Maniototo (NZ Landscape)

Big Big Sky

I reckon Kate Bush has been to Maniototo, in Central Otago. That’s where she got her inspiration for Big Big Sky. Janet Frame wrote passionately about the place and Graham Sydney has brought it alive on his canvases. Giving us an audio, visual and bookish insight into the big wide-open country.

Late afternoon.

From my vantage point I have ineptly tried to capture it in digital pixels. I will fail. I can use the full memory card in my camera and still not get that sky in. A photo misses the quality of the air, the fine definition, and its emptiness. The vast 3 dimensionalness is beyond my limited vocabulary. Perhaps this is why the Health Board built this Sanatorium here for TB patients. To give them lots of fresh air and something vast to look at. The complex we are staying at is perched on the Southern foothills of the Maniototo plain. It has an awesome panorama, 270 degrees of it. I know why I am having trouble capturing this view. It’s because I haven’t anything I can compare it to. It is so different, that’s its weird beauty.

I look across a wide-open plain. A patchwork of greens and browns. Dotted with miniature trees like a model railway. Somewhere down there beyond my eyesight is the old path of the railway. Snaking its way across the flat. It used to be a pathway for trains now it is a main vein for tourism. The mountain bikes pulse along it like red blood cells. Replenishing the cafes, pubs and B and Bs with valuable gold. It was a stroke of genius to take an old disused line and turn it into a rail trail. The main artery supplies from the heart. Clyde, all the way down to another major organ, Middlemarch. I noticed vehicles in Maniototo don’t carry spare tyres they carry spare bikes just in case you run out of fuel I suppose. It’s very likely because it’s a long way between stations.

A tiny dot races across a backcountry road leaving a rooster tail of dust. The sun is creeping across the plain illuminating the paddocks one by one. Like the last of a wave sneaking up the beach to your bare feet… knees, whilst you’ve got your back turned. In the centre of the Plain is a gathering of English trees sprinkled with a cluster of houses. Their windows and metal parts reflect the suns intensity, star like. In fact at night they make their own constellation against the total darkness of the black velvet plain.

In the middle distance the foothills are rounded and smooth. As the sun sets they are a study of contrast. Dark and light, a fawn silk sheet crumpled and exhausted, lying peaceful after a frantic day of high-energy sun. The foothills are a gentle introduction to the jagged range of bare rocks trying unsuccessfully to hold up the Big Big sky. The Mountains are steely gunmetal grey. Now in Summer sprinkled only at the very tops with the merest hint of snow. The grey against the blue defines the crisp skyline. More impressive than any cityscape man could try to imitate.

Then there is just Sky. A full two thirds of my view is filled in with Big blue sky at first a pastel starling egg blue leading up to a darker azure highland blue. The sort of blue that speaks of clarity and pureness. Heavenly.

This morning.

Scattered through the big sky is only a handful of clouds. None of them look like Ireland today. Today they are pristine white wispy stringy high-speed stuff. Lower down they are clumpy browny grey threatening but not really meaning to rain. Unlike yesterdays curtain sheets that ran across the plain gobbling up the landscape then spitting it out the other side, washed, rinsed and sparkling.

The quality of the light is amazing. A new sort of focus like getting new glasses. The light plays games. It falls and creeps across the plain like a slow rolling wave or it punches through clouds and acts like God's spotlight. Or it hides in the folds of the foothills only revealing little bits at a time.

It is entirely that quality that makes this place so attractive to poets, writers, painters and dreamers. Kate knows but even she fails to catch the essence, Graham knows but he is stuck with 2D. You’ve got to come see and feel for yourself. Bring your bike and Kate's CD it’ll get you in the right frame of mind.

 

Big Big Sky by Kate Bush

They look down

At the ground,
Missing.
But I never go in now.
I am looking at the Big Sky.
I'm looking at the Big Sky now.
I'm looking at the Big Sky.
You never really understood me.
You never really tried.
That cloud, that cloud--
Looks like Ireland.
C'mon and blow it a kiss now,
But quick,
'Cause it's changing in the Big Sky,
It's changing in the Big Sky now.
We're looking at the Big Sky.
You never understood me.
You never really tried.
This cloud, this cloud--
Says "Noah,
C'mon and build me an Ark."
And if you're coming, jump,
'Cause
We're leaving with the Big Sky.
We're leaving with the Big Sky.
And we pause for the jets--
hup! hup!--in the Big Sky!
You want my reply?
What was the question?
I was looking at the Big Sky.
Tell 'em, sisters!
"Rolling over like a great big cloud,
Rolling over with the Big Sky!
Rolling over like a great big cloud,
Rolling over with the Big Sky!"