The Auckland customs officers were quite nice about it, really. They just didn’t like the way I looked! When it came down to it, neither did I! I'd spent the flight spewing up and my stomach felt like I had a heroin filled condom burst open. They glanced at the youthful photo in the passport and tried to find some resemblance to the wreck that stood before them. I'm one of the few people who look worse in reality than they do in their passport photo!
After an hour's interrogation I was finally set free, but only after being quizzed about knowing anyone involved in the drug game and how would I feel about being an informer? The only thing that got me in was my Amex card which, unknown to them, had been cancelled some months before.
This was June, winter in Auckland. I didn’t expect winter to mean a howling typhoon off the sea, grey skies and the kind of damp that made me go all soft at the knees for my misspent youth in grotty bedsits in Shit City. My tropical gear was well out of place. The disturbingly fit youth who was driving the mini-bus into town, rushed forward to grab my bag as if I was some pensioner on his last legs. Where was I going? Good question, mate!
By the time we were downtown, my stomach was merely grumbling away and the searing cramps in my legs only required a modest bit of Zen to overcome. The howling blizzard soaked me through even though I'd only had to jump a few yards to the hostel. There were only beds in the dormitory left, I didn’t mind sharing with a dozen other hobos, did I? Just as well I didn’t have anything left worth stealing and the unwashed odour of excessive flatulence would dissuade any sexual attacks in the night. I didn’t so much go to sleep as pass out as if hit over the head with an iron bar - the body can only take so much!
The next morning the sun shone weakly, the blue sea fluttered fitfully and I only filled one toilet bowl with vomit. Skyscrapers with black-blue windows reflected the glare of the day back at each other and deep into my mind. Auckland was weird shit; strong resonances of good old England with some ancient edifices right out of London but a different quality of light and built practically in the surrounding sea. Lots of wooden building right out of the Wild West. Unlike convict dominated Oz, seemed an altogether gentler, more sophisticated trip.
I was so mentally disturbed that I quite happily handed over my passport and a 100 dollars for a week's hire of a Yamaha Jog. Another awesomely fit young man told me all I had to do was sit on the thing, roll the throttle to go forward and hit the front brake lever to stop, as if I was a four year old child rather than a world traveller with an UMG fan club back in Blighty (me mum!).
Didn't they have any Brit V-twins? Nope, though if I had some serious money I could hire something from one of the dealers across town. The concept of serious money had long since disappeared from my grasp (not merely down to the Ed’s reluctance to hand over any dosh for these scribblings - massive hint to UMG HQ... the cheeky bastard claimed my second tranche of ramblings on Oz was totally unprintable! Don’t ask me, it’s all a blank period in my mind!).
The Yamaha Jog was styled along the lines of a squashed scooter, sat on the road on wheels flinched off a kid’s bicycle and sounded like a sewing machine on overdrive. I hated the fucking thing from the moment I set eyes on it but it was the only motorised vehicle to be had cheaply and I wasn't going to parade around Auckland on a bicycle in a silly pudding basin helmet (the law there, fascist cunts!).
Auckland has some very steep hills. Under the Culler beer gut, the Jog seemed to be going backwards at times, the engine squealing in a disturbing resemblance to myself after I’ve thrown up due to massive overindulgence in stimulants. Bumps in the road, and there were lots of them, jerked the handlebars around in a manic manner, making me think I had yet another fit of the shakes. Surely not! It didn't do to take my eyes off the road for a moment, the only good thing going for it was its minuscule size and weight; when the going got tough I could slide sideways under big lorries and snatch the thing up under my arm, carry it through pedestrian precincts as if it was an affectionate puppy. Weird shit, didn’t I tell ya!
At one point, where a hill went almost vertical, I actually had to throw myself off and run alongside the damn thing. No doubt fitness fanatics would say a good bit of exercise for someone famed for his indulgence in excessive quantities of beer. All I can say is fuck that! I really didn’t expect the place to be so cold, me tee-shirt and shorts getting some curious glances from the natives, as did the wobbling beer gut - at least the Princess Di motif meant I couldn't be confused with any other foreigners.
The Jog gave some protection from the elements, but only really effective if you're a Japanese midget in the aftermath of a jaw-wired-shut diet. For some obese Westerner it was a form of torture, how to become an object of ridicule in one easy lesson. It was probably just as well that the gutless heap of shit couldn't wind up to more than 30mph even on the downhill sections! The automatic gearbox worked in a series of fanatical jerks that gave my arms and upper body a massive, and totally unwanted, work-out [the Jog has no auto box to jerk, but a single variable ratio CVT as anyone who has ever ridden one would know, 2020 Ed.].
I squealed to a halt in the main shopping centre, propped the Jog in an alley, hoping someone would nick it, and dashed into a cafe to warm up - Kiwi’s seem to ignore the cold, not wanting to recognize just how chilly the place gets, keep the heating on low. Auckland's expensive because the pound is worth sod ail, about £1 to 2.2 dollars - the cost of a cup of coffee. They give you free top-ups and I soon found myself straining the bounds of hospitality by getting about seven cups of coffee for the price of one! I was pretty wired by the time I got back on the road.
I fair flew across town on the Jog, screaming down the hills with a gale force wind behind me. Ended up in Newmarket, where an old dear let me rent a room for a hundred dollars a month - a bargain in Auckland where a studio flat costs twice that for a week! I almost immediately conked out on the dubious mattress, woke up to find the old biddy on top of me, screaming with ecstasy. Oh well, looked like I was going to be living rent free for a while.
In desperate need of some dosh, I took a job at one of the markets, selling dubious Chinese herbal cures. I reckon most of it was a commie plot to part stupid Westerners from their dosh. No work permit or relevant visa, cash in hand, etc. I'd spent most of the day getting high on the stock Tiger penis, Ginseng, Bee Pollen, Saw Palmetto berries, etc - several herbal stimulants give a stronger kick than a caffeine drip-feed, but not really up to the serious standards of Western drugs. Still it was fun to mix them altogether and give totally spurious advice to the punters, who turned up complaining of everything from baldness to impotence.
I persuaded the old dear to front me the money for a VT250, a piece of piss but at least it accelerated, braked and handled in a reasonable manner. I must admit that after five weeks under the Culler abuse, the poor old Jog looked close to death’s door, kept leaping out of gear [again, not possible. 2020 Ed.] and screaming to about 15000 revs. The owner was too polite to let loose with the nastiness I saw in his eyes - a common Kiwi trait and you can get away with murder if you’re just passing through.
After the Jog the Honda seemed like the height of sophistication and I had no end of fun pissing off the local cops by burning through red lights and failing to come to an orderly halt when gesticulated at. Such niceties as insurance and registration docs being ignored - one of the great things about being in a foreign land is that if you mess up in a big way, all you have to do is catch the first plane out [Insurance isn't compulsory in New Zealand, as anyone who had ridden there would know. 2020 Ed.]
By then the old biddy was talking about marriage and getting so insistent about sex several times a day that I was well pissed off, so it was a good time to leave town. It was straining my imagination to keep going as she had flesh like ancient leather and a body like an old wrestler gone to seed. Just as well half my brain had long ago closed down to the realities of life in the fast lane but I was a long way from home and had to take whatever was going.
Not before several surreptitious visits to the brothels to sample the local talent. 100 dollars for an hour, do anything you want and come out with a big grin. They're all over the place in Auckland, with signs outside, just walk in and take your choice. Trouble was the local women were dogs, dropped a few kids and gone to fat. A few threatened to take me to ecstasy like I'd never known before but I stuck with the Vietnamese gals who looked about fourteen and didn’t object to my not using a condom.
One really blew my mind away, kept giving me these 24 hour erections (or was it all the Ginseng I was gulping down?) and I decided to take her pillion. Some kind of Mafia shit, the girls sold by their parents just like in the Far East. No passport, no papers, barely any English, but I managed to spirit her out via the fire escape and get out of the area fast. I was shitting myself because these gangsters can turn pretty vicious, although on the surface Auckland is totally civilised and unthreatening. Massive infiuxes of Asians, with lots of drug money, was undermining the whole of their society.
The old biddy turned vicious when I went to collect my clothes, ranted on about all the rent I owed her, not to mention the couple of thousand dollars she’d lent me, and what about our marriage plans? The Vietnamese beauty meanwhile looked on bemused, probably figuring my grandmother was having a fit about my choice of companion. God, it was good to be on the open road again!
Dream time! A ton on the clock, some babe wrapping herself around my body, helmets illegally strapped on the rack, the sun just coming up on the horizon, the blue sea haze seemingly all around me as we hustled north - or was it south, everything topsy turvy at this end of the Earth - in search of some sun. Even the drugged, mind warped look in the Vietnamese’s eyes was beginning to wear off and she cracked the odd smile, though she was probably wondering what the hell she had let herself in for.
Nice, well surfaced, snaking roads, a blast on a smaller bike like the VT. They drive on the same side as the UK - just as well, otherwise my brain would've bounced right out of my head trying to figure out the permutations! I caned the little V-twin up to 13000 revs, it sort of cackled with glee, finding a smooth, sweet spot as we whizzed past everything else on the road as if they were standing still. 160km/h on the clock, probably a true ton.
Sometimes it all comes together - the drugs, the feel of the woman and illusion of total control over the bike between your knees. A curious high that pushes you into more and more manic behaviour without it really feeling mad at the time. It's only when you look back that you realise taking those bends on the wrong side of the road could’ve spelled death and disaster and that you really shouldn't have done the wheelie the length of some godforsaken little town that just happened to get in the way.
For a while I just didn’t want to stop, had the feeling that if I pulled over the whole euphoria might shatter and if that happened I might just lose my nerve. Alas, the VT chimed on to reserve, stuttered and then went dead. It took me a while to work out that reserve didn't work; in those wasted moments cars tried to batter us off the road, horns blasted and as if rearing up out of the earth a Kiwi cop car, some Japanese junk that I was sure I could outrun if only I had the motive power, appeared on my tail.
‘What the fuck you think you’re doing, mate? We nearly back-ended you back there...You drunk or something? We've been trying to pull you over for the last two klicks. Why aren't those crash helmets on your head, where they belong? You're all over the place, broken about every law in the book... What the hell do you think you're doing...’
Things were rapidly turning nasty, the pair of cops looked like they were trying to imitate some Yank highway patrolmen and were going to throw the book at me. The Vietnamese girl was shaking with fear at the mere sight of a couple of uniforms and I didn't actually know her age or for that matter the age of consent in New Zealand. Oops!
I gave the old biddy’s name and address as a reference, and where I'd left all my docs, having given her a false surname just to confuse matters. I wasn’t going to give my correct name or passport to a bunch of hick cops. They then wanted to know where I was going and the reply that I was just touring around didn't inspire any degree of trust in my nature. Luckily, the frail was bulked out in a couple of jackets, so didn’t look as young as she actually was, and they ignored her.
In the end, I got off with a stern dressing down that I almost blew by smirking - it wasn’t worth the effort of doing all the paperwork to apprehend a foreigner, was the impression I got. After harassing me for half an hour, they then pissed off with the injunction that the petrol station was only two kilometres walk away, the fatter of the two giving me a slimy grin...
Hells Angels. in New Zealand? Perhaps I was hallucinating under the pressure of pushing the Honda forever and a day. It certainly wasn't a heat mirage - the ice blue sky had clouded over and the temperature dropped rapidly down to near freezing. The ground thumped to the resonance of the 1340cc Harley V-twins. The bearded ones were bloated to outsize proportions and had expressions that indicated severe indigestion from eating raw chicken heads.
They twirled their massive machines around as if they were mere mopeds, kicking up gravel off the side of the road until it rained down on us like a furious onslaught of hailstones. I tried to ignore them, kept on pushing the Honda to the glimmer of civilization on the horizon, but one of the bros let loose with a bicycle chain - the bloody thing would’ve taken my fingers off if I hadn't let go of the handlebars!
I stepped back as the Honda clattered to the ground, with the frail hanging on to my arm as if her whole existence depended on it. The Angels weren't interested in us, they wanted to get their kicks from riding over the discarded Honda about a hundred times until the Jap crap looked like it’d been attacked by a runaway bulldozer.
I didn't stay around to see the end, as one of the guys had started screaming at me in a thick Oz accent. Something about slopes and foreigners needing to have their heads cut off. Of course, the cops were never around when you wanted them, were they? We walked to the nearby town and took the bus back to Auckland, the frail pissing off at the first opportunity. Another disaster... another day!
Al Culler
[Say your goodbyes to Mr. Culler here, folks. I've
long suspected Al's antics were something cooked up by Bill Fowler
when he had a couple of pages to fill and a print deadline was looming... I have now decided I ain't wasting any more of my time digitising this horseshit. 2020 Ed.]
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