Paul Theroux travels through the happy isles of oceania

After a painful marriage breakup - well family too Paul set sail for the happy isles of oceania armed just with a tent, bag and collapsible canoe! He had in fact been invited to a book publicity tour commencing in NewZealand, and that is where we begin!

I have taken out suitable snippets as one must remember that you cannot quote more than 10% of any tome without legal consequences! the setting is NZ 1992 approx [ oh get on with it for goodness sake I hear them shout!]

He was asked “wjat do you think of Na Zillun” –  he replied “This is a wonderful country – or would you call it an archipelago? 


Most New Zealanders seem to wear old shapeless hats. You see a lot of beards and kneesocks. And sweaters. You also see an awful lot of war memorials”……………….the Maori people who had come to New Zealand via the Cook Islands from Tahiri about a thousand years ago, called the Pacific Moana-Nui – o – Kiva, “the great Ocean of the Blue Sky”


Aukland had the largetst Polynesian population of any city in the world – fully half the people are dusky islanders……………………….Many were organized into street gangs with names like Mongrel Mob and the Black Power Gang……………….roughly ten percent……………had arrived from the Tahiti via the Cook Islands ab out a thousand years ago , and named these islands Aotearoa “The Land of the Long White Cloud”………………….


Your Tongan is a decent chap, but your Samoan can be a terror when he’s the worst for drink…………………your Fijian? Let’s face it they’re cannibals, simple as that, and your Indian is a terrible hard working person – work like dogs, most of these Hindus. Your Mohammedan is another story. They’re randy wee buggers – I hate to say it. But while we’re on the subject, a lot of these island women are root rats…….



tbc

LOL! I haven't seen any of this Davo.

he didn't stay too long in NZ if I recall - let me see - oh yes there is more before he moves off to all the other islands were the fun comes in ! - still any comments you wanna make CM before we move on??

I think he's being a bit hard on the Polynesians who have been badly affected by European life styles like alcohol and non-marine foods which makes them fat. These were missing from their diet evolutionarily speaking for a long time. When my ancestors were paddling a coracle around the British Isles trying not to lose sight of land, Polynesians were sailing to South America and back.

exactly I agree - I do find him perfunctory at times - he had just removed himself from a traumatic divorce but perhaps that was always his nature anyway - yes I was surprised by his lack of subtles!!

here we go:

David Lange, PM had just run off with his speech-writer, MIs Margaret Pope………..his mother denounced him and his wife was demanding her rights and trying to get even……………..the sheep shearers were on strike and wanted $46 for shearing a hundred sheep!


I went to Wellington  and sat in my hotel room reading ‘The Sexual Life of Savages’ by Bronislaw Malinowski…………….What a bungaloid place I thought, bungalows and more bungalows  and little fragile chalets………………………..and a wind so strong it seemed to have shape and substance. The wind scoured the streets and whipped the dark waters of the harbor.


The next day I went to Christchurch on the South Island. It looked prim and moribund.  In front of the California Fried Chicken Family Restaurant  on Papanui Road in the district of Merivale I saw a family of four…………and I burst into tears.
NewZealands ……………………….seemed to me the hardest people in the world to compliment. There was something Calvinistic in this refusal to accept praise.


“NewZealands are fitness fanatics “ I said to a man “That’s a myth he said we’re very unhealthy as a nation , we’re poofs.
“But is’s much better than Australia , I hear”  “ Bitter by a long chalk. Your Aussie’s and enemals”


I went to Dunedidn, which was cold and frugal, with its shabby streets and mock Gothic university ………….It felt like the end of the world, and when I looked at a map this seemed true: we were only about twenty degrees north of the Antarctic Circle.


I rented a bicycle and rode it about five miles to Sumner Bay, where surfers were lazing like seals…………..there was another harbor –Lyttelton , over the hill………….I cycled an hour and came to Taylor’s Mistake……………….I cycled back over hills to Lyttelton Harbor, which was lovely and long, a safe anchorage, with Chinese shops  and pretty houses………………….


I went southwest from Christchurch to Queenstown, at the edge of the waterworld of Fiordland…………….and the weather came up from the Roaring Forties , watering this corner of NewZealand with twenty five feet of rain a year.  It is still one of the wettest places in the world

yes having re-read this next section - this is Theroux - he shoots from the hip an American with a touch of British - sometimes a bad mix - and he had been a journalist for a while!

have you been to any of the other Polynesian Islands at all ?

No I haven't Davo , only Pitcairn many moons ago and Norfolk Island in 2007. I am at a bit of a loss as to where or what he is referring to about Bungaloids!  There used to be a phrase here that we encountered just after our arrival in 1953 . Everybody wanted a "quarter acre pavlova paradise" . Morning or afternoon tea was a social occasion where people brought cakes, scones and sandwiches for a really social afternoon. It was very welcoming to new arrivals like us.
David Lange's wife got 6 months notice that he would seek a divorce and later married Margaret Pope.

oh bungaloid - that's just a theroux euphemism !! 

just preparing the next section as I have to keep under 10% for copyright laws!

just a thought?? - perhaps he only stayed in North Island ?? where are you again??

North Island , just up from Wellington in Masterton.

ever been up in the mountains??

 The Routeburn Track was my choice………………it rises well above the scrub line and stays there………………I decided to combine the Routeburn with the Greenstone Valley walk…………..


There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail knowing that everything you need is on your back…………..Even my recently gloomy mood had lifted……………a violinist, a factory worker, an aspiring actor, a photographer, a food writer, a student………………..made up our Routeburn hiking party. ……………and when we finished only three of us pushed on to the Greenstone.


 Isidore the violinist, cursed the water and mud and apologized for being a slow walker, but he was better at other pursuits – he was the concert –masterof the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and he had a knack for beating me at Scrabble during the long nights at the trackside shelters.  We started walking up a muddy track at the north end of Lake Wakitipu in sight of deer and majestic stags. I find it hard to view these creatures as pest………………..


The Harris Saddle was worth the long climb for the sight of the panorama of summits to the west, a succession of mile high mountains. …………a whole ocean of whitened peaks like an arctic sea………………………it took me another hour to descend the zigzag path. 


Deeper in the valley I was among ancient trees……………..an enchanted forest, the trees as old as the hills, grotesquely twisted and very dampand pungent. A forest  that is more than a thousand years old……………..a ghostly look…………and the whole forest clinging together………I spent the next day hiking to the head of Lake Mackenzie. 


The paradise shelducks objected to my invading their territory and they gave their two –toned complaint…………………I awoke early and left the hut quickly…………………..above the path ahead was a New Zealan pigeon……………….fat as a football, and so clumsy you wondered how it stayed aloft; it does so with a loud thrashing of wings. In the past, the Maoris who walked this way snared these kereru and ate them.  


The Greenstone was a walk down a river valley – no snow and sleet here……………..at the last swing bridge that trembled like an Inca walkway……………..the foliage was of a European and transplanted kind – tall poplars………..dark Douglas fir, and the startling red leaves of copper beeches  - the trees that New Zealanders call foreign weeds and would like to destroy, root and branch.  


I was sorry to reach the end of the trail………..bush-bashing on these tracks had stimulated my imagination…………In the Pacific the interlopers were doing the most damage – bringing  nuclear waste to Johnston Island, digging a gigantic copper mine at Panguna in the North Solomons……………….testing nuclear devices at Moruroa  Atoll in the Tuomotus. But this to was Polynesia – this rain forest, these Southern Alps. Te TApu Nui, the Maoris called their mountains, “ The Peaks of Intense Sacredness”.

and that was it - a brief sojourn in NZ - he then headed for OZ and never explained why he gave south island a miss ??

No it sounds like he's been to South Island with Routeborne track , Geenstone valley etc and the Southern Alps (Harris Saddle)

seems he wasn't a particularly accurate geographist !! or me a reader!! - he never mentions moving between north and south at all it's just all NZ to him  - he then moved onto oz and paddled his kayak up along the 'top end' coast for a while and then the main thrust of the book resides in the south pacific isles - which is IMO certainly the more interesting and entertaining part of his book. Sure you can find a copy somewhere if ya interested