Tourist Holiday Vans Cause Frustrations

Waimarino Bulletin, Volume 5, Issue 15, 8 September 1987, Page 11 (Supplement)

Tourist Holiday Vans Cause Frustrations

Oh, bliss. .Oh, joy. Oh great shouts of' celebratory Red X all round. Why? Because the bad weather is here and the newest scourge of the road will hibernate and city to city driving will once again become a pleasure. Yes, all round New Zealand entire battallions of overblown, elephantine Toyota Hi Ace rental motor caravans will now get to rest the overstrained muscles of their two litre hearts. They'll spend the winter doing whatever rental motor caravans do in winter. Perhaps they have their bottoms scraped, or something. Meanwhile, out there on the interprovincial bitumen, we'll all be able to drive at more than 39 km/ hr again. We'll be able to see what's in front of us other than some Mum from Toejam, Nebraska, framed neatly in the pictureTear window of the lumbering Hi Ace, frying salami on a bunsen burner, as Dad, comple,te with many badged, peaked baseball cap, tries to sail this showerequipped land yacht into the wind. (Say, Hyrem, ain't these kinda things got 4 litre motors back home? Or was that my electric toothbrush?) Oh, yes. 1 know that most of these people are tourists fromCanada, Germany, the mighty USA, and other points exciting. And even some points not exciting, like Oz. And yes, I know we

desperately need their bucks. Even the Oz bucks. To that end, this motoring misery guts has cheerfully helped them with directions (polite), punctures, and even how to order fish and chips in New Zealand. (I've worked out what our German friends want, Ivan. Two dollars worth of chips with black pudding, red cabbage, saurkraut and tomato sauce.)

The people are fine. And may they go on spending their funny coloured but wonderful money here forever. It's just that every year inter provincial road travel in summer and autumn gets slower in direct proportion to the breeding rate of these seemingly underpowered metal marquees on wheels. And they do breed, you know. Just like those bilious coloured outdoor portable loos. (Where there was a Portaloo.today, there'll be a small platoon of them tomorrow.) Or is it that foreign tourists, unfamiliar with local roads and road rules drive excruciatingly slowly? Are they looking at every single cow, sheep, gorse bush and farm mortagee sale sign as part of the great down-under-experience. (Say Martha, did you know that down in Noo Zealand, land for growing food and wool ain't worth nuthin while land for buildins that sell food is worth millions?) Now you good folks at Newmans and all the other Hire Van Breeding Studs . . . please don't get your Bics all of a click and write to me to complain. Because you really are doing a great job for the tourist industry. But boy, do I enjoy my winter freedom from the big vans with the little engines. And, hey. Be polite to them van hiring tourists out there. You, me, the vehicle body building firms, Toyota and the national defecit all need them.