This last week saw me, Fabrice and Bryan over 3 days, drive down from Whangateau in Northland to Wellington via Taupo, the Desert Road and Palmerston North and then back again via Whanganui, National Park and Te Kuiti-a total of 1869 kms. We stayed overnight in two holiday Parks on this trip, the best being the park at Paekakariki where it was $75 for a small cabin, more like a motel room and where I was able to cook dinner for the three of us and sleep on a great bed.
The reason for the quick trip to Wellington was for Fabrice to meet with the French attache in the French Embassy to sort out his passport so we can apply for new immigration visas by the next new moon.
Wellington was the same as ever-I still think it is one of New Zealand's nicest cities even with the wind tunnels of the inner city streets-inner city parking is always tricky but the place has good public transport, a great South Indian restaurant and nice energy for a city-something in my mind to do with its size, the wonderful botanical gardens and the Wellington waterfront.
The depressing aspect of the trip was the drive through New Zealands ever expanding grass desert on both sides of the three volcanic mountains south of Taupo, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe.
The grass desert extends for kilometers of driving in the north island without a break for the sad eyes viewing this desolation within the landscape-lazy farming to keep a few families fed and a waste of land in my opinion. The only trees to be seen mostly in huge pine forests. When I think of all the sacrificed native forest my heart breaks and I want to shout to the world that New Zealand lives a "clean green" lie and is only able to support the lie by keeping the country empty of people. A lack of biodiversity in land is not beautiful, environmentally sustainable or healthy longterm either for the land itself (look at erosion) and the species reliant upon the land including the human species!
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| A typical grass desert in NZ |
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| The grass desert road view |
The top two pictures are the landscape from Taumaranui through to Te Kuiti and the one below shows the early morning view as we drove from Raetihi through the National Park road.
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| the National Park grass desert |
Makara beach near Wellington city-a west coast rock beach.
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| Me, after travelling trough the grass desert |
The dead fish frame here at Makara beach represents the death of the New Zealand forest in its majesty and beauty. We have killed our heart and soul and replaced it with a grass desert. This is capitalism at its worst and demonstrates the greedy lazy farming in a country which once had huge forests and where guardianship or Kaitiakitanga should be paramount. Look at the picture below of a part of Caretaker Farm, Whangateau-this is after 20 years of planting and care on a land that had been ravaged by goats for 15 years-there is hope for all of the land of Aotearoa if nature is given free rein to repair and regenerate. A friend once said to me that a rainforest is just a desert with trees!!!!
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