Introduction

 

Let me be honest with you, I do not know who wrote this book. A few weeks ago, a package arrived at my home. A brown jiffy bag. There was no return address. No explanation as to who, or what, had sent this to me. Inside, was a thick wad of loosely typed papers. The pages were a little worse for wear, and worn around the edges with a faint whiff of the country. As I sat down to read, I was even more shocked by the words that jumped out of the wrangled pages.

More than a decade ago, I had lived in a caravan in New Zealand. It was what the locals referred to as a lone caravan, a ramshackle place in the middle of nowhere, so far removed from suburban life that it had no address. This was the wop-wops, only to be found by traversing a long and winding dirt track, rutted with hazards and holes. For several months, I had made this strange place my home. I grew to both love and, at times, hate this place. But I cannot deny the extraordinary effect it had upon me, and upon the contents of this mysterious book.

The package reveals an account of my life in this place. From the moment I reversed off the edge of a cliff and almost tumbled into the oblivion, to my close encounter with a possum, it’s all there. The long nights enveloped in darkness, with nothing but the stars for company and how, for a moment, the experience turned my head inside out.

On the subject of mind altering experiences, not only has someone else written my story, but they’ve also used extracts from my diary. How the author came by it, I cannot say, but another narrator is involved and this voice is definitely not mine. And who is it that shares their account of such a strange tale? None other than the caravan itself.

God damn! What madness is this, you ask. Yes, you heard me right. The narrator of this book is none other than the caravan. Or so it appears. I cannot comment on the provenance of the author. After all, I received this book anonymously. But before you get wrapped up in wondering how a vehicle could perform such a feat, let me tell you that this is a vehicle with a story to tell.

This lone caravan it is one of the last of its kind. It is iconic in its own quiet, unassuming way. There are books and photographic galleries dedicated to it. To the casual observer, it is an eyesore, a large heap of junk waiting to be swept away and replaced by something cleaner and more comfortable. Yet this place is a prominent pointer to the country’s past, a time when pioneers lived on the fringe of civilisation and endured the elements without any modern conveniences. Brave and resourceful souls found ingenious ways to construct what they needed from scraps of wire and metal, lessons that have been learnt and passed on to this very day.

This is the story of one such solitary caravan; a tale about life in a wild, untamed place in contrast to the rest of the modern world. New Zealand has always been a remote place, with strange and unique wildlife that has evolved through the protection of thousands of miles of sea from the nearest predator. New Zealand was the last significant land in the world to be colonised by people. Polynesian explorers arrived some eight hundred years ago and many centuries later, the Europeans made their discovery. The collision of these two peoples continues to reverberate to this day, as the country deftly balances accusations and reconciliation thanks to the Treaty of Waitangi.

More than a century and a half after the Treaty, New Zealand has grown to a modest population of 4 million. You don’t have to travel far to lose yourself in an isolated place. The country’s cities and towns are dwarfed by the vast swathes of forest and wilderness. So, perhaps this book is not so strange after all; for who better to tell the tale of remote New Zealand than the lone caravan itself.