James Griffin: Beware concert-going bunnies

James Griffin. Photo / Dean Purcell

A couple of weeks ago on television, there was an Australian tele-movie full of Kiwi actors, called Panic at Rock Island. It was all about how there was a rock concert on an island in Sydney harbour, which didn't go entirely according to plan because heaps of people on the island caught a wicked virus that first made everyone spew everywhere, like they were at a rugby league double-header at Eden Park. Then they stopped spewing and started bleeding from every orifice until finally they coughed up blood like the Mission Bay fountain and died. It was excellent family viewing.

Anyway, it turned out that the virus came from some evil corporation (with a primo real-estate Sydney harbourside laboratory-facility) who were brewing up the most evil bugs known to humanity, yet who could afford only one guard dog to chase away intruders and two slacker security guards to watch the dog on a TV monitor. Quite why they were brewing these bugs in central Sydney wasn't really clear, but that didn't matter because this was one of those shows where logic was of little importance.

I mention Panic at Rock Island here only because, in an eerie fiction-meets-reality scenario, this weekend there is a rock concert, on an island, in Auckland. Woah, freaky. It's out on Motutapu and various acts like Nathan Haines, Anika Moa, Minuit and the Wellington International Ukelele Orchestra will be entertaining the masses and scaring the native birds in support of the Motutapu Restoration Trust.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting in any way, shape or form that Panic at Rock Island was a documentary-before-the-event of events that may unfold out in the Gulf this weekend, but one does tend to wonder how things might pan out if Panic on Motutapu were to unfold before our very eyes on the island known as Te Motu tapu a Taikehu.

I'm picking it would start with a lone-wolf Hone Harawira-like figure making dark warnings about going to the island and how, generally, the word "tapu" in the island name doesn't suggest something that can ever end well. But no one listens to the lone wolf because, well, he's a Hone Harawira-like figure, so no one likes him very much and they all just wish he'd go away.

But Hone doesn't go away. He goes to the island instead, stealing one of those luxury superboat things from down at the Viaduct to motor there in style. He arrives just as the first sign something is wrong kicks in. Charming songstress Lisa Crawley is on stage, performing her lovely song Wish You Well when she starts to twitch, then commences hopping round the stage. Of course, everyone in the crowd thinks this incredibly cute and the "hoppy dance" becomes not only the dance du jour but thanks to social networking it goes viral and becomes an instant YouTube sensation.

Of course "viral" is an entirely accurate description for what is going on here because, as will be revealed in the Commission of Inquiry that will follow the events of the weekend, DoC, in its desire to rid the islands of the Gulf (and the world) of pests like rabbits, have been secretly experimenting with genetically engineered versions of myxomatosis in a shed on Motutapu. Unfortunately someone left the shed door open and the virus escaped into the concert-going and concert-performing population.

So what happens is that while our Hone-character is running round using big words to spread his message of impending doom and generally upsetting the vibe of the day, Rabbit Flu (as it will become known in the media) is sweeping the island. It hits the youthful and exuberant first, so that by the time Minuit take the stage with their brand of quirky electro-pop, not only are the kids bunny-hopping all over the place, there are sudden and spontaneous mass outbursts of other, more unseemly, rabbit-like behaviour. Parents with young children start to panic and rush for any ferry or boat or flotation device they can find, to get their precious wee things off the island, before they are corrupted forever.

By the time jazz genius Haines actually turns into a rabbit on stage, Hone's message has got through and the island (or at least a bit of it) has been quarantined by the entire New Zealand Defence Force. It is then that DoC are forced to confess that they haven't actually got round to working on an antidote for Rabbit Flu, so the island is sealed off forever. Many, many years in the future swarms of musicians and concert-goers will be seen hopping about Motutapu, doing rabbit stuff.

Look, I'm not saying this is what is going to happen on Motutapu this weekend, but I wouldn't rule it out, that's all.