Old town's having a whale of a time

Ravaged by Rogernomics but saved by the whales, Kaikoura
is now thriving on tourism. In the second of an eight-part summer series DANIEL RIORDAN takes a trip to his home town.

Little more than a decade ago, Kaikoura was becoming the kind of place Paul Simon had in mind when he wrote about the "dead and dying back in my little town".

Times have changed. Thanks to the whale-watching boom, the chief concerns of my birthplace today are coping with the spectacular tourism growth rather than a dwindling population.

I spent my first 18 years on Kaikoura's beaches, riverbeds, paddocks and tennis courts. Buried beneath the pine trees on the peninsula are 140 years of my maternal ancestors - Smiths, Keehans and Burlands - and across the way is my brother. My parents still live there and I make it down from Auckland at least once a year.

About the only shop left in the main drag of the West End from my school days is Harnett's Butchery.

Long gone is the sports and cycle depot run by Garth Bennington, where broken racquet strings were replaced singly and tennis balls came in boxes, not cans. Ben's Burger Bar, where I fried and flipped every second weekend through my last year at Kaikoura High, is now a Work and Income office. Beaths department store (where I bought my first LP, Elton John's Rock of the Westies) is ancient history.

The convent at St Joseph's Primary is a country bed and breakfast, as is the tiny house where I took my first steps. The cheese factory which taught me after five weeks of sweaty holiday toil that office jobs shouldn't be sneezed at was gobbled last year by dairy giant Fonterra after 106 years of independence. Its future is uncertain.

Most schoolmates left Kaikoura at the same time I did for tertiary education and jobs in bigger smokes. My four sisters built their careers and families out of town. My brother, two years younger than me, spent a year or two in Sydney before coming back. An outdoors man, Chris made the most of Kaikoura's rugged charms before dying in a car crash at 30. Our common language was sport - we hated losing to each other at anything, but I'm kind of pleased our last tennis match went his way.

When I moved 190km down State Highway 1 to Christchurch and university in 1980, I somehow imagined Kaikoura would never change. I'd come back each year for holidays, a bit older and a bit wiser, measuring my progress against a constant backdrop. But Roger Douglas and enough Moby Dicks to sink an armada put paid to that.

The town's biggest employer through my childhood was the Railways, which supported about 200 families at its peak. It had a reputation as a job guarantor for school leavers, although some of that may have been small-town legend.

Other government departments, among them the Post Office and the Ministry of Works, were also big employers.

Those days ended with Rogernomics and its wave of privatisations through the 1980s. I was working in Wellington as a government economist by then. The beautiful theories I'd enjoyed studying but was struggling to embrace in real life were draining much of my home town's lifeblood.

Even the council downsized. My Dad, the council treasurer, was made redundant. The twin pillars of the district's private sector, farming and fishing, were undergoing their own adjustments.

Unemployment soared, families left the district and school rolls dipped alarmingly.

What stopped Kaikoura from being just another small town casualty of economic reform was the same thing that had brought Europeans to the district in the first place - the whale.

The whalers came in the 1840s. When they'd harpooned themselves out of a job, many turned to farming.

Tourism was always there, though. Even before whale watching put the town on the world's tourism map, out-of-towners were making crucial contributions to Kaikoura's economy. In my schooldays city folk came for long weekends to fish, dive, hunt and just soak in the coastal village atmosphere. In summer the town's population seemed to at least double.

Through it all, the whales were hanging about offshore. Most residents were probably like me, noticing the 40-tonne giants only when they died and were washed ashore.

About the time the town's fortunes were at their lowest ebb at the end of the 1980s, commercial whale watching began in earnest.

Local Ngai Tahu, who bankrolled the business by mortgaging their homes in the early days, run the operation from the greatly modified railway station. It's a class act that has picked up a swag of international awards and was chosen this year by Tourism New Zealand as the top tourism operator of the past decade.

In that time, about 150 sperm whales have been identified in the area. Up to 20 live offshore at a time, feeding on the rich supply of nutrients, which are continually stirred by the convergence of cold north-moving and warm south-moving currents.

Dozens of tourism businesses have been created, including dolphin encounters, helicopter and fixed-wing whale watching and sea kayaking.

While the area's permanent population of humans has grown only modestly over the past decade, annual visitor numbers are expected to reach one million within a couple of years.

T OURISM operators bring in an estimated $40 million to the town each year, based on the Government's GST takings of $5 million.

Marlborough Economic Development Trust chairman Tony Smale put it succinctly after the awards night in Rotorua, when a Kaikoura motel and camping ground were also voted the country's best.

Kaikoura, he said, had gone from absolute despair to what now borders on euphoria.

Thanks to the whale and in keeping with the clean, green marine image, the district was the first in New Zealand to win Green Globe 21 approval, a badge of sustainable tourism established by the World Travel & Tourism Council after the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Symbolising the shift from the old to the new, the old stock saleyards on the main northern drag into town have been razed and will be replaced by a New World supermarket, the first really big retailer to hit Kaikoura.

Although there's no sign yet of a Big Red Shed (the district's population of about 4000 is still way below the trigger point for a Warehouse) environmental booster Stephen Tindall is taking an interest in the town's waste-management programme.

Other signs of the times include late-night bars and restaurants that wouldn't be out of place on Ponsonby Road, a classy wine company and a roots music festival planned for January.

There's even a radio station broadcasting from one of the town's four pubs, The Blue Pacific.

On the afternoon I sat in the "Blue" waiting for co-owner Kevin Heays to return from a fishing trip, about half a dozen old gents chased pool balls around a table while the dog races blared over the telly.

Heays says local drinkers are his bread and butter, because most tourists aren't into public bars. He ruefully notes he spends a lot of time at customers' funerals.

The former Kaikoura High School teacher operates the radio station from a room little bigger than a walk-in wardrobe in what used to be a pokie machine alcove.

Out of the Blue (88.6 FM) broadcasts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, though most of that time it runs on auto pilot, playing an esoteric range of popular music. Talkback is banned - in a town this size that's asking for trouble - but there's a typical access community radio lineup of information shows and live themed music presentations.

Crucially, Kaikoura's fishing and farming communities, which employ about the same numbers as tourism, are in rude health. Overall, there's a vibrancy about the district that's impossible to miss.

But that kind of growth doesn't come without barnacles. Everyone wants the character of a quiet coastal village retained, but signs advertising bed and breakfasts, homestays and backpacker hostels have sprouted like gorse.

Inevitably, the township's infrastructure is struggling to keep pace with the estimated 8 per cent annual growth in visitor numbers.

Rates increases have some residents on the warpath and keen to see tourist levies introduced, although such a move has been ruled out by the council, which is reluctant to squeeze the source of Kaikoura's newfound prosperity too hard.

Retired GP Geoff Gordon, who practised in Kaikoura for 46 years, has shaken the odd stick at the council over the years, querying its management. He says that, although tourism has brought far more good than harm to Kaikoura, he doesn't want the place to become another Queenstown - a phrase echoed by other locals.

While Kaikoura isn't immune from the social problems shared by all small towns, mayor Jim Abernethy knows how fortunate the district is.

"I must be the luckiest mayor in New Zealand," he says. "We have our clean green image, wide-open spaces and we don't have to rely on artificial attractions like bungy jumping."

I left Kaikoura 22 years ago, never imagining it would change the way it did. But for all that, it still feels like home.

* Daniel Riordan is a Business Herald reporter.

* Tomorrow: Patrick Gower in Taranaki.