Time’s Up

It’s looking like we might have to ease up a bit … slim chance of going anywhere if the pumps run dry. Penny’s dropping like flies as our kiwi dependence on offshore refined oil for virtually everything is laid bare.

“You’re the second person that’s said that to me this morning” Evan replied when I told him he was now likely to be everyone’s new best friend. Ev is a bike mechanic, an expert, and he was tweaking up my 3 seater. Seems the common bicycle is set to become more a valuable item with each passing day. Even more than my spare accordion I’ve lent him. Thinking we’re gonna need lots of accordions to mop up the tears.

Duplicitous bastard I always am, I’m currently driving around Aotearoa in my petrol burning HiAce, running smartphone video workshops for people involved in Environment Hubs and sustainability centres. Folks primarily into community and local food resilience. I should be biking, instead I’m foot on the gas blasting Classic Hits. Some would say I’ve let myself go.

I’m workshopping folks with dirt under their nails, helping them shoot, edit and publish short video stories on their phones, so they can make noise on social bout what they’re growing/doing and how, bottlenecks and workarounds. I’m lucky to be meeting some pretty cool cats.

Talk about timing, geopolitics and all that. Our culture has always been heading toward a forced localism it’s just When that’s been raffled. How far we can walk, paddle, cycle and sail may well define our worlds. Food, shelter and conflict resolution, the big picture KPI’s now touching down home and personal.

Supermarkets, iterated as they are around diesel supply chains, may be powerless to keep up. Composting, bottling, preserving, pickling, fermenting et al gonna be bigger than the All Blacks. Forget MasterChef, we’re looking at MasterVeg, down in the dirt with wormcam. Batman’s gone, it’s now Bugman. Better still BugGrl - patriarchy in the back seat for while, cool off boys.

I’m on the third leg of my journey, begun in February. Now into March I’m off round the Sth Island. I pitch the sessions as a yr of film school in half a day. The full shebang is 4-5 hrs long, and some just one or two hour quickies. The workshops are free/koha, so yeah another passion project that costs rather than earns, freedom camping my way round in the van, dipping in the surf and streams, bludging a shower here n’ there. Doing it cos I love turning people onto storytelling, and I’m super nosey. I want to see what peep’s are doing for themselves in growing and sharing food. So it’s more research I guess, and that great buzz, talking to strangers.

In Thames, a Coromandel of community gardeners, recycling centre and kiwi care peep’s, wetland planters and activists looking to frustrate the fresh attempts of the mining companies, currently going gangbusters cos ‘there’s money in them there hills’ … gold silver, minerals.

Carterton, New Plymouth, Wellington’s Sustainability Business Network, the Te Aroha marae at Kai Iwi, Nina’s living room in Picton. All memorable sessions, happening because of one or two motivated individuals in each locality are gathering up citizen storytellers and newbies keen to be, and making it happen. Bless these people, community driven gold each one.

Working it out together. In absence of any real global leadership, we need to step up. No one is coming to plant our kumara’s. Angela, kuia at the marae session chuckled “we’ve been doing that all our lives, the māra(vegetable garden) is a big part of the marae, feeding people is # 1 and sure there’s Pak n’ Save, but we’ve got lots going on just out the back here”.

We could do well to elevate indigenous ways, foods and herbal remedies(rongoa), community sharing of task and reward - in step with navigating our imminent local and repair focussed economy.

It means a realtime gear change, re-imagining how we spend our time. The diminishing of institution - education, career, portfolio. We’re all going to be growers of food, enablers of water, clothing, warmth, builders of shelter and keepers of peace and equity. Unemployment unknown, all hands on deck.

Don’t freak. Mother nature needs this, and we’ll work it out if we keep our cool. For me it’s bout finding a personal zen, making peace with how we got in this situation, what lies underneath our feet now, and navigating what will likely present ahead. Google maps won’t help, it’ll be our skillsets, grit, stamina, connection and compassion. Fun times.

A fave whakatauki here: Courage is not a lack of fear, courage is fear walking.

Before I left home on this leg, I took some photo’s of my own māra. We couldn’t live off it, but our wee ¼ acre has supplemented the eftpos food sources we use. Our home on Waiheke has crap soil, all clay and stone, so it’s been several yrs of composting seaweed, horse poo, coffee grinds and other waste foods from fruit n’ vegetable outlets and cafes. I’m a food waste scavenger, a wierdo, happy around the smell of decomposition. This summer at our place there’s been lots for the bees, and a reasonable amount for us in the way of veggies, fruit and herbs. Not expansive volumes, but it’s a start, we’re learning what works and what doesn’t, bottlenecks and workarounds.

These pics remind me of the magic of growing food. Chickens/eggs could also be a go when I get home. Ecuadorians love to spit roast their Hamsters, so maybe some hamsters. Gotta have protein. And can never have enough broad beans and other legumes.

I’m an average gardener - I plant a whole lot of stuff in only half prep’d soil, then get busy on other stuff neglecting to clock the daily needs of small seedlings. Like water, which is a scarce commodity on Waiheke island. It comes off the roof or not all. Does make one highly respectful of weather patterns, living rain cloud to rain cloud.

Parked up above the Patea River mouth a few nights back, I chat to some Filipino builders out on the breakwater, set to fish into the night before heading back to Hawera for work. ‘We are so lucky to be able to do this’ said one with good English, all of them beaming and chirping filipino. With Patea Maori Club’s famous hit ‘Poi ē’ the soundtrack of the day, it’s a joy to hear this different language, this different music, mixing it up with Te Reo. That’s us going fwd I think, this melting pot of cool peep’s. Choice also to see there’s still some bounty in the ocean, fab.

Right now we’re past the halfway mark March 2026, gas prices creeping up. The real issues are soon to be bigger than pricing. They are supply and availability, of lots of stuff. Even if the various seaways like Straits of H open tomorrow and it’s business as usual, it’s still coming, opening act already here.

For generations our financialised industrial growthwashing narrative flew from the top of the pole, unquestionably. ‘There is no other way’ said Thatcher.

One of NZ’s big retailers moving globalised consumer goods, once proudly broadcast they were ‘making the desirable affordable’ … the desirable is set to be barely affordable or available. Let alone desirable, a lot of it’s consumer tat.

For we that haven’t been paying attention, it’s unnerving. Collapse of commodity mkts, financial mkts, mass redundancies, a global depression significantly worse than the 2008 GFC, something more akin to the great depression of the 1930’s only with climate patterns spazzing out and a fck lot more people on the planet competing to be fed.

“You can’t come out and say that, people would panic”, were the words of a friend of mine who works in national security, when I suggested the government of the day missed the opportunity to kick start serious local food resilience around the country. The issue at hand was the first covid lockdown, and we didn’t know whether we were facing the black plague or a simple flu virus, or as some were inclined to think, a load of conspiratorial bollocks.

I wanted to hear the Prime Minister come out and say something like ‘we don’t know where this is heading, what supply chain breaks we’re facing, so we’re encouraging all of us to start a veggie garden, and we’ll incentivise it, here look, I’m already rocking a silver beet in a bucket. Let’s go Y’all’.

Imagine if the corporate welfare then given to businesses, was in part given in incentives to dig, emergency containers of spades shipped in, garden supplies, assistance and tuition. Sometimes shit’s just gotta get real. I’ll own it, I’m a composting hard arse, medium rare on the outside, cooked in the middle.

A few years back our local community board had a sterling initiative - two free fruit tree’s to every suburban resident with a berm. Renting or owning, didn’t matter. Council dumped truckloads of compost and mulch on street corners and it was up to us to dig the holes and keep them mulched and watered through the first summer. I have a fig and guava, both on the berm, public fruit for anyone to help themselves. Next door there’s citrus out front. Awesome initiative.

Meanwhile some collective anxiety - back above the equator, one or more psycho manboys playing with matches could well unleash a nuclear popper.

It’s watch this space. Are we gonna see more military tech people pummelling Gaza styles, or maybe even the crown jewel of our age of anxiety, a stakes high nuclear popper.

They’ve been marketing some shocking new armaments in the Ukraine and Palestine. As it’s always been through history. Thermodynamic, thermonuclear, white phosphorous, dudes lining up to buy these batshit cruel advanced armaments. “Small, contained, strategic” they’ll say … whatever that means. Should that escalate, it’ll be a challenge to habit significant swathes of the northern hemisphere. Challenges for the Sth too.

Lord of the Rings and Jacinda Ardern have helped put New Zealand on the global stage, so billions know where we live. A paradise of relative peace, an escape from military madness, a chance to survive maybe even thrive. We’re not the best economic performers re GDP growth, but these indices will likely lose gravitas. Possibly a good thing. We have soil, water and for now, sunshine, all the ingredients needed to generate food in our local hoods.

I’m thinking we could find hordes of people globally, seeking passage on whatever seagoing vessel they can and heading our way. Container ships, trawlers, anything with diesel that can possibly take on the Pacific and Tasman seas. It will have nothing to do with airports, passports, visa’s, retina scans or customs officers. Follow the money, there’ll likely be multiple refugee runs for some vessels, others likely to just beach themselves, mission complete. Our immigration stance and enforcement abilities at that point won’t be able to keep up.

Similarly for military powers. If warships from the US or China or wherever want to rock into our waters, they just will. What are we gonna do? Fly a peace sign and flick them with a wet T- towel ? Whichever flavour of saviour men-of-war seize the anchorages will be a moot point. Any of these vessels of menace in our harbours make us a target to other manboys who wear a different strip.

Sounds Hunger Games but I don’t see it that way. Said manboys should know we’re entering the age of aquarius, that the old schtick is up. And yes, they’ve missed the memo, n’ bets on they’ll throw their toys every which way on the way out, already are. There’s such good revenue for stakeholders in warfare, and we’re conditioned to coo over a good revenue model. Such a conflicted species aren’t we ? And very late to the party.

Bottom line is this: mother nature needs this modern world, this oil world, to stop. She birthed us, and she’s playing her hand in the great humbling.

So let’s get with the play. Walk, paddle, cycle, sail, and get to know the spade like our lives depend on it. Cos they will.