Something Thougtful

 Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.    

                                           INDUBITABLY PLUVIAL 

I wonder how many people remember a statement made by a New Zealand Prime Minister when a TV journalist asked for a comment on the heavy rainfall that was then plaguing the country? Instead of saying “Yes, it certainly rains a lot in New Zealand” the Prime Minister said “New Zealand is indubitably pluvial”. This somewhat pompous answer caused many people to make the P.M. a laughing stock. It didn’t last for long, however. This was back in 1990. The P.M. was Geoffrey Palmer. He was (and, in old age, still is) a thoroughly decent man with great knowledge of constitutional matters. But he didn’t stay P.M. for long, and his (Labour) Party were afraid that his pedantic way of speaking would alienate the voters. So they made somebody else P.M. … and they lost the next election anyway.

In spite of all this, I have to say that Palmer was right. New Zealand really is “indubitably pluvial ”. Tourists from overseas are told that New Zealand is a warm semi-tropical haven, but the fact is that in winter it often rains like hell in New Zealand, and it’s not the warm rain that you get in the real tropics. It’s cold and nasty and sometimes relentless. Sure, the South Island often has snow in winter which is very cold, and which is hardly seen in the North Island (apart from on mountain tops); and the North Island is usually warmer than the South Island. But both islands get the same battering by the autumn and winter rain.

I am writing this about three weeks before you are reading it, and I have just got through three days of non-stop raining. I hope you realise how depressing it is to hear the heavy rain, to look out the window and seeing a dismal grey or black sky and knowing you are trapped and can’t take a walk even if you have an umbrella or a good raincoat. You are demoralized, irritable and unfocused. At least I am.

I live on the North Shore of Auckland near the bottom of a long road – not a gully, but low enough for the road to almost get flooded when the rain pours in. I still remember Cyclone Gabrielle in 2023 when the rain was so severe that it fell like bullets. I stood at my door looking at the deluge and wondering when the ice-pellets would start cracking our windows. Mercifully it did not happen; but our back yard became a big pool and stayed that way for about three days before the sun came out and began to dry things up. Our house was never damaged in any way. We were on the North Shore, where some trees were fallen and some roads blocked for a short time. But we were the lucky ones, for beyond the Harbour Bridge and on the far west of Auckland, the “Westies”, some houses near a river were completely flooded to the point where, when the rain had passed, they had to be demolished. Yet even this was minor compared with that was happening up in Northland – landslides, roads made completely impassable And in that horrible time, much of the East Coast of the North Island was damaged almost beyond repair – landslides, beaches covered with slash, roads destroyed , farms turning to mud, railway lines and bridges collapsing.

And at the time I am writing, huge damage from aggressive rain has tormented many hundreds of people,  especially in northern part of the South Island including the Nelson-Abel Tasman area, with all the tragedy of houses and farms being destroyed .

Let’s not kid ourselves. New Zealand is not semi-tropical haven. It is “indubitably pluvial ”.