The people of the journey: Darren

The cautionary tale of a character I met in this life and how things gradually soured.

Setting the scene: the kitchen, featuring mattress. Note bike and kayak outdoors

Something a little different today. I’ve thought long and hard about writing this, but concluded I had to. It’s an important reminder that not all people you meet while travelling are good sorts.

It was the 20th April and we were wrestling with the DOC website to book the Milford Track. Zoe on one side of Nelson city, me at Tāhunanui Holiday Park. The location made no difference, the booking system had come to work with no intention of actually doing any bookings.

As this artificial industrial action played out, I found myself standing up to take frustrated laps of the camp kitchen’s large, wooden table. It was during one of these waddles that a fellow camper asked “how you doing?”. Darren (name changed, sorry to anyone called Darren) said he was from Christchurch. He was with a woman of similar age and a young girl, who he said were his sister and niece. They were in town for a gymnastics competition, which his niece was expected to perform well at.

Friendly, partially unkept and fractionally rough around the edges, Darren was similar to many characters I’ve met on campgrounds and holiday parks over the years. The striking difference was his age. Normally, these folk are upwards of their late 50s, either permanently resident or living the motorhome retirement. Darren was in his mid-30s.

Clearly experienced in kitchen work, he spent the days and nights before the weekend wearing the metaphorical pinny, roasting and frying anything and everything caught in his path. It was quite the sight seeing this culinary Terminator serve up and endless array of homecooked meals to his whānau. Impressed by his dedication, I ‘let him in’ a little bit.

Experience has taught me to hold off becoming too pally with folk I meet on the road. Too many are sadly just half a friendly chat from dropping an unchopped racist remark into the conversational blender. If not racist, then sexist. If neither, they’ll demonstrate that they’ve fallen for the culture war hook, line and sinker and excrete their opinion into your ear-space, where they’ll leave it festering, like a unflushable lump in the bowl. Darren did none of that. He seemed like a genuinely good bloke, stable and friendly.

At this time, the park was also home to another guy: Corey, a Working Holiday visa holder from the US. He was staying in a tent, but his early work starts and long hours would creep up on him and he’d occasionally fall asleep on the comfortable couches in the heat-pump-warmed TV end of the kitchen. A cold snap was lingering over Nelson, making tent life only for the hardy. Darren followed suit, taking to sleeping on the other couch.

Morning would roll around and I’d traipse into the luxurious kitchen for my 7am coffee to find him crashed out. Sometimes the TV would still be on. It was the off-season and the place was barely being used, so it didn’t impede anyone. Besides, he was leaving next week, right?

The weekend came and I headed out on an overnight adventure. I was eager to get a trip in before we moved into the hostel and my hut pass expired. When I returned, on the Monday night, things had changed. Firstly, I was issued the same site Darren and his family were on before I left. Yet, when I walked into the kitchen, he was still there.

“Oh, my sister and I had a bit of a barney and she went up the coast for a few nights,” he assured me, “she’ll be back in a couple of days.”

I was saddened by this. For all the cooking and good-humoured chat I’d witnessed between these two siblings, and with his niece, all was not right. This sudden shake-up set off alarm bells in my head. The week was about to get interesting.

Next morning, Darren showed me his spoils from ‘dumpster diving’ a well-known sports shop in town. I will refrain to judge those who raid shop bins. It’s not exactly crime of the decade and nobody should rot in jail for helping themselves to items destined for landfill. Yet, he slipped in my estimations. As he proudly showed me the chipped plywood skimboard and faulty $200 sleeping mattress he’d pilfered, I felt a sense of pity. (Actually, we’re in the market for a camping mattress like that, so I also felt a pang of jealousy!). “Admittedly, I had to jump over a small fence to reach it”, he said, his words accompanied with a hand at about thigh-level.

Another night passed and I slid the glass door of the kitchen open once again. The audio from an American sports panel show boomed from the tellybox, straight into my ears. The male guests were venting at pace about basketball. Darren was snoozing on the couch and, because it was ANZAC Day, Corey was on the other couch.

Outside the kitchen on the grass lay a tiny child’s kayak. Last night’s spoils? I enquired and he confirmed it was, along with several pairs of socks “which had all been snipped”. Upon inspection, the kayak had a large split in the bottom of the hull.

“I held it under my arm and rode it back on the bike”, Darren claimed. I don’t care what you think of him at this point, that’s impressive!

“So, what are your plans today?” I asked from the giant table, eating my breakfast. Darren was horizontal on the couch, laptop open on a work-in-progress CV.

“Going to head to the bank, get some money and pay for a site”, he replied. He didn’t have a tent, his sister had taken that. He had a bike, a split skimboard, a leaky double mattress and a kid’s plastic kayak, but no tent. And his sister wasn’t coming back.

In a matter of days, this guy had gone from fun, family vacation to squatting in the holiday park kitchen. He was spiralling downwards before my very eyes.

“I really like Nelson. Think I’ll stick around and find work here” he told me. Before the weekend, he’d drunkenly booked flights to southeast Asia, and said he was intent on saving for his trip. The ol’ drunken flight booking, eh?

In the days that followed, he continued the pretence he was going to pay the camp, while making zero effort to remain inconspicuous. His baby kayak took up residence on a picnic bench outside the kitchen. His mattress found a home inside, propped against a wall, pinned there by two chairs. The cleaner would show up like clockwork at midday, but without a guest list. He was just there for the cleaning!

There was an important US basketball match taking place on the Friday. I say “important”, as Darren knew all about it and bet a bit of money on it. Later that afternoon, I was at my tent, when the peace was shattered by an uplifting roar. Darren bounded out of the kitchen door and fist-pumped the sunny air. He was yelping with delight. “Eighteen hundred bucks in the bank account!” he screamed. Gambling, click! Another piece of the puzzle slotted into place.

That night, he cruised into camp on his bike and started preparing a shoulder of meat for the oven. “Do you have a sharp knife?” he asked me. Wary of my gear and it being used for slicing up animal body parts (actually, all body parts!), he assured me it wasn’t for his food. I lent him my Leatherman Wingman, an oldy, but goody multitool. I got it as my first ever FlyBuys reward, back in my early days living in New Zealand. It later came round the country with me on The Big Loop. We go way back!

“Wow, that’s sharp!” Darren remarked, taking an instant shining to my knife. He popped outside with it, I presumed to tend to some repairs on his kiddy boat. He then returned it, leaving it with my cooking items on the bench. Zoe and I were eating dinner, but I gave the knife a glance and thought “I must make sure that’s packed away tonight”.

Being a Friday, the kitchen was a little busier than usual. One older man sat watching the rugby, while a pair of friends from Germany made and ate pizza. Darren helped himself to my knife again, which I didn’t notice, but I did see him return it. I popped outside to see what he was up to: he was making a bong! He was celebrating his win at the bookies!

Knife and all my kitchen gear packed away in its box, I drove Zoe home, then went to bed. It was my last night in the tent, after more than a year. The next day, we would take up our new roles in the hostel and adjust to living in a flat. That night, I did what I’d been doing during almost my entire stay at the holiday park: I left my cooking box on the shelves in the kitchen.

Morning arrived and I shunted open the sliding door to the kitchen. Darren had fully migrated to the floor, where he lay, comatose on his mattress. Talk about brazen. It’s true what they say about swindlers: the drug is ‘getting away with it’. The more they get away with it, the more they want to get away with. The booty from Stick-up Number 1 will never be enough for Heist Number 10. By not being caught, he’d become the least subtle overstayer: his goods strewn all over the place, like a hoarder’s garden.

Coffee brewing, I checked through my box of kitchen implements and noticed immediately my Leatherman had gone. I sensed I knew where.

Diligently drying my tent in the sunshine for the last time, I took my time packing up camp, waiting to question my suspect. I visited the kitchen and found Corey, but Darren had gone. The spirit had risen!

Everything was away in my car, but I was in no rush, so I plonked myself down on the plush furniture, in front of the TV. After ten minutes playing on my phone, Darren walked in. I began with some lowballs, just to get his bat swinging, then asked him for my tool.

“Uh, uh. It was back in your box. Then that English guy who was watching the rugby came in and… uh, he used one of your boxes from your stuff!”

“One of my boxes? What sort of box?”

“Like a takeaway box,” he was scrambling.

“Takeaway box? I don’t have any takeaway boxes”, I informed him

He replied: “Errr. Oh, well, maybe it was one of your plates he used. That was it: he took the food out of his takeaway box and used your plate!”

I played along, but wasn’t buying it. Trouble is, you don’t go head-to-head with the of your sharp knife, no matter how blunt the thief may be.

He wasn’t going to relent, so I played the last card in my hand: I went to reception and reported it stolen. The chances of getting it back were slim, but at least they might watch the CCTV footage and notice the uninvited guest dwelling in their kitchen.

Upset it had ended this way, I jumped in my car and drove to the city to move into our new place. The sense of a new beginning helped soothe the sensation of loss. It was just a thing, a free gift, it didn’t matter.

Travelling through town, I passed the aforementioned sports store. I couldn’t help noticing the high fence blocking off their bin area. It was considerably taller than Darren had implied.

Later on, I messaged Corey, highlighting the tool’s sentimental value to me, in the vague hope Darren would flinch if he heard that. He did, sort of. Corey later replied saying Darren had found the knife “in his lunchbox”.

However, after three return visits, it seems Darren has faded from existence, after getting chased off the holiday park. He’s probably muddling his way through life in someone else’s reality now.

Lesson learnt. At least I didn’t become besties with a racist, right?