Do you have any need to be worried about the Seabed and Foreshore Proposals?

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I think it was about 1970 or so when I saw my first piece of Waitangi Treaty graffiti. It was on the side of a farm building alongside SH1 just south of Dunedin. It read, “The Treaty is a fraud” and I wondered what on earth it was about.

I had been educated and grown up believing that New Zealand was a place of great racial harmony, there were no issues with Maori and that the Treaty of Waitangi simply was the full stop at the end of a happy sentence about life in this country.

However, my 25 years as a radio talk show host showed me that like most New Zealanders, I had been living in a land where we looked at things through rose-tinted spectacles.

As a talk show and talkback host I used to be appalled by some of the insensitive and totally ignorant claims by listeners who you might call red necks.

The most common was “that we all live in the same country, we are all the same and the same rules should apply to us all” — those rules were all British rules enforcing a British way of life and didn’t recognise that Maori had a vastly different set of rules and culture. And there was the other gem — that the “bloody Maori should be grateful they weren’t colonised by the French and that they should appreciate that without us, they’d still be living in grass huts and eating each other”.

I learned very quickly that the Maori had thousands of grievances and that the British rulers of colonial New Zealand really believed that the Treaty of Waitangi was a sop to Maori aspirations and after a decade or two, most Maori would be bred out and we’d all live a happy contented life, like a duplicate England in the South Seas.

Yes, there was a great deal of intermarriage as the Maori were an attractive and sexy race, but no, Maori wasn’t bred out, despite the bloodlines being diluted many times.

I have no idea what it is about Maori attitudes and culture that dictates that a person who may have to go back several generations to find the full-blooded Maori forebear, far prefers to follow Maori ways than Pakeha.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this was that I became far more tolerant and understanding of Maori issues than most talkback hosts who played the race card to the maximum and who found it easier to deal with red necks and racists — and largely still do.

I wasn’t a populist talkback host and my more liberal approach earned me hostility, criticism and death threats.

But I could live with my conscience.

We now live in a country where the acceptance and understanding of Maori grievances is clearly understood by successive governments of any persuasion and over the past 15 or 20 years, we have seen Treaty of Waitangi settlements that would have provoked a return to the Land Wars if they had been suggested in the 1950s.

And the majority of New Zealanders now seem to (often grudgingly) accept these claims and settlements as legitimate because the early British did stuff up and left us with a mess to clean up. We can’t simply say “that was 160 plus years ago, let’s forget it” because the rest of the world would not allow that.

But even this white liberal has trouble coming to grips with the seabed and foreshore debate.

When it first became topical currency, I would get talkback callers saying “I heard about a ‘New Zealand’ family on a beach today and they were approached by Maori demanding money because this was their beach”.

I never believed that, but the Seabed and Foreshore Act as introduced by Labour seemed to offer those sorts of opportunities, even though senior Maori have said constantly that we can trust them and that that will never happen — the beaches and foreshore will continue to be available for all.

But, now. I am not so sure.

On my recent two week swing through much of the North Island in a campervan, the Navigator turned Driver and I alternated between freedom camping and using camping grounds. One night in the bush or on a beach, the next in a camping ground.

Our campervan was green-stickered and one hundred percent environmentally friendly with both shower and toilet. We made sure that both were always useable by using our nights in the camping grounds to empty the grey water and toilet and refill the water tank.

I am well aware that freedom camping is a touchy subject and many New Zealanders think that freedom camping is illegal. It’s not.

So we were determined to do everything right.

At the little Taranaki seaside village of Ohawe, around the coast from Hawera, we arrived just after dark and found a small parking site past the local fishing club rooms where there were clear “No overnight parking” signs relating to their car park.

We drove on a couple of hundred metres to within a few metres of the sea and the crashing surf. There were no “Private Property” or “No Overnight Stopping” signs.

Next morning, while I was in the shower, a woman pulled up in a small silver car and told the Navigator turned Driver we were on private property and that was going to cost us $15. She paid and when the Navigator turned Driver asked how we were supposed to know, she was told “there are signs when you come in.”

On the way out we examined every sign we could see. There was no such sign.

But we were okay; we had done our bit, left no litter or spilled anything unpleasant.

A week later we were around the East Cape.

I know from the experience of many trips around here that much, if not all, of the beach and waterfront along from Opotiki to just before you go over the hill to Hicks Bay, is privately owned by local Maori.

There are plenty of signs telling you this — some in the bluntest of terms.

Again it was dark when we arrived at our destination for the night — Te Araroa, the little town that’s closest to East Cape. I like Te Araroa and I like the Ngati Porou people who come from here to Gisborne.

We bought some provisions at the local 4 Square and looked around for a place to park up. We found somewhere a kilometre or two out of town, back towards Hicks Bay.

There’s a sizeable bridge over a sizeable river with a little slip road off to the left hand side of the road that leads down to the river, then turns and runs alongside the river and under the bridge.

No signs, no gates, no fences, just a small track leading down to the river.

So down here we headed. We saw another road leading off to the left that took you into a large gravel dump — obviously that was private property, but where we went was just a few metres away from the riverbank, well within the Queen’s Chain and close to the bridge.

We cooked dinner, kept everything inside the campervan and then went to sleep . . .

. . . .Only to be rudely woken shortly after 6.00am the next morning by a white Ford Explorer with trailer up against our front bumper with the driver blowing the horn.

I got out of bed, slipped into the driver’s seat thinking it was someone wanting river access. But instead, when I rolled down the driver’s window I was shouted at by a B man. He was every B word in the book. Bullying, Bullish, Blustering, Bald-headed (of course), Bellowing, Boorish, Bellicose and Blowhard. He shouted abuse at me for ten minutes without a break. Every time he slackened off I tried to say something, but he got another wind and raised the verbal assault level again.

We were parking on private property, he roared. We were irresponsible, he blustered. We were lucky it was him who saw us and not his mate who would simply have let all of our tyres down, he shouted. We were morons. We were Dickheads (partly right of course). We had no right to park there. On and on this extraordinary performance went.

Eventually I got a word in. Why couldn’t he just come and tell us quietly that we were on private land — which I very much doubted?

Because he was sick and tired of bludgers like us, rude and arrogant, assuming we could park anywhere.

Again the tirade. We should know better. We should park in camping grounds. The Gisborne District Council would issue us with a trespass ticket if their ranger saw us (but why the District Council if this was private land?).

Eventually I got another word in. Who owns the land? He named a local Whanau.

Who owns the riverbed? That was the Crown.

So, I responded, we’re on the Queen’s Chain.

“How wide is the Queen’s Chain,” he blustered. “Twenty-two feet!”

No, twenty-two yards, I replied.

He looked and said, “Well you had to cross private land to get here.

“You lot piss me off.” He screamed, his voice now getting hoarse with all of the yelling. “I am going to report you to the campervan company.”

With that, he stormed off and began reversing out.

I thought that wasn’t a satisfactory way to end this one-sided conversation, so in bare feet I got out into the freezing early morning. He stopped reversing and got out of his Ford Explorer.

I walked around the Explorer looking for any sign-writing and inside to see if there was a passenger. There was nothing. But I could see my investigation of his vehicle rattled him a bit.

“Now look,” I said. “My name is Allan Dick, I am a journalist” — and proceeded to give him the account of my attitude towards Treaty matters that I began this story with. I finished with — “I have been supportive of many Maori claims, I have stuck my neck out, I have argued with people who say this sort of thing that you’ve just put us through actually happens. Now I know it does. As far as I am concerned you have put the Maori case back 100 years in my mind. What’s your name?”

“Johnny (surname suppressed),” he replied.

The conversation became more constructive. Eventually I said I had to go as I was not long out of hospital and I was going to catch my death from cold.

Amazingly, he then stuck out his hand and said, “No hard feelings Allan.”

I shook his hand and off he went.

We clearly weren’t parked on private land. We were well within the Queen’s Chain and therefore subject to the rules of the Gisborne District Council. My understanding of the Freedom Camping laws are that if you are in a green-stickered campervan with self-contained grey water and toilet systems, you can park overnight in such places as long as there are no signs banning it.

As for Johnny’s back-up assertion that, “Well, you had to drive over private land to get here” I have great doubt about. The slip road that led to and then along the river ran tight to the road and the bridge and looked exceedingly “public” to me.

Certainly Johnny’s “Welcome to Te Araroa” outburst was a far cry from the night before when staff at the New World in Whangamata told me we could park overnight in the supermarket car park!

I think Johnny was simply letting off steam. I don’t doubt there are travellers and tourists who just stop and park anywhere, breaking the rules of fair play and decency. But we weren’t. We were careful and I think Johnny was probably surprised that we weren’t Germans, or Hungarians, or Israelis.

Nice to have met you Johnny.

But, of course you should have known, I was always going to have the last say on the matter.

Footnote. After this incident I checked with someone in Te Araroa who was astounded at this incident. But he also didn’t believe that I had met “Johnny” — the real Johnny didn’t fit my description,. Didn’t drive a white Ford Explorer and would have dropped off a venison steak for breakfast than heap abuser on me. So, my visitor was not only a verbal bully, but he also told lies.