Land Escaping IV

 David had moved into a modernly comfortable suburban house with a terminal bachelor and two Samoyeds (dogs, not Russian natives), so I stayed there while I searched for a flat of my own.

          Flatting seems to be like driving - the longer you delay, the more difficult it becomes. And, as with driving, I think I missed my best opportunity to become a confident, or comfortable, flatter. My student years were entirely flat-free, due as much to laziness as convenience. Living at home was cheap and, apart from the occasional domestic squabble or my father’s girlfriend’s not-infrequent eruptions, trouble-free. Student life was also never appealing enough to lure me away, at first because I just wanted to get my degree as quickly as possible, and later because I just wanted to leave the country as quickly as possible.

And when, after University, I got a job as sports reporter on the Warwick Daily News, in a beef town west of Brisbane, I’d simply moved into my departing colleague’s half-house by myself. The editor had initially been reluctant to employ a ‘townie’, questioning my ability to endure the ‘quaint’ customs and ‘relaxed’ lifestyle of redneck Queensland, but I exaggerated my affections for country living and got the job.

For the next few months I cycled around my ‘beat’ looking for a ‘scoop’, but my heart was never really in it. I just couldn’t consider a distraught old man burning his sausages as news, even when it did result in a fire brigade call-out. The furore I generated by mis-reporting a minor traffic ‘incident’ - ‘accident’ is far too grandiose a word for two barely-scuffed bumpers - undermined my enthusiasm even further.

Though I gained a loyal following with my gripping and comprehensive accounts of the five-team rugby league competition, which made each match seem like a classic encounter between the world’s greatest exponents of the game instead of a confused huddle of dusty farmers, no amount of poetic license could disguise the fact each match report began to acquire a desperate sameness. This, combined with the fact it was impossible to save money on a cadet journalist’s wage, plus the offer of a well-paid job in Brisbane, resulted in my single solo-living experience being terminated.

Although the route from my father’s house to Marion’s flat to Miller’s Flat had been a circuitous one, I’d never needed to actively find somewhere to live.

Except for those few months in Brisbane after we’d fled my father’s house to escape the curious cockroaches and his girlfriend ... though not necessarily in that order. Things had begun to get tense after a few days - after I’d objected to my possessions being plundered in my absence, after my father had expressed a preference for rouladen over rissoles, after ‘her’ dog refused to leave my side - and had culminated in the great cockroach fiasco.

Cockroaches, those wide-eyed aborigines of the dark, have always been a part of the humid Brisbane nightscape, their whispering footsteps scrawling ancient secrets in the dust atop my bedroom cupboard. Most mornings would find a small clan sprawled on their backs beneath the sink like English sun-seekers on a Gold Coast beach. Occasionally, coming home late at night, the brazen light would interrupt their alien corroborees, and I would join their lino dance, my steps pursuing the scuttling Arthur Murray patterns across the kitchen floor.

Although cockroaches were an integral part of my childhood, I had no real urge to share such experiences with Marion. She’s always been squeamish about insects, and the closest she’d ever been to a cockroach was finding one obscenely exposed on her fork beneath its red cabbage camouflage ... and that was only a baby compared to the thumb-thick Banyo variety.

Once we were shunted under the house - the two unoccupied spare bedrooms being necessarily kept vacant in case my father’s girlfriend’s teenage sons decided to make one of their biannual appearances - there was little hope of avoiding such insectual reminiscences. It was definitely time to move out when she tersely interrupted a discussion of our latest en-cockroach-ment with claims we had imported them into her once-cockroach-free house inside our luggage!

We immediately vacated the premises in favour of a more relaxing environment ... anywhere. Though our Brisbane stay seemed terminally tainted after that, and when our new landlord/neighbour eventually began complaining about us laughing too much and walking too loudly, we decided to flee the country for New Zealand.

          So I approached my first solo flatting experience with some trepidation.

I wasn’t desperate. I could always simply pack up and go home, so I could afford to be choosy ... at least in theory. But I soon discovered it was entirely the wrong time to be flat-hunting, most flats being either fully occupied or full of occupied students.

My original list of demands - a ‘cosy’ flat, with ‘mature’ flatmates, in a ‘quiet’ suburb close to town - was quickly reduced to a single, un-negotiable particular - the flat must be willing to accept two cats. Because although Spindle had, in the meantime, disappeared, Momo was now accompanied by her daughter, Dudley.       

One night I’d come home to find Momo nursing five kittens. I’d never gotten around to getting her fixed, because before all the ‘drama’, we were still debating the various theories of female cat ownership - ie they must have one litter first versus get them fixed a.s.a.p. - and after the drama, cat-fixing was not only the last thing on my list, but hitching with a cat seemed too complicated to even ponder.

Once the initial ‘how sweet’ fog had cleared, I realised I had little option but to dispose of them as quickly as possible. ‘Disposing’ sounds like such a detached, clinical process, especially when farmers speak of it so casually. An unwanted animal, pet or pest? Either shoot it, or simply bang it over the head. It sounds so easy. Though I’m not at all squeamish about killing insects or mice or fish or even the occasional blackbird, cats are another kettle of kittens.

Once I actually did kill a possum by “banging it over the head”. It was a particularly destructive - is there another kind? - Timms-trap-shy, pole-vaulting, fence-climbing specimen which had been systematically stripping my only apple tree of apples and leaves. Losing my first crop of apples was annoying enough, but stupid/clever possums are part of rural life, and I generally console myself with the thought that there’s a speeding car or a speeding bullet waiting round the next corner.

When it began wantonly snapping off branches in the process, my annoyance developed a murderous tinge. So one night I waited for it to begin its nightly climb onto the roof, then confronted it with my torch and a length of window framing. “Just bang it over the head,” I told myself as I swung my makeshift club. But possums are hardy, unbelievably tough creatures, and it takes more than just one bang over the head. The memory of the skull-fractured creature dragging itself along the ground as I finished the job, haunts me still.

Since then I’ve often thought of buying a rifle, but shooting, like driving or flatting, isn’t something I’m particularly keen to do. So drowning seemed like the most humane, and viable, method. I should have done the deed right then, that night, before any of us were fully conscious of the repercussions. But watching Momo preen them with motherly pride robbed me of my willpower, so I went to bed, and by morning I had relented a little, convincing myself I could risk keeping two of the kittens and, hopefully, find homes for them, despite the fact the Molyneux Mail was already full of advertisements for give-away kittens. My change of heart did little to lighten my heart, because now I had to choose which kittens would be spared.

          The litter consisted of three black and two black-and-white, so ‘fairness’ demanded I select one of each. (OK, so I was groping for some rationale for the entirely random, divine choice I had to make.) I waited for Momo to provide guidance, and eventually she lifted a black kitten onto the sofa away from the litter, and sat nursing it. This, I rationalised, was her favourite. One down, one to go. But since she remained silent concerning any further preferences, the final choice was solely my responsibility.

So I studied the remaining players in this mini tragedy, looking for a sign. One black-and-white kitten quickly stood out from the mewing masses. It seemed to always be the odd one out, in the wrong place at the wrong time. Since I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog (or, in this case, the undercat) I now had my second candidate.

As soon as Momo left them alone to feed herself, I quickly lifted the condemned three into a plastic bag in which I’d laid out a few rags to make their final journey a little more comfortable, carried them to the river and gently lowered them into the icy water. They whelped for a few seconds, and I could feel them wriggling inside the bag, but I remained resolute. After a few, long minutes I lifted them out and buried them beside the river. But I still had two kittens too many.

          Eventually someone answered my ad, and since the black and white one managed to elude them by climbing behind the fridge, the young girl whose choice it was, chose the docile black one. There were no further calls. No queries.

Meanwhile, Spindle, who had been highly disturbed by the kittens intrusion, began to stay away more and more, eventually disappearing altogether. When he still hadn’t returned a month later, I decided to keep the kitten. He was supposed to be a male, so I called him Dudley. Of course, when I finally managed to get both my cats to the vet (I was determined not to have any more unexpected surprises, or be responsible for someone else’s surprise), it was revealed Dudley was a female. Though I’d already begun to have my suspicions when I saw him rolling provocatively on the ground in front of his father. Never mind, Dudley it was. He was always a wild cat, uncomfortable in anyone else’s presence, and he retained the ‘knack’ of getting himself into trouble throughout his life.

          Eventually the three of us moved into an old farmhouse a few kilometres out of the city with a single woman, her two cats and one dog, with her boyfriend and his dog usually thrown in for good measure. It was cosy, it was quiet, my flatmate was mature, and though it was three kilometres from the nearest bus stop, the most important thing was she was comfortable having two extra cats in the house.

But although she was, her cats certainly weren’t. They terrorised Momo and Dudley from the first day, making them virtual prisoners in my bedroom. I tried to intimidate her cats into leaving my cats alone, but I often came home to find Momo and Dudley holed up on my cupboard while the other two prowled below. So it wasn’t the most relaxing life for any of us, but until another option presented itself, we all had to compromise.

          Soon after, Marion bought her own home. It was a small bach (a 15 square metre kitchen/living room with a damp 4 square metre bedroom attached and no bathroom) in Waitati, a small community at the end of the motorway north of Dunedin. She was happy to have Momo and Dudley’s company, and I was happy to give them a more relaxing home, and to finally, for the first time, be relieved of the responsibility of cat ownership. Suddenly I was free!

          During the next six months, I spent weekdays battling bureaucracy and apathy in Dunedin, weekends battling window joinery back in Millers Flat, and many hours in-between standing on highway verges battling my growing frustration with hitching. It was during this regular commute, as the average length of my journey slowly increased from two to four hours, that I began to contemplate the relationship between hitching and a country’s dominant social-economic-political philosophy.

Hitching seems to be a reliable optimism indicator - the more confidence people have in the future, the more likely they are to stop for hitchers. This was an extension of the theory that the haves and have-nots are more likely to stop than the want-to-haves. For example, in Germany it’s the top-of-the-range Mercedes - though not the Diesel models - and the small Volkswagens/Renaults that stop, never the BMWs. (The one time a BMW did stop, it turned out to be a Mercedes driver who had rented the BMW while his car was in the garage!)

In Sweden, it’s the Volvos, not the Saabs. While in New Zealand, its the beat-up cars and the flash businessmen’s cars (I would like to say businesspeople, but it’s usually only men), and only those businessmen who are content with what they’re doing. Four-wheel-drives never stop ... anywhere. Cars towing caravans or boats never stop. Cars with roofracks full of skis never stop.

Of course, some people will claim they don’t stop because of fear, but the truth is that there are more hitchers killed or robbed every year than drivers, especially when you disregard cases of ‘hitchers’ who are really drunks coming back from a pub late at night. Though my theory is unprovable, the simple fact remains that hitching in New Zealand has dramatically worsened as self-interest, user-pays and the unfettered free market have tightened their grip on the country.          Such thoughts filled my mind as I hitched every weekend back and forward between Dunedin and Millers Flat. Except, of course, when I was singing my all-time favourite hitching songs (Rolf Harris, Leonard Cohen or meaningless drivel depending on my mood), formulating new insults to hurl through clenched teeth at passing motorists, throwing rocks at various targets, practising my juggling, or considering my next move in Environment Centre development or window construction.

           I had plenty to think about, and plenty of time in which to think about it.