MICHAEL MULLINS’ TINY LETTER

When my cousin was showing me around Wellington last week, I noticed that his phone was a vintage Nokia, just like the one I was using in 1999.

He's not the type who tries to set retro fashion trends. He just prefers a dumb phone to a smart phone. He says he uses it to make phone calls, and that is all he needs it for.

He does not pretend smart phones cannot be useful. He has reluctantly agreed to buy one for his daughter. But he does not like to see people's lives controlled by their smart phones.

A few days ago I was using my smart phone to listen to a podcast that explained how smart phone app developers can be as unscrupulous and unethical as cigarette companies in exploiting their customers.

Former Google app developer Tristan Harris has founded an organisation called Time Well Spent. He talked about the 'persuasive technology design' class at Stanford that taught app developers how to monopolise the time of smart phone users.

'It's not about giving you freedom, it's about sucking you in to take your time'.

An app will 'notify' you when you have a new email or when a news story breaks. In other words, it will interrupt your conversation or stop you from attending to something in your life other than your smart phone.

How often do we physically bump into smart phone users in the street because they are not looking where they're going? Or perhaps we are the ones glued to our smart phones.

I walk long distances for exercise and always listen to podcasts so that I can stay in touch with what's going on in the world. In fact I miss a lot of what is going on in the world close to me because I am listening to podcasts. My eyes are metaphorically closed to what is around me.

Harris says the key question is how smart phone usage makes us feel on the inside. The average person checks their phone 150 times a day because they feel anxious about what they're missing out on if they don't keep checking it.

I've become aware of this, and I've taken to deliberately missing episodes of my favourite podcasts to ensure that they don't control me. I would listen to 'The Monocle Daily' every weekday, and feel anxious when I didn't. Now I listen to it three or four times a week, and feel better for it.

I do not want to give it up altogether because I enjoy it. It informs me and it raises my spirit, with the humour and intelligence of its presenters. I just want to own my time and my life, and I can do that with measured use of my smart phone.

That was my message to my cousin as I gave him the bad news that he would soon need to swap his dumb phone for a smart phone because the telcos are turning off the old 2G phone towers that have serviced dumb phones for 20 years.

 

Last night it was three days since our return from New Zealand and we sought to relive the experience by sharing one of the two garlic chocolates we bought at the Ocho craft chocolate establishment in Dunedin.

Ocho is short for 'Otago Chocolate'. The shop and factory is located in Dunedin's Warehouse Precinct, where the distinctive Dunedin buildings have been transformed from a near derelict state and been given a new lease of life.

We discovered Ocho by accident, lured off the street by the coffee and chocolate aromas. We'd just passed on taking a tour of the huge Cadbury plant around the corner.

It is a labour of love for the artist and former journalist Liz Rowe, who says she got side-tracked into making chocolate after spending six months in Latin America in 2011.

I know what it's like to be seduced by chocolate as a traveller to those parts. When I was in Lima in 2015, I went to the Chocolate Museum for breakfast not once, but every morning during my three or four day stay. The displays put the lure of chocolate into the context of its science, history and labour relations.

Later that year I couldn't believe it when my dietician actually encouraged me to eat chocolate - natural chocolate - and how serendipitous it was that the local health food shop had a large batch of Ecuadorian dark chocolate at a good price. I had that rapturous experience of something you've long regarded as sinful suddenly and unexpectedly being revealed as a virtue.

While enjoying the garlic chocolate last night, we talked about how we might entice our garlic farmer friend from the NSW South Coast to get into the business of making garlic chocolate. Somehow I think she would be intrigued enough to give it some thought.

After a Cadbury dairy milk chocolate upbringing, I became fascinated with the possibilities of creativity with chocolate after seeing the film Like Water for Chocolate in the 1990s. I had just discovered kangaroo meat and I attempted a chocolate kangaroo dish. It wasn't very successful but I didn't regret trying.

I think I was attracted to eating kangaroo at that stage by the fact that it had just come on to the market for human consumption and was still regarded by most people as taboo. A decade or two earlier, the same could be said for eating garlic.

I remember my mother telling me that it was anti-social to eat garlic. She said it was one of the things that distinguished European migrants from 'us', but it was something we'd have to learn to tolerate. In particular there was a Ukrainian man to whom we'd often give a lift who always reeked of garlic.

Now we have learned not only to tolerate but to love and appreciate garlic, for both its taste and its health and cultural virtues. Likewise chocolate. No longer a sin but - in right measure - one of life's authentic peak experiences.

This morning I read Antonio Castillo's article in Eureka Street 'US-Mexico relations are officially off-the-wall'. The expression 'off-the-wall' refers to something that is so crazy it defies rational explanation.

The US is making a fast u-turn into isolationism, and 'off-the-wall' could be applied to America's relations with just about any country including Australia. The difference is that with most of the others it's crazy-bad but with Australia it is crazy-good.

In quite an unexpected development, Trump has told Turnbull that the US will honour the Manus and Nauru deal stitched up in the last months of the Obama administration despite the ban on the entry of refugees into the US.

There are not many things Trump does out of the goodness of his heart, and he didn't have to do that. I'm surprised that our media commentators and the Labor opposition are not busily speculating. If the Australian summer has dog days, these are them, and journalists and the opposition appear to have succumbed.

I didn't notice anything beyond Michelle Grattan's headline in The Conversation: 'Trump gives Turnbull refugee deal green light but government provides no detail'. Grattan herself provided no detail about her reference to no detail. In Fairfax, Mark Kenny is way too gentle in his 'wait and see' depiction of Turnbull's 'soft-shoe shuffle around Donald Trump'.

Elsewhere I've seen commentary pointing out that the Trump-Turnbull relationship is somewhat unique among Trump's pairings with world leaders because of their common background in business. They both speak the language of 'the deal'. With Trump, there's no appeal to better angels, and leaders will get nowhere if they persist in speaking about shared values such as democracy and human rights.

So what's the deal here? What is Turnbull giving Trump in exchange for Trump's green light on the refugee deal? In the short term, there's Turnbull's refusal to condemn Trump's anti-Muslim executive order. He said in his media conference yesterday that it's 'not his job' to comment on Trump. In this he is alone among his peers. Even Theresa May, Trump's new best friend of last week, eventually criticised Trump for issuing this order.

We will have to wait to find out what else Turnbull owes Trump in the wake of the Manus and Nauru deal. But I would guess that Australia is not going to be pursuing a foreign policy independent of the US any time soon. Which is a pity, because now is the time to do it because we're at the crossroads.

In December I wrote about attending a gathering of retired Australian diplomats who all believed it was time for Australia to let the ANZUS alliance fade away in favour of an independent foreign policy. They pointed out that there are a number of things the Australian Government is being quiet on.

Most notable of these was America's heavy reliance on the Pine Gap defence intelligence facility in central Australia. This would probably be an early target in the event of a nuclear conflict involving the US, and the fallout would impact Australia's population centres including Sydney and Melbourne.

Is this the price we are paying for Trump's green light on the refugee deal?

I have just read Catherine Marshall's powerful Eureka Street article 'Trump moves against vulnerable women'. It is about his recent executive order that health organisations receiving funding from the US must not provide abortion services or advice, even if the money is not used to fund these services.

It has reminded me of my own inner struggle with regard to abortion. I am resolutely - but not proudly - pro-life.

In my own personal world, I cannot accept that any human being has a right to choose when to end the life of another (born or unborn) human life. That is God's prerogative.

But I am in favour of the current civil laws permitting early term abortion if the mother's physical or mental health is at risk. These are the vulnerable women that Catherine is talking about in her article.

I also think that it is perfectly acceptable for a Catholic publication like Eureka Street to advocate pro-choice positions in this way because they are pro-tolerance positions.

Tolerant Catholics - including me, I hope - do not impose their religious views on others. That is what religious extremists do. I accept that my particular religious views are out of step with the common sense reality of the community I live in. I don't mind that. In fact I cherish it. I like living in a multicultural, multifaith society.

Why I am not proud to be pro-life is that those who are proudly pro-life are often intolerant of the views of others. They are bigots. I like to think that I am not a bigot.

I might try to pretend that abortion is not my business. That it's for women, and perhaps couples, who are having to deal with an unwanted pregnancy. But if I think of it, that's not fair on unborn human beings, who are defenceless. They need the state to advocate on their behalf.

The only point of contention is a big one. It's when human life begins. My religious belief is that this point is the moment of conception. But I don't have a right to impose that on anybody else. In reality, I support the common sense definition that life begins when the foetus is at an advanced stage of development, as determined by the state.

Without considering myself an expert, I think the state - Australia - has got it about right. Until a week ago, America had it about right. That this has changed is reason for protest and civil action.

For the past two or three years, I have fantasised about being out of the country for Anzac Day. It hasn't happened, and it won't happen this year.

But yesterday I was really pleased to be in New Zealand for Australia Day.

I woke up not thinking of Australia.

We went out and had breakfast. Then we took a short walk to the Wellington City Gallery, where we very much enjoyed the exhibition of the works of American 'selfie' photographer Cindi Sherman. In the afternoon I visited my uncle and my aunt - both facing the challenge of ageing. I was then taken out by my cousin, who was in good spirits and an excellent companion for the rest of my afternoon.

In other words, I had a very happy Australia Day away from what I understand was the ugliness of the day at home. In itself my own protest, with Cindi Sherman's clowns providing a fitting backdrop. If I had been in Australia, my form of defiance would have been just as real, but very different, and a bit unusual. I would have attended an Australia Day citizenship ceremony.

I contemplated doing that last year, did the research, but in the end indifference got the better of me.

A citizenship ceremony would have allowed me to take part in the welcoming of 'new Australians' and to affirm my strong belief in a multicultural Australia. I would like it if Australia Day was all about the freshly minted new Australians. Not the (European) less new Australians like me, or even the (indigenous) old Australians. That is why I am happy to ignore what some of the vocal European and indigenous Australians want Australia Day to be about.

I was proud to grow up in a community that included many people we called at the time 'new Australians' (the term was later dismissed because it was thought to conflict - I believe erroneously - with the idea of multiculturalism). It was in Albury-Wodonga, close to the Bonegilla migrant reception centre, which was still operating when I was a child.

In 2015 I had a piece of art made to commemorate my family's personal connection to the new Australians from the Bonegilla centre (pictured).

I also felt good that my 'family' at the dinner table this past Christmas Day was a group of six friends who were all new Australians. I was the only Australian born person at the table.

In Sydney, I love getting the train to a suburb with a concentration of new Australians - walking around and enjoying the food. Recently I had a Persian meal in Auburn with a new Australian friend and her mother in law who was visiting from South Africa.

I would like to think that New Zealand has it right and is able to avoid the ugly politics of nationalism when it celebrates its national day Waitangi Day in ten days time. But sadly my cousin tells me otherwise.

Before visiting Barcelona at Christmas in 2015, I remember going to YouTube to watch the film Bye Bye Barcelona, which is a documentary about the negative effects of mass tourism on the people of the city.

The film is made by a local artist who explores the fraught relationship between Barcelona as a living population and Barcelona as a tourist destination. He interviews fellow residents who complain that the city is becoming a theme park. One laments the city's 'loss of enchantment'.

Part of me can't take these complaints too seriously, given that the people of Barcelona owe much of their relative prosperity to tourism. That's the main reason Barcelona's regional unemployment rate in 2014 was 19 per cent compared to the national figure of 24 per cent.

Yesterday The Guardian published an article about tension between tourists and locals in New Zealand over access to public toilets.

One North Island resident complained that 50 people each night used a toilet block that contained a single toilet. If the queues got too long, the tourists simply use the nearby bushes and contribute to the contamination of rivers and beaches.

One of the towns mentioned in the article was Glenorchy, a tiny community of 363, an hour's drive to the west of Queenstown on the South Island. It is at the end of the road and the end of the lake that makes Queenstown such a scenic tourist destination.

I have two images in my mind of our visit to Glenorchy. One was the thriving dumpling shop that was set up to profit from Chinese tourists. The other was a funeral procession, demonstrating that life in Glenorchy is not entirely about tourism, that there is a living community made up of real people.

Queenstown has a picturesque lake and many adventure tourism assets. There are only 14,300 permanent residents. Our impression was that it was spoiled by the volume of tourists, and we drove straight through.

It's clear that Queenstown's infrastructure can't sustain the tourist boom. The traffic on its congested main through road is slower than what you would expect in peak hour in major cities in more populated countries. But who wants a four lane highway replacing the existing two lane through road that winds around one side of the lake?

Queenstown is just the first of many South Island towns to face an explosion in tourist numbers. On the other side of the mountain is Wanaka, another lakeside mountain resort town that is poised for similar development. I've heard that numbers developers have approvals in hand. 

Meanwhile there is the quirky east coast town of Oamaru, with its many well-preserved Victorian buildings. It is made for tourism but - mercifully? - there are still relatively few tourists.

On Tuesday afternoon, we visited 'Steam Punk HQ'. This is a collection of industrial sculptures and audio visual installations in darkened rooms that reflect what seemed like a particular local hobbyist's interpretation of the steampunk science fiction sub-genre.

But it could have a big future as part of an Oamaru theme park. Within a year of its 2011 opening, TripAdvisor was rating it as one of New Zealand's best new tourist attractions. It fits with the town's Victorian era ambience, and is complemented by retail shops specialising in steampunk clothing and accessories. Numbers will swell suring the Steampunk NZ Festival Weekend at the beginning of June, but essentially it is fairly quiet for most of the time, for now.

Some of the locals want it to stay quiet, according to my friend Nathalie, whom we visited there. But others realise that the industries that sustained Oamaru in the past have gone, and tourism is their big opportunity to return to prosperity.

The choice may not be entirely theirs. The 2016 edition of Lonely Planet described Oamaru as 'New Zealand's coolest town'.

 

I've always been interested in rivalries between cities. I grew up in Albury-Wodonga. Wodonga had long been considered poorer and less attractive. But for many years it has been growing faster than Albury and may one day overtake Albury in size and importance.

In the eyes of many, the two cross border cities are regarded as one. But in recent years they've dismantled certain joint initiatives. They now promote themselves separately to tourists and potential new industries and settlers.

Today we're travelling to Oamaru, which is a coastal city of 14,000 inhabitants. It is an hour an a half north of Dunedin, where we've stayed for the past two nights of our tour of part of New Zealand's South Island.

A further hour north on State Highway 1 is Timaru, with a population of 29,000. We were originally booked to stay there because it was more conveniently situated for our drive to Christchurch Airport on Wednesday.

We switched because a few people said that Oamaru was by far the more beautiful of the two cities. These included our west coast B&B host Sue, and my friend and work colleague Nathalie, whom I'll see today for the first time in 26 years. Nathalie lives in Oamaru and told me that there is no question that Oamaru is more beautiful and has the best attractions.

Of course she would say that. Our vegetarian AirBNB host on Friday and Saturday told us that both cities have their attractions. She said we should take what we hear from Timaru's detractors with a grain of salt because they are probably from Oamaru.

As it happens, Timaru is in the Canterbury region, while Oamaru is in Otago. That suggests the rivalry between the two smaller cities is at least partly a reflection of the competition between Canterbury's principal city Christchurch and Otago's Dunedin.

I have been interested in that since my uncle told me years ago that he had a soft spot for Dunedin but didn't think much of Christchurch.

He's proud of his Irish-Catholic heritage and didn't waste any time telling me that the English had a stranglehold on Christchurch. If you were a Catholic and wanted a decent job, you probably wouldn't find one in Christchurch.

Dunedin was a different matter. With its Scottish roots, the people there were much more sympathetic to their fellow Gaelic cousins.

He has lived in Wellington for many years, but was very happy to be living and working here in Dunedin while bringing up his family about 50 years ago. When I called him yesterday, he told me that his office was in the centre of town and that he had a pleasing view down on to the Octagon, which is the focal point of the city.

I read that when the Octagon was first laid out in the original 1846 survey of the city, the English made covert plans to build their Anglican Cathedral right in the Centre of the Octagon. There was a furore when the predominantly Scottish Presbyterian local community found out, and St Paul's Anglican Cathedral was subsequently built, and still stands, at the edge of the Octagon.

It was a different matter in Christchurch, which was conceived as the model English city. Its equivalent to the Octagon is named Cathedral Square after the Anglican ChristChurch Cathedral, which was built as its focal point, though it is barely standing today due to substantial earthquake damage.

How to make sense of the beauty of nature on New Zealand's South Island. That is what I'm about at this moment, as I look through the window of our AirBNB accommodation bedroom at the clouds hanging over the snow capped mountains.

I can admire the people here on the South Island. Especially their plucky approach to facing the challenges of the natural environment. The Christchurch and Kaikoura earthquakes of the last few years, and the 'weather bomb', as they call it, that has hit them in the past week, closing roads and disrupting lives.

But its magnificence is another thing.

Yesterday my travel companion Bernard had a word that described his experience of it. Rapture.

I had a mixed reaction to that. What comes to mind is the end of times event from the Book of Revelation in the Bible. According to the prediction, Christian believers who have died will be raised to heaven and those still living will meet them in the clouds.

That doesn't help much. This kind of thing is the preoccupation of those who belong to some very weird branches of Christianity.

But it's a different story when I seek out its various dictionary meanings. A feeling of intense pleasure or joy. | A state of being carried away by overwhelming emotion. | A mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things.

I wonder where Bernard got this word from. It turns out that it's from the Australian writer Robert Dessaix, describing his experience of the sublime in the highest mountain passes in the world, in northern India.

'All I can see is snow and rock. I am thrillingly unhoused, yet snug. I am nothing, I am the whole world. The desolation is complete, the rapture not just beyond words, but thought. This is what abandonment means.' (The Saturday Paper, 1 Nov 2014).

We stayed in Arthur's Pass last week, the day before it was hit by the 'weather bomb' and isolated from the rest of the world. Then on Friday we drove through Haast Pass on Friday, on a beautiful sunny summer's day.

Were those experiences of the South Island mountain passes rapturous? Not exactly. But they do give me some understanding of what Dessaix is getting at.

We all have our particular moments of rapture. Their intensity varies, but they are still rapture.

For me during this trip, it was the orange rain clouds at sunset in Christchurch on the night of our arrival (some would see an allusion to the end of times meaning in the Book of Revelation!). For Bernard, it was the mirror reflection on Lake Matheson near Fox Glacier on the West Coast.

Being rapt is about being stopped in our tracks. Being suddenly able to see more than the mundane. A glimpse of what the divine is for us.

You don't need to be an afficianado of the Book of Revelation to experience rapture. Or even conventionally religious. It reaches many cultures, including youth culture. This is the Urban Dictionary's definition of rapt: 'Australian surfer slang, means excited. "oooo dude im so totally rapt".'

Tomorrow we reach the half way point of our two weeks travel to parts of the New Zealand South Island and Wellington.

My travelling companion likes to have an itinerary planned and transport and accommodation booked. I like to arrive in a country with my return air ticket and no more than the first night's accommodation secured. We've compromised and made advance bookings for about half the journey.

Last night we were in a motel in Fox Glacier on the west coast. We had no bookings for the next couple of nights. Just the way I like it. We were not tied down and could do anything we wished (as long as all the viable accommodation options were not booked out).

It was well into the evening and we didn't know where we were headed the next day. The word 'farmstay' came into one of our heads. That was an option neither of us had previously considered.

We did a couple of searches and found a sheep station close to the geographical centre of the South Island. It looked good, until we read the user reviews on the accommodation booking website.

It turned out that the owner was a redneck who would make judgmental comments about the life choices of his guests. He virtually told one young university student that his university course was useless.

We looked elsewhere and came up with another possibility further south, with spectacular mountain views, where the owner was a strict vegetarian. With this choice, we would not have to face grilling from a redneck, and it's likely the values of the vegetarian would be much closer to our own.

With AirBNB you need to message your potential host to persuade them that you are worthy to stay in their accommodation. I told our potential host that I liked it that she preferred vegetarians. That was true, but she took that to mean that we were vegetarians. 'Very nice to hear that you are vegetarian!' she wrote.

Would we maintain the pretence that we were vegetarian when it wasn't true? Perhaps it would do no harm. Until we visited a salmon farm earlier in the day and could not resist buying two ultra fresh salmon fillets for dinner in the evening.

When we arrived at our host's farm in possession of the fish, we had to confess that we admired vegetarians but were not actually vegetarians ourselves. We had to negotiate how we would cook our salmon fillets without offending the vegetarian sensibilities of her family. If we were to cook them.

Initially she suggested freezing the fish and taking it with us when we leave. We agreed that would not work and she graciously organised an electric frying pan with an extension cord so that we could cook it well away from the house. She also set up a table and chairs outside for us to avoid us having to eat our non vegetarian meal on her family's vegetarian dinner table.

The salmon was delicious but I did go to bed wondering if I would have preferred to be judged by a redneck rather than a strict vegetarian.

Instead of writing early morning Tuesday, I was heading to Christchurch Station to board the TranzAlpine tourist train to Greymouth on the west coast. We have broken the journey for 24 hours at Arthur's Pass, a small alpine village close to the national park and the mountain pass that bears the same name.

It is one of the rainiest localities on the South Island, and it has rained continuously for all of the 20 hours we've been here. There are excellent walking tracks, but we are not equipped to go bushwalking in the rain, so our break in the train journey has turned out to be a break for rest.

Because the mountain pass was historically such a challenge, the train terminated here for many years until the 8.5 km Otira Tunnel was opened in 1923. A Cobb and Co coach had to ferry passengers over the pass to a connecting train at the other side.

Then until 1997, the steam and then diesel locomotive had to be replaced by an electric locomotive for the journey through the tunnel. Since then, a 'helper' diesel locomotive has done the job of getting the train through the still difficult tunnel, with its 1 in 33 gradient. In these more recent times, the issue has been diesel fumes. They necessitate special measures and precautions, including the closing of our train's open air observation cars.

The Arthur's Pass information centre doubles as a museum, and yesterday it was a congenial place to pass some time. That was where I saw the Cobb and Co coach and also learned about the second most deadly mountaineering incident in New Zealand history, which occurred in 1966, when an avalanche killed a rescuer from a party making a vain attempt to save four young bushwalkers.

A few months ago, the 50th anniversary commemorations included a religious service in the mountain chapel here at Arthur's Pass. The rescuer who lost his life had been married six years earlier in the chapel, which has a fascinating story of its own. Like the railway station, it is built as an A-frame (both pictured).

The chapel was unlocked when I was exploring the area yesterday and so I was able to wander in and read the history of its conception and construction in the 1950s, which was a labour of love for the committee and the architects and builders it engaged.

Last night we had a meal at the only cafe that was open. It doubles as a bar and is called The Wobbly Kea, after the endangered species of parrot that is found in this area. Perhaps their omnivorous diet includes alcohol. The locals are preoccupied with protecting tourists from the kea and the kea from tourists. It is known for its intelligence and curiosity, which means it will stop at nothing to use its large and sharp beak to aggressively scavenge for food from any source including tourists, who are implored not to feed them.