After concluding the business of the day, CEP and I lunched in Te Puke, stared disconsolately through the window of the Op Shop (closed on Mondays), and drove around photographing new developments in what Pickle-paw assures me is known in property development circles as “the sleeping giant of Te Puke”.
It looks a grim fate, to push a pram along the raw and deserted cul-de-sacs[1], pukeko in the scrubby paddocks, coppices of “for sale” notices and a few stationary diggers on the bare sections the only other horizontal creatures on what had been flat, river bottom dairying land. The beige houses look temporary – but they'll be there a good while, affordable, dry places to raise a family.
**
Further along State Highway 33 towards Whakatane, there's a turn to go down to Maketu, home of Maketu Pies[2], a friendly kitler (see not very good photo), and a stack of what we both thought, for a surreal moment, were penguins (see other not very good photo).
Also, there was a man WITH A PET POSSUM. He was sitting on the fence near where we parked the car. I smiled at him, and he motioned me over, opening his black drawstring bag.
“Have you ever seen one of these before?”, he asked me. I looked at the bag – a little dark, pointed face, round black eyes and a fleshy pink noise.
“I have,” I said, “but never pettable like this one.” He coaxed her out of the bag and laid her across his arm.
“I've always kept them as pets,” he said. “I've had this girl about ten months, since I lost my last one in a bus fire.”
No comments:
Post a Comment