Allan Uren
Down to some fine arts
Riversdale’s Mixed Media Exhibition has a lot of heart(s). I drive through Gore, out into the rolling countryside, past the Hokonui Hills. An evening fog hovers at sheep level over the paddocks. Twenty minutes later I arrive in Riversdale, population 500. The main street is mostly deserted. It’s dusk on a winter Friday. There are…
The scientist
It was nearly twenty years ago when retired zoologist John Darby, having spent hours at his computer summarising his data on Antarctic and yellow-eyed penguins one day, wandered the short distance from his home to the Wānaka lakefront. There were the usual waterbirds ̶ mallards, black-billed gulls, scaups, shags ̶ but then he saw…
The slacker generation
Crossing the line with the funambulists. Elsa Leperlier, a young French woman living in Wānaka, didn’t have a choice when the small tabby cat adopted her. It was love at first sight. Owning a cat isn’t easy when you’re a freewheeling spirit, travelling the world without any ties. Elsa was once offered a lucrative job…
Frozen fish
Freezing the day at the New Zealand National Ice Swimming Pool Championships. THE FIRST TIME YOU FACED REALLY COLD WATER WAS IN AN ALPINE LAKE. IT WAS SUMMER, BUT THERE WERE STILL POCKETS OF SNOW COWERING FROM THE SUN IN SHADY GULLIES. THE INSTANT YOUR TOE TOUCHED THE WATER IT BUZZED. YOU EASED YOURSELF IN…
Sparkles like the day it went in
In search of the General Grant’s gold. There was no raging storm when a lookout on the General Grant sighted Disappointment Island. The evening of Sunday, May 13, 1866 was almost completely still. There was a dense fog. At 10.30pm, Captain William Loughlin ordered all hands to “square the yard” — set the sails so…
Summer camp
Snapshots from a holiday hotspot. You leave town early to beat the holiday traffic. The car is packed tight with camping gear, the overflow strapped to the roof. The kids were bouncing off the walls, but by the time you pull into Wānaka, everyone is asleep. You’ve left your worries behind. — Every year, around…
The art of the rod
Carl McNeil’s fibreglass rods are pretty fly. WHEN A MASTER FLY CASTING INSTRUCTOR, WHO BY HIS OWN ADMISSION MAKES THE BEST FLY RODS IN THE WORLD, ASKS FOR THE NAME OF THE ARTICLE YOU ARE WRITING ABOUT HIM, AND YOU SAY, ‘THE ART OF THE ROD’, YOU DON’T EXPECT HIM TO REPLY WITH, “THAT SOUNDS…
And yet it moves
A Foucauldian moment in the mountains. Bivvy /(‘bıvı)/ Verb 1. Informal for bivouac. 2. To stay outside in a small tent or temporary shelter. 1. Arriving in Wellington off the ferry late one drizzly night with no money to spare for accommodation, I wandered the city looking for somewhere to sleep. It was the 1980s,…
Clinkered and cramponed
Lilian Familton’s audacious ascent of Mount Aspiring. “Day was now drawing to a close, the setting sun lit up the peaks in riotous colours of flaming crimson and gold. Purple shadows … all was peace” – Lilian Familton, New Zealand Alpine Journal Lilian Familton was wet. When she walked her boots squelched and it seemed…