FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Column

Mountain boy's cry for provincial equality
"I have a dream ... that my four little children will one day live in a Tauranga where they will not be judged by the fact their father is from Taranaki, but by the content of their character ...
"I have a dream ... that one day on the green hills of Welcome Bay, the sons of Tauranga and the sons of Taranaki will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood ..."
I've often pictured myself standing atop Mt Drury, delivering this cry for provincial equality to my oppressed 'Nakian brothers and sisters.
But something tells me that, rather than the 200,000 civil rights supporters Martin Luther King jnr addressed at the Lincoln Memorial, my audience would consist of a lone, gumbooted sharemilker named Maurice.
The lot of a Taranakian is a hard one, filled with disparaging digs about what we in Taradise apparently define as "animal husbandry" and how our beloved amber-and-blacks managed to tumble from second to sixth on the ITM Cup points table last Saturday.
In Hawke's Bay, I've been cast aside as a bow-legged hayseed with an unexplainable mastery of the banjo; in Auckland, my dear homeland has been written off as an "evolutionary cul-de-sac", while one Wellingtonian belittled my people as "lumpy, white, ruddy, iodine-deficient mountain yokels".
I've even encountered anti-Nakian sentiment in Masterton, of all places, where the big cultural drawcard is a sheep-shearing contest. Ouch.
But Tauranga, I expected different of you.
While our sand may be black and yours white, I had hoped that with our Taranaki/Egmont and your Mauao, we might be a like-minded Tangata o Te Maunga, or people of the mountain.
"Nah, you guys are just a bunch of inbred peninsula-dwellers," came the aspersion from a Tauranga resident.
Another local then stepped in, trying to soften the blow: "I think you Taranaki people are kind of sheltered, you know ... you like doing things like running around in paddocks." Okay, fair point, we do like our paddocks but, contrary to the latter Tauranga inhabitant's perception that we are a "bunch of hard-nuts who don't take any & per cent#", we do have feelings. You only have to look at the subjugated expressions on the faces of the other browbeaten Taranaki souls you sometimes find seeking refuge at the TSB Bank in Willow St or gazing up at Mauao, teary-eyed and homesick for their own maunga.
Last week, the attendant at the drive-thru window at Wendy's noticed my TSB eftpos card and murmured, "Are you ... from Taranaki, too?", as if relieved to find another mountain brother in such a strange and cruel land.
I simply nodded and said "yeah", but inside I wanted to raise my fist and assure him, "We shall overcome brother ... oh don't worry, a change is gonna come." When my own spirits need lifting, I turn to some of the good folks back home to find out what makes us Nakians so great.
Trish Dwyer, staunch co-founder of clothing label Taranaki Hard Core, reckons it's our love of the outdoors, of rugby, and of each other. New Plymouth Mayor elect and former MP Harry Duynhoven, whose cellphone reception kept breaking up because he was out in the back-blocks, probably doing something hardcore, described us as a "resilient, self-contained people who like to do things for ourselves and perhaps don't have a lot of time for people's airs and graces".
But Harry's immediate mayoral predecessor, Peter Tennent, put it best: "The Taranaki person is someone who's incredibly proud ... incredibly hospitable ... and always connected to Taranaki.
"Someone, even though he's moved away to go work for the Bay of Plenty Times, is still connected."
Amen brother Peter, Amen.