page 4

Waiheke Island

The night is a rough one, despite a comfortable bed in the caravan. Our sore legs are playing up Old Harry and we eventually get to sleep on a nurophen plus each. In the morning, I have difficulty moving at all when I first wake up, and I pop another painkiller along with breakfast. There is a thick fog enveloping the whole valley.

We take it easy and leave around 11, by which time the painkillers have officially worn off, but I am as good as gold by this time, and hoist the pack nonchalantly onto my back.

Miranda decides it will be safer for her to leave her pack at the caravan for collecting later, and we decide to return via the roads in case we need to be picked up. Destination Onetangi.

An opportunity to test-drive my Warehouse $10 fleece jacket, considerably lighter than a jersey and just as warm. Never was much of a fan for these fabrics until I started reading the tramping websites, which praise them above wool because they are (a) lighter, and (b) do not stretch to below the knees when wet, and (c) dry relatively quickly if they do get wet. (I think the official word is that quality does vary and if you want a good one, look for the word polarfleece. This el cheapo version, however has now done more than a year of wear, zip still functioning, and is in excellent shape and toasty warm when needed.)

I spend a bit of time before we leave looking at Linda's new house in the process of being built. It is mudbrick - clay and cement, with the bricks formed on site as required. It reminds me a little of the ruins of Pompeii which I visited in 1969.

The camera takes photos no trouble at all this morning, despite none of the pics from late yesterday registering, but this I do not discover until later when we are home.

The views across the valley to the tobacco weed are magnificent. Linda tells me that the intention with this area is for it to revert to bush, and that the present cover is an effective nursery shelter. This reminds me of an old Me and Gus story in which Gus applies for a grant to research the hybridisation of clover and ragwort.

The fog is still hanging about the upper parts of the hills near us.

We head off down the road to the village entrance. The Ecovillage is a study in contrasts,

even when the initial concepts are similar. Some houses are relatively simple like these...

while others, like this one and Linda's are somewhat more elaborate, and some that have been established for a while are quite grand.

One piece of land has been laid out in the form of a labyrinth. If my experience with kikuyu at home is anything to go by, keeping this weed from choking everything else in sight will provide ample opportunity for a sitting or kneeling meditation in the weeks and months and years to come.

Maybe motor mowers have a place.

We continue walking until we reach the gate and the far end of the walking track that headed off to the left on our way down the hill to Linda's the previous day.

It is pleasant comfortable walking. The fog has lifted though a fine mist still clouds the distant hills. To the left is an olive plantation on a steepish hillside.

There is a certain formaility about the gateway that sits strangely with the gate itself and the ubiquitous kikuyu, but somebody, somewhere, has a vision.

Some of the driveways are tarseal, and look quite strangely elaborate in the context of the rural gravel road and slightly rusty barbed wire fences.

Now that's a decent sized mailbox.

Smilax covers many of the roadside banks. It's a pernicious choking weed, a relation of the sarsparilla, I understand, hard to eradicate and covered in berries in season which disperse the plant widely.

Down this end of the island the youngsters have to make their own fun I suppose.