I attended a sales meeting in Auckland. The reps said, ‘It’ll be like Noosa.’ Their fantasies grew more intense: ‘Some people say it’s the perfect town.’ And even more intense: ‘It’ll get kids away from their PlayStations.’
I interviewed Bob Robertson, CEO of Infinity and, I suppose, the town father of Pegasus. He wore black from head to toe, set his watch fifteen minutes ahead, and tried to interview himself.
‘Is it about money? No,’ he said.
I hadn’t asked, but seeing as he brought it up I interrupted him and said, ‘It is so.’
He said, ‘Sorry?’
I said, ‘It is so about money.’
‘Yes, it is so,’ he said. ‘It is so, to a level. But sometimes you pass that level.’
He got back to interviewing himself. ‘What am I going to do with the money? What am I going to do with it? Okay, there’s inheritance for the kids and money for my staff. But if it was about money I wouldn’t be doing it. For Pegasus, I’m acutely keen to create what I would like to consider would be as close as possible to an ideal town.
‘My vision of Pegasus is based on the perception of what I would want – and I treat myself as a guinea pig – if I was going to live there.’
But Robertson lived on the shores of picturesque Lake Wānaka.
Sometime later I saw Pegasus on TV. Current affairs show Campbell Live lingered on images of red, white and blue electrical cables sprouting out of the ground. The signs read PEGASUS SCHOOL COMING SOON and PEGASUS TOWN CENTRE COMING SOON.
Reporter Natasha Utting trudged back and forth across the footbridge over the artificial lake. The bridge and lake were new but I recognised the special ambience of Pegasus in an instant – an ambience of dreariness, of purgatory. It looked miserable and hopeless. No one was around. It looked as though no one would ever be around.
In fact the population had reached about three hundred. A café had opened, and a general store. But where was the school and where was the town shopping centre? Infinity put it this way: ‘The effects of the global financial crisis have necessitated a carefully managed approach to the staging of the town’s development.’ Resident Steve Fleet told The New Zealand Herald, ‘We moved here thinking there was going to be a whole new town and we wouldn’t have to keep going into Rangiora or Christchurch.’ He didn’t sound too fussed. ‘The kids love it. They just wander around and do their own thing. … It is quite nice with it being quiet.’
Silence in New Zealand has regional qualities. I thought back to the kind of silence that spring weekend when I mooched around north Canterbury, with the wind in the willows and the shadows of poplars falling in long thin stripes across country lanes. It was silent as a grave in Tuahiwi, where the clumps of wild daffodils were beginning to fade and fray in the graveyard. There was only the shushing of the surf at Leithfield Beach, where the burger van was open from five to seven, Thursday through Sunday. There was not much more than the snip of scissors at Woodend, where the scrapbooking club met every Thursday over chocolate muffins.
I lingered on the footpath outside the Woodend bakery and waited for Karl Mason to emerge. I had seen him pull up in a fabulous 1974 Camaro painted canary yellow. A builder from Christchurch, he belonged to the Garden City Rodders Club and was taking the Camaro up to Kaikōura ‘for a hot-rod run’. That, and ‘to perve at the waves’.
He said, ‘Pegasus? You couldn’t pay me to live there.’ The town was the least of his worries and he didn’t appear to have a worry in the world. He was in great spirits, a lean lithe surfer whose haircut was narrowly avoiding the onset of a mullet. He was travelling with Karen Lewis. She said, ‘Show them your baby.’ Karl took out his mobile phone and proudly brought up a photo of a black 1952 Ford F1 pickup truck.
Graham Turner at Woodend Motor Camp owned a 1963 Leyland converted into a house-bus. He lived in it with his wife Claire, who was making a vegetable stew with barley on the woodstove while their two young sons Isaak and Leo lay on bunks watching Toy Story on DVD and munching on a snack. Isaak said, ‘I got nachos!’ Graham said, ‘Pegasus? I hope it’ll be good for the area.’
Graham worked as a carpenter. What was he doing in a motor camp? Before Woodend, he and Claire had run a café in Westport. She said, ‘It was great in summer, but come winter – pffft! It just died. We made a huge loss.’ They had rented their house and bought the Leyland for $5,000 on TradeMe. Their corner spot in the camp was nearest the beach and a pine forest. They had been adopted by a cat they found under the bus one night and called Smoochie.
Before Westport there was England. Graham’s mother had become friends with two New Zealanders who picked potatoes and drove a converted ambulance they called Mabel. Their stories about New Zealand inspired her to emigrate. ‘Then she rang me up one night and said, “I’m not very well.” I said, “What do you mean?” She said, “I’ve got cancer.” So of course I came. That was twelve years ago. Mum’s still alive. She’s got great willpower. Amazing woman.’
Then he talked about working on a plastering job at the home of a widow in her seventies. ‘Amazing woman. She can hardly walk but she’s out there in her garden digging up a patch ten foot long for two weeks with a spade handle she’s attached to a trowel. She said it was like doing it with a teaspoon. She planted celery and broccoli but the cows got in and ate it.’ He finished his story, and then he and Claire sat down outside
