The recession haunted every place I went, even the end of the world – Scott Base, Antarctica. One day I saw a week-old copy of The Press lying on a table in the games room. The front-page headline read MORE JOBS TO GO.
More jobs did go. That was very often decided in a head office across the Tasman; it was as though Australia had foreclosed on New Zealand. Australia, always Australia, constant and flush with confidence, wealth, warmer temperatures. New Zealanders left in their droves for an apparently better life – higher wages, less self-loathing. The two most important statistics in New Zealand life became the number of people who left for Australia every month, and the holiday road toll.
For three years New Zealand toughed it out, switching off the lights to save power, waiting for better times. It sometimes felt as though it had gone missing. In limbo, it stuck its head in, passed the Home Brand salt and watched Fair Go. It said, ‘Whatevs.’
The age of austerity suited the country, with its cherished notions of modesty and endurance. Author Jonathan Raban has written of his homeland: ‘Like all small islands, England has got into the singular habit of thinking itself enormous, continental.’ Not all small islands: New Zealand thinks itself smaller than it is, a buried treasure, X marks the spot. It constantly talks of being put on the map, as though waiting to be discovered and rediscovered.
It constantly talks about itself. Oliver Duff, in his 1941 book New Zealand Now: ‘A land lying so far from the controlling centres of the world that no one but its own people take it seriously.’ Austin Mitchell, in his 1972 book The Half-Gallon Quarter-Acre Pavlova Paradise: ‘As a country, New Zealand has one major preoccupation: New Zealand.’
The ancient studies have set the tone, created the foundation myth of New Zealanders as conformist, afraid of something, defensive and belligerent. ‘A queer, lost, eccentric people,’ John Mulgan wrote in his 1947 essay ‘Report on Experience’. Bill Pearson in his 1952 essay ‘Fretful Sleepers’ wondered ‘if it isn’t death the New Zealander waits for’. And: ‘Who is he trying to fool, to reassure,’ American visitor Robin Winks asked in his 1954 book These New Zealanders, ‘with his band-beating and horn-tooting?’
Civic pride is easily offended. National pride is at stake every minute of the day. Personal reputations can be destroyed in a trice. In 2011 prime minister John Key gave this chilling assessment: ‘Everyone is accountable for everything they say.’ Someone is always listening, waiting for the chance to purse their lips in disapproval.
Anything else? Yes. We drink too much, drive too fast, and let mad dogs off the leash. Our national pastimes are golf, drowning, and child abuse. Also, we moan and bitch and complain about everything. Poor old New Zealand, driven mad by the voices in its head.
I hit the road for those three years to get away from it all. I kept finding deep signs of happiness. Everyday life rose above the recession and the claims made for New Zealand’s apparent despair. As I wandered from no place special to no other place special I kept seeing an explicit New Zealand contentment, at lakeside and riverside, in the middle of arid plains, in the middle of polluted suburbs, in an ingeniously converted slaughterhouse loft.
Lance used to work as a slaughterman at the freezing works along the coast at Tokomaru Bay. They issued him with three knives. One he later gave to a mate and never got back. Another he lost in a river. The knife he kept was as valuable as a historical document.
A brief history of meat: One of the most profound dates in New Zealand civilisation is February 15, 1882, when a maiden voyage of frozen meat left Port Chalmers in Dunedin for England. The inventory included 2,226 sheep tongues – if only those tongues could talk. England soon clamoured for the various cuts of chop, brisket, rib and liver, leading to an industrial revolution in the new colony. By the time the freezing works at Hicks Bay opened in 1921, there were already four other massive slaughterhouses operating in Poverty Bay. Meat was red gold, a recipe for success, a major new export commodity in addition to wool and grain.
‘The new option radically changed the nature of farming in New Zealand,’ wrote historian Michael King. ‘Previously sheep farmers had been forced to slaughter animals – sometimes by simply driving them over cliffs. Now they could raise sheep for meat and wool … [It] would deliver to New Zealanders one of the highest living standards in the world.’
Lance Roberts, 85 and fangy, survived as one of the architects of New Zealand. He was fifteen in 1941 when Oliver Duff wrote, ‘Have we a New Zealander? Is there one among us so typical of all that New Zealand comes and goes with him?’ Lance worked as a cowboy, station hand, fencer, farmer, shearer, killer. ‘I enjoyed it all. I was a fit bugger. I used to say to the young guys, “If I put my heart in your frame, it’d rattle it to pieces.”’ At Tokomaru Bay, slaughtermen had to account for 84 big sheep or 96 lambs in under seven and a half hours. What you needed to do, Lance explained, was kill with both hands.
He looked back with pride on his 85 years. He’d broken the land, married three times, mastered the art of walking upright in New Zealand. He was its two races, its mixed blood. He said, ‘I’m not a full Pākehā, not a full Māori either. I’m a bit of each. That’s the best way to be.’
His first horse was a chestnut pacer called Socks. He saw the great Australian aviator Charles Kingsford-Smith land his Southern Cross on the beach at Gisborne on a summer’s day in 1933 – he was across the road in a kind of orphanage, where he’d been placed after his mother died. His family of two sisters
