When Bri and I were in Australia, I realised that if I was going to make it back to the sheep farm, it would have to be that weekend. Wal, one of the guys who owns the vineyard where we worked over the original farm weekend, lives in CHCH and had offered me a ride back down to Oamaru anytime. Bri and I got back to CHCH on Wednesday night and I called Wal on Thursday. He said the earliest he would pick us up was 9 am Friday morning, so I had to finish my 1,500-word Russian history essay by then. Of course I spent Thursday doing laundry, cleaning my room, etc. All the stuff we do when we’re trying to procrastinate. I didn’t sit down to seriously start my essay till 9 that night, and I finished to the sound of birds chirping in the fresh sunlight at 6 am. The reforms of Alexander II (or was it III?) are actually pretty interesting, so at least I wasn’t bored. And Rachel was a complete lifesaver—she wrote on the same topic and let me use her library books, and then she printed out and turned in our essays the next morning, and she also biked to the grocery store around 7 am to get provisions for the weekend, because she is awesome. I got to sleep for a whole hour!
By 9 am we were headed to the UCSA building, where Wal was supposed to pick us up. We got coffee and breakfast inside, then ended up waiting four hours for Wal. We had a really long talk, which was great, and then we fell asleep on some couches. Rachel and I were both a little nervous about making conversation for four hours with this guy we barely knew, but he is very friendly and easy to talk to. He told us about the time he’d been in Charlotte, NC and completely blown away by the Southern accents. We could imagine. I tried to stay awake, but it was impossible, so Rachel put me in the backseat with Wal’s dog Dolly so I could nap. Wal took us the scenic way; he drove us down so we could see the Waitaki River and then through the little town of Kurow. He bought us ice cream too.
Two of Wal’s co-investors, Arthur and Jocelyn, are in the process of moving from CHCH to Oamaru, so we helped them move stuff in to their new house for a bit. Those two are a trip. Arthur shoots his mouth off all the time and refers to Jocelyn as “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed.” She is pretty quiet in contrast, but one time he was giving her a lot of sass and she flipped him the bird. Wal’s response was, “Aren’t they just a great advertisement for love and marriage?”
Unfortunately Keith and Kaye, the owners of Glenmac, were out of town for the weekend, but they still graciously allowed us to stay at their house. Rachel and I took the room Alex and Dale had stayed in last time. We spent Saturday tearing apart the plastic guards that go around vines and stacking them together, an activity that we’d dubbed New Zealand Wine Vine Sheath Consolidation back in September. I also helped Jocelyn and Arthur spray the vines with sulphur to prevent mildew.
When we got back to Glenmac, Wal took us into the sheep-shearing sheds to see heaps of discarded wool, the table they spread the wool on to evaluate its quality, the old shearers and the new ones. It was very educational. Then that night, Jocelyn made roast for dinner while Arthur told her what she was doing wrong. Typical. Then we did Tim Tam slams. If I haven’t explained that yet, there’s a type of chocolate Australian cookie called a Tim Tam that you bite both ends off and then suck coffee or hot chocolate through like a straw, and then when the cookie is saturated and melting, you eat it and it is amazing. Afterwards, Rachel and I ended up having a long talk with Wal about just about everything—relationships, religion, drinking, you name it. We crashed by eleven.
On our way back to the vineyard Sunday morning, Arthur showed us his neighbours’ vines and the drastic consequences that tiny differences in altitude, wind power and sunshine can have on the crop. Vine growers are supposed to grow grapes in very poor soil, because in such conditions the vines will focus on producing a few quality grapes rather than a lot of mediocre ones. When we made it up to our vineyard, we helped weed the vines and timed Arthur on the tractor. We only stayed for an hour or so, and then back at Glenmac, Arthur and Jocelyn gave us a bag of lamb chops from their own sheep and a bottle of Riesling (my favourite) to thank us for helping them. Arthur is undergoing chemo right now and unable to do a lot of the work on the vineyard, so I think Rachel and I were more help to them than we realised.
We exchanged email addresses and that sort of thing, and then we headed back to CHCH with Wal. He took us by the Waitaki Power Station on the way home. I spent the whole trip just gazing out the window at the green hills and the sheep. New Zealand just doesn’t look real; it seems idealised, like Arcadia. No photograph can do it justice, although Rachel’s come pretty close.
The past week went by in a blur. Rachel and I cooked our lamb chops for everyone returning from their tramp at Abel Tasman on Monday night. Tuesday I absolutely nailed my ancient epics final. On Friday night Emily and Rob flew in from Sydney and spent two nights here. They’ll be back on Wednesday and then again on Friday and Saturday. Kiwis don’t celebrate Halloween, but we did the other night, which was a lot of fun. Last night Nora and I went to church at the Cathedral downtown, which was super cool because four priests got ordained. There were sparkly mitres everywhere. Then I came home and watched The Emperor’s New Groove with Sina, who’s moving out today. Moey is leaving on Friday, so my last week here will be pretty quiet, which is sad. However, in addition to Emily and Rob, Ellen from farm weekend is coming to visit! I’m meeting her in the city in a few hours. Somehow I need to make time to study for my Nazi history and Roman myth exams, which are on Saturday and Monday.
Sorry about the super-long posts. Consider reading them practice for when I’m a writer someday.
much love-
Carie Mac
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