The lowdown on the Flat

Hawea Flat. Photo: Liz Breslin

Sometimes you drive past a countryside place that looks just like any other countryside place; houses hugged to the road and set back, writes Lis Breslin.

Liz Breslin.

A gravel track. Smoke coming from a chimney somewhere. One day you might wake up and realise that you’ve lived in one such place longer than anywhere else in your life. Like, for example, Hawea Flat. In case you’ve ever wondered what kind of place it is as you whizz on past, here’s ... an outsiders guide to Hawea Flat.

(TALKING BOUT A) REPUTATION

People try to put them down. The college students who bus or drive into Wanaka are called Hawea hippies if people are feeling polite and Hawea horse sh*ts on other days. There’s the story about the angry important Wanakan who allegedly wrote a letter to the editor, alleging that the defaced letterboxes in the middle of the night in town must’ve been the work of well-known Hawea Flat yoof vandals, even though they’re all too poor and lazy to work, or drive, or anything. And then there’s the slightly puckered face people make: thumb and forefinger pinched mid-lips, the other three fingers arched above. Whatever could they mean?

EAT AND DRINK

An important consideration in any serious destination guide is the provision of coffee. Outsiders can be reassured that coffee is strong and plenty in Hawea Flat. But there’s no point recommending the best café because, um, there aren’t any. It’s all home-tamped caffeine pleasure.

If you’re invited to a Hawea Flat potluck dinner, expect at least one dish to contain lentils.  Expect also to notice/feel intimidated about (depending on your own gardening prowess) the range and size of homegrown vegetables and the homemade goats cheese from the home-milked goats. Which is not, by the way, artisanal. It just is, in Hawea Flat.

SPORTS AND RECREATION

You’d think these two mostly come down to the same thing, but there are a striking number of recreational artists and dreamers around these parts, as well as the sporting sort. On the extreme front is the Old Guys Killing It Club, consisting of, well, old guys killing it. Surfing and skiing and missioning up a storm. And/or in a storm. Storming. You can recognise members of this club outside of their natural elements by their wide smiles, waterlogged eyes and barely-masked limping.

On the other extreme, Hawea Flat affords the lifestyle opportunity of going to yoga in your gumboots. According to one aficionado, you can lie, unjudged and blissful, in old track pants and shavasana and smell the beer on the floor from the weekend before’s hooley. The Hawea Flat hall has seen more than a few such hooleys and dances and shavasanas and trapeze classes and play-group garage sales (with ukuleles and pole dancing) and karate and discos and school plays and dramas and weddings and harakeke courses and retreats and everything in between since it opened in the 1950s.

If you’re after competition, the annual town vs country series is hotly contested every Waitangi weekend. Cricket, netball, bowls, a pub quiz, fire crew racing games and the bit where the lollies get fired out of a plumbing-pipe gun thing. Or there was that one year they were dropped from a plane. Hawea Flat get to be Country, of course. Go the reds!

DON’T SAY DIY

"Maintenance" or "projects" can be full-time, full-on occupations in Hawea Flat. A good rule of thumb is to get half way through the project before realising you’re missing a crucial piece of equipment. A tractor, say. You then get to drive around the Flat looking for anyone who has a working one of whatever you’re after, drinking coffee and trading stories in the meantime. Meeean fun.

SHOPPORTUNTIES

No. Not in Hawea Flat. Apart from free range eggs straight from the source, you’d be hard pressed to spend any cash. You can get Udderly Fresh milk up the road from their dispenser, but that could be across the Luggate dividing line. Not sure. There is, of course, The Sharing Shed on Kane Road, opposite the school bus stop and the windmill that doesn’t wind or mill, on the corner that the cars should definitely not drive so fast around. Because what’s the hurry, people? People drop off their unwanted clothes, homewares and excess homegrowns. It’s not on the expectation of exchange or anything. The clue is in the title. There are more than 1000 members of its accompanying Facebook page. Of course it has a Facebook page. Rural doesn’t equal untechnological, you know. The school is even said to be Ultrafast — and that’s just the speed of the Hawea horse-sh*t students.