Goodbye Pork Pie, Hello Aotearoa

Unlike the fugitives of Pork Pie, we had nothing driving us onwards other than a need to wring the most out of the last week of a holiday that had gone too fast

‘‘We’re taking this bloody car to Invercargill, boy!”

That immortal line from the 1981 film Goodbye Pork Pie has probably launched a thousand road trips over the years.

“We’re taking this bloody Ssangyong/Toyota Yaris hire car to Dunedin (and back)” admittedly doesn’t have the same impact, but the spirit of Pork Pie did at times infuse my summer drive almost the length and breadth of these beautiful islands.

It started in a field on the outskirts of Moerewa, waking in a tent to hear the first raindrops of what was quickly to become a churning two-day storm that parked itself over the north like a washing machine on an endless cycle.

After hurling the sodden tent into the back of the car, we joined the exodus of thousands of holidaymakers scurrying south.

The plan had always been to fly to Dunedin and explore the Catlins. However, in the haze of post- Christmas procrastination, the cost of flights had risen exponentially. I found myself seized by a mad idea. Drawing on the spirit of Pork Pie, and perhaps also Easy Rider, Two Lane Black Top and Vanishing Point, I uttered the words, “Why don’t we drive?”

I was to have many hours to reflect on that rush of enthusiasm over the next seven days, as roughly 3400km passed beneath our wheels.

Unlike the fugitives of Pork Pie, we had nothing driving us onwards other than a need to wring the most out of the last week of a holiday that had gone too fast.

There were no Holden Kingswood cop cars in the rear view mirror, just the rapidly receding outskirts of Auckland. A diversion across the Waikato River and through the mean streets of Huntly, got us on the road to the King Country and the sheep-shearing capital of Te Kuiti. The Awakino Gorge spilled into the brooding hills of Uruti, scene of one of the other great works of New Zealand’s golden age of film-making, Vincent Ward’s Vigil.

Next morning, Mt Taranaki was wreathed in cloud and pocked with a few stubborn patches of summer snow. Dark rainclouds dragged their dirty hems away to the east of Whanganui. We allowed Siri to guide us into Wellington. Her repeated, hilariously mangled pronunciation of Porirua alone was worth the journey.

Watching the freight train wagons being unloaded from the Interislander, I tried to remember how they got that Mini clandestinely on board, and the physics involved in jumping a car from a platform onto a moving train, not to mention the suspension of disbelief. But no subterfuge was needed this time as the Ssangyong was staying in Wellington.

Life on board the Kaitaki was pleasant, though the weather in Cook Strait was not. A swooping albatross and a sole seal were spotted during the crossing, and by 6pm we were in Picton and in possession of a Toyota Yaris with a full tank of gas.

It was about now that I started having flashbacks, not of a movie, but of my own misspent youth, travelling around the South Island. Many years ago, my hitchhiking companion and I were rudely awoken in our tent by what sounded like a 747 landing metres away – which is how we discovered we had camped in the dark right next to the railway line outside Picton.

The riverside camping ground in Murchison was full to capacity; it had been since the Kaikoura earthquake, according to the owner. The Buller region is establishing a reputation as an adventure sports playground, with limitless possibilities for tramping, kayaking and canyoning. Also on offer are guided trips to see “natural flames” which emanate from the earth, deep in the beech forest.

It was raining next morning, after what the server at the coffee cart said had been two weeks of 30°C days. The rain got harder as we crossed the Buller River and headed for the West Coast. It got even harder as we drove through Īnangahua and Reefton. From Greymouth onwards it was a fluid environment; rapidly rising rivers and dripping vegetation obscured by spray drift.

The West Coast is a world apart. It was a watery blur for many hours, wildly, ferally beautiful and almost frightening in its vastness. But small-scale snapshots endure in my memory; the Jaguar cars planted in the earth outside someone’s gate near Arnold River, like Stonehenge megaliths; the hundreds of deer antlers fixed to a carpark wall in Ahaura; the portly man with flowing grey hair and beard standing bare-chested in the rain by the Buller River. At one point, I could have sworn I heard banjos, although it may have been Pokey LaFarge on the car stereo.

It was still raining in Haast Pass and I couldn’t help thinking of the unlucky Canadian couple four years ago who got trapped up here in a storm. A massive slip swept them and their camper van to oblivion in the river below. It took three years to find a single thigh bone of the driver.

Almost miraculously, the sky cleared at the top of the pass, revealing a sun-splashed Central Otago. After the almost oppressive West Coast forests, the expansiveness of Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea lifted our spirits. The good thing about not being chased by hordes of cops is you can stop and enjoy a leisurely meal in a place like the Lake Hawea Hotel with a staggeringly lovely view. Dunedin was still several hours away.

The dun-coloured landscape around Alexandra resembled a rocky Moroccan desert after weeks with barely any rain. The Otago towns of Cromwell and Clyde blurred past; the goal was Dunedin before nightfall.

Then, in Rae’s Junction, it happened again. That misspent youth – hitchhiking from Queenstown to Dunedin with a Danish girlfriend, caught out by darkness. We had slept the night on a hillside above the road, with raindrops pattering on the plastic sheet covering our heads.

I looked up at the spot as we sped past. It was now covered with large pine trees.

Through Beaumont and Lawrence, and the fading light was turning everything to gold. Somewhere on the outskirts of Dunedin I once slept in a gravedigger’s hut in a cemetery, after a local farmer refused to let us put up our tent on his land. That night the cops really did come after us, but we somehow got away with it.

Twelve hours after leaving Murchison we arrived in Dunedin. No dramas, no Armed Offenders Squad, and the Yaris did not end the journey in a fireball.

Two days later, we drove back again. It was uphill all the way. Timaru, Ōamaru; memories of specific spots on the roadside where I’d stood, sometimes for hours. Perhaps that’s why they remain imprinted so indelibly on the mind.

Around midday, we got pulled over by a friendly policeman outside Christchurch. As he wrote the ticket, I asked if the Kaikoura road to Picton was open. He had heard that, possibly, it wasn’t. “Check at Amberley,” he advised. “You might have to take the inland route.” Then, as a comforting aside, he said, “You don’t want to go that way.”

We didn’t. But in the end we had to. It was another 12-hour day. But, in a way, I was happy, because we discovered the Lewis Pass. We’re already planning to return.

Road trips, especially last-minute whistle-stop ones, are hard work. Unlike films, they can’t be edited to include just the highlights. But they connect you to your country in a way flying never can. Those long hours on the road reawaken memories and open up endless other roads to be explored on future journeys.

Goodbye Pork Pie. Hello Aotearoa.