I had reason to visit Waitara in Taranaki recently, and I don’t want to sound like there’s a different world still operating …
… but the fish and chip shop people weren’t wearing masks, I passed three guys burning the street with dirt-bikes and no helmets and famously lank and long hair, random fireworks lit up from the beach down the road, I got to be entertained at some dude’s house with videos of their own front lawn with four neighbourhood drivers doing their own personal demolition derby with the cars that now decorated his back yard ready for stripping, most sections had a combination of shipping container or dead implement or dying shed or other decaying structure …
… that is to say, outside the world inhabited by those who get on planes for work or leisure around the country, outside the ambit of besuited John Campbell’s morning show and Radio New Zealand’s blow-by-blow technically-driven anxiety, outside of Auckland and the other metro areas, well away from protests uniting hippies and evangelicals and Act-supporting Maori, there are plenty of New Zealanders leading their lives as if COVID barely exists, and will likely continue to do so.
Waitara is a town with a big Maori presence, a meatworks, a barely used rail line, a few social amenities, really low employment, wages by the hour, and comparatively low rents and house prices. It could stand in for most of Taranaki and indeed most of our western coast settlements.
I have a sneaking suspicion that yet another round of anxiety from the Attack of the Greek Alphabet will mean only that the good folk of Waitara World will at some point get another jab and just party hard, work harder, and keep doing endless dirtbike hillfarm scrambles and driftwood bonfires on the beach. The great swirling constellation of bureaucratic contests, political polls, and slightly famous people endlessly commenting on what other slightly famous people said was a wee bit whatever.
No one is denying the existence or morbidity of COVID, but whatever New Zealand is, it was certainly still alive in Waitara are highly likely to stay around.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress