Hari Hari, Wildside Backpackers

After staying with the Hargreaves in Ross I continued hitching down the West Coast and landed 2km before Hari Hari to wwoof at the Wildside Backpackers. And like most West Coasters the whole family talked with a backwoods drawl (usually incoherently) ate meat and potatoes at every meal and wouldn’t be caught travelling to the U.S. – too many conspiracy theories about 9/11 – or even outside of the coast if they could help it.

In addition to a slightly rough, although incredibly kind and generous, demeanour, the mullet is the official haircut of the West Coast, a rugged and often isolated section of New Zealand where coal mining, lumber milling and hunting are primary past times, and Dan, Kath and their two kids didn’t disappoint

“There the men are real men and the women are men too,” warned Joe Rianey, the father of my adoptive New Zealand family in Nelson with whom Katie and I have stayed repeatedly and eventually spent the Christmas holiday, before I initially left Nelson to head to the West Coast for my solo travelling.

Dan was a work hard and play often sort. The first day I arrived at the Wildside he weed wacked for 6 hours straight, and then he enjoyed the company of friends for the next two days. Kath was preoccupied with their 3 month old baby and 3-year-old daughter. She always looked dazed and disoriented from either lack of sleep or maybe in was long-term cabin fever – less than 20,000 people live along the entire stretch of the West Coast where towns of less than 50 occupants are common and neighbours aren’t.

Although it was challenging to understand Dan and Kath at times, they were very hospitable, appreciative and entertaining during the two days I resided in their backpackers’ cabin. When I wasn’t looking, Dan had managed to built an extensive garden, to run beehives, to monitor wine making facilities, to hunt enough meat to feed the coast, and to guide Japanese tourists who were shooting a film on a nearby mountain. Amid his ramblings I gleaned knowledge about brewing, bee-keeping and hot springs.

A short distance by car and foot from the Wildside are natural hot springs. Both nights, Dan, a fellow wwoofer (Kevin from Canada the first night and Josh from New Jersey the second) and I, hiked 15 minutes through the dark and across fields to reach the river where pockets of hot water, warmed from the earth’s core, seeped into the cold rush. With three shovels we would dig out a sitting whole in the sand and create our own, natural, hot tubs. Above us the stars shone brightly and around us, attached to the mountain sides were glow-worms.

I left after two days, so I could continue on the road and see all I’d hoped to see before returning north for Christmas, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time on the Wildside.