Biddy said, ‘We didn’t want to retire into the Waiau village. We knew that. It didn’t appeal at all really, did it?’ As they were talking, cars drove past their house in a slow procession – the curious and nosy, drawn by the strange spectacle of a nascent town.
Biddy: ‘All the time! And they bring buses from the old people’s home, and a walking group goes through.’
James: ‘Back and forth, back and forth, especially in the weekends. What’d they say – 150 people, I think it was, came through the information centre last weekend.’
Biddy: ‘Mind you, we did that too, didn’t we? We drove in one day and looked at the model of the town and we just thought, “This feels right.” And that was that for us. We’d thought of retiring to Rangiora and we weren’t so keen on Kaiapoi and we didn’t think we were centre-of-Christchurch kind of people, so…
‘People say, “How are you ever going to live with neighbours all around you?” But the beauty of it is it’s going to happen gradually. We should be acclimatised by the time Pegasus is chocka, shouldn’t we?’
James: ‘We’ve as good a view here as we had at home.’ Beyond the neighbouring golf course was the Southern Alps. Inside the house there was a macrocarpa bookcase, a set of plates hand-painted by Biddy’s mother in 1929, coasters on the coffee table; the curtains hadn’t been put up but 172 Infinity Drive was shaping up as a home. What did they make of the petty covenants placed on each resident – no caravans or tents, all vehicles with commercial signage to be parked inside the garage, no garden statues or fountains without prior approval?
Biddy: ‘One Christmas James bought me a lovely concrete gnome doing a brown-eye. Where do I put that?’
James: ‘I’ve actually got permission to put it on the letterbox. I told one or two people about it and they laughed like hell. Mind you, they did say, “I don’t think so.”’
James remembered the summer holidays they used to take in the Marlborough Sounds. ‘The beauty of it was we would sit up on a hill, and there was a wharf down below – we’d sit on the hill at night and have our drinky-poos, us and four other couples. Oh, we had marvellous holidays there for 27 or so years. We’d watch the wharf, and the world go by, and all the people…’
James and Biddy, the early settlers, had brought their history with them to Pegasus, invigorating the empty unloved town with their laughter, their ridiculous gnome, their drinky-poos, their heirlooms, their warm welcome. Effortlessly and triumphantly, they had brought New Zealand to Pegasus.
Waiouru
Operation Desert Rose
The half-moon above Waiōuru on an afternoon in the middle of winter looked nothing like as remote or unearthly as the town itself. New Zealand’s only army garrison town, Waiōuru operates as a defence zone. It looks very defensive. It looks low down, crouching. The temperature had dropped to six below; even the sky looked as though it were trying to burrow itself under the ground.
The army camp is cordoned off, out of sight, just about out of range. From a helpful brochure welcoming new residents: ‘Broadcasting Communications Ltd have supplied Waiōuru with a TV translator due north of the town on Waitangi Hill. This broadcasts TV1 and TV2 only and if you wish to receive TV3 you will need to have an aerial directed at Mount Taranaki.’
Waiōuru, pop. 2,000, is more or less in the middle of the North Island, a kind of dead centre. It doesn’t support a lot of life. The surrounding Rangipō Desert looks raw, mugged. Waiōuru translates as ‘The place that all must pass through’. The passing is more memorable than the stopping. New Zealand’s most intense highway, the Desert Road, twists and rises through the blonde tussock and red scorched earth on the high volcanic plateau dominated by Mount Ruapehu. Ice and snow seal it off every winter. There are two standing headlines in New Zealand journalism: TRAMPER LOST and DESERT ROAD CLOSED.
It closed, opened, closed and opened again all in the same week in July. The clouds hung thick and low. You couldn’t see the mountain, or much above the desert floor of tussock and pumice. Creeks and streams did their best to nudge through – the prize exhibit on the wall of Waiōuru’s pub, the Oasis, was a quite obscene length of eel, weighing 32 pounds and going by the name of Hector. Even in death, Hector looked hungry.
Waiōuru is the compulsory training destination for new army recruits. The teenage boys are housed in small bedrooms in small wooden huts with cracked windows and peeling paint. They are sent out into the Rangipō Desert to shoot live ammunition, run when told to run, sleep when told to sleep, and freeze without any instruction.
Major Chas Charlton said, ‘Waiōuru is our college and our university.’ The army camp’s policy is to place ten recruits into each bedroom: was Waiōuru also a boarding school? ‘No,’ the major said, and returned to the solemn duty of eating his hot lunch in the officers’ mess. The plate of chilli con carne was piled so high it might have defeated Hector, but the major, a trim, taut man with a trim, taut haircut that stayed close to his head at all times, spooned down the lot.
He said, ‘I’m a patriot.’ What did that mean? ‘No matter where I am, I feel a swell of pride in my bosom about New Zealand. I will do anything for my country.’
We were being eavesdropped by 1979 portraits of the Queen and Prince Philip on the far wall; they could rest assured their corner of the Commonwealth was in safe hands. Major Charlton spoke of the importance of tradition, loyalty, service. He knew his military history. He was about to go – armed with replicas of two 1861 Colt 44 open-top revolvers,
