Don't be timorous about our beastie

By LOUISA HERD*

Now that the fuss over the one-eyed taniwha of the Waikato has been settled to the satisfaction of all except Deborah Coddington, isn't it time to consider the huge tourism potential of such a creature?

Coming from a country which has turned a similar beastie into a bottomless gold mine, second only to oil in revenue generation and intimately entwined in the national psyche with our other great export, whisky, I think you need your heads read if you allow this valuable attraction to sink back into swampy obscurity.

The Loch Ness monster is the most famous of Scotland's each uisges (pronounced yach ooskys), or water-horses. Nessie is first mentioned in an ancient chronicle of St Columba: in AD565, the saint and a brother monk were crossing Loch Ness in a coracle and the monster tipped them over in the hope of a snack.

St Columba rescued his friend and gave the monster a talking to, since when, it is said, she has eschewed her meat-loving days and turned vegetarian. Possibly the saint doesn't deserve all the credit for her conversion - maybe monk tasted funny. A bit dry, one would think, and those hairy robes would stick in anyone's throat.

Each uisges have been disporting themselves in our lochs - eating maidens, stealing cattle and generally making nuisances of themselves - for thousands of years, but until the Great Caledonian Tourist Boom pioneered by Queen Victoria and Thomas Cook, nobody south of the Highland Line had heard of them.

Then, in October 1871, during a slump in bed and breakfast bookings, a man by the name of Mackenzie spotted a strange object traversing the calm waters of the loch, and Nessie-mania was born.

Hotels, motels and guesthouses, owned and staffed by locals, are now filled almost year round by Nessie-spotters. Local boatmen profit from trips around the loch, guiding folk to sites associated with the monster. Pubs and restaurants do a roaring trade, especially in summer, because it's well known that Nessie likes to come up for a breath of air during the long Scottish twilights, and no hunter worth his salt goes out a-monstering without a skinful of single malt.

Talisker fumes charm her to the surface, a fact unknown to the annual expeditions - usually funded by some scientifically inclined American billionaire - that arrive in Inverness hoping to find proof, demanded by Northern Hemisphere Coddingtons, of her existence.

They spend a few months trawling the loch, then head disconsolately home, towing their submersibles and sonar gear with them, having found nothing more interesting than an empty Glenmorangie bottle. It doesn't stop them coming back.

Nessie generates much-needed cash in the shape of the countless T-shirts, toffee tins, soft toys, notelets, oven gloves, tea towels, kitchen tidies and music boxes sold in her image. Most are mass-produced foreign tat, but many locals are finding employment in the manufacturing and selling of souvenirs with a bit more class.

It's filthy tourist lucre, yes, but it's keeping people in jobs. It's bringing in development money. It's giving the younger generation a chance to live on in the home of their forebears.

Imagine what that kind of scenario could do for Ngaruawahia or any of these other small north Waikato towns. Questing Americans on the taniwha trail would need somewhere to stay. Why not give them traditional Maori hospitality? Marae stays, with hangi food, music and song. Scare the pants off them in the evenings with Maori legends skilfully told. Have souvenirs ready for them to buy with those dollars burning holes in their pockets.

Okay, the thought of selling plush taniwha wearing piupiu to Texans may offend the cultural sensitivities of some, but if it's made locally and sold in a local shop that employs locals, how can your taniwha object?

There is nothing in little Kiwi backwaters to keep the young people there. Surely the guardian spirits of those places forgotten by Reserve Bank economists will not mind being exploited to some extent if it means their children stay around them?

I felt irrationally pleased when Transit New Zealand decided to leave the taniwha alone, for he made me think of our Nessie. All Scots are at heart rather proud of her. Like the Yanks and their nukes, we will neither confirm nor deny her existence.

Whether she is happily commuting between the loch and the North Sea through a secret tunnel, whether her lair is in a deep cavern under Castle Urquhart, or whether she does indeed play the bagpipes and wear a tartan toorie, as she is so often depicted as doing, all are aspects of her mystery that endear her to us.

None of us would want to see her captured, just as I'd be sad if someone did find the one-eyed taniwha. Let him have his swamp, but, like Nessie, I'm sure he wouldn't mind his people making a bit of a living from his well-deserved notoriety.

* Louisa Herd is a Wellsford writer.