Letters From New Zealand

1/1/00 (nr Mount Hutt/Methven)

... so it's around 10.00pm, New Year's Eve.

We're both feeling deflated: our earlier feeling of excitement submerged under a relentless barrage of unimaginative NZ televisual build-up. Like rolling news, it suffers badly from having to repeat the same stories every 10 minutes. Far better to look to the local paper, which boasts that Dunedin is not 'computer-reliant' and that the town hall clock will be hand-wound as usual. The dusk arrives - late - and we wonder just why we came to this spot. (Does my love for music really supersede all else? Why else are we in Dunedin?)

With Bev and her friends down the Octagon, though, we start to cheer up. A covers band is running through a medley of Abba songs, and we push our way through lifted-up tape barriers to the church steps, where we can survey the good-natured throng. The clock faces appear to be showing different times - two minutes apart - and there's no way we can hear the distorted announcements, but no matter. Into 'Do The Timewarp' (from the Rocky Horror Show: I had no idea so many Kiwis loved to cross-dress), 'Amazing Grace' and 'Otago Highlanders' (a paean to the local rugby team, which includes the line 'welcome to the house of pain'). A few drunken Maori girls behind us sing lustily and harmoniously along.

Everyone's crammed in, solid. The announcer's indecipherable, booming voice comes over from the other side. The TV cameras are shining a fierce spotlight in our eyes. (Dunedin is the first... let me get this straight... first city in the world to have a town hall clock to chime in the Millennium. AND its people will see the dawn - not the sun-rise - 10 minutes earlier than Gisborne. Or so the local Millennial coordinator claims.)

A cheer goes up. (The clock is showing both a minute to, and a minute after, midnight.) Why is everyone cheering? Oh, that fella there, up on the rooftop, has just cracked open the champagne. Good on him! Early, though. Now everyone's cheering for real.

'They should've amplified the clock,' complains Charlotte in my ear. 'I can't hear it.'

Just then, the chimes start..

(It later transpires that Dunedin took two attempts to count down the Millennium on national TV. There was a great explosion of fireworks round the town hall clock, though. The aftermath was just like the pivotal scene in 'Back To The Future'. Without the wide-eyed professor.)

A lone piper pipes. We don't hear him, ears deafened by cannon fire.

Now the covers band are playing assorted hits from 'Grease'. (The guy in the record store where I bought the tape yesterday must be kicking himself. He could've doubled the asking price.)

'Sa-a-a-ndy/Can't you see/I'm in misery... why-i-i-i-i-?/Oh Sandy,' the band wails.

C refuses to stay for their rendition of 'Hopelessly Devoted To You'. We walk up George St towards our cars. A drunken youth knocks over a barricade. He's spotted by a security man who calls ahead. A couple of police officers walk over to the youth and MAKE HIM PUT IT UP AGAIN. Phew! That's making the punishment fit the crime.

Drive back to Bev's. World hasn't ended yet.

...around 4.30am, New Year's Day.

Couple of hours sleep, phone my mother - she puts the phone down on me. We've driven down through scary fog and bleak night rain to Moeraki. I sing bad music hall songs, and keep referring to a near-useless map. We huddle together on the beach, watching the sky lighten over our beloved Moeraki Boulders. (No chance of a sun-rise with these clouds. In fact, we don't see it for another four hours - and then only momentarily.) The beach - and boulders - are deserted. I ask C to lend me her diamond ring for a conjuring trick, and tell her to close her eyes. Next she knows, I'm on my knees in the sand, proposing.

She says, 'How long are you prepared to stay on your knees for while I decide?'

She says, 'I will.'

Toast our engagement with a sip of Johnny Walker Red and coke from a tin cup, then decide it's dangerous to drink more so tired and with three hours still to drive. Embrace 12 boulders for luck, one for each month. World still hasn't ended.

...around 9.00am, New Year's Day (nr Mount Hutt/Methven)

We're shattered. No, we have no concrete wedding plans yet.

World still hasn't ended.

...around 6.00pm, New Year's Day

Sleep a couple of hours, then force ourselves awake to watch the English Millennial Celebrations.

Already, New Zealand is claiming all sorts of spurious and rather sad 'Millennial Firsts' for itself: the First Golf Match, the First Bunjee Jump, the First Baby, the First Embroidered Quilt (I kid you not), the First Bowls Match, the First Bowl Of Honeyed Rice Krispies Eaten By An English Woman In Dunedin (Charlotte), the First Attempted Singalong With 'Nothing Takes The Place Of You' (me).

Everyone on TV is raving about the French fireworks - funny, we though they hated 'em down here, cos of the Rainbow Warrior. Maybe that's only the North Island. Tune in to Greenwich, and what do we see? The bleedin' Eurythmics. Aaargh! Wasn't seeing them live in Melbourne enough punishments?

The fireworks are brilliant and badly filmed by what appears to be a New Zealand Outside Broadcast Service somewhere in the vicinity of Canvey Island (in Essex). We are bitterly disappointed the much-vaunted 'river of flame' never materialises.

Across to house for an extended tour of the beef/sheep farm led by Andrew and son Jonno. Learn how to rotate grass crops so animals never grow hungry. Watch as hundreds of sheep are herded from one paddock to the next. Get licked all over by elderly, slobbery dog. Stand in middle of field, unprotected, as hundreds of stampeding cattle rush past - on the name of art. (Eh?) Walk through fields of clover, weed, thistle, grass. Take tumble on tractor bike - bike rolls over and lands on its wheels. In contrast, I stay down. Fortunately, I land on my head. It's swollen now, but what's new?

Excellent family. Very deadpan sense of humour.

World still hasn't ended.

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