Dinner with the Locals: Tasman, Tornadoes, and a Tarnished Reputation (Travel)

The best story about New Zealand occurred in 1642 and involved a man named Tasman, a few members of his crew, and the local natives. Considering this is also how New Zealand was discovered, it’s not a bad place to start off this book, either.

Here goes.

Having been charged with discovering the great Southern Continent--and, if not that, then some very nice spices—-Abel Tasman found himself off of the shores of New Zealand with a few canoes headed toward his boat and very little clue as to what was going on. This was due to the fact that no European had seen native New Zealanders before (called Maoris), and no Maori had seen a European before. The Maoris stopped short of Tasman’s ship and started blowing trumpets and waving their arms, a gesture now better understood to have meant “go away or we’ll kill you”, but was misinterpreted by Tasman as an invitation for a hoedown. The Dutch Explorer called his music players to the deck and, with the help of the Maoris, created the first documented dueling-band shindig in the South Pacific.

Needless to say, Tasman was quite impressed with this and, being the perceptive man he was, decided that he liked these Maoris. They might be savages, but boy could they carry a tune! He sent out a welcome party of four men to make proper introductions and, upon seeing them, the Maoris rammed the welcoming boat, took them captive, beheaded them and ate them for dinner. So, apart from celebrating August 22 as the day of New Zealand’s first hoedown, it is also celebrated as the day Maoris discovered white meat.

Since then, New Zealand has been on the up and up, but rather quietly. It’s spent a good deal of human history just sitting in its own corner of the world politely minding its own business. There was that whole matter of humans showing up sometime around 1,000 years ago, followed by a second set of different humans about 700 years later, but then there was a lull for a good long time when the only thing people heard about New Zealand involved a sheep and a very lonely farmer. In fact, that’s where New Zealand is right now historically, lodged somewhere between total obscurity and bad jokes. That is to say, no one knows just exactly what New Zealand is doing.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, either, considering that New Zealand is so remote. When I was at the local library researching my upcoming trip there I found books on the country nestled comfortably between My Life with Headhunters and Surviving the Arctic. I pulled from the shelf every single book available on New Zealand (there were four) determined to learn everything I could about this country before going there myself. And, apart from a few other facts that I’ll dish out as I go along (I’ve got to keep you reading somehow), I’ve pretty much brought you up to snuff.

Somehow, while planning for this trip I thought it would be a great idea to take along my fiancé who knew less about the Pacific than I did, but possessed a few traits that I suspected would come in handy along the way: common sense for one, bravery, good looks, and a bit of charm, too. She was anxious to go (as she always is when she is offered free plane tickets) and so soon there were two of us planning a sojourn to the South Pacific.

This would not be our first time to the Southern Hemisphere. A year prior the two of us were standing in La Bellavista district of Santiago, Chile wondering just what the hell we were doing there. One of the more valuable lessons learned from that trip was the realization that south isn’t always the direction of warmer climes. In fact, you could say there is a precise geographical line running around the belly of the world that marks the spot where places stop getting warmer and start getting colder. Of course, we remembered hearing something about this line in grade school and how the seasons were flip-flopped, but that all seemed ridiculous.

“Besides,” I reassured Kate, “I checked the weather report and it said 72 was the high.” But by that point Kate was less in a listening mood than she was in a hypothermic state. And if you’ve ever been to Chile (as the name hints) then you know that asking a Chileno about warm winters is like asking a fire hydrant the way to the drug store. It just doesn’t get hot down there. The end result of this is that Kate and I were cold on the trip, but nowhere near as cold as the glare she gave me when we first sat on a park bench and watched our breath freeze before us in sandals and t-shirts.

“Boy this is a cold 72, isn’t it?” I said, rubbing my hands together for warmth. And that’s when the look was given.

Needless to say, we weren’t going to make that mistake again, not that it would be much of a problem anyway. After all, New Zealand was nothing like Chile. Forget that they share identical latitudes or coasts on the same ocean. This was New Zealand, neighbor to Fiji, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, there was no way this country was going to be cold. This was nude beach territory. Parrots and kiwis and Mangrove forests didn’t sound like the contents of a cold landscape. And consider those Maoris paddling out to dinner back in 1642. There was nothing about them being bundled up like Eskimos. I mean, come on, this was the South Pacific and Kate and I packed accordingly: flip-flops, snorkel gear, beach towels—-we had learned our lesson.

And so I’ve compiled a list of all the people that would have been better prepared to land in Auckland, New Zealand than yours truly:

1) Sir Edmund Hillary
2) The Abominable Snowman
3) Santa Claus
4) Anyone with an ounce of sense

And,

5) Kate

Number Five had grown privy to the fact that when it’s summer up in America it’s cold down here and smartly packed away a fleece jacket. In the off chance that it might rain in the sunshine paradise of New Zealand I myself had brought a rain coat, and thank god, too—-the weather is anything but pleasant in the dead winter month of August.*

You might even say it’s downright miserable.

The trouble is that no one ever mentions New Zealand’s other, slightly less tropical neighbor, the continent of Antarctica. Both Antarctica and Fiji are about a thousand miles away from New Zealand (very few things are less than a thousand miles away from the country) and both have an equal pull on New Zealand’s climate and geography. Being neatly wedged between tropical paradise and a continent’s worth of ice has given New Zealand a transitory climate that stretches nicely between the two. The result is tropical forests to the north, glacial Alps to the south and nearly every other climate in the world spread somewhere in the middle.

A second indicator that New Zealand’s weather might be less than sunny is found in the country’s native name, Aotearoa, or Land of the Long White Cloud. When I first read this (before the trip) I thought it was some native metaphor where clouds were actually snow-capped mountains or something of the sort, but Lord no, I was wrong. It’s quite literal and rather spot-on.

It seemed that August was a month that belonged more to Antarctica than Fiji in Aotearoa. It wasn’t snowing, but it was cold and raining and the two of us had rather poor first impressions of the island country. On the other hand, I can happily report that the very same August Kate and I stepped foot in New Zealand was an atypical month of wretchedness. More succinctly, Dorothy had better weather on her trip to Oz than we did on our trip to New Zealand. She only had deal with a tornado. So says New Zealand’s National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research:

A convergence of intense depressions (‘lows’) around the Chatham Islands led to the extremes of cold, high rainfall, hail, snow and wind which enveloped New Zealand in August [2004]. These produced storm force southerlies, which brought wintry conditions to many areas. The prolonged period of storms from 11 – 30th August produced two high rainfall events producing floods, two severe hail storms, four heavy snowfall events to low levels, record ground frosts, a destructive tornado and the worst southerly wind storm to batter the Wellington area in more than a decade. Nationally, this was the coldest August since 1992. Kelburn in Wellington recorded 7 consecutive days from 23-29 August with maximum temperatures of 9.0°C or less, making this the longest cold spell there since July 1981…It was very wet, with about 200 percent (twice) of average rainfall…

I’d like to reemphasize that part about floods, hailstorms, tornadoes and severe windstorms, in case you missed it. Let’s also make sure no one gets mixed up with the metric conversions, either: 9.0° Celsius is about 48° Fahrenheit, Tornados are bad, and twice the average rainfall roughly translates into a steady downpour. New Zealand receives about 50 inches of rain annually and doubling that number—-as happened in August 2004-—puts New Zealand’s average rainfall on par with the Amazon Rainforest, if not slightly above.*

Kate and I had no idea of any of this as we stood outside the arrival gate of Auckland’s airport, hands on our hips and staring into the grey blanket of rain before us with expressions on our faces that can best be described by what Kate said next.

“Huh.”

I felt much the same way. Most people utter this when they make an unexpected realization, if you think about it. It’s not entirely poetic, but incredibly suitable for even the most landmark discoveries—-Einstein upon discovering the Theory of Relativity; Lewis and Clark upon reaching the Pacific; Tasman when his welcoming party weren’t so much welcomed as eaten—-all christened their discoveries with a scratch on the head and a resounding “huh” or the equally suitable “well I’ll be damned”. I’m sure of it.

So, we let the rain soak us with surprise, made the appropriate clothing adjustments, and took a shuttle into New Zealand’s largest, most cosmopolitan city, determined to fight the rain and enjoy our time on New Zealand’s North Island.


Auckland is boasted as New Zealand’s cultural and urban hub. It has the largest population, about 1.3 million-—one third of New Zealand’s entire citizenry—-and to say it is growing is something of an understatement: two out of every three people that have moved to New Zealand since 1991 have moved to Auckland. This is a city on the rise. Young adults dominate the city demographic and this is made no more obvious than by walking down Auckland’s main street from beginning to end without seeing a single grey hair. In short, Auckland is on the up and up and has been for some time.

Few cities in the world are more geographically fascinating than Auckland. Apart from being built on or around sixty extinct volcanoes, the city sits on a nine kilometer stretch of land that separates the Tasman Sea from the Pacific Ocean. For this reason, Auckland sports two harbors on two separate bodies of water, a feat which few cities in the world can boast.

As for calling Auckland the cultural mecca of New Zealand, well, that’s a separate issue all together. Firstly, saying that any city is the ethnic center of New Zealand is like Wichita boasting itself as the cultural hub of Kansas. Mathematically speaking, zero culture equals zero cultural hubs. That’s not to say New Zealanders—-Kiwis, as they’re called—-are shallow or boring, it’s just that their history, what little of it there is, is remarkably civilized, even considering all that cannibalism and headhunting.

This is not the first time this absence of culture has been mentioned, either. Of those four books my local library had on this antipodean country one was titled Verdict on New Zealand, a collection of essays by various authors on their respective opinions of the island country. Essays like “An Unextraordinary People” by Henry Demarest Lloyd, “A Biologically Standardized People” by Sydney Greenbie, or the equally exciting “A Temperate and Reasonable People” by James Bryce set the tone for the rest of the essays that are just as complimentary. It wasn’t exactly a stellar read, but I flipped through them anyway and can tell you how Kiwis got this way in the first place.

History is to blame.

Any type of European history in the South Pacific begins with Abel Tasman, the man who was, as we already know, incredibly inept. Apart from this, it’s rather safe to say that Tasman single-handedly prevented the Dutch from taking over most of the South Pacific. In fact, Tasman was really only good at naming things and got to do a sporting lot of it on his 1642 voyage where he named, among other things, New Zealand, which means “New Sea Land” in English. Naming places was Tasman’s only real talent though. When he discovered Tasmania and New Zealand he named them, but didn’t bother to circle the islands or effectively claim them for Holland, which was, rather understandably, something of a priority for his superiors. In the case of New Zealand he didn’t even get off the boat and have a look around. To sum it up, when it came to exploring Abel wasn’t very able (sorry, couldn’t resist).

My favorite quote about the man comes from Russel Ward, an incredibly detailed historian
who described Abel as such: “Tasman was as good a navigator and certainly as great a bully as any other blue-water sailor of his day, but he seems to have entirely lacked the first requisite of any good explorer: curiosity.” And even though Tasman named an undiscovered island after him (and a New Zealand cape after his wife), Tasman’s boss, Anthony Van Diemen, didn’t have anything particularly positive to say about the explorer, either. He wrote that Tasman:

Did not employ. . . great. . . eagerness to establish the extent of the lands discovered or the nature of the inhabitants, and regarding the principal issues [of claiming the bloody country for Holland], left everything open for a more conscientious successor.

Which is a polite way of saying Tasman stank to high heaven.

That more conscientious successor was the hero of the South Pacific, Captain James Cook, who arrived on the scene in 1769 and claimed everything he saw in the name of England, including Australia and New Zealand. He was much worse at naming things than Tasman—-the pinnacle of Cook’s creative flare happened when he named an island speckled bay the Bay of Islands—-but was much better at charting new territory and claiming it for England.* Beyond that, Captain Cook was a Jack-of-all-trades who, aside from boldly going where no man had gone before, can put discovering Antarctica, studying the transit of Venus, circumnavigating the globe, and curing scurvy on his list of accomplishments—-all which was done in just ten years, too. As if this weren’t enough, Captain Cook was also considered a God on the island of Hawaii (they killed him when they found out he wasn’t) and was considered of such importance to the world because of his expeditions that, at the height of the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin issued orders that made it illegal to fire upon any of Cook’s ships. Captain Cook didn’t accomplish this by being stupid, either. Unlike Tasman, when Cook saw a rowdy group of Maoris paddling toward his men he didn’t pull out the trumpets; he pulled out his guns, shot a volley of warning shots over their heads, and then shot a volley of warning shots through their heads when they didn’t respond. What’s important about this is that Cook introduced England to New Zealand, and introduced New Zealand to guns.

After Cook, other Europeans started showing up in steady numbers, primarily to fish, whale and trade. People were quick to realize New Zealand was a fisherman’s paradise. In New Zealand’s Bay of Islands, for instance, up to five marlins were captured a day and humpback whales were prevalent enough that, for a short time, they were captured with nets. It was through these fishermen that Maoris were introduced to a high volume of guns that, as soon as they figured out how to use them, they used to shoot each other in record numbers.

The trick is the term “Maori” is a bit of a misnomer. At the time of European settlement, about ten separate and distinct tribes existed throughout New Zealand and each had been waging a war on one another for as long as any of them could remember. The whole mess of inter-tribal warfare was never much of an issue though, because there was only so much damage you could do with a spear. Guns were a separate issue all together. As soon as the Maoris felt the power of gunpowder at their fingertips, they smiled, had a good chuckle, and proceeded to decimate each other. Take the Maori native named Hongi for instance, who, having returned from England with a load of guns proceeded to kill a thousand Maori in Auckland and fifteen-hundred Maoris in Waikato. All told, of the 100,000 or so Maoris that were present when Europeans arrived 50,000 were killed with the discovery of the musket. Eventually the Maoris grew privy to the notion that if they kept this up they would kill (and eat) each other to extinction, and so made peace and started shooting Europeans instead.

Anyway, here is where New Zealand history gets a bit dull. The Maoris and the Europeans fought, the Maoris inevitably surrendered, and then the Europeans started shooting themselves to the point that they realized they needed to bring some order to New Zealand. And so a group of them politely asked England to take over their country. Not surprisingly, England obliged and in 1840 New Zealand got its first British government, marking the first time in history a country actually asked to be ruled by Britain. Most other countries were fighting against such an idea tooth and nail. When Britain tried to push New Zealand toward independence in the early twentieth century most Kiwis were indifferent or even opposed the idea. Being independent just sounded like a lot of work. Eventually New Zealand grudgingly achieved dominion status (in 1907), but the mark of English culture remains in the country.

And that’s the real problem with New Zealand. Until recently it hasn’t wanted its own culture, its wanted English culture, which is why New Zealand is sometimes referred to as being “more English than England.” Only recently have Kiwis shied away from this and started looking for their own identity. But consider that New Zealand isn’t even 100 years old: as most countries measure their history by centuries instead of decades this puts New Zealand in its developmental years.

The one other issue is that, as I said before, New Zealand is remarkably civilized. It never does anything wrong. It is a nuclear free country, doesn’t over fish, granted women the right to vote 25 years before America, established minimum wages early on, introduced pensions long before anyone else, and established child health services around the same time six year olds were making wonderful knit-tops in America. No slavery, peace with the Maoris, environmental protection, New Zealand has it all, which is just too bad. If they had convict history, massive bloodshed, and maybe a nuke or two, why, then they’d have some history, but instead, other than those first few clashes with the Maoris and a boat accident in the 1980s (I’ll get there), everyone has gotten along quite civilly in New Zealand. The country is immensely progressive, traditionally conservative, and is such a successful melting pot of culture that the result is a country that has had a bit of trouble gaining a fixed self-identity. And so, for a good while they embraced English culture as their own.

The whole attempt at being “more English than England” backfired though. The problem was this: what do you get when you try to imitate an overly mannered, remarkably civilized person (such is the tea and crumpet English stereotype, no)? I’ll tell you that you don’t get anything more exciting. No, you get someone more manner conscious and drier still. And for a good long while Kiwis were such outstanding gentlemen that onlookers labeled them as temperate, reasonable, biologically standardized, and (what was the other one? Ah yes), “unextraordinary.”

For a while it looked like this was it for New Zealand, but then, and no one’s quite sure why, they started to change. Lately there has been a remarkable backlash and things have taken a turn for the more exciting. It seems New Zealand finally hit cultural puberty and is striking off on its own. If we had to pinpoint any one moment in the country’s history to mark this change it would probably belong to A. J. Hackett who, presumably fed up with taking the stairs or the elevator as the well-mannered gentleman he was raised to be, decided to go jump off a bridge, then a cliff, then the Eiffel Tower, etc. all with a bungee cord strapped to his ankles and gave birth to extreme sports in New Zealand. Kiwis haven’t looked back since, and now, like any adolescent they’ve become addicted to adrenaline sports, fast food and movies.

* If there is any sort of confusion to what August, or any month’s climate is like in the Southern hemisphere, just add six months to it, and you’ll get the Northern Hemisphere equivalent. So, their August is our February.

* For comparison, New York City averages 40.9 inches of rainfall annually. Seattle, the reputed rainy city of America receives only 36.2 inches. The wettest place on earth, Mawsynram, India however, received an annual rainfall of 467.28 inches, so we shouldn’t complain.

* The Maori’s knack for naming places goes well beyond either Cook or Tasman though. Consider Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikima ungahoronukupokai-whenuakitanatahu. It’s Maori for “the brow of the hill where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, who slid, climbed and swallowed mountains, known as the Land Eater, played his nose-flute to his loved one”. These days it’s usually abbreviated to Taumata, but still, it’s spicier than Cook’s Bay of Islands.