Wherewhere and Erewhon

Hoo has just driven over the Taihape to Napier Road and is pretty pleased with himself.

…

Hoo: I’d never done it before.

Wat: You sixty and you never been Taihape Napier?

Hoo: My father say people go missing. They start at Taihape but they never arrive in Napier. Now I know why.

Wat: You know why?

Hoo: They all went off down Wherewhere Road. No Exit. Massive graveyard at end.

Wat: I heard it because they all end up at Erewhon.

Hoo: Erewhon.

Wat: 20 ks further on. Nowhere spelled backwards. Well, half backwards.

Hoo (shrugging): Who knows?

__________

Voiceover

Although Samuel Butler (1835-1902) did not farm Erewhon Station (he was a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station in Canterbury), out here on the Napier-Taihape Road the old New Zealand exists much as he might have viewed it in the 1860s. Ah the old New Zealand. Everything that Modern Auckland (Sodom and Gomorrah?) is not. Sky, hills, rivers, some sheep, overpowering emptiness. Here, it is hard to believe as Butler prophesied that machines will eventually replace man in ruling the planet and such concerns are hardly the stuff of farmers’ conversations. The farmers might seem to have had a bit of fun with place names in the area but the Wherewhere Road is likely a Maori name.