< Disclaimer> < Return To Issue Article Index >

The Big Plan was to walk and write. Walk and write, walk and write. I didn’t care, I told myself, to meet people. This is my first year of being a widow. I’ve never done anything by myself, I thought - never even had my own bedroom until now.  After 14 years of stress, I was starting to care about myself physically. I was also working on lyrics to an Irish-type ballad about a widow being courted by a younger man (Fantasies on my part? Perhaps Demi & Ashton or Cameron & Justin could sing it?)  The widow sings something like this to her suitor: Trouble, I say,  Tis trouble to marry, The load of true love is  Too heavy to carry. Looking at a map of 5X7 kilometre Norfolk Island I decided I didn’t care, either, about being near the town of Burnt Pine or the swimming and snorkelling area of Emily Bay. Anson Bay looked a bit remote. I wouldn’t need a car either, even though all accommodation on the island seemed to include them. How hard could a 5X7 kilometre island be to walk around anyway? I discovered the Norfolk Island group is situated on the Norfolk Ridge, an elongated submarine rise which extends from New Zealand to New Caledonia. In other words New Zealand, the Norfolk Islands and New Caledonia are the tops of a mainly underwater mountain range. I would be walking and writing on the tops of mountains covered by the deep turquoise waters of the South Pacific!

Phillip's Island from Mount. Pitt

Cows well ...... the size of cows Norfolk Pines

But, I wasn’t interested in lying in the sun or staying out all night, was I? I looked around the plane at the passengers. Not very many young faces it seemed. Maybe I had picked a place only old folks want to go. Maybe I’m really an older folk…

The plane to Norfolk truly was full of a disproportionate number of grey-haired heads, mine included! Sitting one seat away from me for the hour and 45 minute plane ride was one of them - a woman. We didn’t speak until the plane began its descent. Suddenly chatty, she turned and said, “Oh, there it is…Norfolk Island.” 

We were passing over a very small and barren chunk of volcanic residue called Phillip Island. My heart sank. “Are you sure?” I said.  Fortunately, the plane wasn’t landing and we could see a larger mass of emerald green, the famous Norfolk pines, a golden beach and a lagoon, coming into view.
.

Coastal view of Norfolk Island

My row-mate had been a care-taker for a number of years for a man on Norfolk Island and continued to come back every year to visit friends. As the landing strip came into sight she explained how she had tried growing cabbages on Norfolk, but they were only the size of - she held up her hands at this point - the size of, well…Brussels sprouts!  Almost at ground level she pointed out the old fire engines lined up on the grass where lots of people were waving a welcome to us. “All the cars are old here,” she said.  The airport is like those in the Caribbean - small, with everything necessary and nothing more - and welcoming. A mild breeze coming from the Andes blew through the terminal. My travel agent mistakenly thought I didn’t need a visa as I was flying direct from New Zealand. However, as Norfolk Island is a protectorate of Australia and I travel on a US passport, there were some tense moments as I waited while they issued me one - no charge!

My first seven nights would be spent at Ansons Bay Lodge in a charming two-bedroom unit complete with kitchen. Wayne took me by the supermarket in Burnt Pine, the island centre. It’s on a long street, called Taylors Road, full of duty-free shops, travel businesses, cafes, and tourist attractions. 

After leaving Burnt Pine, I could see why the people of Norfolk Island drive cars. It wasn’t flat! In fact, it was very hilly. Silently, while Wayne chatted away about the island and pointed sites out to me, I began to wonder about my plan. 

$60A had gotten me a big tub of plain yoghurt, muesli, two cans of fruit in natural juice, two small tubs of cottage cheese, two packages of frozen veges (green beans and mixed), a container of apple juice, a box of tea (which I didn’t need to buy as the unit came with all the tea I would ever want to drink), two cans of tuna (Wayne had a bowl of limes waiting on the table), and two small packages of walnuts and almonds. Go natural, girl! Everything was more than I would have paid in New Zealand, but that was OK. If I rationed well, I wouldn’t starve if I couldn’t make the walk into town to eat out.
.

That night at the Bounty Restaurant, amidst laughter and joking, I learned that gaining permanent residence on Norfolk Island, which has no income tax, is not easy. There are jobs, mainly related to tourism, but work permits are renewed every year and after five years you leave the island or apply for residency. I learned Wayne, in his early 40s, had made money investing in real estate in the Auckland area as a young man. After a divorce, he decided to come to Norfolk as he could see business potential and a lifestyle he was seeking. And he has found love again. The islands were discovered in 1774 by Captain James Cook and he named it after a noble English family. He called it a paradise, fertile and uninhabited. Just 14 years later, convicts were being sent to settle this paradise. It became known as “a hell in paradise.” But by 1855 all the convicts and guards were gone leaving some of the best preserved Georgian buildings in the South Pacific.

Tahitian Gal at the fish fry

..
In 1853 the people of Pitcairn Island, the descendents of Tahitians and the Bounty mutineers, had appealed to the British government for relocation. On June 8, 1856, a total of 194 souls landed at their new home. About 2000 people reside on the island today: one-third the descendents, one-third Australians, and one-third New Zealanders.

The next morning, after having my muesli, fruit and yoghurt “breakie,” I set out hat on head, sensible walking shoes on feet, backpack on back. Almost as soon as I hit the road, islanders in every car or ute (truck) that passed were giving me a wave. Often, if they were going in my direction they stopped to ask if I wanted a ride. Of course I said No: I was walking into town. The tourists were easy to recognize because they didn’t wave unless waved to and they didn’t stop to offer a ride.

The hills weren’t really bad…they were perfect in fact, just enough of a rise to force exertion and then a pleasant descent, flats for a while and then more of the road rising up to meet me. Cows on Norfolk Island were the size of…well, cows…houses the size of houses, people the size of people and even some lettuce the size of…well, lettuce. Tall stands of bamboo on the sides of roads played tunes for me. It was easy to fall in love with Norfolk Island. 

Poor tourists in cars: they couldn’t hear the bamboo; they couldn’t smell the earth; they couldn’t feel the breeze bring refreshment every time it was needed. 

The sight of the biggest hill loomed ahead just as I passed the Silky Oaks Stables. I spotted a Tea House and Garden next door. After an iced coffee—covered with whipped cream—I was ready to take off again. My hostess told me the big hill was the last before the road wound down into town.
..
Soon - but two hours after I had started off from Ansons Bay - I arrived in Burnt Pine after what could have been an 8-minute car ride. My hair was plastered to my head underneath my hat. I was beginning to feel hungry. 

Instead, I stepped into the office of an island tour company. They advertised half-day & whole-day tours, breakfast bush walks (on a bus to Anson Bay!) clifftop barbeques, nights as convicts, progressive dinners to island homes, fish fries (at Puppies Point near Anson Bay!), Mutiny on the Bounty shows and much, much more.

I chose a progressive dinner that night after the ladies of the tour company assured me they could give me a ride home. Then, for the next night, I chose the fish fry at Puppies Point, figuring I could walk there from Anson Bay. Evening meals for that night and the next would be covered. At this point, the canned tuna and limes weren’t calling me back to Anson Bay. 

You don’t even know how to take a holiday, I told myself. You’ve booked it like your Kiwi friends told you, but you don’t know what to do now you are on one.

Before my husband and I had children, we did some traveling and took vacations in Mexico and the Caribbean, but those years were limited and always packed into a busy life trying to do something productive. For the 15 years we lived in Pittsburgh before coming to New Zealand, we hardly ever took vacations away from home. It was just too complicated or expensive with four growing children.
.
I think now of Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us:”

HE world is too much with us: late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! 

My husband would schedule his vacations around Christmas time so he got some extra days. Then, he just wanted to be at home resting as any exhausted human being would. We loved Daddy being home. 

Over the years, we might have taken a few trips over to Sea World in Ohio in summer. Most every year I drove up to New England to visit my brother, the monk, in Brookline, Massachusetts, and Tom’s sister and family in Vermont. Once we took a side-trip over to Maine where my children saw the ocean and a lobster for the first time. They waved it around with the claws on their fingers and then gobbled it up.

Now my children are grown and away from home - independent, not really needing me around, making their own ways in the world. And here I was, out in the middle of the South Pacific on the top of a mountain settled and inhabited by descendents of people who mutinied because of the gross rudeness of a despotic sea captain.
.
Just as I was about to rise from my chair and leave the touring company office in strode a wiry man in bib overalls, wearing a white cap labeled “White Trash,” speaking loudly in some kind of southern American accent! Stunned to think I was going to be sharing this island with another American, especially one in bib overalls, I sat back down and listened to him ask questions about air flights over the island and tried to figure out what kind of accent he had. 

“What part of the South are you from?” I interjected. Now it was his turn to be startled as he recognized my American accent. 

It turns out he was from southern Ohio and had never been out of the region. He had heard about Norfolk Island eight years before. He was 62 years old, retired, and had come half way round the world to visit only Norfolk. He wasn’t going to visit New Zealand or Australia, he insisted, just Norfolk Island.

As I had no more business in the tour place, was even hungrier, and, most likely, not thinking properly, I asked him if he had eaten. A generation gap revealed itself as he thought I was hitting on him! He immediately asked how old I was. I told him 58 and that I was a recent widow. “Oh,” he exclaimed, “You don’t look like you are 58…you’re too young to be a widow.”
.
Now, that was sweet - but was my next love to be known as Mr.  White Trash? I think not! Then, out on the street his motor mouth dominated the conversation inquiring about religion and politics. Within two minutes we were arguing like an old married couple. Fortunately, I escaped a café down the street, had an unsatisfying bite to eat, discovered the town’s cyber café and shot off a letter to family and friends about my first day on Norfolk Island, including my encounter with Mr. White Trash.

Then I waited for the day to end and the progressive dinner to begin. I was hot, bothered, unsettled and not sure of what was happening to all my plans for this holiday. Walking on mountains might require some risk management strategies.

The progressive dinner didn’t help things - the participants were all older couples. Our bus ride consisted of a tour of the island as darkness settled and visits to four homes: three restored to perfection, and one recently built with post and beams from New Zealand. We were served by the owners, young    couples with families. It gave me a sense that Norfolk Island has a wonderful future. 

However, seated at the long dining table on the veranda of the first home, a couple began to talk to me. As I have done for the past year I, very quickly, let them know I was a widow. They expressed their sympathy, but I could tell this is not the kind of conversation older couples want to have when they are taking a holiday. So, for me, it was kind of quiet the rest of the evening. It’s OK, I told myself. Remember, you wanted to be by yourself.

I stayed home the next day and tried to write. The widow’s suitor was trying hard to win her:

Should I court a widow
Who’s older than me?
“There’ll be sorrow,
more sorrow, I reckon,”
says she.
But I’ve known some sorrow
And I’ve known some pain.
Deep calls to deep
And then deeper again.

But, she was resisting:

Time will slip away like
Those sands on the shore
I’ll turn and I’ll change
And I won’t be anymore.

In late afternoon I began my walk to Puppies Point for the fish fry. I was the first to arrive and watched the tour company set up tables, the food, and then the Tahitian dancers gathered. Finally, the bus load of tourists pulled up--older couples again. When I spied two younger women finding a table, I made a bee-line for it, asked if I could sit with them and introduced myself. 

I learned from one of the women there are good package deals to Norfolk Island from New Zealand comparable to the week-long packages to the Gold Coast and Fiji. With all my hemming and hawing I had missed them and ended paying for my plane fare what she paid for airfare and a room for 7 days. She and her husband had gotten this good deal, but, sadly, were using this time away from their children to decide to split up. Like hills and mountains, it seems, the risk of love has its ups and down.

The other woman, Marie, a 41 year-old single business woman from Melbourne, became my island friend for the next few days. She was a walker, too, and had decided she would return her car after her first day on the island so she would be sure to walk. The car agency tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. Then they told her they’d heard there was an American woman walking into town from Anson Bay!

Marie and I shared many happy hours together - eating, walking in the rain and taking wrong turns. One of our best lunches was at the Leagues Club, a not so posh looking place which served fantastic seafood chowder. Accompanied by a light beer, it was lovely after a long walk into town.

I was learning I could not do without people. I also wondered how the fellow American I had been so happy to escape was faring. 

Another day Marie and I met at Brankas (which only serves lunch) near the airport and shared plates of baked avocados stuffed with a rice curry and breaded and braised field mushrooms with lentil sauce. Marie described a successful single life, filled with human relationships. She has traveled a lot; she wasn’t interested in exchanging email addresses.

The days slipped by. I accepted rides when I wanted to. On my own I discovered The Golden Orb Bookshop and Café, read the hours away - a book called Wild Women - and ate the same lunch three days in a row: a fabulous tomato-based soup with chili, roasted capsicums (red peppers) and ground peanuts - a huge slice of sour dough bread on the side to dip.

I walked one afternoon to the exquisite Captain Cook Memorial which overlooks the bay where the Endeavor moored. By this time, I was staying just down the road in a home for my last four nights. My housemate, Sarah, was a young Irish woman on a round the world ticket who was headed home to Ireland after 8 months on her family’s farm in New Zealand. She was going home to build a shed with her brother. 

She listened patiently to my story and then told me pointedly I had to stop talking about my dead husband so much. I told her pointedly, after she told me she wanted to marry, that if she considered herself a farmer, her husband would most likely be a farmer. I read her the completed Irish ballad and we became friends. 

I met a mother traveling with two daughters around my age. They drove me to the top of Mt Pitt so I could view the whole island. I bought each of my children a gift and more for my grandson. I bought a painting by excellent local artist Sue Pearson at the art gallery attached to the unique Cyclorama history of the journey of the Bounty which began in Portsmouth, England.

I had to buy a suitcase with wheels. But, by now, after talking with Sarah, it would be needed for my round the world trip. Thanks to my email about Mr. White Trash, I began a dialogue about love with a dear friend half way round the world who is hoping it will happen again for him. I knew I was growing and changing. I had walked and written and rested on top of this mountain range. Suddenly, it was my last full day and my last walk into town.

Now the rises and falls of the road were familiar. I had started using my umbrella instead of a hat to shade myself from the sun. It looked weird, I knew, but it was light and handy. Hey, I was on Norfolk Island in the middle of the South Pacific. The islanders still waved at me and the tourists still didn’t offer rides.

As I passed the post office, I saw Mr. White Trash sitting on a bench, bib overalls and NO shirt now. I passed by without speaking and he didn’t see me.

I sent off my last emails, drank a mocha at my favorite café and began the walk home. On the way, I began to wonder why I had chosen to avoid Mr. White Trash. Why couldn’t I be friendly to a fellow country-person? Was I ashamed of him? Was I ashamed of what he was so proud to represent? 

Was it that I was afraid to talk to men and talking to him seemed like having to start at the bottom? I began to regret I couldn’t have at least asked him how his visit had gone. We were both leaving on the same plane - only two fly in and out from Auckland per week - the next day.

Just as I was thinking these thoughts, I looked up and there, in the not-so-distance, I could see the lone figure of Mr. White Trash making his way up the road. Our paths were going to cross.  Here was an opportunity to do something with my repentance! 

As he drew closer I could see he was waving to the cars with a real flourish, almost like a king would, if a king were walking down a road with bib overalls and no shirt on!

We greeted each other and exchanged pleasantries. He had had a great time during his stay. He showed me the latest issue of the island newspaper and a column dedicated to him. ”Just Call Me Putt…” was the headline. He liked to be called Putt after the John Deere tractor which made a “putt putt…putt putt” sound. He was glad the words “White Trash” on his cap showed up so clearly in his photo.

“I love Norfolk Island,” he told the newspaper, “I love the weather and I could live on Mount Pitt.”  Hmmm…Putt on Pitt.

He told me - didn’t ask - we would sit together on the plane the next day.

Sarah had a car and we drove to the airport together. I was fretting over how I was going to get out of sitting with Putt. Sarah instructed me.  I didn’t have to be nice to everyone I met, she said. She didn’t like Mr. White Trash, wouldn’t spend a minute talking to him and didn’t feel a bit guilty about it.
When we parted she told me to get her email address from Wayne.

I felt a hand at my elbow. It was Putt. I told him it had been nice meeting him, wished him well, and said I really wanted to sit by myself, that I had preparation to do for school the next day. He was fine. 

I will be, too.

The following are the previous articles that Candy has written about New Zealand for the magazine:

Living In New Zealand ~ Answers & Anecdotes Part 1
Life, Liberty, The Pursuit Of Happiness And Dying - Reflections On Immigration To New Zealand
Is There Trouble In Paradise? - In New Zealand
Answers & Anecdotes, Part 2  - More On Living In New Zealand

To contact Candy Click Here
.

< Send a Letter to the Editor > < Subscribe> < Submit An Article >< Disclaimer>