You can feel it winding up, many weeks out. You’re running around like a headless chook, making the rounds in the urban jungle, just trying to keep it all on track. Ensnared in a demented frenzy, you’re cranked as tight as your mother-in-law’s frozen smile. It hits you like a thunderbolt: you need to get outta here, escape, run like dogs into the back country, get a taste of the open road, the wind in your face, and some small-town chilled time.
“You better get back, honky cat/Better get back to the woods/Living in the city isn’t where it’s at …/It’s like trying to drink whisky from a bottle of wine”. Thank you, Elton John.
Don’t all blokes have a hankering to smash the shackles and high-tail it out of the city, on a road trip to some rural bolt hole? This was the general scenario that gripped me a few weeks back. Being a mature male, in years at least, I have a deep passion for nostalgic or retro automobiles and roadside landmarks. An excursion off the beaten track into the heartland on a quest — hunting down these remaining signposts to our past — seemed compulsory at this moment.
SPIRITUAL CALLING
Decision made, brain cells lit up like a neon Vegas Strip joint sign, the spiritual calling led me to — Dargaville! I needed to prepare carefully for a mission of such gravity and risk into the depths of Kaipara country.
The nerve centre of operations was critical, and I booked early into the grand, atmosphere-drenched Northern Wairoa Hotel (1918), on the main drag in Dargaville. I insisted that my room be strategically located above the main street so that I could keep an eye on the late-night shenanigans erupting from the bar and any hooning up and down the strip. Vital, you understand, in gauging the flavour of the town.
Cameras were checked, loaded, and charged. Capturing
