Jamie Mackay: Field Days and foreign drivers

Jamie Mackay (left) made it to Southern Field Days to interview Minister for Agriculture Damien O'Connor. Photo / Supplied

Opinion

I write this on the eve of heading down the road from Dunedin to Waimumu, just outside of Gore, for the Southern Field Days.

Run by the local Young Farmers clubs they've been an institution on the farming calendar since the mid-1980s. Not quite the 50 years being celebrated this year by the National Agricultural Fieldays at Mystery Creek but a proud record nonetheless.

Next up there's Northland (March 1-3) at Dargaville, Central Districts (March 15-17) at Feilding, the East Coast Farming Expo (April 11-12) at Wairoa, AgFest (April 13-14) at Greymouth and, of course, the Mother of all Fieldays at Mystery Creek (June 13-16).

The highlight for me will be the Farmlands Cup game between the Highlanders and the Crusaders on the Field of Dreams ('build it and they will come') on a farm paddock across the road from the field days site, where a sell-out crowd of 6000 will watch two full-strength super sides go head-to-head in their last serious pre-season hit out.

Somewhat less enthusiastically, I'm lining up against the National leader (but not for much longer) Bill English in a speed shear. I'm getting my excuses in early. I have only shorn one sheep in the past 10 years. That was two years ago against Bill at the same venue. In between times he's had a brief stint as Prime Minister and he's beaten Sir David Fagan in a speed shear at the World Shearing Champs in Invercargill.

A favourite son of Southland, I suspect he'll have the partisan crowd firmly on his side at Waimumu. I can't help but wonder who I will be shearing against when the Southern Field Days roll around again in 2020? Will it be Judith, Simon, Amy, Steven, Jonathan or Mark? And if it's Judith, will she even need a handpiece? Or will she tear the wool off with her bare teeth? They say the only soft thing about Judith is her teeth!

And as I make my way south on State Highway 1 to the Southern Field Days, I'm hoping I won't encounter any crazy foreign drivers. Lord knows they're bad enough in a rental car. Let them loose in a campervan and in my opinion you have a recipe for mayhem on our roads.

I suspect I'll be labelled racist or even xenophobic but I'm only putting in words what many are thinking. We really need to do something about foreign drivers, some of whom are nothing short of a potentially fatal menace on the road.

I was in Arrowtown last weekend for a family wedding. If the trip through the Kawarau Gorge being stuck behind a campervan travelling at 50km/h on the corners then speeding up to 100km/h on the passing lanes wasn't enough to make my blood boil, a first-hand experience with a young tourist reinforced my worst fears.

I was taking a stroll around the most scenic of Central Otago towns when a young woman approached me from her car for directions to Arrowtown's shopping centre. As it was no more than 750 metres away, I pulled out my phone, pulled up Google Maps and proceeded to point her in the right direction.

Unfortunately she was having trouble understanding my English (mind you, she's not alone there) and I was having just as much difficulty understanding her broken English dialect. After what seemed liked several minutes of miscommunication, despite her extremely obliging demeanour, in despair I said I would jump in the car with her and show her the way. In despair she said yes!

We had a disjointed but courteous conversation about where she was from as we crawled in an equally disjointed manner towards our destination. Never has 750 metres seemed so far. I'm no Lewis Hamilton when it comes to driving, but she made me feel like one as she flouted several road rules on our short but painfully slow journey - which included only one Stop sign and one roundabout. My nerves were not aided by a large "keep left" sticker plastered over the odometer of her car. I'm sure she hadn't read it.

As we parted ways I wished her all the best for the remainder of her New Zealand journey, hoping for the best, fearing the worst. She politely and profusely thanked me.

I remember thinking how proud her parents must be of their daughter's delightful manners. She looked well educated in all facets of life except driving at a modicum of speed on the left hand side of New Zealand roads! So while we don't want to unnecessarily alienate billions of potential tourists, surely that has to take a back seat to keeping 4.7 million of us alive?