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

The Life of a Walker

Dear Friends,

This is not so much an update as a portrayal of the realities of the lifestyle we are living as Walkers of the Walk.

This journey is like no other I have ever been on. It's not just the walking that sets it apart, nor is walking the most challenging aspect. As I have said in previous updates, when we arrive in each town, (usually between 5 and 7pm) we set up our camp in the most central, grassy location we can find. First we set up our banners, as this legitimises and explains our camp site. Then, up go the tents. As soon as our tents are pitched, people become immediately curious. Some of them walk past and ask us what we are doing, and others will just mumble under their breath, speculating and questioning, without speaking out. We barely ever have to approach people, the combination of the tents, the banners, and our colourful chip car is enough to bring a steady stream of bewildered locals for us to talk to. Invariably these people are positive and supportive of the cause, sign our "Dear Helen Clarke" book, and often bring up their own local environmental concerns for discussion too. The people who don't support us don't stop. They usually drive past very quickly and shout at us from moving vehicles, things like "Get a job!" and "I love Coal". They are never brave enough to enter a discussion.

So after we set up our tents, we spark up our hobo stove and begin to cook, all the while engaging whomever happens to be around at the time. After dinner the people usually keep us talking until at least midnight, usually more like 1 or 2AM, before we can finally stretch out and try to get some sleep. As we are in the centre of town, on state highway one, and more often than not next to the railway line as well, our camp is not a very restful place. In some places we will be on a corner, where trucks will come closer and closer until they sound like they are just about to plough straight into our tents and we are saying our last goodbyes before they zoom around the corner and we breathe a sigh of relief, until the next truck comes. With each one we wonder whether it might just be the one that misses the corner. Then the train will roar past a few metres away and the whole ground will shake like an earthquake, waking us all up again.

In the larger towns, the central parks often have sprinklers. The sprinklers are usually quite high powered, rotating hoses. It can be hard to spot where they are if we are setting up after dark, so we just accept that we are likely to be woken up at three in the morning by a jet of water tearing across all our tents, threatening the very foundations of our skinny pegs, quite often with more pressure than our flies can handle, so we end up with a thin mist making it's way through every time the jet passes by on it's rotation. We have discovered we can put our heavy, collapsable camp table on it's side, directly in front of a jet to protect our tents from the closest threat, but the noise it makes at close range is too loud to sleep with and lasts for at least an hour.

Then there are the street hoons in their souped up boy racer cars, doing burnouts and yahooing at all ours of the night, sometimes driving up into the park we are in and doing wheelspins and doughnuts around the trees.

At about 8.30 or 9 in the morning on week days, when the council worker is on his or her way to work, he or she will approach us and tell us that we can't camp there, and they don't want anybody else getting the idea that it might be acceptable. They also tell us our car and our banners are affecting the visual amenity of their town. We reply that we just did camp there, but it's a terrible place to camp and we don't think anybody else would even consider it! As far as the banners, saving our environment from large scale attacks like the one planned in Happy Valley and the subsiquent carbon emissions is far more important than bylaws to protect the visual amenity of your town! But regardless, don't worry, we will be out of here as soon as we can get the local newspaper down here to take a photograph, we have to walk all the way to ......... today.

The walking is quite a welcome relief after the hectic camp life, and most of the time we just get into a groove and keep plodding along in a sleep deprived, delerious stupor. That's not to say that we aren't wide awake and constantly aware of the dangers involved in walking New Zealand's highways. The proper side of the road to walk on is the right side, so that you can see the traffic on your side of the road and they can see you. This is not, however, always the safest option. On some blind corners, they couldn't see you and you couldn't see them until they were literally on top of you, and if they cut the corner (which they usually do) and the car coming the other way cuts the corner over the center line (which they also usually do) the vehicle has nowhere to swerve to. So we cross over on the blind corners and back again when visibility improves. We are also constantly looking with our ears for traffic coming behind and in front, judging whether it's a car, or a truck or a motorbike and how far away it might be.

When we cross bridges we sometimes just wait until we can hear nothing coming for miles before we make a mad dash for safety, and in some cases have been known to scoot down the bank and cross the river or stream instead. A great many variables come into account when deciding the best way to negotiate tricky roads, including space, terrain, vegetation, steepness, traffic speed and size, visibility, road conditions and weather.

We are not always speaking to each other in rosy, philosophical and peaceful tones as we continue on our journey. We have had many enthralling political debates, found ourselves in stitches of laughter or deep in a meaningful discussion about the nature of the universe, or ripping each other to threads trying to ascertain who ate all our lunch the night before, but no matter what our mood or current conversation we always manage to slap on a beaming smile for the traffic and try to wave heartily at every car that goes past, especially the trucks because they pass us time and time again on their back and forth trips, picking up and dropping off loads of what can only be termed as "stuff and things".

We speak to the police almost on a daily basis. They pull us over when we are walking, just to see what we're up to (although surely they must know that by now) and I say "Sorry officer, was I speeding?" they are generally very friendly to us and warn us to stay safe. "Of course" we reply "we've walked all the way from Auckland and we wouldn't have got this far if we weren't careful!". Then they approach us at the camp, with various excuses or reasons for their enquiries asking us all our names, dates of birth and where we have been and are going, and why. We tell them over and over again, and either they just don't communicate with each other, or they just want to make their presence known and keep tabs on us, because they all act like they have no idea what we're doing. As long as the relations are as reasonable as they have been though, we have no reason to complain and we must admit that there have been points where we have been glad to see police around in the middle of the night, keeping an eye on the midnight marauders.

I will never be able to tell all the stories of this epic journey on our website or through these updates and will probably have enough to keep my friends and family entertained for a lifetime and still keep some special experiences secret just for me, but for the rest of our supporters, this might give you a glimpse into the maniachal life of a Walk the Walker, and the trials we go through to bring awareness to the pillaging of the most important legacy we have to give to our future generations-- Planet Earth.

Heather Simpson
Walk the Walk Organiser

Manawatu Standard: Nothing will Stop them Now!

"It was literally a drive-by. I'm not sure whether it was our cause, or whether it's just because I'm a hippy chick with natty dreadlocks."

Ms Simpson has dealt with blisters, hypothermia, emotional and physical exhaustion during the past seven weeks - but this was the first threat of a gunshot wound.

Check out the full article online!

Walk-the-Walk in Pahiatua - Heather Gets Shot at.

Dear Friends,

Walk the Walk is currently in Pahiatua. We have had a mad few days in this part of the world! We have had another walker join us, by the name of Dan, who is right behind the cause and loves walking too, so it seemed like just his cup of tea. So now we are four. On Friday we visited Massey University in Palmerston North to expose government greenwash and stir up some action among the student population, who we have heard haven't been up to much activism lately.

I let rip for about an hour on the megaphone about the hypocracy of our government regarding Climate Change and our environment, and persuaded students to take off their shoes, dip their feet in green paint and put a footprint on a banner saying "Stop Greenwash, No Coal, Massey University Students, Palmerston North". Each footprint is signed, and we will be bringing this to Parliament when we hit Wellington on the 27th-30th March.
We also had the chip wagon parked nearby pumping some chilled out, revolutionary music with it's eco-friendly chip powered spare battery.

That night there were some hostilities, and although I'm not sure they were directed at our cause, they were definitely directed at me. I was busking across the road from where we had been camping in the square, playing Bob Marley's Redemption Song, when a black car drove past containing 4 young men with shaved heads, dressed in camouflage. I saw one of them lean out the rear passenger side window and point a gun at me, while looking me straight in the eye. I didn't know if he was just trying to freak me out but when he pulled the trigger I moved my head to the side and a slug gun pellet brushed past my ear and made a dent in the wall behind me. So, it wasn't a real gun but it could have done some real damage where he was aiming it, at my eyes! Lucky I dodged it because he was a crack shot. I must remember that not everybody loves peaceful hippy chicks with natty dreadlocks.

The following night, we made it about 12 k out of Palmy to a beautiful lookout point atop a hill beset with a forest of wind turbines. From our camp we could see both Mt Ruapehu and Mt Taranaki, and Palmerston North spread out in front of us looked like a fairy city by night.

Apart from the idyllic location however, all was not peachy. We saw a white ute drive into the turn around we were camping near about three times in the evening, checking us out, but not stopping to talk. They were young guys, looking drunk as skunks. It wasn't until 5am when we were all in bed that they had the guts to approach, and when they did it was to sneakily steal our "climate camp, Haere Mai" banner and hoon off cackling like hyena's when Mick heard a disturbance and leapt up, telling them "You leave that there!"

So if anybody sees this banner being hung up anywhere, please return it to us, care of state highway one. Or if you can help us with replacing it - we need a huge piece of fabric which we can't afford and some way to paint it again.

Catch up again soon,

Heather

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)

Message from Heather in Taihape

"I enjoy all of your company when I am walking physically alone, and I feel you all beside me every step of the way."

Dear Friends!

Since I last updated you, I have been walking the most dangerous road in New Zealand, THE DESERT ROAD! It is brutal, it is treacherous and it is deserted. Deserted like a desert. I guess that's why they call it that, because when we were there, it certainly wasn't dry!

The Rangipo desert is another of New Zealand's wild places. Just like Happy Valley, it is unfit for human habitation. That doesn't make it any less worth saving. Fortunately, it is a National Park. Happy Valley, unfortunately, is on a state coal reserve.

It took us three days to walk the desert and the first two days were fine and sunny, we went through a lot of drinking water and were getting a bit worried about our water supplies. Luckily (or unluckily, whichever way you look at things) on the last day it rained. It poured. The wind was behind us, which helped because we had another 30K to walk, one of our longest days yet, so I let the wind carry me. I found out my raincoat wasn't waterproof but that was okay, I had my thermals on and a fire in my belly so I just kept walking. I didn't stop until I reached the desert oasis of Waiouru, where I was too exhausted to pitch a tent and slept in the train station, which also was not very waterproof. You get that on the big jobs.

Since then we have pressed on to Taihape and met plenty of supportive and friendly locals here, I have had a gumboot throwing lesson and plan to come back for the contest on Gumboot day, watch out, I'm ready!

I must move on and continue my korero with my new friend Josh who is taking me to meet some local Muso's because I'm hankering for a jam, so I will speak to you all again from Palmy.

Thanks for your support, I enjoy all of your company when I am walking physically alone, and I feel you all beside me every step of the way.

Peace out,
Heather and the Walk the Walk crew From the Gumboot capital, Taihape, represent!

Heather Simpson
Walk the Walk Organiser

Message from Heather in Taupo

Kia Ora my Friends!

Walk the Walk is currently in Taupo, getting ready to head off around the lake towards Turangi, which should be about a two day hike. Since the last time I sent an update from Tokoroa, we spent one night only two kilometres out of town beside a private logging overbridge, abundant in lush long grass, blackberries and shady trees. Tui, webdesigner and camp mum, came to visit us there and brought me a new cellphone, much more reliable than the previous hunk of junk I had, so text away, 0211750665 with those messages of support, we will need them as we approach the harsh environment of the Desert Road leg! She also brought me a new pair of shoes from Teva, after having sent them a photograph of the state of the ones I started the walk in, they were happy to replace them with a newer model, free of charge. Thanks Teva!

The following day we pressed on to a town called Atiamuri. Only about 9 people actually live there, although it grows substantially in the holiday season because of the hydro dam which provides a beautiful lake for holiday makers to zoom around in their little yuppy crafts or yahoo about on jetskis. I think we met most of the actual permanent residents. This is another town similar to Arapuni, originally built to house the engineers on the Dam, now shrunken, with large parts of public land being sold to developers to make way for housing developments to be occupied by holiday makers and lifestyle commuters. We camped up in the disproportionately large central park there, and didn't have any real hassles from any authorities. The locals were very friendly and supportive on the whole.

The next day was a long and arduous one which took us within a hop skip and a jump of Taupo to the small village of Wairakei. I have to admit that this was the first day when I really felt tired by the time we were about 7 k out and I had to voice my lack of enthusiasm for walking even one step further. So we sat down and had a rest in what I thought was going to be a town, marked on the map as Te Pouwhakatutu, merely an intersection with a furtiliser factory, a bus stop, and a very noisy dog kennel. I had a power nap in the bus shelter and woke up refreshed enough to get my trudge on for the last stretch.

The small town of Wairakei was built to accomodate workers from the nearby thermal power plant. There was a pub, a dairy, a school and a hall, and quite a few more residents than Atiamuri, because the settlement is only about 12 Km from Taupo. The first people we met were a group of school children, who thought we were completely mad for walking so far, but when they found out our support vehicle was run on fish and chip oil they warmed to us a bit (but still thought we were completely mad) One of the boys said he had an uncle who had a car running on water, but it didn't have a WOF so he couldn't drive it on the road. His uncle wasn't a local though so we didn't get to meet him unfortunately.

Next we were approached by some roofers drinking beers (as is the custom for roofers, every time they finish a job they receive a customary roof shout) who we had a game of pool with, Mick cleaned them all up and we were quite impressed by his straight shooting pool prowess, he's not just a pretty face our Mick! The roofer boys then came back to our camp and had a discussion about the government, the environment and long, long walks. As usual we had to reiterate the fact that we were, in fact, walking, all the way, several times before it sunk in.

The next day felt like a stroll in the park and before we knew it we were on the banks of the mighty lake, sipping coffee and having a much needed shower in the SuperLoo! We originally set up camp right down by the lake, but were approached by a big angry barman who owned three of the bars on the waterfront, telling us he and his patrons didn't want to look at our UGLY CAR (we had been eating in his pub with our roofer friends from Wairakei for the last couple of hours and the other patrons didn't seem too fussed and were in fact quite interested in our journey). We decided that he wasn't the king of Taupo, and didn't own the lakefront and considering the council were at home, being a Saturday night, we didn't think there was much he could do.

We had another thing coming when by 11.30 that evening we were quite keen to hit the hay and we still had a big angry barman shouting at us, and three of his heavies staunching us out threateningly with glowering eyes. On his signal they went for our banners and tore them down, almost letting the wind blow them straight into the lake.

We decided it was more trouble than it was worth and found what we thought was a much better, more central, visible and rather cheeky location, directly beneath the icon of Taupo, a big shiny rainbow trout sculpture, in the "Garden of Regional Significance" on the main drag, near the SuperLoo. We remained there all night, only being disturbed by a few hoons shaking the tents "Hoo hoo hoo" and freaking out a little when they heard my "Oi!" and realising there was actually someone sleeping there.

Sunday went just as smoothly, as suspected because the council were still off work. We set up a stall with some nice visuals at camp, but found that we got more of a response in places like Putaruru and Te Awamutu. We think this is because most of the foot traffic in Taupo are tourists, and there is so much more going on in a tourist centre like this. We did manage to find a few locals though who were all very supportive and were surprised to find that quite a few of them were already familiar with the Save Happy Valley Campaign.

So this morning we head off towards Turangi and must pack up before the council come back (they arrived just before nine this sunny Monday morning as expected). The funny thing is they always approach us just as we are leaving and tell us we can't camp there, and we say, well we just did, but we're leaving now! They were really quite friendly and reasonable though and the guy, who was actually the environmental planner, was supportive of the cause. They look after their tourists in Taupo.

So With that, I bid you adieu, and please think of us slogging it out on the desert road by Wednesday.

Heather Simpson
Walk the Walk Organiser