Day 20.It's a stormy night and rain is lashing Auckland. It was so lucky that we had two perfect balmy nights for the quarter finals. I am snug in my campervan-listening to BBC world service and enjoying a brilliant minestrone soup. The campsite is very quiet-all the English have gone-probably heading home and the French are no doubt out there applying theirl palets to the products of local vineyards("Sacre Bleu! C'est impossible! Vin de Nieu Zealand??? Mais c'est bon!")and fortifying themselves against what their mercurial team might have in store for them on Saturday night..
An easy relaxing day-after a prolonged breakfast-doing my best to pretend the slight Auckland Herald (with a rugby rather than sport section) is really the Australian, I drove to the museum and walked through the bijou and very heavily "pacified" world war sections. Some interesting new insights.
Like Australia, Kiwis volunteered for the Boer war in South Africa as mounted Infantry which provided a more flexible response to hard riding and shooting Boer Farmers than the British cavalry could achieve. In the Great war, they served in parallel with Australia's light Horse at Gallipoli, in Mesopotamia and on the Western front. To my surprise, the Kiwis claim that their soldiers were first to be known as "diggers". Also, immediately after the war some NZ horsemen carried out a retaliatory raid against a Bedouin village where a thief who had shot a Kiwi soldier was believed to have come from. The result was a massacre of 20-30 Bedoin men and the unit lost all privileges and commendations they had won in the war plus a dressing down by General Allenby who called them murderers.(not the sort of the thing the 'saintly' Light horse are ever admitted to having done, in Canberra's displays. In today's paper, an Australian historian claims to have discovered a tape recording of one of these soldiersasserting that some Australians and Scots were involved. No such Anzac solidarity when it came to museum entry fee-Aucklanders free-Aussies are pressured to give a $10 donation-there you are Wayne an idea for your post Tax summit committee.(especially if the all Blacks beat us)
THOSE WHO IGNORE HISTORY MAY BE DESTINED TO REPEAT IT
In search of photographs for the cover of my novel, I was pointed to some very interesting photo albums of handsome, physically striking NZ soldiers-the snaps were so frailly mounted, I had to wear white gloves-like historians I have seen in the Cambridge University library handling original extracts from Chaucer's work. Some of the pictures fully met my requirements and were much cheaper than our War Museum charges but alas, all wore too obvious New Zealand uniforms and insignia to be used to depict the Manchester Regiment Sapper-Dan-and the Light Horse officer-Charlie.
Then to restock supplies at the supermarket, which was a fortunate decision, because the storm began to blow up and when I got back through the rush hour traffic to Remuera it had set in for the night and I was sufficiently"Re- victualled" not to need to slog up to the main road restaurants for my dinner.
The All Blacks have lost the replacement for Dan Carter with a similar groin strain and their full back is out for the finals.( gee the NZ Hernia butchers will be having a field day-could the condition replace tats as an All Black mark of honour) So, despite their commentators making light of the Wallabies win against the hardest quarter final opposition one can detect the smallest seeds of unspoken doubt in their prattling about what might happen next weekend. Seriously, it is not allowed to consider that Australia could win?? Despite the All Blacks having lost the tri-Nations final match against the Wallabies in Brisbane a few weeks ago.
Whilst I look forward to the France v Wales match on Saturday-I will be glad to head home the next morning as I am starting to find the ubiquitous appearance of All Black references(even in the museum programs and wartime exhibits) and black shirts and car flags with the silver fern, no longer fun but a bit oppressive, almost such that I can appreciate what it must have been like to see the red flag everywhere in the otherwise drab world of Mao's china. God knows what will happen to their dollar and GDP if they lose the final and psychologists will have to be flown in from Aus and the US to help them cope with a national post-traumatic stress outbreak. A bit of more of Melbourne's mellowing, mediterranean sunshine and warmth will not go amiss for me and maybe the All Blacks too.
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