More Espiritu Santo

*

Day two of Espiritu Santo dawned, of course, rainy. Gently rainy. But rain is not a deterrent here.

At 9am driver-guide Kenneth and his Tour minibus presented itself at the foot of the gangplank and we all climbed aboard for what was to turn out to be a truly enjoyable day.

We started off with a quick whirl up and down the main street of the town. What a difference a day makes! With the shabby shop-shutters down, the market tables overflowing, and the whole place alive and colourfully buzzing, Luganville took on a wonderfully vivacious air that even the peeling concrete and puddles couldn’t dim.

Then we set off towards the north of the island. The town ended quickly and splendidly with a large, new Agricultural College, and at the same time the tarmac ended too. From here on, it was dirt roads of decreasing proportions and increasing age all the way. Given the way the rains come down here, and given that seemingly the Santo Ministry of Works consists of one elderly, large, yellow grader, we would, over the next couple of hours, find ourselves tackling some hair-raisingly rain-rutted routes.

Our first event was a visit to a ‘typical’ country village. And I reckon this typical country village really was exactly that. I don’t think Santo has got round to special country villages for the tourists yet. Plaited walls and palm-leaf roofs, huge and lovely trees, typical tropical flowers, typical tropical dogs and, of course, the people. A deep-hued man dragging a cow on a rope (it promptly sat down), a little caramel boy with wide eyes, and everywhere those grand, infectious grins…





On we drove, past our first copra smoker. I didn’t actually know, before, what copra really was. Just that it was a coconut product. Well, I do know now, and I have had a detailed education on the drying and separating of the inside of the fruit that is the raw material of this place’s main industry. I also realise why it can’t be loaded in the rain. The finished article is bundled into loosely woven sacking, barely closed with wide, gaping stitching at each end. As packaging goes it’s airy, but at best approximate. But who wants a hold full of mouldering coconut?

The other obvious agricultural activity is cattle. Well, the climate and the lush greenery clearly agree with cows: the fields were full of fine, beefy animals. So, often, were the roads. Fencing is an idiosyncratic art here. Many fences are ‘live’, not with electricity but with green growth. The fence-posts have rooted and they supply not only an enclosure but also cattle feed! (Maybe I should try that one on my fence-devouring horses). But more paddocks have no fencing than do, and the cattle are free to wander. I guess, given the lushness of the pasturage, they have little need to stray far.

Our destination was Champagne Beach. I was a little worried about this, as the name had a resort-y ring to it. But who, I thought would rattle over an hour and more of excruciating roads to get to a resort? Well, Champagne Beach turned out to be a gem. Your genuine coral sand beach, with a line of local-style chalets set in green lawns and lashings of lavish flora and .. best of all … we were the only people there! So we lunched on good stout sandwiches and papaya and grapefruit and bottled water from Kenneth’s esky, some of us took a dip in the warm sea or a stroll along the strand (me), and it was like having one’s own private little piece of storybook Pacific paradise for an hour and a bit.
Oh, and the champagne bit? It’s the colour of the sand.




Not far from Champagne Beach, Kenneth took us to visit the village and the house where he had grown up. The minibus wove in and out of the non-existent streets, between the houses, past a ‘church’ and a sizeable football field, and I was staggered when he told us that this not overlarge group of houses was home to over a thousand people! People living largely in the traditional fashion, as folk do in the northern parts of Santo. Give or take a minibus in the family.

And then we set off to brave, upwards, the most terrifying of the runnelled roads that we’d earlier negotiated downwards. There were a couple of occasions when I thought e wouldn’t make it, but we did. A fear seriously for the suspension of Kenneth’s proud new bus.

Our last stop for the day was to be the Blue Hole. Well, the Blue Hole seems to figure in most descriptions of the beauties of Santo, but there is no sign to it, and it is approached by a muddy track at the end of which we had to abandon the bus and climb aboard the tray of our accompanying pick-up for a particularly vertiginous last few hundred metres. Not the easiest of ‘tourist attractions’ to approach!
Well, it is a hole, and the water is indeed the bluest of deep blue set in foliage of the most dazzling green and gold. And it is also, theoretically, swimmable. If you can scramble successfully down the slippery stones to its edge. The three most adventurous of our party (average age: seventy-something) took up the challenge. I hastily appointed myself chief photographer to the occasion, before deciding I’d rather climb the vertiginous bit back up on my own two feet than on the slipping-and-sliding tray of the truck. And that was when God decided that there was one kind of rain we hadn’t had today, and pulled out the plug. Drenched again, like some circus clown. Transparent again. What joy I’d had the foresight to pop a couple of bottles of beer in my little red cabin-bag.



By three o’clock we were all safely if wetly back on ship, queuing for the laundry dryer, after a grand day’s outing.
I do like Santo.
And it looks as if I shall be able to go on liking it. The wharf is empty. Seems copra-loading has been called off.

Lost in Lugainville

*

From the island of Espe, Vanuatu (capital: Port Vila) to the island of Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu (capital?: Luganville), is little more than a night-time wriggle northwards through the chicane of islets that make up this beautiful but battered country. Battered? Oh, dear, yes. Battered by a massive American presence and the action that it attracted during the 1940s war, and battered all over again by power-drugged local men who would be king, thirty years later. Santo, the biggest island of the group, was the centre for both tragedies.

We sailed in, through the gauntlet of islands, mid-morning under – what else? -- erratic rain. We are going to be here for two days (maybe more, depending on the weather: copra, our main cargo, cannot, it seems, be loaded in the rain) and I decided that, even if the novelty of rainy walking may have worn off a tad after yesterday, I’d power ashore, ‘do’ the town, the beach, the markets and the river, and pop up that inviting green hill behind them.

Well, I’ve been and I’ve done it. I took all sorts of extra turnings and byways, climbed right over the hill … and I was still back at the gangplank in just an hour and a very small bit. The town of Luganville is only just worthy of that description. ‘Village’ would be kinder and, even then … settlement, maybe?



The traces of the war can still be seen, even though (thanks to local 1946 politicians’ inefficiencies) the Americans dumped most of what they couldn’t take home into the sea off what is now known as Million Dollar Point. You can’t miss the semicircular army huts, now converted to other uses, and I also spotted the carcase of an elderly ship, and the chassis of a troop carrier (I think) both, I am sure, artistically placed for the modern tourist, for believe it or not Santo is becoming a tourist destination. Apparently, largely for war groupies and thanks to the opportunities for snorkel-divers to explore its wrecks.



I saw nothing else of all that on my walk. On the front, set back from the untidy green-lined coral beach with its soggy park and modern foodstalls, just flat-roofed concrete buildings and variegated shanties (how does a roof of plastic bags, straw and newspaper keep out the sort of rain they have here?), two ANZ ATMs, a prominent First National land agent, some tatty-shuttered shops with a higher degree of Chinese owners than in Vila, several invitingly atmospheric-looking places for sleeping, eating and drinking which would give Conrad Hilton and building inspectors nightmares, as well as lashings of delightful greenery and tropical flora. Someone had added to the rickety town hall (currently scaffolded with something you wouldn’t get me up onto!) a vast and vaguely modernist courtyard roof, already getting tatty from the weather. Less comical was the neat, new food market, with its long benches but very few occupants. Maybe because it was Sunday. Apart from the ATMs and First National, and in spite of the predilection for concrete, the whole place had a distinct feeling of Somerset Maugham to it. Wonderful!

Before I knew it, I’d reached the Sarakata River: lushly green, lushly indigo, and with little fishing and pleasure boats buzzing here and there.



I photographed a smiling, waving man in a smashing outrigger (alas, it came out as a photo of my thumb). I photographed three little giggling girls outside a shanty with a vast washing line full of multicoloured knickers (maybe mother is a washerwoman?) and a surprisingly nearly-new red pickup truck out the back. And then I struck out up the hill.



As in Vila, away from the front, amongst the greenery and gardens, shanties give way to ageing bungalows with reasonably sound roofs and even the occasional ‘villa’. Not to mention public buildings. One of the first substantial peeling mid-C20th buildings I came upon was the local Law Courts. The already-peeled Rotary Club buildings even had a broken-down swimming pool. More modern, and decked out with beautiful gardens, was the local branch of the University of the South Pacific. But Luganville is not Vila. It’s much, much smaller, much, much less consequent. There is no Vanair catering mansion here. No high-class cricket ground.

But Espiritu Santo is, it seems, ‘developing’.

Barely across the water one can see the island of Aore. Aore is, it seems, a ‘resort’. So I won’t be going there. Give me shoreside Santo any day. It has a real charm.

Smiling in the Rain

*

Port Vila. The guide books make it sound awful, what with its hideous political history and their assurances that it was now a booming tourist metropolis. Should I go ashore or not? I did fancy a walk. But…
I got up at 5am, did my gymnasium bit, and climbed up to the bridge to cast an eye over the town as we sailed in. Nothing. Just a wimple of mist and rain. And when finally the town peeped greyly into view it looked very ordinary. Forget the walk, I thought. But I wanted some local ‘vatu’ (100ish to the US$) for tomorrow’s jaunt in Santo, and the guide book said there was an ANZ in town. And from the deck the local greenery looked so deliciously lavish. I dithered. And then I heard the jolly sounds of other folk going ashore. Well, why not …?
Uniform for malarial countries. Super-light cover-all. I decked myself out in my thin cotton Arab pants (closed ankles), my Monoprix lawn shirt (closed wrists) , shoved Dad’s old opera scarf (silk) which does me as a turban (neck covered) into my bag, donned my new Logan for-the-trip shoes and off I set.
The rain was falling lightly. Lovely, warm droplets of soft tropical rain. The others were catching the bus to town. Not this boy, of course. I strode off along what passes for a dockyard in Vila and immediately thought ‘I like this place’. The containers coming and going sit not in a vast yard, but alongside the road that leads to town, and the trucks and lifter-machines do their loading and unloading in the middle of the public highway!


The road to town passed by the usual range of shabby tropical buildings, cracked, faded and forgotten businesses of sometimes unlikely kinds, and I’m sure that there would have been some nice views if one could have seen through the grey haze. Mostly no footpath, but when there was one, I wished it finished for it was ten times more dangerous and precipitous than the road. A road on which drivers actually took huge trouble to avoid puddles, so as not to spray a pedestrian. Amazing! Where else in the world…?
Then, a couple of kilometres into my walk, the heavens emptied themselves upon earth. Drowningly but deliciously. So, as the locals sheltered under vast coloured umbrellas or shop awnings, I just carried on, heading along the road in Kurt-length strides. Well, I was soaked utterly through, a living wet-T-shirt advertisement, so what difference did a bit more warm-n-wetness make?



Down the main street, half touristy, half-shabby, past the grandiose food market with its bananas and coconuts, and the sodden tourist market, selling plastic grass skirts and those shirts that we all used to pray our friends wouldn’t bring us back from their holidays in Fiji. Past the ANZ bank where an elderly German lady tutted me that I should get home and have a good rubdown and a whisky. Then, firmly, off the waterfront. Up through Chinatown – all Chinatowns smell the same, but this one was really deliciously spicy and ramshackle -- up to a little residential suburb where I stumbled upon the local Chamber of Commerce, an aged clapboard house with a lavish tropical garden. On, then, to the quarter, back from the more commercial area, that housed the schools, the church, the theatre (Australian provoked, alas), a magnificent playing field with a stand Lords would envy, and a palatial establishment which turned out to be the catering department of Vanair.
And all the way, along my way, I was greeted with smiles, shouts, helloes, and bonjours on all sides. One small young man with a huge umbrella even ran after me – two strides to my one! -- to try to have a conversation. Was it just that the sight of an elderly chap in Arab pants and a silk scarf, drenched to the skin, doing a seven-league-boots act along the road was the novelty of the season? Or are the people of Vila just the joyously friendly islanders that I’ve met in other like countries? For, of course, except for the German lady, every one of the more than a hundred folk who greeted me, spoke to me, shook my hand (and in one case made me shake the baby’s hand) were of course Ni-Vanuatu: the local Polynesian (?) people. And mostly young men. Several blokes in vans stopped and offered me a ride. One was at the helm of a pick up truck and I thought back, thirty-five years, to St Maarten in the Caribbean, where I circumnavigated the island standing on the back of such a truck, wind in the hair I then had and blissfully happy. Would he take me round the island, I wondered. Not enough time, but dreams are free.

One couple of girls giggled shyly as they whispered ‘Alo’. I looked down. Not only was my shirt pasted transparently to my body by the rain, so were my super-thin cotton trousers. ‘Kiwi flasher arrested in Rue d’Artois’, I thought as I strode on without bothering to ‘adjust my clothing’, as they say.


Back down the wharf yard accompanied by hoots, yells and cheers from the dock workers who’d seen me set out in the rain two hours earlier…

Thank goodness I did go. I’m sure I shall remember Vila for a long time. Not its scenery, its greenery, its buildings, views, markets or even its bank. But its people, The Ni-Vanuatu. And that lovely, soft, warm rain.

Almost Chrissie-mas!

*

With bags packed (bless you, Sarah) and head distinctly in departure mode, what better way to spend a waiting-to-go day than … at the races.
Tuesday trotting is a new thing in New Zealand, introduced just this year to feed the ravenously hungry television-betting industry. Tuesday race-days have reduced stakes and (theoretically) reduced fields, sort of like dog racing with sulkies, and they were intended for the lesser lights of the sport and the lesser horses of ditto. Well, that was the idea. It hasn’t quite turned out like that.
Read on.
Rangiora HRC was the organiser of this week’s event, which is why I was there doing my ‘meeting and greeting and congratulating’ act. Also, best-friends-Robin-and-Geraldine-Wilson had two horses in and Jan, Wendy’s sister, had brought Chrissie all the way down from Nelson. She’d run at the previous week’s event and finished a splendid second.
Well, what a grand day it was! I had some really delightful people to meet and greet (hello the Wakelin family, Mrs Strachan et al), the Wilsons' pair nailed up a first ('His Honour' aka Tony) and a second (my old friend 'Gridlock' aka Lockie) and I also ended up presenting the trophy and the traditional winner’s bit of a tipple to my Mum’s friend, Barbara, as well. I'm not sure who was the more shocked at our unforseen meeting, she or I!
And Chrissie? Well, Chrissie was in the last race. And on the turn she was in last place. Here’s the photo of the finish. That’s her at the very top (ie way out wide), almost – but not quite -- getting up to win. Right under my nose!
And who beat her? Which lesser light? Just a representative of the ritziest and starriest stable in the whole of New Zealand. Well, if you have to get beat, even on a Tuesday …



So bravo, Chrissie, and bravo Jan who now has the remarkable record of driving in four races at Addington, the HQ of NZ harness racing, for one win and two seconds.

And now, off for a jolly supper at the local resto, and then it's time to get that head of mine back into departure mode...

Here I go again .. eventually?

*

My mother says that half the fun of a voyage is the planning of it.

I beg to disagree.

I’ve passed many a wakeful midnight during these last weeks over the arrangements for my next seven months. You see, I’m not one of that kind who can start out around the world (with one very small green suitcase and one even smaller red cabin bag) with a blank book. Not even this year when, I’ve decided, I shall not ‘guest’ myself upon friends old and new. Well, not so often as last year.

So, here is the plan. And it starts, already, with an imponderable. Groan.

The good ship the Gazellebank, Captain Peter Stapleton (see earlier blogs and pics ), was due to pick me up in Auckland 26 January 2008. At this moment, it’s re-scheduled for 14 February. And will, probably, unless Peter puts on the steam, not even make that. Which retards my arrival in Europe by at least 3 weeks. So my first adventure on the old Continent has been emasculated.



Now, I shall now arrive in Hamburg – after ten weeks on the high and low seas -- in late April, to be met by my dear friend Kevin (see blog) with whom I shall visit his birthplace, Berlin, before ending up in his present home town (see blog) of Amsterdam. From there, I am booked to fly, on 14 May, to Jersey.

In Jersey I am staying at the Bayview Guest House, St Helier. Yes, I’m in town this year. Sorry, Lucille of lovely Rocqueberg View, but my heart and feet are older now and last year’s shoes wore out. And I still fret about destruction of your umbrella (see blog).

From there, by two-part ferry (via Portsmouth) to the Isle of Wight for a lazy month of June at Hermitage Court Farm on St Catherine’s Downs. I and Red Ted’s (much) younger brother who will help me track down a few of my Victorian Vocalists in the island’s graveyards.



And then, on 1 July, France. That’s where I really want to be. So why have I tarried so long elsewhere? It’s partly the damned car-driving thing… I simply can’t drive again on the wrong side of the road. Hell, some people would say I can’t drive on the right side of the road… Especially roads with all those erratic touristy cars on them. Instead, I have to rely on the kindness of others.
So, what will I do, what do I want in France?
Umm. I wish.. I wish.. for a nice sixtyish gentleman (grin) to drive me around and help me find a new French home … At least, I think that’s what I want.
But, more realistically, I just hope to re-meet old and newer friends and almost-family, stay with (YES! but briefly) some darling people, and have a lovely French time…

Oh heck, mum is totally wrong. I loathe the planning, but I am looking forward to the places and the people.

Lyndall says...

...

That its a perfectly good picture
That I look better at 12 stone than thirteen and a half
That she even believes she spies a muscle
Have I been at the horse feed?
And that I'm to put it on the blog pronto
so here it is

The Cavalcade of Red Ted

*
*


I left Nelson and mother at 7.45 this morning.

My wonderful little break was, I thought, at an end.

Good grief, I thought initially it was the other way round! HERE was supposed to be the break. But, no. I have some head getting-together to do.

I drove back south through mostly the same country as on the upward leg. Beautiful. Only a few of those beastly caravans and Maui trucks (may they be damned and banned for all time) to make one slam on the brakes. Four and a half hours instead of nearly six!. Did I speed? Red Ted can’t speed.

I don’t care much for driving. But today … cruising through the glories of NZ … hell, I was happy.
Again
Twice in two days.
Ted seemed happy too. What would I do without him?
He did the ups and downs and fought off all sane challengers (NZ drivers are THE PITS and there would seem to be no speed limit except for me!)

I took petrol at Wakefield, a brief lunch at Hope Bridge – it had to be brief thanks to the scourge of NZ, sandflies! -- and arrived home to find… water pump problems. ARGGGH!
I’m going to bed

Dream trip over!

I have had such a happy time.

Could life perhaps always be like this?

My Father

*
*



When I go back to Richmond or Nelson, I’m not Kurt Friedrich Gänzl internationally famed, multi-award-winning author and blablabla…

I’m Dr Gallas’s son. Dr Fred Gallas, longtime headmaster of Waimea College, Richmond, and remembered with enormous respect (and occasionally just a little twinge of fear) by the many, many thousands of local boys and girls who attended the school during his long period at its head.
Even this week, leaning over the bars of the horse-yards at the racecourse … ‘YOU are Dr Gallas’s son…?!’
I sure am. And couldn’t be prouder of it.

This year was of course Waimea College’s fiftieth birthday, and the odd bit of uninformed twaddle found its way into print (as these things do) for the occasion. I could have reacted, but I didn’t bother.

If only those people knew the truth. And (chuckle) if only those thousands of boys and girls could have looked into the box of photos my mother gave me yesterday, and seen their benignly stern ‘Victorian’ headmaster when he was in his teens and early twenties.

Mountaineer, international skier, gymnast, health and fitness teacher, Ph D (and half a dozen other sets of letters) … and heck, how come I never inherited those good looks, not to mention that elevation….!

My wonderful father. God bless him.

An Anniversary Day at the Races

*
*
I first discovered harness racing at the age of 11. My father had been appointed as the inaugural principal of brand new Waimea College, Richmond, Nelson, and in January 1957 the family removed from Wellington to Richmond. An 11 year-old is a bit of a pain when carpets and furniture are being unpacked, so I was allowed to wander down to see what was going so colourfully on down at the Agricultural and Pastoral Society’s grounds. What father didn’t realise, until some time later, was that the A&P grounds contain Richmond racetrack, and ‘what was going on’ was not a country fair but the Nelson Harness Racing Club’s summer meeting. That was the day I first got hooked on the sport. And, I suppose, if I hadn’t gone, I wouldn’t now have the farm of 'Gerolstein' and all its horses, I wouldn’t have been the proud achiever of 28 racing wins. There would have been no Davey Crockett, no Master Ado, no Lite Gasp, and, Zeus forbid, no Elena de Gerolstein. I’d be a lot richer. But much less happier.

It wasn’t till I started telling someone how long ago I’d first come racing in Richmond that it hit me. Today was my half century. Fifty years exactly from my first glimpse of Rosyth, Somerset Lad and the world of harness racing. Well, it turned out to be a truly wonderful ‘birthday’. I can’t remember when I last enjoyed myself at the races so much.

All the old Nelson/Richmond pals from the 1990s were there, and we had joyous reunions. All the horsey pals from down the years were there … who would miss Nelson? … and in holiday mode. None of the ‘rush to Addington on a windy Friday night, run your horse and get home as quickly as possible’. Here, everyone is happy to linger.
Wayne Higgs, who trained all my early horses for me, was there with a team. He’d grinned to me not long ago that he would win a dozen races on the holiday circuits this year. So I passed the news on to my punting friends. I’m afraid they scoffed. Well, I’m here to say that Wayne took out three races on 11 January alone, and at tidy odds too!
And Murray Edmonds, who drove our dear Davey Crockett at Nelson one year (he came 4th, I have the video) and now trains my Wanda, Fritzl and Seppl: as every year, he was there with a tidy team, including my Gwen’s half-brother, Boomdiddiboom, and her ‘nephew’, Ronnie Coute.
None of mine, alas. I’m having what’s politely called a fallow period, but I get just as much fun watching the rest of the red-white-and-yellow horses running. With Murray, Wayne and the other pals there in force, I always had at least two or three horses to cheer on per race.
And, of course, there was ‘Chrissie’. Chrissie is Konni Kase, and she’s trained and driven by Wendy’s sister, Jan. She’s five now, and hasn’t really shown anything on the track since a promising first start, way back. But she had trialled well last week, so hope was in the air.
Well, Wayne hit hard and first with his triple whammy. And Murray almost pipped the redhot expensively-bought favourite with a once wild beast named Barmy Army. I took my photo an instant too soon .. he got even closer than in this picture.




Ronnie ran very well for fourth (he will be hot fave on day two after that!), and Boom just behind him in his usual honest 6th, so Gwen and Duchess’s ‘family’ were far from disgraced.
Then it was Chrissie’s turn. Here she is parading in the birdcage before the race: she’s grown into a fine specimen.



I needed six eyes for this race, the Hoani Jack Cup, because, apart from Chrissie, my friends Erin and Arkie had a new horse running, and old pal Les St Clair had one in too. But of course, I watched Chrissie. She’d drawn 17, so she was lastish when they settled. But Jan took her courage in her hands, looped the field three wide, put the horse handy and Chrissie ran on stoutly to finish sixth just 3 lengths from the winner and just a length off getting in the money! That’s her on the outside, in the yellow jacket. She’s making ground all the time, and was closer by the end. Oh, and by the way, she was the rank outsider of the field, paying 100-1! Not next time!



This picture however, tells a further tale. That one sneaking through on the inside to win the race – that’s Fire Dancer aka ‘Erin’, and the one pushing through the middle to second? That’s Les’s horse! So Erin and Arkie got to take home the Hoani Jack Cup, and the remaining races of the day passed in a flood of joy, great company and cold chardonnay, under the glorious Nelson sunshine.




Yes, this is why I got into harness racing. Why have I stopped doing this thought of thing? Well, I know why I stopped. But now, I must start again ... next summer Red Ted the Suzuki Alto is going to have to work a bit more for his living!

And so my anniversary day, Johnny’s birthday, was a splendid one, finishing with a quiet little supper and a nice bottle of local wine with mother, and -- oh, bliss! -- a good night’s sleep. So, who thought he’d never be happy again…?

A Trip Northwards ... and back in time

January 11 2008 was brother John’s 58th birthday. January 11 2008 was also the Nelson Harness Racing Club’s summer meeting. And I wanted to spend a day or two with mother, before, in a few weeks, I head off back to Europe. Mother just happens to live directly opposite Richmond racecourse.
So what more logic than for us to spend Johnny’s birthday together, and of course take in a bit of summery harness racing.
Just to make this trip all the more logical, Nicho from Germany (and Barraba Station) has been staying with us, and has as yet seen of New Zealand only Sefton, horse racing and Mount Cook. So what more suitable than for him to ride with me the 400 kilometres from Gerolstein to Richmond and, from there, bus, hitch and walk his way back to Christchurch in time to catch his plane for Stuttgart at the end of the month.
And so, on January 10, the little red car (which, these days, isn’t used to doing much more than a short sprint to the shops or the racetrack) was rolled out of its bed at 7am, and off we set in a mild grey Canterbury drizzle.
What I didn’t realise was that it would turn out, for me, to be much more than a simple car trip.
Only once in the past five years have I driven over what used to be the familiar road between Canterbury and Nelson. The road that, in the 1990s, Ian and I scooted regularly up and down, from our cottage in St Arnaud, happily following our horses round the Canterbury racetracks or fulfilling various lecturing and book-related dates. What memories there were, round every corner of the road.
Happily, as we approached the Lewis Pass, the point in the mountainous’ backbone’ of New Zealand’s South Island where you cross out of the Canterbury plains, the clouds vanished and the sun came out, so for the second half of our trip we saw the Buller and Nelson provinces at their best. I’d somehow forgotten (how could I?) just how beautiful New Zealand’s countryside is.
We stopped at the impressive Maruia Falls for soda water and a choc-bar. More memories. A visit there with Ian ten years ago. And much further back, as children, Johnny and I with our parents. It hasn’t changed. Except at last they’ve put signs up so you don’t miss it. And a toilet and picnic table and a proper track to the riverside! But in true New Zealand Dept of Conservation manner: no rubbish bin. (Well, someone would have to empty it. Official answer!).



I’ve never wanted to go back to Lake Rotoiti and the village of St Arnaud, where I spent so many weekends of my childhood climbing and skiing, and where Ian and I had a small holiday farm for something like a decade. But Nicho needed to see it, so I bit the bullet and detoured. The lake first. It must be over half a century since I first paddled in its waters.
It too is, of course, the same. Its deep blue waters, its pebbled ‘beach’, and the friendly mountains, naked of snow at this time of year. I must be getting old and kindly. I ever felt warmth towards toward the happy families picnicking messily (no DOC wastebin) on the strand, until one little girl decided it would be fun to frighten the ducks (the same ones, I’m sure, from 50 years ago). She now knows that frightening ducks is not funny. Especially in a National Park.
I got Nicho to take a picture of me in the same place where I had one taken in my childhood, and I intended to put the Then and the Now up here together. But I can’t find the Then, and I take a lousy photo Now, so here’s Nicho instead.



From the lake we drove out through St Arnaud village. Much of it is the same, but the new village hall has at last been built (it looks more like an aircraft factory) and some grotty ‘developer’ has shoved a dozen or so tatty chalets onto what used to be one paddock on the edge of the (tiny) burg. A ghastly eyesore. And then, a couple of kilometres down the road, Fernenland. Our sometime wee house and 62 acres. I didn’t mean not to look, and anyway the buildings and gardens are hidden behind the National Trust mini-forest (my donation) that lines the road. I just clocked the fact that the trees had grown hugely since our time, and plunged onwards. Too many memories can be too many.

Through the vast Golden Down forests, on the road we used to take each week to buy supplies in Wakefield (a wonderful butcher) and Richmond. Alas, the butcher has sold up and his little shop is now a garish block of commerces. My friendly garagiste, too, has gone into retirement, but his successor has spruced the place up nicely. We press on.

At the bottom of the main street of Richmond, Nicho piled out with his backpack and headed for the busstop. And I turned in the other direction, to Villa 40, Oakwoods Village, and a whole lot more memories.

A long time between blogs

It’s been a long time between blogs, hasn’t it.

Mainly because there wasn’t a lot to blog about during this very indifferent hot-n-cold, grey-n-gold antipodean summer.

I’ve done a bit of writing and researching on my monster work on Victorian Vocalists. I’ve done a bit of horse, of course. A tiny bit of farming. And, in between, well, not a lot.

It has not been the most successful or exciting horsey season at Gerolstein. Mostly so-so racehorses and a whole heap of bad luck have kept success on the racetrack away, and my own beloved beasts … well, Elena, Wanda and Boris are all ‘resting’. Elena curbed a hock (the penalty, I fear, of her large size), just when she was starting to get things nicely together on the beach, and Wanda and Boris were both judged to ‘need more time’. Little Fritzl and Seppl are eating grass too, over in Motukarara, but they both – like Wanda and Elena – should hopefully be back in warm-up action more or less about the time I set sail for Europe (6 February). Gwen and Duchess (below) had a year off from baby-bearing, so they and I are having to make do with ‘other people’s babies’ (we have three beauties on the farm) for now, but they came home last week in foal to the French stallion Love You, so this time next year we will -- hopefully --have two fine Friwi foals.




We’ve had a horse lose its driver, a horse fall through the fault of an incompetent (other) driver and animal, we’ve had a horse caught in an electric fence (and it cost me 20 jolts of electricity to get him out), but the worst event of the horsey summer, was the loss of little Peggy, who died just after I posted her picture on this blog, aged five weeks. We are due for some luck! But that’s racing.

So 2007 is nearly over. It has had some high spots, some (including my first ever motor-car graunch) not so high, but I look forward to doing better in 2008. And, of course, I shall tell you all about it.

Bonne année!

Rosie's Baby

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With the easing of the equine flu restrictions in Australia, Barry and Rosemary were at last able to voyage up to the Hunter Valley and visit Rosmarino (Rosie) and her progeny at Brooklyn Lodge. Rosie and her last year's foal, Basil, came in for a share of the attention ... but, needless to say, the latest addition to the family, little Peggy (by Fusaichi Pegasus) was the most photographed girl on the block. She is much admired by those who have knowledge, so fingers crossed that she will grow up a bonny and speedy lass.

My name is Mikie!

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Well, its dusk .. and the wee boy has, as promised, a name!

Also its a degree or two less frigid. For the moment...

So we run (intermittently) to keep warm...

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Hey World, Here I Am!

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A bitterly cold night in Canterbury, NZ. Three degrees, and showers of heavy rain.

So this, of course, had to be the night that Sally chose to give birth, under the pine trees, to her fourth son, a baby brother for General George, for Ned, and for one year-old Rose.

Our first Gerolstein foal of the year! Welcome, ummm... baby. (I guess he'll have a name by the end of the day!)



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The Queen holds court

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Jack and Laura make the acquaintance of Elena de Gerolstein. Still growing and threatening to become an understudy to a giraffe!

Hilary's Tree

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November the fourth is not only a significant date in my life. It is a significant one in the life of my friend, Jack, as well. November the fourth was the birthday of his late wife, Hilary.
It had been our intention, during his present visit to New Zealand and to Gerolstein, to plant a tree 'for Hilary', and today seemed the logical occasion to do it.
Jack, I and Laura (daughter of Marion Hue, see my French episodes) chose a healthy looking little elm, bred on the premises, and this afternoon Jack planted it in the centre of my rose garden, where Ian's ashes also lie.

Dear Ian

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It's November 4. Somehow I've got through a whole year without you. Sometimes it's felt longer than the thirty odd I spent with you.

With love forever,

Kurt xx

A little more Sydney

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22 October, and here I am -- after two months of Australia -- in New Zealand again, for three months of summer racing, before, in January, I board the good ship Gazellebank (captain and purser ... guess who!) to sail across the seas to Hamburg and a northern summer cum autumn in places beyond.

This second bite at the sunny city by the sea was a merry if unadventurous wee stay spent mainly in enjoying the company of Barry, Rosemary and Holly the dog. Here they are pictured on the boardwalk at Balmoral where we spent a delightful few hours by a proper golden Australian beach, sprawled on the grass feasting on some rather superior fish and chips. That's what I call life!

Rosmarino Inc

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Five of the six owners of the splendid mare Rosmarino (5 wins and some $200,00 in prize-money a few years back) got together at a Sydney pub for lunch, and discussion on the future of our lady, her baby Basil (due to go to the yealing sales, which have been postponed because of Autsralia's equine flu epidemic) and his due-to-be-born-any-day brother (or sister). Also to top up the operating kitty: keeping horses in Australia is a rather more expensive business than it is in New Zealand. There was enough left in our pockets, when all was said and paid to sample some what was apparently Sydney pub-Thai food (?!) and a few bottles of local red. A grand time was had by all. Now we are all smoking the nervous cigar waiting for our grandchild's birth, and waiting for the various Sales people to get their dithering act together.
Left to right: Kurt, Ivano, Les, Barry, Gerald. Absent: Brian, somewhere between Warsaw, Berlin and France.

A Month in the Country

It’s very nearly a month since I arrived in Barraba, and tomorrow my visit will be over. It will be time to bid goodbye to the now familiar vines and dogs, fields and streets, and most importantly to my good, kind friends and hosts, to load myself into Coco’s car, and head back to Flood Street, Sydney.

The second half of my stay here has been as lively as the first … and as populated. The house welcomed guests from both sides of the family, the hotel welcomed another weekend full house including a posse of wandering travel journalists, and 20 year-old Nicholas from Germany arrived to take over from Benji and Sofie as the wwoofer in residence. And our daily activities continued the regular sun-broiled mixture of vineyards and hotel-rooms, washing lines and irrigation pipes, combined (in my case, at least) with a regular dose of lazing about.



Thanks to the less lazy moments, I discovered the unfamiliar joys of the swimming pool. What could be nicer, after a sweaty, fly-blown morning ripping recalcitrant weeds from the hard-baked earth around the struggling vines, with the aid of an effortful kitchen knife, than to strip off one’s dirty clothes and melt into a piscine full of fresh, cool and chemical-free river water? Bliss.

I’ll carry away a lot of new memories from here…

A visit to the home of Bill Bright, internationally renowned harpsichord craftsman, where we lunched on chicken salad and white wine on the ‘lawn’ overlooking a lake before a viewing of the workshop where his instruments are made. I even got to tinkle three bars of Chopin on one (before going wrong) … my first ever touch of a harpsichord.
Last night was Bill’s 61st birthday, so it was our turn to play host, and I took the opportunity to photograph the cutest (grrrr! wooff!) muso in New South Wales.



An afternoon at the Playhouse Hotel Theatre for Andrew’s screening of the German musical film Der Kongress tanzt. I’ve known about this famous movie for years … but, crazily, I had to come to Barraba actually to see it. I’m so happy that I did. It’s a delicious melange of naievete, sophistication and spectacle, with a couple of thoroughly plugged hit songs, and some splendidly characterful acting. I particularly relished the chance to see Paul Hörbiger, whom I’ve mentioned so much in my Encyclopaedia, doing his thing.



And then there was the snake. It wasn’t till I’d been here nearly three weeks that Haddon gave Nico and I a ‘what to do’ chat re snakes. And promptly found one in the woodpile. Then, yesterday, as we weeded our way down the alleys of vines, a volley of barking broke out. Alfie and Gus the ‘watchdogs’ (mostly they watch the inside of their eyelids!) were a little further up the field – where we would be working in 20-30 minutes -- bouncing up and down, snapping and yapping to beat the band. They had baled up a 4-5 foot brown (and definitely poisonous) snake. Weeding came to an abrupt halt, and we retreated briskly to the house with the dogs in gleeful pursuit. Alfie and Gus have, as far as I am concerned, thoroughly earned their title of watchdogs!
I wish, though, that they’d warned me about green ants. Those blighters have a nasty bite, and my digging forearm is right now a swollen mass of blistery fangmarks!



And finally, and oh so importantly, yesterday there was rain. About 12 millimetres of it, in three (very) short and sharp bursts. That may not sound much to those of us who live in damper climes, but what a difference it makes in this sunburned country. The greenery smiles. The weeds pop out of the ground instead of battling to stay in. And, of course, the house’s rainwater supplies get a top up. I’m glad I saw it rain on Barraba Station. It will be a happy memory to range with the others….