In the last He Tāngata, Elisabeth Easther talks to Kelvin Davis, Minister of Tourism
I had a wonderful childhood in Kawakawa. There were 14 families in our street with a total of 96 kids and everybody's house was open. Our cul-de-sac backed on to farmland and we used to makehuts and swim in creeks among the eels, or do bombs off bridges.
When I was 9 my parents said: "In a week, we're taking you to Porirua to stay with your uncle." This was our first real holiday and it was the most exciting news our parents had ever delivered. We had so many questions like: "When we go past Mt Ruapehu, will we see snow?" We were totally agog. When we finally got to Porirua, we went to the Waitangirua Shopping Centre, and it was the biggest, flashest most amazing set of shops I'd ever seen. Twenty years later I went back and I don't think it'd changed much. No disrespect to Waitangirua, but it wasn't that flash, but to my 9-year-old memory, there was nothing as amazing as that mall.
I was in the seventh form when I went on my first trip overseas, to Tonga with an organisation called Friends of the Pacific. We went to a village called Kolovai to help rebuild the school after Hurricane Isaac. We spent three weeks hammering, building and helping. I was billeted with an old lady and, when I arrived, I was shown my bedroom. Because it was late, I went straight to sleep. The next morning I walked into the lounge to find the old lady had slept on the floor because she'd given me her bed. I was 16, and I really wanted to say: "You sleep in the bed and I'll sleep on floor" but I didn't know how so, for three weeks I felt guilty for sleeping in her bed. Aside from that, it was an amazing experience. At church they sang in eight-part harmonies which blew me away. They even sang grace before meals and that was also stunning.
I never did an OE because I went to Teachers' College straight from school. Then, in 2004 I was awarded a Wolf Fisher Fellowship that allowed me to travel for three months and visit schools in Hawaii, America and Canada. I made a decision to only fly over water, and everywhere else I needed to travel, I would go overland. I also wanted to stay with local people and not in hotels. There were some logistics involved, but that's what I did.
Because I travelled across America by train, I'd talk to people in the dining car, eat a steak and watch the mountains pass by. On one journey, I saw a grizzly bear sitting next to the railway track. I said to a lady across the table: "Look, a grizzly bear". She looked out and said: "So there is." If she'd not been there, I might have thought I'd imagined it.
While I was away, I looked at indigenous schools in Hawaii, then on Navaho and Hopi reservations in Arizona. I also visited the Cree and Mohawk people in Canada and New York. I visited a number of reservation schools and it was mind-blowing to learn not just about education but also culture, language and history.
Tourism Minister Kelvin Davis and Te Whanau a Rangiwhakaahu Hapu representative Aperahama Kerepeti-Edwards at Matapouri Beach. Photo / John Stone
When our kids were younger, we were on the Russell car ferry and I saw one of those orange camping vehicles called a Spaceship. It was the first time I'd seen one so I got talking to the people who'd hired it. I asked where they were staying that night and they said they didn't know so I invited them to park up at our family land, and they stayed for about five days. My uncle was haybaling out the back of Motatau on his farm and I said: "Come on mate, come to the farm and see what haybaling's like in New Zealand." This guy and his girlfriend had the best time getting my uncle's hay in. Try to get the whānau to help and they say: "Oh gosh, not haybaling again", but this English couple thought it was fantastic. They also got to have beers and a big feed afterwards, because Auntie cooked up a storm. Staying at our campsite, having barbecues, going haybaling, swimming in the creek and going bush, to them, that was brilliant.
When people in Northland tell me they want to get into tourism, I say all they need to do is take people to do the things we do for fun. Netting for flounder, digging for pipi, going bush and then tell them stories. Visitors are really keen to experience those sorts of things. Interestingly, when Minister Luo, the Chinese minister of tourism, was in New Zealand he really admired the way we combine our landscape attractions with storytelling. That's something we do really well here, and it's an integral part of our culture. I'm very proud of that aspect of tourism in New Zealand. People want to meet real Kiwis in natural settings. It's really very simple.
