Pamela Wade: Broadening the mind

Sir John Kirwan: he played rugby . . . on the . . . ahh . . . Photo / Greg Bowker

We all have gaps in our education but travel can help, writes Pamela Wade.

During a lunchtime chat the other day, the movie Dunkirk came up in the conversation. One of the group, a woman in her mid-50s, well-travelled, a writer and editor, exclaimed in wonder over the inclusion in the story of the private fishing and pleasure boats from England that assisted with the evacuation of troops from the beaches of northern France.

"I had no idea!" she gasped.

Somewhat undiplomatically, I gasped too. "Had you never heard about that?" I couldn't help asking, struggling to understand how someone like her could have what seemed to me to be a huge gap in her general knowledge.

The Little Ships of Dunkirk famously sailed from England to help rescue more than 338,000 soldiers. But then I reflected that I was most familiar with the main speaker at the lunch, Sir John Kirwan, through his work for mental health; and although of course I was aware he had once been an All Black, I couldn't to save my life have said when, or in what position he played. I don't even know what the positions are, to be honest.

Everyone has gaps in their knowledge: books they haven't read, foods they haven't tried, customs they're unaware of, places they haven't been. Even Stephen Fry, the fount of all knowledge on QI, still had to have the phrase "beer goggles" explained to him by Alan Davies. Whereas some things, like Fifty Shades of Grey, tripe, and rugby for me, are specific choices not to waste my time on, other random discoveries are reassurance that, even when your formal education is a distant, and fading, memory, life can still be a voyage of discovery.

Ordinary days will supply plenty of small enlightenments if you're paying attention — yesterday I learned that frogs can scream — but for industrial-quality edification, there's nothing like travel. That doesn't necessarily mean overseas travel, as anyone who's peeped beneath the surface of our own country knows: Norwegian whalers had a base on Stewart Island; wallabies are a big pest in South Canterbury; Waimate North is the only bit of New Zealand that Charles Darwin considered halfway decent.

We don't even have to travel outside our own city; although it helps in this case to be guided by fresh eyes, because there's nothing like habit and familiarity to blind you to what's around you. Have you noticed that the Britomart light shafts are built like volcanoes? Do you know why one of them is different? Or that Grafton Bridge, at the time of building, was the biggest arch bridge in the world? Or that Vulcan Lane got its name from all the blacksmiths shoeing horses there? No, me neither, until I took a tour.

But, although learning things like that about your own city makes everyday life a bit richer, it's when you're overseas that the benefits really mount up. Or at least, they will if you don't keep on returning to the Gold Coast or Fiji year after year.

Venturing into new countries has so many benefits, not the least of them learning about yourself: what a scaredy-cat you can be, how stupid, how prejudiced — but also, hopefully, how brave, how resourceful, how adaptable.

You learn interesting new facts, eat delicious new food, and discover that people the world over, despite different appearances and sometimes quite confronting customs, are essentially the same, and nearly always well-intentioned. You make connections with places that, ever afterwards, when they crop up in news bulletins back home, you can empathise with and understand better what's going on and what it means for the people who live there. Who are just like you.

You can also have your world view reset. Like most Baby Boomers, I grew up brainwashed with the glories of the great British Empire. It's been startling to travel through countries that Britain colonised and see the story from the other side: to learn that the Brits were in so many ways the baddies. Going to South Africa — where Lord Kitchener's use of concentration camps was an inspiration to the Nazis — and to India, Ireland, Kenya and Australia gave me an entirely opposite picture of what colonisation meant. A visit to Parihaka has the same effect here. The revelations aren't confined to British colonialism: visiting the war museum in Hanoi is a real eye-opener; and there's quite another side to Gallipoli that you'll discover if you go to Turkey.

It's a big world out there, and there's a lot to learn: far too much for anyone to get a complete handle on. All we can do is pay attention, and do our best. So I can almost forgive the American I met in Kenya, who was on her way to spend time in Mauritius, for not knowing that's where the dodo once lived. But that she had never even heard of the dodo? Still can't get over that one.