Welcome to Fiordland

Hello children!

Something very exciting is happening right now near Milford Sound: New Zealand is getting its first proper theme park – Fiordland!

Very soon the boring old tramping tracks and huts will be replaced with fabulous gondolas, ecologically sensitive monorails (a bit like a rollercoaster but slower and painted green) and spooky bus tunnels.

The Department of Conservation has already given its okay to the first of the theme park rides; the spooky tunnel (officially known as the Milford-Dart Tunnel Project) pending a public review. So as long as the grumpy locals and dirty hippies don’t spoil the fun it should be opening up soon.

This ten-kilometre-long, five-metre-diameter tunnel is going to be an engineering marvel and although it’ll be a little spooky it’ll be completely safe, just like the Pike River Mine was and totally earthquake proof, just like Christchurch was.

So don’t worry kiddies there’s absolutely no chance it’ll ever make international headlines for all the wrong reasons like the Mont Blanc tunnel did back in 1999 when a margarine truck caught fire in it sending 39 people off to heaven.

The next couple of rides: an all-terrain-vehicle and monorail ride between Lake Wakatipu and Lake Te Anau and a Gondola through the Caples Valley; might take a bit longer because the Department of Conservation isn’t playing nicely with the businessmen, but don’t worry they’ll be here just as soon as DOC rubber stamps the proposals and goes back to bothering the possums.

This isn’t just great news for children around the world – it’s great for the economy (yes, eco-no-my is a bit of a big word kiddies, it means is it’ll make the rich people happy).

You see, letting the big businesses build the rides means they get to decide who goes on them and how much they’ll have to pay – and that will make them lots of pocket money.

Of course they won’t keep it all to themselves – that’d just be mean – they’ll share it with their friends the lawyers and the property developers… and they might even give a bit with the politicians while no one’s looking. They’re not supposed to – but we won’t tell anyone will we. 

Every theme park needs a theme and although the ideas for the rides have come from different companies they’ve landed on exactly the same theme – convenience. They’ll all shorten the ten-hour trip to Milford Sound to as little as four hours.

What a clever idea! After all who wants a place like Milford Sound to be remembered as wild, rugged, and untamed? No, we’d much rather have our theme park remembered as cheap, convenient, and looking exactly like it did in the brochures.

Around the world convenience theme park projects like this have been a wonderful success. In Tibet and Nepal, once upon a time you had to endure weeks of heathen culture and prehistoric infrastructure to see the big mountains, now you can just take a train or a bus most of the way – it’s very convenient.

Some people say that the road has spoilt an ancient way of life for the families who’ve made a living looking after travellers for centuries and that the railway to Tibet is just a way to encourage Han migration to Tibet to legitimize China’s territorial claim. But those people just need to lighten up and realise that change can be fun.

Likewise, in Italy, the big businesses have done such a good job bringing visitors to Venice on big convenient cruise ships to see the city’s culture that the little Venetian locals can’t afford to live there any more – and so have had to take their culture elsewhere.

That’s okay though, because the tourists’ Venice is much more fun than the real Venice ever was so no one really minds.

In fact, we know for sure that no one really minds because in 2010 some cranky Venetians staged a protest at the loss of their culture, dressing in costumes and handing out admission tickets to “Veniceland”.

But the protestors didn’t realize that American tourists don’t understand sarcasm and so they thought they’d seriously opened a theme park. Silly protestors!

Once Fiordland opens there’ll be no telling what fun attractions might come next. Perhaps a tunnel under McKinnon Pass, so people can do the Milford Track on Segway scooters. Or maybe a giant ferris wheel at Sandfly Point – just like Melbourne’s Southern Sky. With an open mind and a pro-business government in the Beehive, the possibilities really are endless.

All this is coming soon children but it’s not here quite yet. So you must be on your best behaviour. That means no sending angry emails to the Minister for Tourism, no writing letters to the newspapers, no lodging submissions to DOC – and absolutely no sending silly satirical columns to Wilderness Magazine!

If you misbehave then Fiordland might just stay a boring old national park.

[As published in Wilderness Magazine April 2012]

Glenorchy cowpoolers anonymous

Better living through bovine crime.

With tough economic times starting to bite, families everywhere are looking at ways to save a dollar or two from their grocery bill – everything from buying the cheap cereal to using tea bags twice and of course cowpooling.

What’s cowpooling? Well, it’s a little dollar saving trick where you get a few families together to buy an entire cow carcass direct from the farmer and then take it to your local butcher to get it chopped up. It’s a great way to have barbeques all summer long for a whole lot less than what you’d pay at the supermarket.

Now this is a new concept in some parts of the world, but it’s been happening for quite a while in Glenorchy. And as with many things, in GY they have a slightly different approach. Here’s a guide to Glenorchy cowpooling from one of the locals… who’ll remain nameless for obvious reasons.

Wait until there’s an All Blacks game on, preferably in Dunedin, so you can be fairly sure the farm hands on the property next door will be either out of town, or at least occupied for a few hours. Gather up a few mates, a four-wheel-drive, a jerry can of diesel, a chainsaw, a .22 rifle and a box of matches.

Drive into the forest immediately adjacent to the farmer’s property, and then jump the fence with the rifle. Select and shoot an appropriately tasty looking cow uphill from the four-wheel-drive then roll it down to the fence. Carve the carcass into quarters with the chainsaw then load the pieces into the four-wheel-drive ready to be chopped up into barbeque-sized portions later at home.

Lastly, pile the head, skin and entrails up somewhere in the forest and douse liberally with diesel, toss in a match and watch the evidence go up in smoke.

With the bounty safely in the deep freeze, invite your friends over for a big barbeque the following weekend, making sure to include the farmer next door... it’d be just plain un-neighbourly not to.