Tuesday 9 to Monday 15 February 2010  - Parachute Festival's twentieth celebration was a blast.  If you couldn't make it live the experience in this week's video. 

Quote of the week:  God grant me the serenity to accept things that I cannot change.  The courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.

- Reinhold Niebuhr

Suzanne Aubert, who might just turn out to be New Zealand's first saint, has the following advice for the week days of the month ahead:

  PARACHUTE TURNS 20

  BOOKS FOR THE BLIND

  BLESSED ARE THE POOR

From last week...

A wise word from Maya before you go:

I don’t know perhaps I’d do the same, after all it is New Zealand’s national emblem, so what’s a little white lie in the face of that?  After all New Zealanders are universally known around the world as kiwis and the Chinese gooseberry was renamed the kiwi fruit after farmers here hit on the idea of exporting it to adorned the plates of the well heeled in swanky restaurants back in the ‘80’s.  The kiwi is as New Zealand as, well New Zealand but are there any left?  The trouble is if there isn’t, how do you admit to the world you’ve been having them on all this time?

Now I know I haven’t been here long and maybe in time I’ll be blessed with a visitation but I’ve done the tourist thing.  I’ve handed over bucketfuls of hard earned cash to tramp after kaki clad wardens in the gloom of night-time nature reserves, on the half baked promise that, ‘tonight will be the night.’  For what you may ask, and that was exactly my question three hours later after being eaten to death by mossies and getting no closer to seeing a wild kiwi than a pig flying.  Oh, I’d heard the rustling in the undergrowth alright.  I’d witnessed the warden stiffen like a lurcher and cock his head to one side as if picking up the unmistakable footfall of the elusive bird but I never actually got to see one.

Let’s face it if you can’t trot one out for the tourists, who’ve invariably flown days for the sole reason of coming up close and personal with a unique flora and fauna, than I doubt there are any.  To be honest I’m seriously wonder whether they existed in the first place!  I reckon they’re a New Zealand urban myth, perpetuated for and by the tourism industry. There never were any knee high flightless brown birds whose party trick was putting their head in the sand - or is that ostriches?  I don’t know, anyway it was something that’s meant to fly and couldn’t.

Putting up a few signs saying ‘Dogs to be kept on lead - kiwi breeding ground’ is one thing but is it real evidence?  I mean, from the start the warden had regaled the coach party with tales of kiwis running through the legs of an ecstatic Germans the previous night, but could he produce one for us… could he heck.  No amount of, ‘hark I hear a male kiwi yonder,’ and ‘in truth there speaks the gallant’s fair maid in sweet reply,’ could convince me.  I don’t know maybe I’m just jaded with life, maybe the magic of mystery has worn a bit thin but I couldn’t get over the sneaky feeling that there was another equally kaki clad warden twitching the bushes and turning on an MP3 player.  Still the American contingent of the coach were overjoyed to hear the warbling and thought it well worth every cent and jet lagged minute.  The warden studiously avoided my response to his ‘any questions?’ at the end of the trip, as he opened up the shop and encouraged us to purchase kiwi memorabilia to, ‘take to the folks back home.’ The fact we hadn’t seen one didn’t deter my fellow coach travellers one bit.  A woman from Idaho said ‘having a stuffed one would be just like the real thing for her little Timmy.’  Would that I were so easily satisfied with life.  I’m sure I’d be a lot happier if I were able to believe with naïve trust and child like innocence.  It would certainly make the job of tour guide for the park warden far easier.  He’d already identified me as the trouble maker in the group, I could almost hear him muttering, ‘there’s always one’ to himself as I pedantically clarified that our tickets were non-refundable in the event of a no show.  Fortunately for him the revolution wasn’t going to start in that coach, that night and the rest of the group were perfectly happy to tramp around in the cold and dark and be fobbed off with excuses about their feathers melting if they get wet so that’s why they stay hidden.

C’mon let’s face it they don’t exist and no amount of polite New Zealand service in the face of disappointed foreigners, is going to make them real.  So in conclusion I reckon there just aren’t any wild kiwis.

And just for the record my tongue has been pushed firmly in the side of my mouth while writing this.  So please don’t write ‘angry from Thorndon’ emails in hot response to this slur on New Zealand heritage and good name, I meant it in good humour but if you do know for certain where I can see a wild kiwi and want to prove a point…

Hope you liked our site, made possible by the inspiration of Bernie Hehir (RIP).  Thanks Bernie