So lovely, so very true, and so beautifully captured Ngawi. - the 'place that sways in the wind'.
Every year for so many years I spent two nights at a friend's bach in Ngawi for my birthday - the longest day when I'm in NZ (which is most of the time). Usually there were solstice storms, once there was an earthquake, but the tourists had yet to arrive and the locals were usually still pretty quiet. One morning as I packed to leave I found, smelled first, a sea lion under the car. I learned then that where sea lions are concerned upwind is the place to be.
Have you ever been to the Panorama of the City of New York (once called the 'City of Opportunity') at the Queens Museum?
PS
Please don't leave until you go to Kawhia (actually - please don't leave at all)
A SEA LION UNDER YOUR CAR?? Susan that is the most hardcore NZ comment on this blog yet. An earthquake tossed in for good measure. Ngawi delivers!
I haven't seen that NYC panorama! When we lived in Shanghai we used to take visitors to the Urban Planning Museum to see the massive scale replica of the city that would cycle through night and day as you watched. We could see our own building there--very meta. Comforting and belittling all at once. Like the view from Ngawi...but not.
You're too kind! That means a lot, truly. No plans to go anywhere just yet. I must make it to Kawhia!
Nowhere as hardcore as the eye-watering drive back to Wellington in the rain with the windows down while I wondered whether anyone would buy the car or I'd have to leave it by the side of the road somewhere.
What you're seeing across the water is Tapuae-o-Uenuku - the footprint of the rainbow - and the highest point of the Inland Kaikōura Range. Wellington astrophotographer Mark Gee took this stunning image of it from Tararua, looking across Wellington city: https://www.instagram.com/p/ohLXTqyJV_/?igsh=dXJhbWxndnRnOWQz
That's a great pic! Thanks for this--I didn't know the name Tapuae-o-Uenuku. We don't see it at all from the inland Wairarapa, of course, so it's always more a surprise for me than for Welly folk & I don't know names or geograhpy like a should. I wonderd if it might be the Kaikōura Range but told myself nah, that was too far south! Very cool to know. I'll hike up to that view in the Tararuas someday.
Tapuae-o-Uenuku is alse very visible around Wellington's south coast - it's the tallest peak visible and magnificent when covered in snow.
If you're a tramper/hiker, the Southern Crossing is incredible - probably best in summer though.
Have you done many of the Wairarapa-side hikes? Holdsworth is a day tramp; others can be reached with an overnight stop in one of the many huts. Mitre/Pukeamoamo is my favourite by far - the tallest point in the Tararua Range.
If you google Pete Nikolaison's website, he has the Wairarapa-side peaks named in one of his images - just mouse-over the photo to see the names and heights.
I know the bike ride you're talking about! At least I think I do. I used to live in SW WI (Richland Center) and remember bikers coming through. It was a big event. Oh again (always) the poignancy -- being on the edge and in the middle, no family bach in Ngwai (can't stay in NZ?!), firmly staked and flapping in the wind. The both/and (neither/nor) of it all. The beautiful heartbreak. The grief and the gratitude. Always. (And in some ways, is that not just the case for immigrants but for all of us? I mean, maybe none of us are "from here"? Where did we come from and where are we going and where is home anyway, for any of us? Sometimes it feels that abstract, and sometimes it is very practical and grounded -- where do I want to wake up? Where do I want to put my body on this earth? Where do I want to put my body into the earth?
Hi Jean! Oh yeah, RAGBRI would have ended up near there on years it ran a northern route. On my life list for sure.
You know the feels, for sure. I could have an NZ life without a bach in Ngawi, yeah. But baches, as much as I love them, mark this family claim on the place I feel gently excluded from--no family history to fall back on, and no family real estate either. I drive by and think I want one, but mostly I want to have the anchor of family and time in NZ that they represent? But if I had it I wouldn't be me? And off we go in circles again.
There's a James McMurtry song you might like: I'm not from here, I just live here. From the Western US perspective, but rings true anywhere:
I grew up at Ngawi, my Dad was a cray fisherman. We still have a family home there, not really a Bach as it was our family home for years until mum and dad moved to 'town' I.e. Martinborough 😁. We spent Christmas there and a week in the summer holidays. It was perfect in the way that only Cape Palliser is with no wind. Was joyous to share with my son the things we got up to as kids, on the quad bike, in the rock pools, out on the boat, up the hill at the back. I hated living there as a kid, so remote, no TV, so windy and dusty. Now every time I drive down the bend on the hirupi my heart leaps at the expanse of the bay, the blue of the water, the calmness of being at the beach.
Hi Karyn! You actually grew up in Ngawi?? So cool! I know I'm romanticizing the place. It's hard not to, with a view like that. I imagine all the way-out-there feelings I love now could so easily drive a kid crazy! Wonderful now that you can go back and be there again in that place with your own memories, and pass them on to your son. It's a good feeling to be from somewhere, right? The place that made you, the place you didn't choose--and thus always belongs to you in some deep way. You're lucky to have yours be a place of such otherworldly beauty, dust and all. Thanks so much for sharing!
What a beautiful story! I have been fortunate to take the ferry twice across the Cook Strait by going south from the South Island and ending up on the North Island!
Hi Steve! The cardinal directions are really funny in the Strait, right? I tried to get into it in this post but it just took too long to explain. The photo is on the North Island, looking West, to the east side of the South Island, which stretches acros sthe horizon from SW to NW, etc. And Ngawi is quite a bit far South of the Sounds. Love that ferry ride!
So lovely, so very true, and so beautifully captured Ngawi. - the 'place that sways in the wind'.
Every year for so many years I spent two nights at a friend's bach in Ngawi for my birthday - the longest day when I'm in NZ (which is most of the time). Usually there were solstice storms, once there was an earthquake, but the tourists had yet to arrive and the locals were usually still pretty quiet. One morning as I packed to leave I found, smelled first, a sea lion under the car. I learned then that where sea lions are concerned upwind is the place to be.
Have you ever been to the Panorama of the City of New York (once called the 'City of Opportunity') at the Queens Museum?
PS
Please don't leave until you go to Kawhia (actually - please don't leave at all)
A SEA LION UNDER YOUR CAR?? Susan that is the most hardcore NZ comment on this blog yet. An earthquake tossed in for good measure. Ngawi delivers!
I haven't seen that NYC panorama! When we lived in Shanghai we used to take visitors to the Urban Planning Museum to see the massive scale replica of the city that would cycle through night and day as you watched. We could see our own building there--very meta. Comforting and belittling all at once. Like the view from Ngawi...but not.
You're too kind! That means a lot, truly. No plans to go anywhere just yet. I must make it to Kawhia!
Nowhere as hardcore as the eye-watering drive back to Wellington in the rain with the windows down while I wondered whether anyone would buy the car or I'd have to leave it by the side of the road somewhere.
What you're seeing across the water is Tapuae-o-Uenuku - the footprint of the rainbow - and the highest point of the Inland Kaikōura Range. Wellington astrophotographer Mark Gee took this stunning image of it from Tararua, looking across Wellington city: https://www.instagram.com/p/ohLXTqyJV_/?igsh=dXJhbWxndnRnOWQz
That's a great pic! Thanks for this--I didn't know the name Tapuae-o-Uenuku. We don't see it at all from the inland Wairarapa, of course, so it's always more a surprise for me than for Welly folk & I don't know names or geograhpy like a should. I wonderd if it might be the Kaikōura Range but told myself nah, that was too far south! Very cool to know. I'll hike up to that view in the Tararuas someday.
You'll need to be on one of these peaks, I think, to be high enough: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1710918165829379/permalink/3702379406683235/
Tapuae-o-Uenuku is alse very visible around Wellington's south coast - it's the tallest peak visible and magnificent when covered in snow.
If you're a tramper/hiker, the Southern Crossing is incredible - probably best in summer though.
Have you done many of the Wairarapa-side hikes? Holdsworth is a day tramp; others can be reached with an overnight stop in one of the many huts. Mitre/Pukeamoamo is my favourite by far - the tallest point in the Tararua Range.
If you google Pete Nikolaison's website, he has the Wairarapa-side peaks named in one of his images - just mouse-over the photo to see the names and heights.
I know the bike ride you're talking about! At least I think I do. I used to live in SW WI (Richland Center) and remember bikers coming through. It was a big event. Oh again (always) the poignancy -- being on the edge and in the middle, no family bach in Ngwai (can't stay in NZ?!), firmly staked and flapping in the wind. The both/and (neither/nor) of it all. The beautiful heartbreak. The grief and the gratitude. Always. (And in some ways, is that not just the case for immigrants but for all of us? I mean, maybe none of us are "from here"? Where did we come from and where are we going and where is home anyway, for any of us? Sometimes it feels that abstract, and sometimes it is very practical and grounded -- where do I want to wake up? Where do I want to put my body on this earth? Where do I want to put my body into the earth?
Hi Jean! Oh yeah, RAGBRI would have ended up near there on years it ran a northern route. On my life list for sure.
You know the feels, for sure. I could have an NZ life without a bach in Ngawi, yeah. But baches, as much as I love them, mark this family claim on the place I feel gently excluded from--no family history to fall back on, and no family real estate either. I drive by and think I want one, but mostly I want to have the anchor of family and time in NZ that they represent? But if I had it I wouldn't be me? And off we go in circles again.
There's a James McMurtry song you might like: I'm not from here, I just live here. From the Western US perspective, but rings true anywhere:
https://youtu.be/agVIN8UIRsg?si=A3LyhnHjHYuPG7P-
Doesn't solve the burying question. Doesn't solve any question, I guess! We keep moving...
Beautifully written! I'm so happy you are experiencing things like this.
Thanks, Christopher! Glad you enjoyed it. That view makes me feel lucky indeed!
I grew up at Ngawi, my Dad was a cray fisherman. We still have a family home there, not really a Bach as it was our family home for years until mum and dad moved to 'town' I.e. Martinborough 😁. We spent Christmas there and a week in the summer holidays. It was perfect in the way that only Cape Palliser is with no wind. Was joyous to share with my son the things we got up to as kids, on the quad bike, in the rock pools, out on the boat, up the hill at the back. I hated living there as a kid, so remote, no TV, so windy and dusty. Now every time I drive down the bend on the hirupi my heart leaps at the expanse of the bay, the blue of the water, the calmness of being at the beach.
Glad you're there on a good weekend!
Hi Karyn! You actually grew up in Ngawi?? So cool! I know I'm romanticizing the place. It's hard not to, with a view like that. I imagine all the way-out-there feelings I love now could so easily drive a kid crazy! Wonderful now that you can go back and be there again in that place with your own memories, and pass them on to your son. It's a good feeling to be from somewhere, right? The place that made you, the place you didn't choose--and thus always belongs to you in some deep way. You're lucky to have yours be a place of such otherworldly beauty, dust and all. Thanks so much for sharing!
What a beautiful story! I have been fortunate to take the ferry twice across the Cook Strait by going south from the South Island and ending up on the North Island!
Hi Steve! The cardinal directions are really funny in the Strait, right? I tried to get into it in this post but it just took too long to explain. The photo is on the North Island, looking West, to the east side of the South Island, which stretches acros sthe horizon from SW to NW, etc. And Ngawi is quite a bit far South of the Sounds. Love that ferry ride!
There's an ever-readable 2011 NZGeo article about Ngawi by Dave Scott that's a reminder of how far from the outside world Ngawi was/is.
Oh man I gotta read it! I can see the photos now. The tractors on the beach at sunset, for sure. Still feels pretty out there, in the very best way
'Me, I'm out here dreaming of a life-sized map.' !!!
Sounds like a lovely trip away. One day I want to do something crazy like ride a bike from Auckland to Wellington (maybe not in one day).