Before the plains

As if to prepare for the forty-two hour trip across the barren expanse of the Nullarbor Plains, a copy of Larry McMurtry’s Roads appeared in the travel section of my used book library. One way to describe this library is dynamic. Another is diverse, though someone given to extremes once described it as an obsession. I concur, and by way of mitigation, suggest there are many worse obsessions, even within my own repertoire.

Roads is a millennial journey along America’s great interstate highways (unquote). In other words, a collection of observations from a 20th century lone ranger in a car, criss-crossing vast tracts of one of the world’s foremost infamous nations. This may not sound like something to get excited about, but the craft of the highly acclaimed author breathes life into every chunk of nine thousand-or-so-mile journeys. One trip each month from January to September when the urge to drive finally ran out at the north end of highway 281, the same road that runs past McMurty's old family home 'deep in the heart of Texas'.


This $7 find in the 5-minute wait for the Waiheke Island ferry on olive harvest morning climbs to the top of a current reading list of Micheal King’s Te Puea, Three Pillars of Zen and Jonathon Raban’s Arabia, and won’t be put down. This is late April. The Nullarbor trip is scheduled for early May.

This cross section of Southern Australia might speak to McMurtry’s lifelong yearning for the big horizons and open plains of a rural West Texas childhood. For him, life in cities and mountains, whether East or West, always felt transient, demanding frequent relief through return to the plains. My own unease comes from spending too long away from the ocean, though I share his unconditional love of travel and the need to return to the landscape, if not the actual land, where the roots of childhood were formed. Perhaps some deep, sub-conscious instinct keeps drawing us back.

I would love to read the impressions of a seasoned traveller like McMurtry on the journey I will soon undertake. The eye of a stranger is somehow more observant, fresher than one familiar. The writer’s craft is transmitting the product of an incurable, curious mind. But my own musings will have to do. McMurtry travelled to write about his own country in 1999, anticipating the restrictions of advancing age. It is sadly unlikely that he could be persuaded to leave his comfortable home and treasured used book collection in Archer City to travel to Australia in 2009 just to satisfy the whim of a reader, however strong the allure of different plains, horizons and landscapes might be.

I've finished the book so happy to give it out on loan :-)

Te Kahu olive harvest - Waiheke Island

The hawk was airborne over the house when we arrived off the 9.10am ferry. Regulars and friends know what that signifies.

Te Kahu – the harrier hawk - in Maori mythology the colour of its feathers resulted from scorching by the fire of Mahuika trying to destroy Maui. Its also the brand name of the award winning oil we’ll work on producing.

Another year has passed and the olives are ripe for picking. The gathering at harvest time has become a looked forward to highlight of a not so busy social calendar. A time to meet with people seldom seen, to remember loved ones not present and do some unfamiliar physical work.




There’s something primitive and strangely satisfying about this communal activity. Perhaps a remnant from some distant generational memory of subsistence living? For someone in the team it's just plain fun!
Some strange and some familiar faces in the picking squad today.

As always, there’s an excellent feed washed down with good NZ wine or beer at lunchtime.

Somehow the crew manages to keep working in the afternoon without a siesta. The nights are drawing in (as we say in Scotland) so the day is short. Six pm ferry back to the city for a long soak and an early night.