here we were to spend a couple nights and a day there to buy a car and prepare for going to our first WWOOFing place the following day.
Well, what to say about Invercargill…it was built with far too big ambitions for such a small population and as a result, it’s a soulless shell of a city which resembles something between an isolated settlement you see in an old Wild West film and a once, briefly loved yet now abandoned, sea side town. About 50% of the shops on the high street are shut, closed down or just plain old empty. The place was also built with cars in mind so everyone drives everywhere as its all spread out. This means barely any pedestrians and rarely do you see a cyclist. It’s an actual apocalyptic ghost town. But it’s a city. There are very few differing in job opportunities there too, you either work in one of the small independent shops of not much (which seem to be everywhere), you sell/fix cars or like the majority of the towns population you work in meat packing or are a sheep slaughterer like the guy who we had just bought our car off of.
Inspiring isn’t it…?
There is one thing in that blip of creation which is actually not too bad and that’s the city gardens. There’s a park there which is pretty large and has a variety of spaces and gardens along with some animals in a mini zoo-type-park and in an aviary. There was also an enclosure with a prehistoric animal called a Tautara. A lizard but more dinosaury. The one we saw was born in the late 19th century. He was pretty funky but just sat there behind the glass. Poor thing. There’s also the supposedly famous water tower in the town. I think it’s famous because there’s nothing much else here. The architecture of it is pretty but that’s it as far as I’m aware.
Most people just pass through Invercargill as we’ve found out. Keith Richards is apparently quoted for having called it “the arsehole of the world”. Bit harsh but I can kind of see where he’s coming from on that one. So far the most lively and biggest group of the people we saw was actually in the McDonalds. It’s positively thriving with kids and grown ups. This is where we were sitting awaiting the car to be fixed a couple shops down the road when I started writing this. It’s also the most modern looking of places here and is stupidly cheep compared with home. FYI you can also get a $5NZ large pizza from Dominos…that’s basically £2.50 to you at home..! How unfair is that compared with our £15?!
We made friends with a couple of the girls in our dorm room on the second night which made the whole thing a bit better. They’d come in from Canada and had been to New Zealand before so gave us a few good places to add to our list and shared some of their stories. Like us they’d just got a car but had never driven in NZ before. They were struggling with driving on the opposite side of the road big time – they had managed to drift sideways on the road to “avoid” oncoming traffic and ended up crushed their headlight into a pole on the sidewalk at pretty much walking pace. As bad as this was this did make us feel better about our own international driving sensibilities! There was also a French guy and a Californian girl amongst those in our dorm who I also got talking to. He was just there between college courses and she was there just to get away from the cities. It was just really nice hanging out and swapping our stories so far and we enjoyed the fact that we’d all pretty much had the same issues in different places and got to laugh about it.
After this (and the faff with the car: transferral of international money, fixing and time and many other things) we headed on out to our first WWOOFing hosts, Francis and Fritz. Well, the house is huge! No joke. 4-5 bedroom around a central gallery/atrium/hall with 2 sitting rooms, a library, family eating room and a formal dining room and then loads of cupboards and washrooms and a library and an indoor pool and a dance room in the basement and a bathroom which had the shower, toilet and bath all in separate spacious rooms within this room. The people are the absolute loveliest. They both had Dutch heritage and moved out there separately when they were much younger. They’re a couple who had 5 grown up (and nearly all married) children and owned just sheep now having just been in the process of selling their dairy farm. The sheep were in their back garden (more like grounds) and our job, as it turns out, was to help prepare the garden for landscaping which in turn was in preparation for their last child’s wedding in 7 weeks time. We cleared a hell of a lot of over grown garden and also laid down some tarps which were then filled with 7-8 tons of pebbles. Thankfully Fritz used the tractor to bring most of it over, but we then had to move and distribute it evenly around the house by hand. Also mulched and planted and sewed grass seed as well as wire brush reclaimed tiles which were being laid for Fritz’s tractor to sit on next to the barn.
The food was amazing also! Everything was either grown in their garden or freshly brought in from the butchers. Apart from 4 meals in 2 weeks, I hadn’t eaten anything ridiculously processed and if I had it was basic foods like pasta, milk and ice cream. Everything was from scratch and everything was so good. The other places had a lot to live up to. I’d definitely put the weight back on I stressfully lost before coming going out there!
We went for a walk in Riverton during the week. This gave us chance to get out the house and grounds and see some more of the Southland. Although Riverton was small, it’s the nicest place down there I think we’d seen so far. Much nicer architecture, the people actually liked being outside and hanging out with each other and that just made it feel alive. It was also there that I managed to get sunburnt quite badly too…
We’d had a coupe of extra WWOOFers join us at the house on Friday. A coupe of German students, a boy and a girl, soon to be off to university after a gap year travelling. They were really nice and started off really quite shy despite having been in the country since September, working and camping their way across NZ. It was really nice to have some people the same age about actually – when you’re out in the sticks and haven’t really seen many people, let alone your age, since you landed in Auckland, you realise how important it is to help you feel yourself. I was sure it would change as we headed up the country but at that moment we we’re further south than many casual travellers our age tended to go so would have to suck it up for now.
To Journey Far and Back Again 