Scenes from a Fiordland Life ...

Here I am, all tucked up in this Covid-19 lock-down, happy to be where I am …

We’re out in the country, in a sparsely-populated part of New Zealand, hunkering down and hoping the storm passes through without touching us … without touching family, friends, anyone and everyone.

But it’s too late for that wish, I know it.

There’s going to be a period of adjustment, with the possibility of 4 weeks at home, due to the Prime Minister announcing a state of emergency today.

No one is sure of what shape that will take.

There’s a friend needing a ride to Queenstown Airport, hoping to catch one of the last flights back home to Australia. We’ll try that tomorrow.

The Department of Conservation, my employer, has us working remotely, from home.

Claire, my flatmate/landlord and friend, has 4 weeks off from her job. My girls are here, blowing in from other places, to become part of this tiny community.

The supermarket is open over in Te Anau. There was a brief panic but things settled down and our shelves are, generally, well-stocked.

And then we woke to snow on the mountains yesterday but we have a fire, here in the lounge, so that’s all okay. We had shopped over days, quietly working out what we might need if forced to stay home. So we’re good.

The Fiordland community is a stunning community. They are used to coming together in times of disaster … in a way that makes the disaster seem entirely manageable, if we simply work through it together.

Although, this summer season it does like we’ve experienced it all. And we’ve come through. I expect people here will continue to support one another, in those ways that they always have, and so, I feel quite blessed to be part of it.

Restaurants have given away the last of the food in their kitchen, as they’ve shut down their kitchens, gifting meals to the elderly and the vulnerable.

Facebook groups have started up: kindergarten teachers entertaining children at home, work groups that allow us to stay in touch with each other now that we’re working from home. And then there’s the community noticeboard, humming with life. Perhaps I might be heard to whisper a small vote of thanks, in the direction of Facebook.

Even the dogs … out here on the farm, are squirreling away ‘food for later’. I saw Koru tucking her possum, almost tenderly, into a ‘bed’ out there on the path.

Don’t look, if squeamish … just saying but I couldn’t resist sharing a photograph. The ‘stuff’ I have cleaned up lately. Mark, formerly Dad’s cat, vomited up his self-service mouse meal. The skull had not digested, at all My daily life, here in Manapouri, is one that makes me smile more often than it makes me cry. And really, what more can a soul wish for than all of this …

Kia kaha (stay strong) We’ll get through this, and perhaps we’ll learn new ways of being here in this world that gifts us so much.

Photographing A Takahe Release, in Fiordland, 2019

The Takahē, a New Zealand native bird, was rediscovered in 1948, by Dr Geoffrey Orbell. SInce then, the bird has slowly been making a come-back with Department of Conservation assistance.

The population dropped down to 77, back in 2015 when there was a stoat plague, followed by major flood that caused landslides, killing the flightless takahē. These days, the DOC Recovery Programme is using science-based conservation techniques to develop the population.

And so it was, that I had the extraordinary experience of photographing the latest batch of two and three-year-old takahē, being released in the Murchison Mountains. We picked them up from the Burwood Takahē Centre near Te Anau, checked them over and boxed them.

Burwood is where adult takahē teach the young birds skills they will need to survive in the wild. This release group was the highest number released into the Murchison Mountains. The previous highest number was 29 in summer 2015/16.

DOC Takahē Recovery Team senior ranger Glen Greaves says, “The Murchison Mountains has been considered the home of takahē since their rediscovery there in 1948 yet maintaining a robust population at this site has been challenging.  Achieving this, while also growing takahē numbers elsewhere, is a true measure of the success of our takahē recovery work.

“After battling for decades to bring the Murchison Mountain population up to its natural limit, maintaining these numbers would be a huge reward for takahē staff past and present, and for our partners Ngāi Tahu and Fulton Hogan, and our supporters.

“We look forward to future surveys showing that takahē have once again occupied long vacant territories around the Murchison Mountains.”

“With the overall takahē population growing at more than 10% a year, other suitable sites with low predator numbers for new wild populations need to be found,” says Glen Greaves.

Note that last photograph. A Kea was keen on checking out the inner workings of the Helicopter … and didn’t move until the pilot climbed right up there and shooed him away.

Source: DOC website.

And I Am Back ...

Everything has changed in the months since I last wrote …

The change was unexpected and the pressure of it all has, only just, begun to ease a little.

It’s 3 months since Dad moved into the Resthome. Since then, I’ve gone through his house, storing some things, giving away others, and selling a little bit. It was huge. It sold quickly, and he experienced the relief of no longer having to watch how he spent his money.

Dad worked so hard, all of his life, and so it was lovely to drive him around, as he replaced his glasses; the ones that fell to pieces weekly. And to have his troublesome teeth repaired/removed and replaced.

He has settled into his new life, quite beautifully. It was time. I’ve watched as he’s thrived in the new, gentler, full-time-care, environment.

He looks younger than he’s looked in years. His osteo-arthritis and gout pain is being managed so much better than we could do it at home. He has routines and schedules that make his heart sing … something else we couldn’t manage at home.

If he’s in pain, or anxious, the staff at his little resthome are there to reassure and/or treat him. His tea is ready at 5pm, every day. He has friends, entertainment, and a room of his own.

I couldn’t wish for more for him, as his mind slips and shifts some days, sometimes much more than others.

Although, he still knows, for sure, that I’m not his granddaughter.

In the meantime, during these last 3 months, I’ve found a job that I love and I’ve moved to the lower south-west, here in New Zealand. I’m living and working in Fiordland, New Zealand. It’s an incredible place, where Nature is in the ascendent and man simply works out how to live in the midst of it all.

Te Anau receives something like 1.500mm of rain per year, and Milford Sound … a meagre 8,000mm. And I love it. Rain has always been special to me and I realise now, after living here in the 90s, that Fiordland rain was the rain I wanted to experience where ever I lived in the world. But no place else had the pristine natural space that is here and so torrential rain was never going to be as sweet-smelling and as glorious as it is down here.

I work in the Visitor Centre, and it’s a far-cry from how I imagined that job might play out. It’s so much more. Mostly I’m absolutely loving the fact that the world drops by daily, wanting advice on what to see and do. Actually, mostly people want to know what the weather will be and that, my lovely friend, is impossible to know.

We have the science of the NZ Met Service’s weather report but Fiordland can do almost anything outside the constraints of that prediction. I love that no one really knows precisely how things will play out when it comes to the weather.

I live about 22kms from Te Anau … it’s an escape to the country, at the kind invitation of an old friend from the 90s. I moved quite a few weeks ago but I go back to Dad, and to Miss 15, every second ‘weekend’.

‘Weekend’ because my new weekend is Monday and Tuesday, and I’m good with that. It leaves me free to do all that needs done over in Dunedin and Mosgiel. The same goes when I get to stay here, on alternate weekends. I actually managed to see a doctor, and that’s taken a while to do properly.

So I’m loving my new life. I feel so very fortunate. I love my new bed and bedroom. Mark, formerly known as Dad’s cat Mark, has gone beyond expectations and settled in here, on the farm. He caught 4 mice, in 12 hours, the other day. Made possible by a double Mast this season, gifting the rodents many seeds, creating an exploding population of mice, rats, ferrets, weasels and stoats. Needless to say, that translates as a nightmare for our native bird population.

One of the things I am really loving about this life, is the passion I’m finding amongst staff, down here at DOC (the department of conservation) in Te Anau. My colleagues are passionate about protecting and developing New Zealand’s natural wilderness and wildlife. It’s a beautiful thing to be a part of.

But anyway, more to follow. This is just a note, to tell you I’m back … almost thinking again, and about to head off on a grand adventure in the days ahead.

The view … from Fraser’s Beach, Lake Manapouri. A sunrise, with special people.

Missing My Storied Life ...

Life After Living With Dad ...

You have adapted and thrived in different countries, communities, and circumstances. You have the ability to forge relationships and understanding. You’re determined, creative, resilient and resourceful. You don’t need to tell your whole story in a letter. Tell enough to intrigue them, you hemisphere-jumping, continent-crossing traveler.

Veronica McCabe Deschambault, writer, artist, editor, wrote about me.

We are now entering the days ‘after’ the months of caring for Dad.

The days where I begin again. I’m searching for work, for a home …

I have been moving out into the rest of the house, for the weeks that I can continue to live here … previously I had restricted myself to my bedroom but then Dad was admitted to a local rest-home, quite unexpectedly.

You see, he was scratched by Mark, his tabby cat, and the wound became infected. We were working on it, with the doctor and antibiotics, with the District Nurse coming in twice per week, with the care-workers who helped with his pressure stockings watching for heat or spreading redness.

One night, I heard Dad moving around and, by then, his mind was slipping more often. Nights were restless for him. I went out to see why he was in the lounge. It was almost midnight. He was freezing, he said, as he turned on the heater.

For some reason, I missed the big clue and filled him a hot-water bottle, made him a hot cup of tea, and got him back to his bed.

His breath became laboured. And, very quickly, I thought I was losing him … one frosty misty night in the middle of winter.

I called the ambulance and they came, eventually. I called them back, just to check because Dad was struggling to breathe, and time has a tendency to slow down when you’re waiting for someone to come save your Dad.

They diagnosed his high temperature, almost immediately (how did I miss that), and listened to his chest. It was fluid-filled. He was in congestive heart failure.

They were great, filled him with all kinds of drugs, put him on oxygen, and rolled him out to the ambulance. I went with him.

13 hours later, a bed was found in the hospital, and Dad was in for a few days and I went home. It was a little like having jetlag, after 30+ hours awake. But it was good, it felt like he was safe and secure, and I was off-duty.

The fever passed, they stopped the antibiotics in ER but he stayed in hospital more than a week, as they pumped him full of a drug that drained the fluid from all over his body.

He came home but he was never the same … for all kinds of reasons.

He had loved the 24./7 presence of people, there in the hospital. Dad has always been a very social man, and it very quickly reached the point where he would call me, if I left the house for more than an hour. My world was already small. It had became simpler not to go out in the evenings, simpler not to go out for too long but this was more of a strait-jacket existence. I was exhausted.

He was more confused, as the Dementia - probably made worse by anxiety, when alone and those phone calls were about where I could find him when I came back ‘to pick him up’.. But he was always at home, he was simply forgetting. He would forget where his bedroom was. His dinner routine. Everything, just sometimes.

He wanted to go home … but he meant a return to childhood. It became more and more stressful but we were coping. Adjusting.

We were fortunate. The powers that be came in to assess his needs, after his time in hospital. He was worse than we realised. The assessor made a phone call and 5 days later, Dad had a place in a local rest home - 2 weeks of respite care.

To my relief, he accepted that we both needed a break but then the rest home situation became like a runaway horse. I hadn’t imagined admitting him, and he was still adamant he wouldn’t go … then he was in.

These days, 3 or 4 weeks since admission … it is taking longer than I had expected, for me, to accept it. I struggled with guilt, had I tricked him? How would he cope? Could I have done more, held on a bit longer?

Meanwhile, there is Dad, generally thriving.

He has a gang of armchair friends. The staff are telling me he’s lovely to deal with, ‘a great sense of humour’. And this man, who had built his life around routines and regimes that couldn’t be messed with, is slipping into his new life with ease.

And I am still visiting him, on or two times per day. It’s a lovely place. Small, just 33 residents. Routines that delight Dad … especially when they involve food. He feels safe, and warm, and secure. He’s not lonely any more. He is taken care of by others and his anxiety is quickly dealt with.

Slowly I’m learning how to let go, that our time of sharing his house is over and I’m just his daughter again.. His Dementia continues to advance however he still knows me. I introduce myself, whenever possible, as his granddaughter. He’s in there, immediately, saying ‘No, you’re my bloody daughter!’ Seemingly outraged that I would even try that :-)

The words I began this post with … Veronica reminding me of life before Dad. Reminding me I can start over again … how many times have I done it already.

And so here I am, waiting for the next wave, as I organise his ‘stuff’ for a downsize, and the sale of his home to pay for the rest home.

I’m learning. Always learning.

Writing a new Resume, deciding on Cover Letters, dancing the dance of starting over again.

Here’s to the next part of the adventure.

Oscar Wilde said, and Stephen Fry explained ...