I’m concerned. What is New Zealand famous for? What is here in greater number than people? What is it that provides the ‘comfort’ for so many solitary, distant farmers? And what tastes really nice with mint sauce and new potatoes?

Of course; sheep. And yet all you see is cows. Not in groups of a dozen like we see them at home, but massive herds of hundreds and hundreds. Then you see a few sheep, couple of dozen, then another 20,000 cows.

Is this an ecological problem? Is the balance of numerical power shifting from the sheepish to the bovine? Are these new, possibly ‘supercows’ eating all the sheep? I’d really want to taste that steak but have my doubts about that particular theory.

Then I learned that it may be to do with the sheep occupying the high ground. Not that they fear invasion, like the Normans, but that they keep the sheep in the mountains so that their wool becomes longer, thicker, stronger. Like the Merino sheep. Nothing to do with Jose, I learned, even though he’s pretty thick-skinned himself. But the sheep who make famous sweaters live high up where temperatures reach -25 in the winter.

I learned this in a place called Tarras. On the 247km trek from Mount Cook to Queenstown. The scenery is simply sublime. It’s like a Christian Eriksen pass that lasts for 4 hours. Quite magnificent. But the ‘towns’ aren’t really towns as such. They’re just like a petrol station, a bar/restaurant a coffee shop and a store that sells Merino Wool stuff at 200 quid a scarf. It’s not like driving through Sheffield. It’s more like driving through a motorway service station that’s really cute and pretty and nice. Unlike any motorway service station ever. And this one announced sheep-shearing events and ram-shackling and all sorts of local, Kiwi-type shit that no-one in the world understands. Nor cares about really but that makes it all the sweeter.

When you arrive in Queenstown it looks like the pic. And is bigger than the above mentioned, kind’a ‘1 horse town’. This is at least a 2-sheep town. But with better restaurants.

Loving it here. The more souther-er… you go, the more better-er… it gets. Amazing place.

Baaaah

A xxxx