coast NZ

[Johnnie Phatt]

So in tonights episode we learned about the more or less most southerly part of the NZ. Stuart Island. Hime ti sand bars Marches and tropical rain forests all in one small island
Places like Halfmoon bay which if memory serves a Japanese tourist arrived at and decided to live there for months In shall we say primitive conditions. She has never said why She just did. She was eventually found to have over stayed her Visa and sent back home. The locals did not care but govt types just have o sense of cool factor
There is doughboy bay. I can not remember why it is important. I just like the name. Reminds me of crescent rolls for some reason
There is an American Whaling ship which is a wreck lying in just a few feet of water just off shore of a Norwegian whaling stn
The Norwegians being frugal types brought with them homes in sections. Like giant Ikea houses. When the whalers left the residents took them apart and put them back together else where. All tongue and groove walls and dowel pins rather than nails.
Side note there is a a place on the way up North in Ontario called little Norway where Norwegian pilots were trained for the war (WW 2 if memory serves). They sure do get around
There is an area where the ocean is so pristine it is used as a baseline for other areas around the islands to see how bad the water can get
Home to fifty varieties of fish and over 300 species of life forms. Also a haven for the 7 gill shark
Finally Stewart Island is home to the world largest parrot. It is nocturnal and can not fly. but it runs very fast and can climb And it is not really all that big compared to say a MaCaw But it is a good size. But it is not dead
and of course there is a the Stuart Island Kiwi A small bird that looks for all the world like a hump with legs
The scenery is so fabulous This area is known for two things. the waves and the sounds of birds. neither of which ever seem to stop
Take it away Kiwi

 

[Kiwi Rider]

"Kiwi A small bird that looks for all the world like a hump with legs"
Thanks a lot Johnnie, I resemble that remark!
You've taught me a few things about NZ that I never knew . . . the Jap tourist at Half Moon Bay, I have never heard about that, wonder when that was?
I've never been to Stewart Island, but I know a fair bit about it, I have a mate who is a keen hunter and he goes down there often, there's a fair few people live there permanently, around 500, I've got a mate lives at Bluff, the most southern town in the South Island, very windy witrh cold southerlies coming up from Antarctica . . brrrrr, I've been there twice.

Here we are at the top of the world lol !

 

[Kiwi Rider]

Here's a story about the Japanese woman in self exile at Half Moon Bay . . .

"
WHEN I THINK of a pathway out of the forest, I think of the path that the Japanese woman Keiko Agatsuma constructed between the cave where she lived and the beach. She built her path out of pieces of driftwood and covered it in washed-up fishnet to stop herself from slipping as she walked down onto the sand. A simple, cursory path made from the materials at her feet.


Agatsuma had arrived in Christchurch with a three-month tourist visa in August 1978. After travelling around the lower South Island, she took a boat to Stewart Island, a heavy backpack on her shoulders. She arrived at Freshwater Landing, where the launchmaster warned her of dangerously changeable conditions and a boggy wetland track to walk across. But she set off alone; I imagine that she didn’t look back. The launchmaster later described her as ‘wiry, tough-looking’. It took her two days to reach the Forest Service hut. She began to explore the island, foraging for food as her supply of groceries dwindled, and soon – in Doughboy Bay, just south of Mason Bay – she came across a cave with a high ceiling and overhanging rātā trees that sheltered the entrance from rain. She set down her pack at the back of the cave, where it was dry. She constructed a bed from driftwood and fishing net. She hung colourful buoys in the trees around the entrance.


It’s impossible to know for sure why Agatsuma came to such a remote place. Those who spoke to her on Stewart Island – park rangers, fishermen – said she had mentioned an abusive husband, and a feeling that she did not belong back home; perhaps that she felt barra-barra, ‘broken apart from others’, as hikikomori do. We can assume that she wanted not only to be by herself, but to feel the relief of placing a great distance between herself and her home country, the opposite of homesickness. The cave was a dwelling only: it offered no particular culture or history, asked no questions of her. However, Agatsuma was to live there for only one week. Her overstayer status was quickly discovered by authorities, and she was deported back to Japan, travelling with her brother who had come to Christchurch to take her back. The story of her isolation rippled outwards. International media were fascinated by the tale of the ‘Japanese woman cave dweller’, and she fell into Southland urban myth. She later inspired a short story (‘Of Memory and Desire’ [1991] by Peter Wells), a film based on that short story (Memory and Desire [1998] by Niki Caro), and a Noh play (Rakiura [1993], written by Eileen Philipp) – and perhaps all of these works are testament to the symbolic power of that image of a woman far from home, living inside a cave, as if in exile. It seems so far removed from the young man with his blinds pulled down in a bedroom in suburban Japan, but this is a story, too, that ripples outwards, that remains unsolved. "
Very interesting stuff, first I knew of it, and I was here in the late seventies, although, I was stoned for most of it lmao.

 

[Kiwi Rider]

here's more info on her I dug up off some web page . . . I'm not trying to hijack your thread Johnnie, it's just so interesting to me, I want to share the story.

" I beachcomb for a time, then find myself walking back though the dunes to the cave. In late autumn 1978, a light plane landed on this beach, bringing four passengers. One was Keiko Agatsuma. She was returning under police escort—to collect some buried money, she said. She had lived here in Doughboy cave, cooking her meals under a rough corrugated-iron barrel. To her the place was the antithesis of Tokyo, where she worked as a cleaner in glass-and-concrete tower blocks. She said she hadn’t known such places existed. Her visa allowed her 30 days in the country. She took 180 more. New Zealand immigration officials extradited her as an overstayer.

I read her story in old newspapers that were turning yellow and brittle. Her intent was to get south, as far south as she could. Australia wasn’t far enough. Getting away from Tokyo—that was the important thing. Her family felt like strangers, she said.

I thought about her lugging her belongings over Adams Hill, the high point between Doughboy and Mason Bays. Did she have a suitcase? Or did she strap them to her back? How did she cope with the peat bogs, the roots of the bog pine, the steep inclines? When she returned, an odd drama played out near the crest. She led her escort into the manuka to look for the money, but nothing was found. The police suspected it was a ruse, a chance to have one last look at the island. "