Middlemarch: Where the "middle" is short for "middle of nowhere"

So here I am in Middlemarch.  Never heard of it?  Not surprising.  Few have.

It’s in the Otago region on New Zealand’s South Island, which means this summer it’s one of the few dry places in the country.  As the rest of New Zealand is mucking about in incredibly wet conditions, Otago is living through a drought. 

The village is pretty remote – it’s a 45-minute drive to the nearest “real” grocery store and gas station in Mosgiel (itself a small town), and an hour to the city of Dunedin.



Mainstreet of bustling downtown Middlemarch facing north...




...and facing south.



It’s a place where people wander around town on horseback and pigs occasionally roam the streets.  Where rubber boots are “de rigueur,” and mullets are unironic.

It’s somewhere famers remove their mud- (and other matter-) encrusted boots at the door of shops and wander in their stocking feet (this act of decorum is greatly appreciated by those of us who clean the floors). Where the library is open an hour a week and to use the pool, you rent a key at the pub and let yourself in as you wish.

Middlemarch has a shabby, run-down feel to it, like a dust storm rolled through a few decades ago and nobody has quite managed, or bothered, to shake off all the residue.  Some of the locals even have a visible layer of dust on their person at the end of the day that gives them a sort of washed out, blurry look.

Most buildings could use a good paint job; quite a few of them obviously once housed businesses that are no more.  Many a yard is riddled with disused farming equipment and the only landscaping some lawns see is at the hands (or more precisely, mouths) of the sheep, cows or horses that live there. 

The aforementionned disused farming equipment and the poor horse who lives among it.  I give him carrots sometimes.

And, yes, there are a good many animals about. I have to watch my step while walking through town lest I trod on the sheep pellets, horse dung piles or dog poo that pepper the sidewalk in places.  It’s at once disgusting and charming.

As in small towns the world over, there is an incestuous air about the place. Not the literal “I’m my own grandpa” kind of incest, you understand (though you can never count it out) but more the “everyone’s linked to everyone else” kind.

It’s a little claustrophobic.

Since I’m here without a car, and bus service out of Middlemarch is both inconvenient and expensive, I’ve been feeling a little “landlocked,” if you will.  For a few glorious days I did have access to a “company car” but unfortunately, a coworker took it out on her first week and crashed it (this was especially gutting as the car itself was in the company’s possession for all of two weeks).

The town owes its existence mainly to the gold rush of the late 19^th century when a railway line was built to connect the gold fields to Dunedin.  As the rush slowed to a crawl a few decades later, trains became more and more disused. In the 1980s the line the Otago Central Branch Railway went the way of so many other lines around the world, and 150km of it was ripped up and converted into a cycling and walking track.

Near the end of the line.

The end of the line: Middlemarch station.

Nowadays, it is this track and the remaining bit of the railway line to Dunedin which is the bread and butter of Middlemarch. Every year thousands of tourists travel the Taieri Gorge railway between Dunedin and Middlemarch and cycle the Otago Central Rail Trail.

At the end of these unused tracks is the start (or end, if you do it from the other direction) of the Otago Central Rail Trail.  Pretty funky arch sculptures, eh?  And how about that cloud?  There are often cool cloud formations -- I think it has something to do with the Rock and Pillar range of mountains to the west.

I’m working for a combo café/info centre/bike rental business.  Basically, I’m a short-order cook and barista. It’s hardly mentally stimulating, to say the least.  To be honest, I have been questioning my decision to stay – why am I working for little more than minimum wage doing a menial job in a small town hundreds and thousands of km away from anyone I really care about?

My situation does have its strong points though. The cost of living is decidedly low.  I’m paying $100  of rent a week (for some inconvenient reason, rent is paid weekly, not monthly, in New Zealand), for a which includes all bills. 

My home in Middlemarch.  I'm sharing it for the moment with my coworker Adam, which is pretty cool.  He's a 25-year-old American dude who wishes he were Canadian (I told him he could be a South Canadian like my Californian friend Ben).  We also worked together at Treble Cone over the winter, and I hooked him up with this job.  It was nice having a friendly and familiar face when I first arrived. 

I often get food from the café – savoury pies, sandwiches and the like that are past their prime – and even when I get the urge to spend money, there’s really nowhere to do so;  Other than “my” shop, the only places of business are the post office/farm shop and a dairy down the road. Not much in the way of tempting shopping, in other words.

For another thing, it’s really pretty (it’s in New Zealand, of course it’s freaking pretty). The landscape is riddled with really arresting rock formations that jut out of the earth.  The (simplistic) explanation I've been given for their existence is that the whole area used to be kilometres below the ocean, and the softer rock was eroded away.  What remains is the the denser rock on which grass and other plants can't grow.  There's also a cool inland salt lake (more of a pond,really) nearby, which obviously is a bit of the ocean that never disappeared.  Pretty cool.

One of the thousands of rocky bits that define the Middlemarch landscape.

The Sutton Salt Lake.  Evidently, it's got nothing on Lake Huron. On the day I went to the lake it was teaming with millions of small flies.  Luckily they were happy siphoning salt off the lake and surrounding eart and left me and my sweaty skin alone. Each step would send a swarm of them airborn and they'd quickly jostle for space on the already crowded ground.  It was kinda gross, but also kinda satisfying.





Me in some of said rocks near the lake.

Also, I’ve been interacting with animals more than I ever have before.  The paddock (what I would call a “field” back home) next to my place is home to two real horses and a sheep called Rammy who believes he’s a horse.  I regularly go feed them bits of carrot and handfuls of grass from the other side of the fence (it’s always greener, you see). I’ve also been privy to the delightful scene of be-mulleted men and women chasing a pig down main street, and used to be greeted daily by lambs on my way to work (until they disappeared two weeks ago, presumably they were someone’s Christmas dinner…sad).

I'm sorry you were eaten cute little lambs.  You'll live on in my blog though.

So, yeah.  Here I am in Middlemarch, and I’m meant to be here until early May. Afterwards, who knows…again.

Cool bridge.

Possibly the saddest park in the world.  It's literally a patch of grass, a few trees and two concrete pipe things that I presume kids are supposed to crawl through.  Don't worry, there's a better park by the rugby field and at the school.

An artsy shot of my neighbour's windvane (windvane? weathervane? whatevervane) at sunset.  That's the Rock and Pillar ranges in the distance, and it was about 10:00 at night.  The sun sets late in these parts this time of year.

Me at the old sheep yards.

The week the Hobbits came to town

My love for all things Lord of the Rings (well...the movies, anyway) is what first brought me to NZ way back in 2004, so it's fair to say that those movies changed my life. 

So you can imagine how chuffed I was to find myself, by pure cooincidence, staying in the same village where filming for The Hobbit was going on.

For the past five days I've been a giddy little girl, unashamedly asking people to take my photo with them and chatting up whomever I can, so long as they're somehow linked to the movie.

At first, I only encoutered crew members (drivers, caterers, etc.), all of whom received these hoodies a few days prior:

That dude in the background owns this hoodie.  He goodnaturedly offered to let me wear it for a photo. 

I'm such a geek.

 A few days later, I came across some of the lesser-known actors such as Richard Armitage, Graham McTavish, and Stephen Hunter.

But, finally, on Monday this happened:



Martin Freeman! He plays Bilbo.  You might also know him from The Office, Hitchhiker`s Guide to the Galaxy and Love Actually.
(Stupid blogging site!  Why have you made vertical pictures unusable?)



And the main event:



Yup.  That's me with Sir Ian Freaking McKellan!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gandalf/Magneto himself.
He was lovely.  Friendly, funny, gracious and all round awesome.  Defnitely not the diva he has every right to be.

How amazing is that????? I was shaking when I first talked to him, but he was obviously used to it and took it all in stride.  I'm sure I came off as a ditzy chick. Oh well. 

Sadly, they've wrapped up their filming here, and they've left me bereft. 

Published in NZ!

As you may know, I have a degree in journalism and spent quite a few years working as a writer/communicator.  The last year and half, however, basically the only writing I've done has been for this blog. 

I've been wanting to get back into writing, so a few weeks ago I wrote an article for the local newspaper, The Wanaka Sun.

I had met Ellen Delis by chance back in August while I was hitchhiking up to Treble Cone (tons of people do it here).  She kindly offered me a ride and during the half-hour trip up to the mountain, she told me about the trip she and her husband Andy are going to take this coming May. I thought it was really interesting, and decided to contact the Sun about it.

The results are below:

Kiwis may not fly, but a Wanaka couple is proving that they sure can ride.

This coming May, Andi and Ellen Delis will pack a few belongings, strap on helmets and embark on the journey of a lifetime. 

Over the course of 18 months, the pair will ride motorcycles from Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska to Ushuaia in Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego region. The journey will bring them through more than 25,000 km, three continents, some 15 countries, and countless adventures. 

“There will be some character-building moments,” says Ellen.  “Definitely.”

A long-haul trip has long been an ambition of motorcycle enthusiast Andi’s – he’s the president of the Wanaka Motorcycle Club – but as Ellen was a reluctant rider, it seemed unlikely he’d get to live his dream.

That all changed a few months ago when, to Andi’s great surprise, Ellen decided to get her full motorcycle licence.  Her test is scheduled for November 1^st.

“What was my dream has now become our dream,” says Andi.

To help offset costs, they’ll camp most of the way, and Beijing-born Ellen has been in contact with Chinese-language magazines about writing of their adventures.

They’ve also secured sponsorship from companies including Sargent Seats and Icebreaker, and hope to attract more leading up to their trip.

Their exploits and preparation are being documented on their blog at www.twomotokiwis.com, and they will continue to update it during their travels.

“We’ve never had a blog before.  We started and it’s really quite fun,” says Ellen. “We’re meeting new people. It’s opening a whole new world for us.  It’s already fantastic, and we haven’t even started [travelling] yet.”

As with any travels, there are some concerns, but not the ones you’d expect.

“To be honest, I’m afraid I won’t want to come home,” says Andi, with a laugh.

http://www.issuu.com/thewanakasun/docs/wanaka_sun_527 (go to page 5)

Follow Ellen and And's adventures at http://www.twomotokiwis.com/

What to bring on a two-week trip to New Zealand in the spring (mom and Chris, this is for you!)

So you're coming to New Zealand in October!  Great choice of destination.  It's fantastic here this time of year (well, any time of year, really).  But what to pack? 
Well, it's going to be pretty warm, but likely rainy, so that's something to take into consideration.  I guess it also depends on how you're getting around.  For the sake of argument (and the fact that this is mainly directed at mom and uncle Chris) let's say you'll be travelling by car, so weight of your bag is not an issue.
Beyond the obvious (undies, socks, shirts, tooth brush) which I assume you can figure out for yourselves, here are some of my recommendations of items to bring.

• Rain is always a possibility in New Zealand, especially on the West Coast.  Bring a rain jacket.  I wouldn't bother with an embrella -- they're heavy and the wind that often accompanies said rain just destroys them (I speak from experience)
• It'll be fairly warm during the day (mid- to high-teens), so you'll likely want some summery clothes: capris, shorts, skirts, that kind of thing. 
• At night it tends to cool down, even in summer (much of the heat here is due to direct sunlight -- when the sun goes, so does the heat). So be sure to also pack long pants, at least one sweater and/or a light jacket.
• About that sun -- it's no triffling thing here.  The hole in the ozone layer is pretty much directly overhead and it's extremely easy to burn here.  You'll want sunscreen and a hat with a brim (and I'd bring the sunscreen rather than buying it here -- it costs an arm and a leg compared to in Canada).
• With all the stunning scenery you'll be enjoying,  a camera is definitely a must.
• For you bird watchers, binoculars might be appreaciated.
• Comfortable shoes are always a good idea no matter where you are, especially somewhere with such amazing walking tracks.
• If you're bringing electronics, obviously you'll want to have a converter for the plugs.  The outlets here look like this:

Yet another attempt at sliding down a hill

I have completed the alpine trifecta today by trying telemark skiing for the first time. 

Don't know what telemark is?  I'm not surprised.  It's hardly mainstream. 

If you're old enough to remember the Lillehammer Olympics back in 1994, you would have seen skiers telemark down a hill as part of the opening ceremonies. That's when I first saw it.

Basically, telemark skis look like a hybrid of downhill and cross country skis -- The base is the same, but the bindings don't attach in the back, so your heel lifts up as on a cross country ski.  To turn, you bend the knee of the leg in the direction you wish to go and do a bit of a lunge.

Here's a video!

I actually went to dinner last night and the Biff guy from this video was there.  Too funny

Working on the ski hill I've seen a few telemarkers in person, but had never planned on trying it. 

Anyway, Dave has a bunch of extra telemark skis and boots for some strange reason, and with not much to do today, he basically forced me to try.  It was fun, but I wasn't really doing it properly.  Oh well. At least I tried.

Farewell to an awesome dog

Anyone who’s ever owned a pet knows the pure happiness and simple joy an animal who to call your own brings. 

Despite the smelliness of their fur and their breath and their digestive system, despite the pain-in-the-ass walks in the rain and poop-and-scooping, despite the cost and the hassle of having them around, you love them.

Unfortunately, almost everyone who’s owned a pet also knows the pain and heartache of losing them.

Let me tell you about an awesome dog named Chevy that left us far too early.

Chevy was a big, friendly husky with those big, expressive husky-blue eyes, the gentlest of personalities, and a dopey look about him thanks to some floppy ears that aren’t typical of his breed (an ear infection somehow damaged them when he was young).

Droopy ears on an awesome dog.

Chevy’s exact origins are somewhat unclear to me.  All I know is that he came into my life a few years ago courtesy of my stepfather, Roger who acquired him when he bought a house (when he wasn’t yet my stepfather, but already an unofficial member of the Robitaille clan) off a couple moving overseas. 

I understand that poor Chevy was tied up much of the time in his early years, pre-us, which is devastating for a dog, especially a husky who’s wired to run, run, run! For the love of all things good and holy RUN!

Even sadder is that one day while he was tied up, another dog came and attacked him, and he was unable to run away.  That encounter left him with some big scars – some visible, some not.  He was often nervous around other dogs.

When Roger moved into a pet-unfriendly condo a few years later, my brother Paul was quick to offer to take Chevy in as a boarder at my mom’s place (she, not much of an animal person, eventually agreed).

How could she turn this face away?

We’re so glad he did. 

Chevy quickly became an integral part of the family, and it’s safe to say he loved being at our place as much as we loved having him there.  He was happiest when he was around people (especially people with treats) and there were often a lot of people at our house to be around.  We rarely had to tie him up – he wasn’t one to run away.  He just loved hanging around our place. 

See? That's one happy puppy.

In the summer all that husky fur made for an uncomfortable and slow-moving dog.  His usual hot, summer day would consist of sleeping in the driveway in one spot for an hour or so at a time, getting up, moving about three metres, then flopping back down again for another hour’s snooze. My brother Johnny once joked that we should set up a bingo-style grid and place bets on where he’d flop next. 

Last summer when Johnny and I were staying at my mom’s, we woke up one morning to find a few porcupine quills stuck in Chevy’s nose.  I’m convinced that he didn’t try to attack the other animal, he just saw a prickly shape moving around and thought “yay! Someone to play with!  Hello friend! What do you smell like?” 

Ouch.  A costly (but worthwhile) trip to the vet later, we had a de-quilled and be-drugged Chevy on our hands.  It was so cute and sad to see him looking so dopey and bewildered and oh-so-sleepy.  He fell asleep in the vet’s office with his head on my foot, his drool soaking my shoe.  Awwwww. Chevy.

Doped-up Chevy.  See hoe his upper lip is caught on his paw?  Priceless.  After a few hours in this position I had to physically roll him over by grabbing his feet.  He had bits of gravel stuck to his lip. Poor pathetic Chevy. 

While the Robitaille’s loved Chevy tons, there’s one person who I think loved him most of all: my uncle Chris.

I can’t prove it, but I’m fairly certain that Chris’ visits to mom’s house increased exponentially once Chevy was around. 



Look at the love.

For Christmas last year I bought Chris a set of those glass coasters you slide a photo into to personalize them and set a photo of Chevy in each one.  He allegedly keeps a photo of Chevy on his fridge too.

I haven’t seen Chevy since I left Canada in January, but every time I talked to anyone at home via Skype, I’d be sure to ask to see the dog.  Except last time. I was so caught up in my own stupid dramas and stresses that I forgot to say hi to him – and do I ever regret it.

A few weeks ago I got an email from my mom with the title “A very lucky dog”.  She went on to explain that Chevy had very uncharacteristically wandered onto the road in front of our house where there’s an unfortunate blind spot, and was struck by a car.  They’d taken him to the vet with a bloody nose, but there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with him, so he was sent home with a few pain killers.  We all breathed a sigh of relief.

Yesterday though, I got another email.  This one was simply titled “Chevy” and it contained much worse news.  It seems that he hadn’t been himself since the accident. “Like a zombie, a body without a spirit”, as mom put it, and eventually, he couldn’t even stand up.  They had to put him down.

It’s been devastating.  I’ve been crying buckets and I understand that most of the family has been doing the same.  I’ve lost dogs before, but I think it’s harder for me cause I’m so far away, and when I left him he was so happy and healthy and now I’ll never see him again.

Bye buddy.  I miss you so much.

I miss your big bark and your happy growls.

I miss your prancy "foods-a-comin'!" dance.

I miss your insatiable hunger for treats.

I miss your canine smile and your barky greeting.

I miss your late night howling at cows and your all-day naps.

I miss your doggy stench and your doggy breath

I miss you.

If you’ve got a dog around, give ‘em a big hug and a pat and a cuddle and treat for me.  You never know when it’ll be their last.

Treats

Chevy's other biggest fan, Johnny.

One of the last times I pet him : (

Things I'll miss about New Zealand, Volume 4

17- Walking around barefoot: especially now that the weather is warming up and people are starting to do it around town.
18- Slices: One thing kiwis don't eat much (at least not as much as we Tim Horton's-dependant Canadians) is donuts.  They prefer their baked goods sans hole and pressed into a pan in the form of slices.  Basically, these generally consist of a biscuit base with either one or two layers of sugary topping.  In North America, I guess these would be our "squares" or "bars".  It's not that they're revolutionary over here, it's just that they're ubiquitous. Enter any bakery, café, or even petrol station and you'll find a slice or five just waiting to be eaten. I've even forayed into slice-making myself, trying my hand at (and succeeding quite well, I must say) making a nice ginger slice and an even better chocolate caramel one.  My next venture is likely to be a mocha concoction.  Stay tuned.

19-The flowery trees: Again, with spring here, it's especially difficult to think of leaving.  The buds are out, the willows down at the waterfront are already "en feuille" as we say in French, and a remarkable amount of trees are in bloom.  I remember being impressed in 2009 when I arrived to see how many trees here boast flowers.  I'm still impressed today.

Here's one now!

20-The rugby: rugby is awesome.  Canada should watch and play more of it.  It's as exciting and even more physical than hockey, and the dudes are tough.  And hot.  Here, rugby is undeniably, and rightly, king.