You Can’t Handle Tom Cruise’s Tepee! (Oct. 22 – 26)

Leaving George and Wellington behind, we headed north, which is appropriate since there’s nowhere to go but north from windy Welly. In our brief dash through the North Island in the summer we missed the west coast pretty much entirely, so we decided to go that a-way. Fifteen minutes out of Wellington we were instantly taken back to our memories of the N Island; rolling green hills littered with cows, hot and sunny weather, and hazy plains stretching from the sea to the far-off mountains in the center of the island. We drove through the black-sand resort towns of Waikanae and Paraparaumu, where we encountered traffic, of all things, which came as a great shock to us – the South Island doesn’t really do congestion. By the end of the day we were knackered as we reached one of the rural Manawatu region’s big cities, Wanganui. Not much going in Wanganui on the Labor Weekend; it’s not the kind of town that has to be on anyone’s must-see itinerary.

The beautiful "Three Sisters" north of Urenui

The next morning we were off further north to Taranaki, where we had lined up some wwoofing work at an organic brewery, White Cliffs, just outside of New Plymouth, the area’s only major city. As you can probably guess, Taranaki’s another really rural region, basically a remote western peninsula with many, many cows. The region is most notable for the eponymous Mt. Taranaki (or Egmont, depending on who you ask – Taranaki sounds cooler so it’s our preferred nomenclature), a conical snow-capped volcanic mountain which rises out of the center of the Taranaki ring plain to dominate the skyline.

Ron Burgundy is ready for his close-up

We’d been keen to see Mt. Taranaki since we’d been here for nearly a year without spotting it, but we’d heard people say that on remarkably clear days it could be seen as far away as the South Island. We haven’t been that lucky, so we figured we had to go to the source. Even while we cruising along Taranaki’s Surf Highway that runs along the peninsula’s western edge, the mountain was only 10 km away but obscured by a heap of clouds on an otherwise clear day. When Taranaki finally emerged as we drove into NP, it was an amazing sight – if for some reason John Madden was describing the area he might say: you’ve got a lot of flat plains and trees, and then all of a sudden, boom, there’s a mountain right there, amazing.

We began wwoofing at White Cliffs because I’m always into seeing how various breweries do things, get another notch in the belt, etc., so we drove out of New Plymouth, after staying there a night. NP’s a nice little beach city, and judging on the big free museum, art gallery, and big public sculpture on the beach, has a fair bit of money coming from the offshore oil and gas discovered nearby in the Tasman Sea. The brewery is in nearby Urenui, which is a typically rural, bush-covered N Island town: this island was built to grow vegetation.

We weren’t quite sure what to expect from White Cliffs since we’d had only brief contact with the owners beforehand, but they turned out to be two generations of a South African family who’d bought the brewery only 4 months earlier. The husband and wife, Ron and Jill, were the owners, but his parents Mike and Rina, originally from Zimbabwe, did the brewing and much of the day-to-day operations. They were a bit older but had to work, owing to the weakness of the South African rand compared to the kiwi dollar. With the white lab coat, Mike got called ‘The Doctor’ a lot, though we reckon that the short shorts (certainly not uncommon around here) should give him away. The brewery was an interesting little set-up: just a tiny operation where they had a little retail space, tanks, refrigerator, and storage space in the equivalent of a big two-car garage. For our part, Becky and I puttered around for a few days there, helping mostly with the bottling, but not really doing too much else. At this point we’re packaging experts.

The good doctor poses with his tonic to cure all "ales"

Our living space was amusing, as we had a little shack set in the back of the property, in the midst of a wee avocado orchard. It certainly was peaceful and tranquil. The only bummer was that the kitchen and toilet was on the other side of the grove, requiring a 5-minute walk through chilly, wet grass. But our favorite aspect was that in the middle of the orchard, the brewery’s previous owner had bought and placed the tepee used by Tom Cruise in the filming of The Last Samurai, much of which occurred nearby. Even if he’s become a crazy Scientologist, we still had to chuckle when we walked past his tepee every morning. The Taranaki terrain was apparently a good stand-in for rural Japan, especially Mt. Taranaki, which looks like Mt. Fuji from a distance.

Our migrant laborer shack amongst the avocado grove

Overall, it was a reasonable enough place to WWOOF, but it certainly didn’t blow us away, and after a few days we began to get keenly aware that our time in NZ is quickly coming to a close, and there is more we’ve yet to see. It was an unusual WWOOFing situation in that they weren’t feeding us there, but instead were paying us for some of our work. That’s alright, but wasn’t what we anticipated. In addition, I didn’t reckon there would be much that I could learn from them, as they’ve barely had more brewing experience than I’ve had. Thus, we decided to leave after four days. Even though this WWOOFing place was no Arapawa Island, don’t feel bad for us – it’s not every day you get to share a yard with Tom Cruise’s tepee…

I LOVE this tepee!