Day 49 | Caron Nature Reserve: I'm starting to find a certain affinity with the NR
55 km | zzOz total: 2,463 km
What a bash.
13.3 km/hour average today. The wind has slowed proceedings.
A fierce storm hit last night, here just 5mm of rain, less than quarter of an inch, so I was surprised for blue skies much of the day. The clouds didn’t hang around long, heading south at great pace.
I just plugged into Radio National, for once great reception out here. Early on I heard a discussion about the predicament of the flood of NZers who have arrived in Australia subsequent to 2001 and have to wait 10 years to obtain many basic government services. I’ve been here much longer, a different category, so long there’s only a few words in my vocabulary that mark me as coming from Aotearoa, ie, NZ, man, that will be an embarrassing issue when I return, I’ll have to start speech therapy immediately.
Later was half an hour of poetry of Hone Tuwhare, one of NZ’s most read poets, hearing the accent of George Henare made me drift off, contemplative, if somewhat tangentially.
Some of Tuwhare’s images had me thinking of student days in Wellington, maybe it was mention of the pie cart, the only place for a late night feed in the days when the capital shut down at 5 30pm. I drifted into thinking of the bands I saw, back in the days when all the pubs shut at 10pm, the musical Blam Blam Blam, or the less musical noise merchants, The Gordons, actually one of my favourite performers, who later transformed, slightly, to become Bailter Space, or The Body Electric, or some other band I never remembered the name whose mesmeric performance I stumbled into one windswept Wednesday evening.
I never became an Australian citizen, firstly because I would have had to give up my NZ one, and, anyway, it had no effective difference to life, but later because I’ve always felt I’d be heading home ultimately. NZ might have a shaky foundation, miserable summers on occasions, and be impoverished in comparison to Oz but it’s always felt like my real home.
I was daydreaming away, less than 24km/hour max speed for the day, but each pedal stroke bringing me, however tangentially, closer to my return.