Rotary Conference and the Hokitika Police

Last weekend was Rotary District 9970s conference in Hokitika on the West Coast of the South Island. I drove over there with Alan and his wife Vivian, absolutely wonderful people who were so keen to act a tour guides for the foreigner! Although it was a beautiful day in Christchurch, as we drove through Arthur's Pass it became more foggy and rainy and by the time we got to Hokitika we were in the midst of an absolute downpour


one of the many beautiful waterfalls in Arthur's Pass


I was staying at a bach (lakehouse) on Lake Kaniere about 20km from Hokitika with the other 4 scholars, and the Group Study Exchange (GSE) teams from Missouri and New Zealand. They were a group of 5 young professionals who has just spent the past 5 weeks travelling around the South Island and learning about their vocation in New Zealand, compared to Missouri. Definitely an awesome group of people who were so relieved to hang out with younger people (they had been staying with and travelling with older Rotarians for the past month!)

Anyway, the conference was quite inspiring and definitely informative. We spoke on Saturday morning to the group (about 420 people) about who we are, why we're here, etc. After that lots of people came up to us and invited us to their club- the group from Blenheim wants all 5 of us to come up for a weekend to hang out at the lake and speak to their clubs!

Saturday night was dinner and dancing at Shantytown, an old replicated gold-mining town just north of Hokitika. There was a gold rush on the west coast in the mid-1800s, thus the location and also the theme for the conference, "Go for Gold, Get Involved" AND the crazy costumes. There were pirates (to steal gold), leprechauns (for good luck), athletes trying to win gold, crazy people dressed in plastic sheets and balloons(?!?), men in black with gold wigs...you name it, and someone had it on. It was funny that these were the same people sitting in seminars all day acting quite serious and mature!

The 5 of us had been given a van for the weekend to drive ourselves back and forth from the lake. Very considerate of them, not so considerate to give us the van with virtually no petrol! On Saturday afternoon we put about $20 in the tank, thinking that it would be plenty to drive to dinner and then back to the lake. Boy were we wrong. First of all, Shantytown was about an hour drive from the lake. Secondly, the van guzzled gas at an alarming rate. So, we get to dinner with the gas gauge on E but thought that we would have no trouble getting petrol either up the road in Greymouth or back in Hokitika. Ironically, the GSE team also had almost no petrol in their van and actually went to fill up in Greymouth during dinner (we weren't so smart). After dinner we leave at about 11:30pm, thinking that we'll be able to get some petrol back in Hokitika. We arrive about 30min later, after driving with the gas light on for the past 50km, only to find that the petrol station is closed. We drive downtown (which was almost totally dead at midnight on a Saturday) and a guy tells us that the Mobil station just out of town would be closed, but that we could use a credit card. Great! So we head out to the Mobil station, only to find that they accepted Diners Club and American Express only. No Visa, no mastercard, no Eftpos (debit), and no cash. The two cards that we didn't have, were the only ones the station accepted. So...heading back to town we end up behind one of the busses dropping Rotary people off from dinner. Great! So we follow it and jump out to ask a group of Rotarians if any of them had an Amex or Diners Club card that we could use. No luck. (one guy did offer us $20 cash though) Our next brilliant idea was to go to the police station. Genius. Upon hearing our dilemma, Russell, the officer on duty first seems to be unconcerned...why would he care that we had no petrol and it was 12:30am!? After a small amount of sweet-talking Russell kindly offered to drive us back to Lake Kaniere in his patrol car. The 5 of us (plus the 3 partially full bottles of wine left over from dinner) squeeze into his car and away we went. Thanks Russell!

Conference ended on Sunday afternoon and Alan drove me back to Christchurch. On the way we stopped at Death's Corner in Arthur's Pass to get a good view of the viaduct. The old road used to be on the right hand side of the pass but was getting completely washed away due to erosion. The viaduct is quite the engineering accomplishment and makes the drive through the pass much easier.

Whew...busy weekend! I'm in Malaysia now, at "home" in Kuantan studying for the MCAT and soaking up the sun! It's definitely hot here...a few nights ago I did a step class with mum in an UNairconditioned room on the 2nd floor of a building. I seriously thought I was going to pass out. Afterwards the instructor says oh, it's only 32C in here!

Hope you have a happy and blessed Easter!

cheers-

steph