Golden Bay's own shanty town or a 'tribal revival'?

Friday, 29 December 2017

The River Tribe base in Golden Bay resembles a shanty town, but is there more to this ramshackle emcampment than that? Nina Hindmarsh reports.

A gate and several boulders blocks access to one of the Takaka's most controversial places. I squeeze through a crack and head towards it.

It's a stinking hot day; the air is dry and dust fills my mouth. White gravel reflects the bright sun on the road that leads towards the riverbank, and the grass on either side has turned crunchy amber.

I trudge past a couple walking to town. As I enter a large barren car park, a barefoot man with dark brown dreadlocks, tattoos and a beard approaches me. He wears a Jim Morrison singlet, washed-black denim shorts cut-off just above the knee, and a backpack. Immediately, I recognise him as the guy I'm looking for.

'We just want peace,' his friend in Takaka has just said, after declining to speak with me. He said they've been 'ripped apart' by the media and 'run down' by angry locals in utes.

'Go to the river and find Pete; he's the diplomatic one.'

'Are you Pete?' I ask the man striding towards me. He stops close; I can see my own reflection peering up in his mirrored sunglasses.

'Who are you?' he says, eyes darting to the notebook in my hand.

Pete Murdoch, 30, is on his way to town to take a shower.

He belongs to The River Tribe, a group of nearly 20 people living in makeshift campsites and huts in a small bush community along the Takaka riverbank.

With shacks assembled from discarded materials, tents and tarps, it resembles a shanty town. But rather than on the back streets of Rio de Janeiro or Paris, this ramshackle encampment is tucked between the leafy glades of a lush riverbank on the outskirts of Takaka, in Golden Bay.

***

Golden Bay has always been home to people who live on the fringes.

Forty years ago it was the hippies who colonised the area, upsetting dairy farmers. Today, there's a new group emerging from the woodwork, perceived by some as a sort of grass-roots tribal revolution, challenging what society – and Golden Bay – deems acceptable.

For the past year, the River Tribe has been put directly at the centre of a simmering freedom camping row, with a few townsfolk calling them 'river scum' and attempting to run them out of town.

To some, they are homeless gypsies and vagrants; but something about that description is off – this small river settlement is complex, radical and hard to define. Is this an emerging sub-group claiming unused land and rejecting society out of choice, or a sign of the growing inequalities in our country?

The River Tribe offers a shocking contrast to life in the rest of Golden Bay – a gleaming holiday destination on the North-west coast of the South Island. In recent years, property prices have exploded, forcing most first-home buyers out of the market and gradually transforming a large part of it's demographic into the rich and retired. In 2013, over 33 per cent of homes were unoccupied.

Oversized holiday houses and old baches sit empty along beaches with their curtains drawn, awaiting their absentee owners or the next Bookabach customer. Meanwhile, residents struggle desperately to find rentals.

The River Tribe's infrastructure is nonexistent: there is no electricity and no running water, except for the river beside it. Camp residents must make the walk to town for showers and to use the toilets. They sit outside their huts and tents among makeshift tables on logs and old armchairs and cook on a campfire.

Many are New Zealanders, others foreign. Some work, some are unemployed. They are tradesmen, buskers, musicians, artists, fruit pickers, possum trappers, and carpenters. Some dwell at the camp permanently, others are transient.

Reilly St is shrouded in controversy: located behind the Takaka Memorial Library and right beside the River Tribe's encampment, it had up to 400 illegal freedom campers a night last summer, sleeping in the car park, along the riverbank and on the side of the road.

For decades, it was believed Reilly St and the area along the riverbank were public land, and was used as a dumping ground for Fulton Hogan and the Tasman District Council. Takaka residents would go there to walk their dogs, and the town's youth as a place to do doughnuts and roll joints.

But last year, when freedom camping numbers exploded, the council dug deep into past records to reveal only half the car park was public land. The council believes the rest, including where the River Tribe dwell, is private land owned by a Takaka dairy farmer, David Rose.

However, the Rose family still dispute that and have taken legal advice. 

David Rose isn't too worried about the River Tribe, except for the flood risk. A few weeks ago, he stopped briefly to observe a group of bare-chested River Tribe men working hard in their garden in the blazing summer sun.

'They appeared to have some organisation going amongst themselves,' Rose says.

Earlier this year, river access and a large portion of the car park were blocked by gates erected by the council, following a barrage of complaints from residents. Residents hurried to find solutions, installing compost toilets and rubbish bins.

Then, Golden Bay residents were upset and angry when whole campsites, rubbish and even cars were abandoned as the River Tribe and other freedom campers cleared out for winter, following a severe flood that destroyed their camp and swept rubbish around nearby terrain and into the waterways.

In November, a large disorderly party in the Reilly St carpark resulted in the council seeking an amendment to the traffic bylaw to block off all vehicle access indefinitely.

Some in the town have tried and chase the River Tribe out with threats and violence, but the camp remains, and some are angry that more has not been done to move them on. One said: 'It's a joke, nobody wants these 'river scum' in our town.'

'User pays – everyone else pays rates and rent, so why should our taxes pay for them to live for free?', said another.

****

After some convincing, Murdoch decides to take a quick dip in the river instead of making the trip to town for a shower. He's had a big night and needs to revive himself.

He leads me through the length of the barren car park, past a lonely wood burner sitting mishappenly in the centre. We move into the cool shade of the trees, and through winding paths bordered by river stones and vegetable gardens.

We pass a dog, and structures made of tents, plywood and tarps, some raised on wooden poles and built between trees. We walk through a communal area with a fire pit. The camp residents are welcoming, all except one who is obviously angry at my presence. It's so tidy in here now; a shocking contrast to the last time I visited eight months ago, after the flood destroyed everything.

Murdoch hoists himself up on his hut, which is made of a tent pitched on a platform of discarded pallets, and held together by bamboo. It looks out on to the river with a view of the gushing rapids, rolling green pastures and dark mountainous backdrop. I wipe the dust off an old wooden box and use it as a chair, sitting down to face him.

As Murdoch lights a vape and inhales, he tells me it's finally peaceful again, since the gates went up to block vehicle access to the river. The transient travellers no longer stay in the carpark overnight and leave a mess, and the drunk local 'rednecks' don't drive down in their utes to abuse them.

He's an ex-punk rocker from the streets of Wellington, so he's not scared. He doesn't own a cellphone, and only just sold his car. He's been living on-and-off in Takaka for years, where he put on dance parties around the top of the South Island. Over the winter, he worked as a painter while he rented a place in town. When his lease ran out, he moved back to the river.

A young man walks into Murdoch's camp. 'Pete, got any meat for the hangi?' he asks.

'Nah man, only dog food.'

Murdoch claims the River Tribe is part of an 'archaic revival' and has elements of an emerging 'neo-tribalist' culture. He closely follows the philosophy of Terence McKenna, who postulated that society will revert back to an earlier form of tribal culture when it finds itself in 'some kind of trouble'.

'I've seen it on the rise. Carbon emissions, consumerism — there's a collective feeling in the new generation that us humans are just trashing the planet and living meaningless lives,' he says.

He admits the River Tribe may appear to be the ones guilty of those things. They've made mistakes, but says they're learning from them.

'Now that we have some organisation going, we are becoming a more tightly-knit group, a more well-oiled machine.' He lights his vape again, and cocks back his head to exhale. 

'It was mainly the people that would just come through and trash the place. They would just come down here [in the carpark], drink and leave their s*** everywhere, then go. The locals have confused us with them.'

Murdoch says the carpark at Reilly got out of control last summer, and even they didn't know what to do about it. It caused division between them, whom they disdainfully called the 'self-contained road maggots' and the people in the carpark the 'highway community'.

He dangles his bare feet around in the air, white from the dusty gravel road. In the event of flooding, Murdoch says they now encourage new people arriving at the camp to build their structures above ground. He and several other senior residents have taken on leadership roles, regularly handing out rubbish bags and making sure everyone's 'zones' are kept tidy.

They've worked hard to instil a sense of community; sharing their beers and cigarettes, and holding communal dinners around the campfire every night. Sometimes, they forage and hunt for their own food: last night it was paua, and the one before that, wild goat. 

There's a flood policy, a s*** in town policy, a rubbish policy, and a no stealing from town policy. They've asked some to move on who haven't followed these rules.

'No playing Redemption Song, or Stairway to Heaven. We are trying to tell people to keep it original. Don't just come down with your dreadlocks and guitar and play us that bullsh***, because no one wants to hear it.'

An ex-street kid from Christchurch, with small tattoo shapes around his cheeks and eyes, walks into the camp and sits down. He wears black clothing, and a bucket hat on whispy hair. His tells me his name is Bushy, and that he chooses to live at the river simply because: 'it's peaceful'.

This isn't the first community he's lived in like this, he says.

'I do this all around New Zealand. They're everywhere, just like this. The one I was last in was hidden away really good, in Taupo, in the bush. It only started with me and three other friends, but it's probably got more now this summer.'

Last year, TV3 reported on a group of homeless teenagers living in the bush behind shops in New Lynn, Auckland. Bushy and Murdoch both tell me there's also another one on the West Coast of the South Island.

'Honestly, it's way better with the gate up,' Bushy says, 'Because the locals can't drive down and threaten them.

'They get away with it because they have generations of families here. They can do it; but we can't. I've had them come down and pull a cricket bat on me with animal blood smeared all over it.'

Murdoch says not everyone living at the river is looking for a 'free ride', maybe just an alternative to the consumer-based society.

'What people don't know is, how nice it actually is being a part of a small community living at the river.'

He jumps lightly off his hut, and puts on his backpack, clipping it up.

'New people turn up and they see that, and it draws them in. They feel like staying because they feel like they have found some sort of alternative to the current state of the world.

Murdoch says, when they leave five or six months later, they're completely changed people.