Weepy, even before the plane touched down, the sight below of all those dark hills and green deserted fields, knowing that’s where she lives now, at the ends of the Earth – okay, so Dunedin isn’t exactly Scott Base. I travelled there once. New Zealand’s last and loneliest outpost in southern waters is quite modern. Dunedin, though, feels like some weird old 19th-century relic, all that colonial stone and settlers’ brick, the massive buildings actually only two or three levels in height but wide as a city block. I checked into the Leviathan Hotel. It was built in 1884. To step inside its vast wooden gates was to step into the mouth of an ancient creature from the deep past. But I was in town to step forward in time.
Weepy, to see her, a blonde arrow shooting into a cafe on George St for lunch – the first sight of her now aged 18. She looked so confident and happy, four weeks since she left home, a glowing, distant star. Naturally, I tried my best to bring her back down to earth and infantilise her. “Are you okay for money? How is the laundry situation? Look. I got you this!” It was an egg cup shaped like a chicken. “Do you miss home and were you looking forward to seeing me and how would you feel if I moved here to live?” She answered with such kindness and patience; we are doing well as parents if our grown children have gentle regard for us as dolts.
Weepy, to walk with her through campus. It was so beautiful, a glade of walnut and beech and rose, set on either side of a whispering river. I chatted with a groundsman trimming the edges of the lawn by hand. He asked how the University of Auckland campus compared to Otago. “Auckland’s is lovely. But this,” I said, “knocks it for six.” It was so quiet. If you listened carefully, you could hear students think. Front page story, Otago Daily Times: “Student numbers are rising upwards for the first time in nearly five years … Enrolments are at 18,018 compared with 17,540 at the same point in 2024.” To all parents of Year 13 kids: post them to Dunedin. I held fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge. Dunedin is the New Zealand equivalent, with cheese rolls.
Weepy, all that weekend. I have missed her so much and seeing her for two days was among the happiest hours of my parenting life. There was a capping graduation going on and I kept seeing parents clinging on to their really very grown children, now 23, 24. I recognised the pride, and the sense of awe (we grew this!), but also their strange new status as distant relations.
All that weekend I saw her in the act of becoming someone else, her own person. The new friends, the new routines of work and play – I shuddered to walk along the infamous Castle St, and see a student flat named SLUTBOX. The egg cup looked good on her windowsill.
Weepy, to leave, on the bus to Christchurch – I thought I may as well enjoy the scenery of loss. White mist in the valleys and steaming off the tin roofs, settlements where the only thing on sale were fresh eggs and pea straw, signs reading FIVE FORKS and BLUE CLIFFS and HERBERT. We stopped for cheese rolls at the Lagonda Tearooms in Ōamaru. A little further on, a woman gumbooted her way through a farm paddock with two dogs. I wondered if she had kids who’d left home and were making their way in the world.
Steve Braunias also writes for the NZ Herald and Newsroom.
