Most highly-prized of all, however, are the semi-mythical seven pump stations necessary to keep the water at bay, that turn migrating eels into easily digestible chunks in the process. Constructed in an afterglow of moon-landing euphoria and man’s ability to dominate satellites not his own, these sentinels were thought more than equal to the task which they were set. In retrospect, the extent of nature’s nostalgic desire was never within their ken. For even without ascribing some sinister motive to the gathering clouds, significantly less than forty days and forty nights of rain are needed to flood these pastures, driving man, beast, and all the cattle after their kind to higher ground. Uncannily like the biblical narrative of terrestrial cleansing, water can sit on the land for weeks on end before slowly receding, suffocating the grass brown in its hold. A farmer’s yearly plans are thrown into more than mild disarray by deluges that turn large numbers of paddocks back into something reminiscent of what was one of the largest wetlands in the Southern Hemisphere. Fence posts are silently bereft, no longer having anything to fence, not knowing how to control the liquid state that comes and goes between their strained wires, power poles stand like pointy islands in a mirror-flat sea; their reflections on the face of the waters an apt visual metaphor for the not-so-secret double life of this place.
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It is an all too common visitation from the ‘Ghost of Nature Past’, a reminder perhaps that man shouldn’t get too comfortable on land he has tried to remake into something other than it was designed to be. Certainly the speed with which the earth here seems ready to throw off nearly a hundred years of cultivation might indicate that something wild still lurks not far beneath the heavily-fertilised surface. For the moment though it seems like the slowly-blinking warning signal that goes unnoticed in a mission control room seldom manned. Just what then, does the future hold for a resting place worthy of two-faced Janus himself? Will the spectre of climate change make this look like a short-lived farming folly, the last flourish of a utilitarian philosophy that couldn’t stand idly by while such a large expanse of unproductive flatland went to waste? Or will our ever-increasing ability to profit from new technology validate man’s stubborn perseverance in the face of nature’s cruel forces? The answer might well be one on which many of our futures may depend. Virginia Guy is a fine art photographer. Her work has been exhibited at galleries around New Zealand. She is currently investigating using encaustic wax with her photography to lend it a new visual dimension. She lives in Hikurangi. Aaron Robertson is a writer and musician currently living in Hikurangi. He has published poetry, essays, music reviews and art criticism in magazines both in New Zealand and overseas. He blogs at www.wordwhittling.com.