Antipodes
The Ingenious and Exhilarating Expedition of El Lider and La Campana
By Mark Price
Longacre Press
RRP $34.99

‘When he was young, he travelled much. And when he finally returned to NZ, he had many tales to share. If anyone asked. Which no one ever did.’ Thus it is that we meet El Lider on the eve of his travel epiphany. Life has continued on from those heady days of adventure – but he is standing still, or sitting still rather with an unfulfilled yearning for adventure, until one evening; reclining exhausted at the end of an office-job-day, there it was: The Idea. Many of the best expedition schemes already taken, (finding the source of the Nile, that sort of thing) this was yet unique and perfect because it was so simple. He would explore the antipodes of NZ.

The thrill of this rippled him such that, ‘He lay back on the couch and noticed that he had missed the sports news.’ So begins an epic-ish tale of vision and single-mindedness, a quest without rules (apart from the one about not drinking his own urine). Digging out an old globe, El Lider blows it up and puts one finger on Wellington and one on the other side of the globe. NZ’s antipodes seemed to be somewhere in Spain. How many people knew that? Not many, if any. An expedition name proffered itself, A Journey to the Ends of the Earth.

Mark Price (El Lider) and his wife, the stalwart, parsimonious La Campana first travel the happy isles of NZ making a list of Perfect Places, then cross the equator in search of each sweet spot’s Spanish antipodes. Charmingly reversing our notion of the ‘Antipodes,’ (a word oft used smugly by the English to denote a place of ill or little repute) the voyage achieves what none other has: an actual map of New Zealand’s antipodes, crafted with the help of Brian Grant at the School of Surveying, University of Otago. With a wonderful narrative voice as pithy as the pithiest helmet, Mark Price’s book is immensely readable. I laughed out loud, unfortunately frightening my cat, Mr Puck.

Personal Best Bit. Finding themselves in the antipodes of Wellington North, the conquistadors learn they are close to the town of Alaeios, in the province of the city of Valladolid⎯once the capital of the Kingdom of Spain, the very place where Christopher Columbus died in 1506 and where Cervantes first published El Ingenioso Hildalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha in 1605. Poking the most excellent fun at pretentious travel writers who exhaustively sample each and every bull’s testicle and lard sandwich to come their way, ‘El Lider could think of no actual reason to go there.’

Q&A with Mark Price

1. How would you describe Antipodes?

The idea of searching for New Zealand's antipodes sounded like a bit of fun but I had the feeling that a serious book on the subject could easily be sleep inducing. Then, while crawling out of a black bog somewhere in Marlborough,  I remembered the misadventures of Jerome K. Jerome and his friends in Three Men in a Boat. It had some of the funniest pieces of writing I have read.  At that point, I began taking more careful note of the things that went wrong with our 'expedition' and began wondering why books about expeditions never seemed to contain any humour. I would describe Antipodes as an antidote to the seriousness of everyday human endeavour. Designed for reading in a hammock.

2. Do you expect to explore other countries in a similarly innovative way with a view to future books?

I have searched google earth extensively to find more interesting antipodes. Unfortunately, I have failed.

My wife and I have, however, cycled the approximate antipodes of state highway 1 – "upside down and backwards'' so to speak  – from Tarifa on the south coast of Spain, which is opposite Braigh, north of Auckland, to a point on the north coast of Spain, opposite the Rakaia River, in South Canterbury.  We think not many people have done that.

3.Which part of the journey was the most interesting to you?

We spent most of our time in the Spanish countryside, and just loved it. Spain might be known for its mediterranean tourist spots but, in spring, its massive interior is a fabulous, warm, colourful tourist-free zone. Try Ronda (opposite Auckland) for starters. And, of course the plains and towns of La Mancha (opposite Hawkes Bay).

4.What are you reading right now?

The Otago Daily Times, mostly, but also a very heavy-going manual on how Spanish politics work. It is quite amazing that so many disparate political and ethnic groups can co-exist in one state. I have a book on the Spanish Inquisition to read when the politics becomes too hard going.


5. NZ author/s that you would name as influences?

I grew up reading comics hidden inside text books - none by New Zealanders as I recall.  I loved the simplicity and humour of Barry Crump books but in terms of writing, my influences are from tv - Mr Ed (bet u don't remember him), M.A.S.H., Dad's Army, Morecombe and Wise, Seinfeld, Monty Python and of course One News and Three News.

6.What does New Zealand Book Month mean to you?

Nothing really. Sorry.

Antipodes by Mark Price. Following in the footsteps of Hilary, without tripping over discarded oxygen canisters.

I am writing a book. God, who isn’t? My bus driver is writing a book, a romance he says and given the surly way he sneers at the flamenco schemes of my wardrobe, it’s not a colourful one.

I have renovated an entire room towards this end, painting walls, hanging art, buying bookshelves and filling them with books, (the reading of which delayed the project for years) all to create a writerly den. Some paintings being nudes from my time as an artist’s model, a den of iniquity. I had long pictured myself in a flowered frock, sitting at my desk, summer sun pouring in the French doors, the cats frolicking in the garden, typing away, sheets of manuscript piling up.

Enter reality, like the ***-end of a bush rat dragged in by the cat. Arriving back home from Israel last year to discover the recession had got there ahead of me, suddenly, events planners were as tacky as a mistress demanding a Mercedes upgrade. My former luncheon and launches booze budget of $40,000 disgusting, as parsimony took oysters off the menu around the country. Unemployed, it was time to write my book.

Inspiration had come thus: in a foreign country for 6 months and a voracious reader, the economist’s colleagues had been warned what might happen should I run out of reading material (think junkie needing a fix – but it wouldn’t be a chemist I’d rob). Books poured in by the boxful, thrillers, chick lit and one lonely copy of Rebecca. It occurred to me 1) What a fabulous book it was 2) How like my own experience as the new girlfriend (creepy old house filled with relics of the past, the miasmic ghost of the departed wife, the swirling rumours about her) and 3) How cool it would be to write a modern interpretation, combined with the better plot elements of the thriller and chick lit genre, which, after 6 months I was thoroughly rehearsed in. Frankenstein’s monster was born.

Writing like stink for 6 months I got to 26,000 words without a single line of dialogue. Dialogue scared me somehow despite the fact that I am only silent when unconscious. ‘I’m almost finished!’ I emailed my friend and mentor Roy Colbert, having Googled something about novels having 50,000 words. ‘Actually, these days it’s more like 80,000 or 120,000,’ he replied. Verbose cretins, I thought, ruining it for the rest of us.

I refused to show it to anybody. Especially not the economist for all that he made cow’s eyes at me, because he has a terrible tendency to correct my punctuation (at that point my fledgling couldn’t bear it) and also because I had used vitriolic letters written to him by his ex wife, murderously pointing out his many faults and foibles – found in the cellar while looking for a ream of paper I had half-inched from my high-paying job – as inspiration for one of the characters. I applied for a CNZ grant and was declined at the same time as the bank refused to top up my overdraft.

Winter arrived. Art harlot that I am, I fell in love with a painting by Sam Foley which I just had to have. I dreamt of it, the vision of a verdant bower. The house seemed to be sliding into the neighbour’s garden. Men came round to quote for a retaining wall. At home every day, shuttling from the dining room to the kitchen to the bathroom, I became hyper-aware of all the cracks and dents that needed fixing, the many costly projects that should be undertaken, the art that we should be buying. The Siamese cat had begun to talk to me. He wasn’t saying, ‘kill him and we can be together,’ but it wasn’t far away.

‘Get a f**kin’ job,’ said the economist. The book was clearly going nowhere. Before committing to the utter horror and stupidity that is selling television advertising during a recession, I sent an early draft of the first 3 chapters out into the world. A suicide mission, a pigeon in a flak-storm. Against all logic and expectations, a letter came back. Parts were good, said the Book Fairy. The narrative voice was a little annoying (sometimes I float out of my body at dinner parties and cringe at the babble of nonsense I talk, so this didn’t surprise me) and I should be careful the book wasn’t too raunchy – raunchy? Maybe I am just filthy-minded. Best of all, they would be interested in reading the completed manuscript. Oh, so would I.

The Iron-Bound Coast: Karekare in the Early Years
By Wallace Badham
Edited by Bob Harvey
Published by Libro International, an imprint of Oratia Media Ltd

The Iron-Bound Coast is a thing of beauty. Not just because of the New Zealand landscape of which it speaks, in all its public and private grandeur, but also because of the 215 photos which illustrate this life’s-work, most never before published, making this book a treasure in every sense.

Lingering over the illustrations I was reminded of the days after my Grandmother’s funeral. She, a dour and whiskery-chinned matriarch had always terrified me into dislike – until we small cousins, invited by an Irish aunty to look through a handmade wooden box of crinkle-cut photographs, discovered that instead our grandmother had been quite a beauty, always surrounded by loved ones and, ever-present, the land. The past held out its arms to me and I became a part of it.

So too, Wally Badham’s story of a life when the world was new on the coast of iron sands isn’t just a tale of Karekare in the early years, it tells the lives of new New Zealanders (German, Irish, Dutch and Scots escaping the depression and looking for work clearing forest, on the gum fields, laying track, whatever) in remote settlements between the world wars. Like walking through the gallery of a natural history museum ringing with recorded birdcalls, The Iron-Bound Coast allows a peek into a world as rare, fleeting and near-extinct as remembered last glimpses of the Huia.

A story of happiness in a hard time and a gorgeous object in its own right, The Iron-Bound Coast was discovered by writer and Waitakere City mayor Bob Harvey while researching Auckland’s spectacular west coast; originally, the two manuscripts for the work were written in long hand with photos laboriously pasted in.

“I realised this was truly a rich gem, a legacy of not only remote Karekare beach, but a grand story of this country.” says Bob. “Wally speaks in a voice that reflects the time; a time that is now rapidly fading in memory and people.” Setting out to preserve his crystal-clear recollections of early Karekare for his nieces, Wally has instead created a work of living history that speaks to all New Zealanders.

Sadly, Wally did not live a happy life after the Karekare years. After a golden youth in his own personal Eden, much went wrong in the life of this enterprising and likable man. As he aged he became taciturn and estranged from his family, drifting into a lonely decline. This was how Bob Harvey came into his life – to listen and to help tell his tale. Curmudgeonly, eccentric Wally had grown away from the person he was during those years in Karekare but thanks to his exceptional journals, the distinctive narrative voice of the jug-eared, beaming Wally of photographic record (in the best, happiest years of his life) shines through.

Wally as both a character and narrator is an Everyman for New Zealand in an oblivious past when a black horse could be called ‘Darkie’ and the enemy a ‘Jap.’ Brutally blunt, taking pleasures in small things, breathtakingly nosey, caring enough to ride ten miles by horseback to supply much needed yeast for bread and totally without guile, this is the way we were. With a cast of locals, visitors, hermits and early settlers this book paints a beautiful miniature of a small world of private pioneers, living an almost secret existence in the ranges, refugees from society.

Without power, water or basic services, (actually Karekare had electricity before Auckland did) often without medical help, despite this the inhabitants thrived in the little cluster of houses that were Wally’s life, raising children, writing books, painting and cooking. Dogs swam ashore from cattle ships to be rescued on the beach and Essexes attempted to ford mud rivers up to their axle rims. Everyday activities required the commitment of physical labour and the friendship of your neighbours. Wally’s unpretentious manuscript is an inheritance not only for remote Karekare beach but also a grand story of this country. Beautifully designed by Dee Murch, I’m sure I’m not alone in closing this exceptional book and hoping my own life could leave behind even a tenth such a legacy.