Palmerston North

Dear Friends,

"Walk-the-Walk" has hit Palmerston North! We are currently camped out in the Square here and all the local greenies and fighters for the cause seem to be coming out of the woodwork to give us a warm welcome. The camp has become a bit of a homeless shelter here, we put up four guys and a very young girl (too young to be sleeping outside) who were just planning on crashing under trees, in our spare tent and they were very friendly but snored like beasts! I let the 15 year old Julia who worked at McD's across the road sleep in my tent because she was too scared to sleep in a tent by herself and she didn't want to go home to her Mother...(I remember when I was 15, but we needn't go into that) so we kept her safe.

Always happy to accomodate people who want to join the camp for whatever reason so it was great to have some more friendly company.

Since I last spoke to you all from Taihape, we have passed through the small town of Mangaweka, on to Hunterville, where we camped up next to the town's icon, a statue of the Huntaway farm dog.
We met a French tourist called Christian who walked with me for one day from Mangaweka to Hunterville. We were really appreciative of him for taking a day out of his last two weeks in New Zealand to do something to protect our environment here.

Some friends who we met in Arapuni (one of our personal favorite towns) bumped into us again in Hunterville on their way home from Welly. They were amazed at how far we had come and happy to see our banners up in another town. Another lady there stayed with us for the night to avoid falling asleep at the wheel and after Mick left in the morning he went with Josh (our new walker from Taihape) to his parents' house and had a korero and a good feed before meeting little old me in Marton.

I was without a cellphone for about four days because I dropped it in our friend Malcolm's compost heap when he was enthusiastically showing us the ins and outs of his pride and joy. I had thought it was gone for good until he went to put another load of compost on and saw it sitting there on top! It was very lucky he found it when he did because I don't think the garden would have liked it very much.

When I got to Marton we set up in their little town square, but there was no flat space and we were camped on little curvy hills reminiscent of the Tellytubbies set, not a very comfortable night! We were approached by a surprisingly consistent stream of locals in full support of the cause.

The Police approached us in the morning with a completely made up story about a theft that was connected with our car, and used it as an excuse to ask all our details, while telling us we weren't allowed to camp there. (the first time this message has come from the Police) They went on to say this apparent theft happened in July last year when the car wasn't even going! So Mick told them straight up that we thought they were making it all up and they needn't because we were happy to talk to them and tell them all they needed to know.

They ended up being quite friendly and seemed rather amused by our way of going about things. Then it was on to Feilding where we had a pretty quiet response, but you get that on the big jobs.

So we will hit Massey University tomorrow with a hairbrained stunt to expose government greenwash and stir up those students into some environmental activism with our enthusiasm, creativity and shocking extremist behaviour. A bit of well chosen music won't go amiss either!

The next big destination will be Lower Hutt, which we plan to hit on the 25th or 26th and will be passing by the office of Trevor Mallard, where we plan to do a bit of vigorous stirring too. The next day of course will be Wellington and that's the big one folks!

Watch this space....

Love, Peace and Joy from Positive Palmy

H Diggity dawg (Heather)
J Jiggity Jawsh (Josh) and. . .
Mick the Chip Man, Gnatty Dread Brother (Mick)