Illustrated Epistle Extract: Coal, Cats and Nudie Calendars on the NZ West Coast

Hey, I'm back!

Not that I really went away this summer, keeping it pretty local in Lyttelton, gardening, surfing with my sister (who has moved here to Christchurch, woop, woop!) and hanging out with her and our other sister and family over the Christmas break. Our only real trips this year have been exploring the rugged West Coast of New Zealand's South Island.

The West Coast is famous for the wild coastline of the Tasman Sea, which stretches for 2,500 miles between New Zealand and Australia, with nothing in between. It's also known for its not-so-tropical rainforest, sandflies, and unpredictable weather. What's less advertised, however, is its attachment to the past. Coal mining remains a major industry, and many homes burn the dirty stuff all year round. Despite being surrounded by breathtaking wilderness, people let their cats roam free to prey on native birds. And though we love local pubs that are rough around the edges, it’s confronting to encounter nudie calendars from two years ago proudly displayed behind the bar.

It's like stepping back in time, but not always in a good way.

So the best of the West Coast is the nature and getting into it. We went to a fantastic, dog-friendly (most of the Coast isn't) campground, called Gentle Annie's, for a few days. It's north of Granity (most famous here for the houses which are being lost to the sea) and smack dab on the beach, next to a beautiful river which Molly and I paddled up without being bitten by too many sandflies. Stunning.

Molly the Jack Russell loves paddle boarding even more than I do

Then the boyf was groundcrew as I pedalled the West Coast Wilderness bike trail from Greymouth to Ross, a total of about 150 km (just under 100 miles in old money) and almost all off-road. The second day was mostly uphill, over 50 km and it didn't stop raining, but I loved it.

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More about the NZ West Coast Wilderness bike trail in the next post.

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This is an extract of  my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out once a month-ish. It is a behind-the-scenes look at my cartooning life. I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD

Or head to the archive to read more here.

New Zealand: West Coast Wilderness Bike Trail from Greymouth to Ross

I recently spent four days biking the West Coast Wilderness trail, and, despite the classic West Coast inclement weather, I loved it. Here's a quick rundown of my journey:

Day 1: Greymouth to Kumara

Only really half day of biking to start. It wasn’t too demanding, but I had less energy at the end of the three hours (much of it stopping to read signs or look at stuff) then on the rest of the trail.

Reminders of the importance of coal mining to the west coast are everywhere, including the smell of coal smoke even in summer

Sadly, I didn't see either

I saw a dead bumblebee on the path in front of me as I left Greymouth. It strangely affected me. As I get older I find these things harder to bear.
The death of nature everywhere.

I pressed on, relying on my gut feeling to guide me when the signs disappeared. Trail markings seemed more consistent later in the trip, or maybe I became better at finding them.

The highlight of the day was the wooded section towards Kumara, where you lose the noise of the road and hear only water and bellbirds. Crossing the gorge was a treat. As was the pub at the end. We stayed in the backpackers, which was a bargain at $50 for the double room.

Gorgeous

Day 2: Kumara to Lake Kaniere

Day 2 was a ride of over 50 km, mostly uphill. Despite the rain (my feet were wet within minutes and the rain crept in to the rest of my gear reaching all but my very core), it was my favourite day of the trip. The West Coast rainforest was stunning, with tree ferns, fun fungi, fern-lined avenues, and beautiful water races. A hare crossed my path to begin with and it seemed like a better omen.

So much rain that even the sheep had given up and were sheltering from it. Click to see options for using the image

I was guided by a shag (cormorant) flying over the lake as I came into the first shelter for a cup of tea and some River Cottage seedy slice.
Excuse photo quality. My phone doesn't do well in the rain.

After my first stop there was a slow incline. Sometimes it seemed like I might be on the level, even going down, but the tea-stained streams and water races beside the track would be running in the opposite direction.

After the boardwalk the trail goes along a well formed track that has been benched to take most water off it. I was never bogged down in mud like on some trails.

Water running high but not too high

There is a high water route for when the weirs run too high to cycle through. I asked some electric bikers going the other way whether the weirs were open and they said they were but that they were too high for them to go through. Perhaps because they have batteries and electrics that would not do well in the mid calf water I found. It was fun to pedal through them on a pushbike.

Not too deep: one of the river crossings on the West Coast wilderness bike trail

I saw crazy conical blue mushrooms that looked like something out of a weird, land-based Avatar movie.

When I finally arrived at Lake Kaniere, I was grateful for the drying room and hot shower at the homestay. The host, Grant, ran a tight ship, with a list of things to do to keep the place comfortable, including removing our muddy gear and keeping everything closed against the West Coast sandflies.

Grant took us on a guided walk around a local nature reserve with many kahikitea and rimu trees interspersed with tree ferns

Day 3: Lake Kaniere to Hokitika

Lake Kaniere

Day 3 started with a refreshing swim in the lake, with only a diving duck (scaup) for company. Along the way, I saw a South Island tomtit perched on a small tree, and we stared at each other for a few moments before it flew away.

Click for options on using image

The ride through the beautiful forest was easy and then I was going along the Hokitika river and back to civilisation with a jolt. A huge mass of pipes, concrete and steel embodies the talent Fontera has to make money from turning clean water into milk and dirty run off, before using coal to dry it into powder to ship overseas. But it is jobs and money. We need better jobs and more than just money. Clean rivers would be nice.

Day 4: Hokitika to Ross

The final morning of my trip was spent exploring Hokitika, a town that has suffered through the Covid pandemic and is struggling to get back on its feet now that tourists have returned. I was relieved to leave the shiny, happy and sterile campground (which was recently a natural swamp that was drained and filled in with gravel - isn’t it weird that we call areas like this “reclaimed”?) and get back into nature, although it took some time to do so.

I went over the concrete bridge that has been part of the taming of this wild river mouth and coast which used to wreck a ship every 10 days in the 1860s at the height of the Gold Rush. A time when men who often couldn't swim took their chances to get rich quick. That that gold rush mentality endures in New Zealand. Gold gave way to coal and sheep and now cows.

Then I rode past the golf course before taking a welcome turn into more regenerating nature reserve, escaping into dense thickets of new growth forest being greeted by the sound of bellbirds with traffic muffled, but the pounding surf breaking through.

Autumn on the trail is a great time to see lots of mushrooms like this fly agaric

Bellbirds sang me through the tunnel of trees that were near the wetland of Mahinipua reserve which ends at a weird plantation of tall trees,

A stand of eucalyptus trees that seemed to become impossibly tall before dying. Like a scene out of the Dr. Seuss book. They were part of an experimental plantation of exotic trees that never worked out.

Coming off the tramway track I was annoyed at myself to find I missed the turn for the picnic track to the lake — the only way to see it on this trail. A missed opportunity to swim as well. I didn't want to backtrack and add 4 km to the journey. So onward and out on the tarmac for a fairly easy ride for a few kilometres on a wide road with vehicles giving me a decent amount of room. A kea crossed my path as I cycled toward the Totara Lagoon.

It's a long boring slog along the old rail line to Ross. More than a dozen kilometres with nothing but track and flax for most of it. If I did the trail again I would probably stop at Treetops.

There was a brief reprieve in the monotony when flaxes gave way to show the wider expanse of the lagoon and the hills beyond. It didn’t last long before the flaxes closed back in again. When I got to the end of the rail line I should have headed to the finish but instead I turned right and had a welcome swim at Ross beach. If you stay at its very expensive campground you do have the advantage of being right by the beach. But I turned back to rejoin my other half at another pub before we headed on towards home.

The end of the trail for me was the beach at Ross

Overall I enjoyed the trail immensely and recommend it as one of the best off road rides in New Zealand. My favourite sections were those that were in nature. Even if they were in the rain.

Illustrated Epistle Extract: Power Cuts and Solar Panels

I will keep this epistle short as I’m catching up after a long weekend away to celebrate my birthday (53rd). We went to Le Bons Beach (I learned that the name comes from the original Bones Beach, and not from the French settlers who were around the place, as there were a lot of bones found on the beach, in common with many peninsula settlements). It's an hour and a half’s drive from here, unless you're in a 1975 Land Rover…

It was on the cool side and we had a lot of rain, but it was brilliant to go in the sea every day (as did Molly. The boyf was not keen) and I had a couple of good surfs. I also took lots of books (reading the wonderful Paper Palace at the moment). Fortunately, I also took audiobooks and my battery-powered speaker so that we were able to listen to podcasts when the power went out. I enjoyed being without power for most of Saturday, as we had the long days and a log burner to take the edge off and it meant neither of us would be tempted to try the DVD player (there was no phone reception, no TV, no wi-fi). But I really feel for people in Europe who are going into winter as energy bills skyrocket because of bloody Putin.

Our energy bill last month was just under $4, total. I'm hoping that in the summer months the power company will be paying us for the solar power we are feeding into the grid. We’ll never make our money back, but it does make me feel good contributing to grid power at a time when New Zealand often struggles…

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This is an extract of my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out once a month-ish. It is a behind-the-scenes look at my cartooning life. I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD

Or head to the archive to read more here.

Illustrated Epistle Extract: Bursting Out of my Bubble

A lovely neighbour of ours sent me a link to a documentary about conspiracy theorists in New Zealand. It explores how social media has exacerbated our differences and stoked hatred, the worst of which spilled over into real-world violence outside Parliament earlier this year. She found it so disturbing that she could only watch eight minutes of it (mind you, she doesn't watch the news for the same reason). But she thought more people should know about it and asked me to share it as she doesn’t use Facebook.

I don’t blame her. I use social media less and less. It upsets me how it has displaced real, curated content online. Facebook and co want posts that engage (facts don’t matter), and the algorithms reward arguments and hatred. Social media isn’t building community anymore. It is dividing it. We preach to the converted in our bubbles and attack anyone who doesn’t agree, driving them off to their bubbles, or off the platform entirely. It happened to neighbours who didn’t want to be vaccinated. They left Lyttelton's Facebook group: end of conversation.

How do we break out of our bubbles and prevent social media destroying our online and off-line communities?

I was given that opportunity last Friday when I went to see my physio (for reasons of age catching up with too much time sitting at a computer/drawing table). At the end of the session, she often leaves me with pins sticking in my neck and shoulders as she starts up her next patient. A couple of curtains separate us.

One of my very early cartoons!

The patients are usually Lyttelton locals like me, who have similar views about the world. Often the chat is about the aches and pains, but sometimes it becomes more interesting. Nearly always those fellow patients are in my bubble—left-leaning, environmentally concerned...you know the type—rational and decent people (so we think). But this time, the patient on the other side of the curtains was from a very different bubble and the conversation became very interesting…

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This is an extract of my Illustrated Epistle, which goes out once a month-ish. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the life of a cartoonist (specifically, mine). I'd love it if you signed up at the bottom of this page, or here:

http://eepurl.com/cCOOeD

Or head to the archive to read it here.