The Far Corner

It’s quite odd the things that are hard to find in New Zealand. Take clotted cream for example. You would have thought that a dairy based product wouldn’t be hard to come by in a country that boasts milk powder as one of its key exports. But no, it’s almost impossible to get. In over five years, I’ve only seen it once and that was in a supermarket in Picton. I should have bought some there and then, but decided against it as we were about to embark on a three day hike. Three days of sun and lack of refrigeration for a precious dairy product didn’t seem like a good idea.

As well as hard-to-come-by dairy items, we pay a premium price for a whole heap of other consumables; furniture is pricy, electrical goods just plain expensive and clothes? Well it’s cheaper to buy them from Marks and Spencer’s and have them delivered 12,000 miles to your doorstep.

But that’s the price we pay for being a long way from everywhere. The air miles on produce and products adds up and we pay a premium price for goods we import. But there is a solution. A work-around if you like. So you don’t  want to pay $5 for an avocado? Well don’t buy it out of season. Hold off your craving until February and get 3 for a dollar. Then, they’ll be practically giving them away as the avo trees in New Zealand hang heavy with the trendy green-fleshed fruit. 

It’s the same for limes. Buy them when the New Zealand trees are plentiful and you can get a bag full for next to nothing. Want them in the winter? Well don’t be surprised to pay $20 a kilo. Just find something else to put in your gin and tonic or do without.

New Zealand isn’t on the way to anywhere, unless you’re holidaying in the Antarctic, and you have to be pretty determined to get here - especially if you’re under the impression that we’re just next door to Australia. It’s nearly a four hour flight from Sydney to Auckland so hardly somewhere you can just pop to for the day. And add that to a twenty hour flight from the UK and you’ve got to be pretty fond of airline food and dodgy movies to want to make the trip. It honestly is worth it when you get here, but the journey is something else.

But sometimes, being in the bottom corner of the globe has its advantages. And before some smart aleck says anything, I’m fully aware that globes don’t have corners. I’m just saying that if they did, New Zealand would be in it. And that’s assuming that the map makers have remembered to put us on in the first place. There has been a few occasions in recent years where we just got missed off. Australia was there but no Aotearoa.

Being the last stop, and a distant one at that, does mean that trouble seems just that little bit further away. The reason that tyrants and megalomaniacs have boltholes here, isn’t because of their fondness for Pineapple Lumps, but because they know that this will be one of the last places that will be habitable when they’ve destroyed the rest through greed and their unquenchable thirst for power. New Zealand is viewed as a safe haven, a port in an increasingly stormy planet. Providing you ignore the fact that it’s built on a volcano field and is prone to the odd earthquake or two. 

There’s certainly nothing quite like a global pandemic to help remind us that remoteness does have its advantages. At the time I write this, an increasing number of the world’s countries are asking their citizens to self-isolate - to remove themselves from general circulation and keep their distance. It could be argued that New Zealand, through no other means than its location, has been doing that all along. Self-isolation as a nation. We currently have six reported cases of Covid-19 and all of those were brought in from elsewhere. There’s no doubt that this number will rise, but for the moment it seems to be under control. 

But complacency is just as dangerous as the virus so that’s why yesterday the Government implemented a plan to limit the spread of the disease. From today, anyone arriving into the country has to self-isolate for 14 days and in a stroke the Government effectively stopped people entering New Zealand. Unless spending two weeks inside a hotel room was someone’s idea of a great holiday. And, who is going to want to travel to Australia for a long weekend if it requires two weeks in isolation on the return.

Despite the few cases, people here are still taking it seriously but without the hysteria and panic that appears to be going on elsewhere. Maybe it’s the She’ll be right attitude that’s ingrained in the Kiwi psyche? Or maybe it still seems someway off. Whatever the reason, we still have toilet rolls in the supermarket, hand sanitiser is freely available for free on counter tops in shops and pubs, and yes there’s a plentiful supply of pasta. Providing, of course, that you don’t mind paying the price for it to be brought here!