Kia ora, hello! I’m Dunc and I still live in a tent. Despite the apparently endless challenges, this way of life is still out of choice. I found a cushty job that pays my camp fees and the adventure fund has slowly crept up over winter. I depart for the next stages of my Waka & Waewae Journey in the coming days!
Unfortunately, this winter has been a record-breaker for rain. According to NIWA, July 2022 was the country’s wettest July ever recorded. My tent and I would like to go on record to confirm this. From our point of view - which is both of us lying on the ground looking up at the sky - it has rained a lot these last three months. It has rained more than I thought it was possible to rain in Aotearoa. With the rain has come storms and winds, some very strong winds. What a time to take the #tentlife full-time!
Admittedly, the camp I live on has many options for shelter. Perhaps I have been too trusting of my gear, too lazy to move it to safety or maybe even reckless. I could’ve done more. The situation hasn’t been helped by my appetite for testing my equipment. I like to push my gear to the limit, just to see where that limit is. Ooops!
Anyway, my aged Kathmandu Boreas tent suffered two breaks over winter. When I say ‘breaks’, I literally mean breaks like a broken bone. With a tasty flesh wound on top; snapped poles and a torn fly. I’ve had spare poles since I snapped my first one during The Big Loop, so mending the bones hasn’t been a problem. The first flesh wound was sewn up by a seamstress co-dweller here at the camp and she did a fabulous job. Then came the second tear. The one I told you about before.
Of course, this rip coincided with a dramatic shift in the culture at the camp. New Zealand’s borders fully reopened and the backpackers were back! As two more of our original Pukenui crew left, a fleet of Toyota Estimas crammed with younger overseas travellers arrived. My pal and co-worker Lennie looked on in disbelief as our kitchen - yes, “our kitchen”, where just four of us had hunkered down from all that rain - was taken over by newbies.
Fresh into the country, these ‘backpackers’ - as they are misnamed, since there isn’t a backpack to be seen - have wanted to do everything, in a very short space of time. Hikes, beach trips, beach runs, drives, ice creams, coffees; I got swept up in the never-ending social enchantment. The tent, rolled up and stowed on the floor in the pool room (the game, not swimming type), was a ‘Future Dunc Problem’. I have my hiking tent here too, I have been sleeping in that - all good!
Gradually, over three sessions, I fixed the poles, stitched up the tear and covered my new seams with vinyl tape. I replaced one of the two broken pole sections with pieces from my mk. 1 Boreas tent poles. I didn’t have the right piece for the second snap. Instead, I got a brace tube from Lennie and taped that into place. I’ve noticed a weakening in the alloy poles as they’ve aged. The sewing was a very basic needle-and-thread job that would make my textiles-professional sister ashamed to associate with me. Finally, sticking the vinyl repair tape on was a case of cutting strips to fit, then sticking them on with the same accuracy I used to lay the stickers in my Panini football sticker albums as a child. Job done!
Of course, as I re-erected my home, a huge shower cloud came flying over the camp and drenched the inner before I could get the fly on! Classic. I finished setting up and headed out to climb Kaiaraara Rock/Dukes Nose, leaving it to dry in the spring sun. One positive of this tent is how fast it dries when wet. I returned that night and moved back in to its luxurious 3-person real estate. If you like sleeping surrounded by all your possessions, then a 3-person tent is for you, dear solo traveller.
The bones and flesh may be healed, but the small leaks I’ve been enduring under heavy rain remained. The past week had been mostly dry, until a very special delivery of precipitation came in on Thursday arvo. While moving back into my watertight (and bombproof) Zempire hiking tent, I saw an all too familiar sight on the Boreas: yet another pole had snapped and was protruding through the fly. “Oh, you have got to be kidding!”, I told the tent.
Roll on The Waka & Waewae Journey!