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.He started passing roadside stalls.A bank of black and purple thunder clouds rolled in from the north-east and he made it under cover just as raindrops the size of small grapes started splashing in the dust and on the tin roof above him.Most of the produce in the wooden-floored shed had rotted in the boxes and trays around the walls.Some carrots were still okay and he tossed a handful out the door to Bojay.A few sacks of spuds were still good too, and so were some pumpkins and crates of kumara.Sean filled four small onion bags with vegetables.He grabbed a bag of pickling onions and some mixed nuts, and found himself a box to sit on by the door while he waited for the rain to stop.It didn’t, so he made himself comfortable under the awning and fried himself some vegetables.Night fell and rain rattled on the roof.He lay awake thinking of what Uncle Morepork had told him about the Maeroero.A gift? What?He rode the deserted highway in the morning sun, enjoying birdsong from bush that seemed a season away from engulfing everything.At the bottom, he passed Pokeno, the turn-off to the Coromandel and the Hauraki Plains.He remembered two years’ secondary schooling in Paeroa, and hitting what he thought was a peak of educational achievement when Mr Fraser had written on his sixth-form report card that ‘Sean cooperates passively’.He was still reliving adolescent small town scenes buying a dozen at the back of Ernie Bishop’s hotel and rolling the Mk II on the way home from a dance in Thames, when Meremere reared up on his left.The power station didn’t look any different to Sean.Still lurking.Still looming too, with the same haunted quality of primitive and abandoned technology crumbling into ruin.On his right was what he’d always thought of as the great grey-green greasy Waikato River.On every bend a taniwha.Further up the river was a string of unattended dams, water spilling over or roaring through till turbines corroded and seized.Powerboats, with their spectacular antics, and fit young rowers had used the hydro lakes most weekends.As Sean rode he saw, through gaps between the trees, young men paddling carved waka, sunlight flashing off the water.The road led south as the river meandered north.He remembered one summer when they’d run out of water in Auckland and had started talking seriously about piping water from the Waikato so people could wash their cars and water their lawns.Folk from both Waikato and Auckland were upset at the mixing of mauri for no good reason that they could see.No wonder the Maeroero had been upset, Sean thought.No wonder Cally had seen them stamping about like Rumpelstiltskin, crying despairingly, ‘That’s enough, that’s enough!’Uncle Morepork’s warning made more sense.He felt a sudden affection for the gnarled little guys he’d seen in Cally’s paintings.They’d had no show in the old world.Maybe they’d get a better deal this time around.His attention was suddenly caught by the double stack of the Huntly power station away in the distance.What a very expensive way to boil water.Sean hoped the Maeroero were happy to see the giant machines quiescent and the stacks cold, emitting nothing.As he drew closer, he could see seagulls perched on the rim of each chimney, preening and resting as they journeyed up and down the river.Sean didn’t feel like adventures in the small town of Huntly.The last time he’d driven south, traffic had been bottlenecked there and everything was covered in a fine black and ochre dust from the coal and bricks that had underpinned the local economy.No doubt things were different now, nonetheless, he stopped at the next creek and rode through trampled and broken fences to a spot about three paddocks away from the road.He unsaddled Bojay, strung his tarp in the willows, boiled the billy and sat back with a cup of tea.He felt relaxed, in command.There was a natural nervousness at being in somebody else’s territory, but the more he let that thought mill around, the more it felt like his turf, and even if he wasn’t from there he was still welcome
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