Rimutaka Valley Road

Dear Friends!

The Walkers have crossed the perilous Rimutaka Valley Road, the last great barrier before our arrival at Parliament. We are currently waiting in the wings, in upper Hutt, for our descent into the capital on Friday.

Since I last updated you in Pahiatua, we have been travelling through the wide, wonderful Wairarapa! We spent a night in Kiwi Country (Eketahuna) where we met some very supportive locals, outraged at the governments hypocracy when it comes to endangered species protection. The town of Eketahuna thrives on the tourism it enjoys because of the Mt Bruce Kiwi sanctuary down the road and is adorned with images, sculptures, neon lights and souvenirs depicting Kiwi birds.

The next night, of course, we spent at the Mt Bruce sanctuary. It was one of the most peaceful nights sleep we have had for weeks, apart from the raucus kiwi calls. We were awoken by a dawn chorus of epic proportions. In the sanctuary we were lucky enough to see a kokako in the wild. We are told this is the only place in the world you can. We also saw Kakariki, Kaka, Stitchbird and more Kereru (native wood pigeons) than we had ever seen in one place, as well as two chilled out tuatara. When we visited the kiwi house they were in their burrow, but we were able to see them through the burrow cam preening each other, oblivious to our presence. I felt like a peeping tom!

The next night we hit Masterton, which was nowhere near as peaceful during the evening. To be fair, I had an excellent couple of busking sessions at the local supermarket. The people were very welcoming, encouraging and generous. When the lights went out the streets were the realm of the boy racers and the hoodlems. We were camped on the approach to town beside a big grass roundabout which seemed to be a favorite place for hoons to skid around and around in circles yahooing and showing off their loud, carbon intensive cars while yelling things like "peace to the world" and "save the planet" in sarcastic tones. Ignorance is bliss.

Carterton was our next stop and is a transition town, so we enjoyed hospitality from a lady called Sonia who promotes sustainable living in her community. We also visited another couple who have an extensive garden where they provide most of their own food and save organic seeds, use rainwater and are also involved in the transition towns movement. We had a delicious home grown lunch and had a tour of her property, while Josh and Dan got stuck in and helped with some gardening work.

Greytown was surprisingly busy, and I was amazed to see how many of their heritage buildings are lovingly preserved for public display! We were a hit with the locals and even had one woman sing us some of her political rap music which was really entertaining to say the least. We were given donations without having to ask, always a good sign, and the council didn't even move us on!

Featherston was a completely different kettle of fish. This was one of the worst nights sleep we ever had, mainly because of a group of very young boys hanging around at our camp, making themselves at home by helping themselves to our firewood, building a blazing inferno uncomfortably close to our tents and feeding it with an aerosole can! They went home but came back at about 5 am saying they had "left home forever" to join our walk. They made themselves a charming little bivvy using some roadcones and a tarpauline and finally went to sleep when they had finished freaking us out. During the day we had great support from the community of course, busking went well and Malcolm visited a supporter of ours by the name of Clare who lives nearby, who is an anti GE activist and gave us some organic food for the journey!

From there it was up over the Rimutaka hills, after having been told you CAN'T walk over them, which was a little nerve racking to say the least. We stayed alert and focussed on nothing but survival and made it over despite the dangers, with passers by looking at us like we were dead men walking, aghast to see somebody on foot on THAT road. Malcolm drove ahead and waited with the "Caution, Walkers" sign to alert drivers to our presence. Now we have conquered the Rimutaka's they had better take us seriously in Wellington because we didn't risk life and limb for nothing!

So here we are in Upper Hutt. We stayed outside the courthouse last night and were moved on at 8.00 this morning by a very angry lady, who we thought might have worked for the courts but would not confirm or deny, with a posse of three police, telling us if we didn't hurry up they were going to help us pack up and we probably wouldn't like the way they did it. We asked where the sign was that said we couldn't camp here, but there wasn't one. The unnamed dragon told us we were on private property. Malcolm argued that the ministry of justice is a public organisation paid for by taxpayers money and that the land should be publicly, not privately owned. She couldn't really argue apart from asking us whether we paid taxes ourselves, to which we replied "yes, we have spent many years paying taxes to pay for things we disagree with and are now taking a stand about what that money is being used for". She wasn't interested in the cause, but after she left the police were. So apparently you can't camp on the courthouse lawn in upper hutt, but we did anyway. It wasn't a very nice place to camp, we had streetkids hasselling us, throwing rocks (we need rocks to hold down flyers at our stall) and other useful things like pens (which they obviously don't have use for) and an apple (which tasted home grown and delicious) at our tents and banners and sneaking around as if they thought we couldn't see them.

We will be visiting Trevor Mallard's office in Lower Hutt tomorrow and Parliament on Friday, so an update will follow in the next few days to fill you all in on all the no doubt maniacal details of those meetings.

Keep in touch,

Arohanui

--
Heather Simpson
Walk the Walk Organiser