It is more than eighty years since Zane Grey made Otehei Bay in Urupukukapuka Island his hide-away. It’s one of the islands in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands. Here, over several seasons between 1927 and 1933, the US author spent weeks big-game fishing and writing cowboy stories.
Oetehei Bay, Bay of Islands – a photo I took in high summer, more than eighty years after Zane Grey first used this bay as a fishing and writing retreat.
It was very difficult for me to get this ‘hole in the rock’ picture – the boat was rolling and I kept being jostled.
Today the Bay of Islands is one of New Zealand’s top attractions – visited by tens of thousands of tourists a year who come there for the fishing, for the warmth, and for spectacles such as the ‘hole in the rock’, out on the edge of the bay.
Grey’s island hide-away is a nexus for water traffic. There is a a café just up from the shore, where She Who Must Be Obeyed and I ate a mildly over-priced lunch. A concert venue next door was being set up with various burps and beeps.
Later we walked down the beach under a bright sky, away from the people and the noises and the boats. Our feet crunched on shell sand. I tried to imagine the place without the tourists, without the intrusion of the new – pristine, isolated, as it would have been in the 1920s.
Later we found ourselves in the ‘Duke of Wellington’, one of New Zealand’s oldest hotels. It’s on the waterfront in the little town of Russell – known, when the hotel was set up – as Kororareka, the ‘hell hole of the Pacific’. Sailors, whalers – many of them from the US – convicts and beachcombers drank, and indulged in this town, a place where the lock-up was apparently a large crate – suitably ventilated – into which miscreants were flung.
A picture I took of the Russell foreshore. The Duke of Wellington – which Zane Grey frequented – is the low building on the middle left of the foreshore.
In the cool darkness of the main bar I sipped beer and looked at a wall given over to pictures of Grey with his fishing boat and the marlin dangling, like trophies, from the winches. And I knew that he hadn’t actually come out here for the writing.
But I could, I thought. I could sit on his island and write, if it wasn’t for the tourists.
Could you write in a place like that?
Go to my Pinterest board http://pinterest.com/mjwrightnz/new-zealand-landscapes/ for some more Kiwi landscapes.
Copyright © Matthew Wright 2012
I never knew Zane Grey lived in New Zealand. Love learning all these new bits and pieces of history, especially about NZ. I could never write in a place as beautiful as this because I’d want to spend all my time enjoying the scenery, people and history. I’d be better off in the middle of a blizzard somewhere – with, of course, a roaring fire and a computer.
Absolutely – Bay of Islands is seriously distracting for writers. I think Grey spent a lot of time fishing when he was here, not too much writing. He was something of a local celebrity up there back then, partly because the tourist industry hadn’t got going and he was pretty prominent anyway. Today, I believe, Michael Crawford (the Phantom of the Opera guy) lives in Kerikeri, which is about 20 km from Grey’s island.
Looks too too pretty to me! Not sure I could write there. I’d spend most of my time wandering around, watching the ocean, collecting sunsets and/or sunrises.
Is that where Zane Grey wrote The Reef Girl? Great story! Zane Grey is one of my favorite writers from a lot of different perspectives. His book The Trail Driver is a favorite. Despite his tendency to mawkish sentimentality there’s always a ring of authenticity in his work. My feeling is that he records fairly well what it was like to live in American between say 1880 and 1935. At least, from his perspective.
I’m not actually sure what Grey wrote there – I know he did a lot more fishing than writing though. It’s absolutely distracting, that place. When I was last there, I spent a lot of time touring the historical sites – this is where the first European settlements were in the 1810s, and before that it had been the major centre for Maori habitation. Way too interesting to waste time sitting insdie writing!
I was in New Zealand years ago. If I had the opportunity to live in one area for an extended period of time eventually I could focus in enough to write. But otherwise I would be too busy taking in all the beauty around me to bother with a pen and paper!
There are areas that are pretty boring. My street, for instance
I used to live in a house with panoramic views across Wellington harbour – have to admit, it WAS distracting.
A harbour or a valley, anything with a long view I can sit and watch for hours – it is said even a window is a distraction for a writer. Wellington has some great views. It’s not the beauty of the Bay of Islands being a distraction that would concern me, its the need of a regular dose of culture and civilisation.
The harbour view I had in Wellington, from Brooklyn, was stunning – years ago now, but I admit to certain nostalgia pangs for it, occasionally. Earlier this year I did manage to do some writing in Rarotonga, by way of a ‘get away and write’ week. It sort of worked…but the lagoon was rather inviting…