Peter Janssen - Travel Writer

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to a podcast from Newstalk SEDB. Follow this
and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio. Real Conversation,
Real Connection. It's Real Life with John Cowen on News
Talks EDB.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Gooday, and welcome to the last Real Life for the year.
I'm John Cown and I'd like to introduce you to
the person who has sorted out for me what I'm
going to be doing in my retirement, because I've traveled
from the top of New Zealand to the bottom several times,
and I foolishly thought I'd seen New Zealand. I've done it,
so I better head off overseas. But my guest tonight
is travel writer Peter Jensen Jansen, who has written more

(00:55):
than twenty books about New Zealand walks and pubs and
towns and places and stories, and there's all sorts of
parts of New Zealand that I still haven't seen. His
books show me that there are and wonders all over
this country, and the ones that I have seen, I
didn't see them the way he's seen them. So I

(01:16):
could spend the next five lifetimes working my way through
Peter's books, marveling at all these sites and never getting
tired or board Peter, thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
And welcome, thank you, please be here.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Ah, your books are fantastic And I've just grabbed hold
of an updated version of one I already had, and
plus another one, and they're incredible. These books are called
worth a detour, a North Island one and a South
Island one.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Tell me what they.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
Are, well, they really are a real pot piri of
places that I think people tend to overlook. So you
won't get the sky Tower in here, you won't get Queenstown.
You'll get everything else but those. And it doesn't take
too much to just stick your hose down a road,

(02:05):
check out something you think, don't rush quite so much,
and just take your time and stop at a few places.
Sometimes you go to places at a deadly dull but
don you find incredible gems.

Speaker 3 (02:18):
And that's enough book for you. Deadly dull places in
New Zealand, places to avoid it.

Speaker 4 (02:24):
And talking about something doing in the retirement, I do
a pub book. And I had an email from a
guy and he had just retired and his whole retirement
plan was to work through all the pubs in the book.
And there are one hundred and seventy of them, and
he wasn't really a drinker particularly, he was really liking
they're all historic pubs, and he just wanted to go
all these lovely old pubs that were still existing.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
So so this book of yours one hundred and seventy pubs.
And they had to fit a certain criteria, didn't they.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yes, it had to be booked before ninety sixty seven.
They had to have some architectural integrity, and they actually
had to be.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Nice places to go. Why sixty seven that's when we.

Speaker 4 (02:59):
Went to ten o'clock closing, and after ten o'clock, when
we went from six o'clock closingto ten o'clock closing, then
it became the.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Whole place for a night out.

Speaker 4 (03:08):
Kind of changel Yet there were pubs everywhere.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
We never had motels.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
If you went somewhere, you stayed in a pub and
you and also there was people didn't go flatting, so
they lived in pubs as well.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
So the pub that.

Speaker 4 (03:21):
As we we tend to think about its alcohol, we've
got a little bit sidetracked here already we have. But
with a lot of pubs hotels, they had to have
other criteria. The one the place called Hranui. Part of
the license is he had to show drovers the safest
place across the river.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Don't worry about the drink. How do we get across
the river with our flock of sheet.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
And look, that's the type of stuff that you dig
up for places all over the place. You know that
there are be is in the in the glass cabinet,
somewhere somewhere will be a stuffed bird that it's the
only example that's.

Speaker 4 (03:55):
One in North London, in Russell, and no one's really
studied it there has I don't think it's I couldn't
find a scientific name for it. And it's a type
of like a bit, like a bit nora, a raked,
like like a wick, it's a rail and there's just
this one and it's just tucked in this cabinet and
it's an incredible story verite a bit long here that

(04:16):
how it survived And it was only completely by chance
that that bird survived. So I didn't survive, but how
it didn't just get forgotten by the way.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Peter's books are great if you're planning to go and
do these trips, but even if you're not, they're very browsable,
they're very readable.

Speaker 4 (04:34):
I had a compliment from someone I think was a compliment.
They said, oh, we have your books and they're in
the toilet. They said, we read them all the time, perfect,
and they're a guidebook. I don't tell the people everything.
You know, you've got to find some stuff out for
yourself too. So I said, I steer you in the direction,
saying this might interest you.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Off you go, right, yep.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
So these books are worth the latest ones that you published.
They are republishing of one that you put out a couple.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Of years ago.

Speaker 2 (05:02):
I've got an earlier version I got probably about twenty nineteen.

Speaker 4 (05:06):
Twenty nineteen, just before and things changed and the publishers
wanted to reprint them.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
I said, oh, look, you.

Speaker 4 (05:13):
Know a lot of things have changed since COVID, and
so I said, I'll do it again. So I just,
you know, got in and away I went. A lot
didn't change, but certainly like a lot, a lot of
closed down completely. Another one which was interesting in New
Zealand and that people didn't tend to close for the winter,
and now, particularly in the South Island, people will just
close their businesses for the winter, or that you know,

(05:36):
the little museum will close, and a lot of a
lot of the museums run by places are run by volunteers,
and so some of them only opened very short times.
You know, it will be a couple of hours on
the Sunday afternoon. So if you want to go to
one of some of these places, there's websites and phone
numbers you need to find out when they're open, because
you don't want to turn up and find that.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
I'm just amazed at the things that you have dug up,
you know, drapery stores in the middle of Northland, and
strange murals and things in pools and all sorts of
fascinating stuffes.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
The toy Wall, The toy wall and Alpha was one
of my favorites. And this the story goes as this
local woman she found some toys just lying on a path,
so she put them on a wall for someone to
find them. But what happened was people just kept adding
toys to it. So what they then did doing ended
up doing, is that they just put in this wall.

(06:33):
It's maybe about twenty meters long after toys, and the
toys are all cemented into the wall, and there's no
rhyme or reason. So you've got snow white with like
twenty dwarves, and you've got Superman being chased by a dinosaur.
And then when this lady died, they created this little

(06:54):
fairy village in the bushes above the wall and then
Tutor ashes in it.

Speaker 3 (06:59):
I think that's just so lovely, right.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
So that's the type of stuff that your books are
full of, strange things like a death, a death, things
of the.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Death, offense and death. I don't know if it's called
Defence of Death.

Speaker 4 (07:12):
But mccray's Mining, as mccraze is a mining town where
they still mine, which is really interesting that there's a
huge open cast mine and when you're heading out of
the town north south southeast southwest rather there's this and
it's not just a few it's hundreds of mainly pigskins

(07:33):
all strung out along the fence and they've been there
for thirty years. So there's like there's skulls lying on
the floor ground and it's and it's and I kept thinking,
what what the hell's all this about?

Speaker 3 (07:46):
And I kept asking people what would it be about?

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Because it's it's sort of creepy.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
It goes from maybe five hundred meters cult try, I
think it's a cult trying to scare you up. And
someone said, in the end, oh.

Speaker 4 (07:58):
You know, it's a thing that put the skins on
there to think the farmer for shooting on the lab.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
But they were never worth anything. But in the end
it's a sky defence.

Speaker 4 (08:06):
You you're on a killed got a peg wrap, some
big peg and it's lovely and you just put your
hang the skin in the head on the fence. It's
really weird, it's really strange.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
Oh look, there's treats all over this country. And do
you travel all the time.

Speaker 4 (08:24):
No, No, because you know, I think you just get
tired of it. And when I'm doing the book stuff,
I travel on my own because if I take someone
with me, they think it's a holiday where I have
to be a little focused, I have to cover a
reasonable amount of ground because there's.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
A lot of roads in New Zealand. So I tend
to go on my own. I hope you still enjoy it,
say it absolutely?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (08:44):
Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 4 (08:45):
And because you're meeting a lot of these people, you know,
the taxi, the museum in Taranaki, the Manatahi and you.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
When I went there, I.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
Thought, oh gosh, I'm lost and it's just a farm
shed and you open the door and it's just an
amazing array of taxidermy, animals and birds. But most in
q is the guy who runs it. Knows everything about everything,
and he will take you around and he will show

(09:14):
you all sorts of things. He'll tell you stories about him,
and it's just it's one of my favorite places and
doesn't matter if you're interested in taxidermy or not.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
I hadn't rat it in my top list.

Speaker 4 (09:26):
No, but you open this door and it's just incredible.

Speaker 2 (09:31):
My guest tonight is determined to destroy the overseas tourist business.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
You might have a bucket list of.

Speaker 2 (09:37):
Going to Europe and North America and Antarctaca and things,
but Peter Janssen is an expert at just revealing what
a wonderful, diverse and remarkable country we have.

Speaker 3 (09:48):
We're down every little side road there's some.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Treasure, and if you've got an eye and a bit
of curiosity, and especially if you've got one of Peter's
books in your hands, you'll be endlessly amazed. I'll be
back with him a little bit later on to find
out how he got into this wonderful career of unearthing
treasures around New Zealand. This is real life on Newstalk.
It'd be I'm John Cown back with you in.

Speaker 1 (10:10):
A minute, intelligent interviews with interesting people. It's real life
on news Talks.

Speaker 5 (10:15):
Aboo and Feelings.

Speaker 3 (10:30):
Welcome back to real life.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
I've got Peter Jansen in the studio who's sharing his
love story with New Zealand. There's love of New Zealand.
And he's also sharing his love of a particular song.
Why do you like that Nina Simone song so much?

Speaker 3 (10:45):
I just think.

Speaker 4 (10:47):
It's easy in a in a trouble world to get
sort of ground down. But I think that song is
you know, birds flying high. It's just you can just
sing that song and just feel better because there are
things to be glad about, you know, the son coming up,
the birds in the tree, and it's a night and

(11:08):
it's a nice beat to it, and it just really
does make.

Speaker 3 (11:12):
You feel good. And when you're traveling around New Zealand,
what's your favorite bird?

Speaker 4 (11:16):
Oh, Kia has to be Kere. I don't know why
we call ourselves key We should be keys. Keyas are
just trouble and you know we've got Keyas and Weaker
and pooke Ecko and the Bogan birds, all of them.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
All of them. They travel, They steal, they.

Speaker 2 (11:37):
Can you think we should be calling ourselves the keys
clever they are.

Speaker 4 (11:44):
I was at the four past and I had some
food and they said, don't feed the kids. I wasn't
and I had this bit of cake and I leant
back just and the key was it just waited for
me to it knew I was too far to get it,
and it got the bit of cake. It just threw
it over over the rail of the cafe, then flew

(12:08):
down and got it went under a car. They are
so smart, They are so smart.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
They are amazing birds. Now, when you were talking about
McCrae's junction before and you're talking about the open cast
mind there I detected a little glaze in your eyes
of nostalgia.

Speaker 3 (12:23):
No, why would that be.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
I come from a coal mining town and I have
to say I have a soft spot for open cast miners.

Speaker 3 (12:32):
And well maybe other people are. I know there are.

Speaker 4 (12:37):
I think there are open cast mine for Shnado's not many,
but a few. And I come from a coal small
coal mining town West Huntley called pook Mirro a little
bit of my parents and then we moved into town
and I don't know, just there's coal mining town, coal
mining people.

Speaker 3 (12:56):
I have a soft spot for it.

Speaker 2 (12:57):
I'm just wondering if your small town origins gives you
a different perspective on New Zealand. Does it make you
more empathetic when you when you go to a town
that's obviously a bit down on it's luck and has
a story.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
To absolutely, you know, I have to say when I
go to places that, you know, the Kitangata's cold mining
town or Waira, which is you know, it's has had
a bit of rough time, I have a soft spot
for those places, I really do, and pad working people
and they.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Made the best of when it's growing up.

Speaker 4 (13:33):
Our world is quite small, your your neighborhood is quite small,
but we were great. My father and mum were the big,
big fans of the Sunday Afternoon Drive. And the Sunday
Afternoon Drive I think is a real key institution.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
That everyone should do.

Speaker 4 (13:48):
Where you you don't really have a specific destination, but
it's vague right You might say, are we going to
see there?

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Someone's building a new house out there, or we haven't.

Speaker 4 (13:57):
Been down there, and off you go, and you get
sidetracked and you chat about the people who live in
a particular house along the way, and there's that old
building over there and it used to be a school,
and it's this, and so you just take an interest
in everything around you without necessarily having to be fixed
on getting somewhere. And there was always an ice cream.

(14:19):
There's always a nice cream. So someday afternoon drive was
always do you reckon?

Speaker 3 (14:23):
That sowed the seeds for your travel.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Yeah, and my parents were interested as well, so they said,
all well, and who was ever free, just got in
the car and off we went. And there was a
destination sort off, but it didn't matter if you got sidetracking,
you went somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Now you say name Jensen, that speaks of a sort
of a European origin, your first generation New Zealander. Yep, absolutely,
you're borrow some of your parents continental perspective, or at
least the perspective of someone who's come to New Zealand
seeing it fresh.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
Yes, there's an element of that.

Speaker 4 (14:55):
And my parents were Dutch, and my mother and three
brothers came and it was a really big thing for them.
They came from poor families basically, and they came here
and New Zealand was very good to them, you know
people in that place, like Hooky Mirror. My mum was
always incredibly loyal to certain people. They said they were
really good to us when we came here, and that

(15:16):
Huntley was good to my parents and they were very
loyal to it.

Speaker 3 (15:19):
They loved it.

Speaker 4 (15:20):
They built their own house and that's where they stayed.
So and I think you learn to make the best
of things, and you learn to enjoy things that don't
necessarily need to be big in flesh, because if you're
not having a lot of money, big and flesh is
not going to cut it.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
But you can.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
Still enjoy things. And my mum was a reader. My
dad would you know, sex o'clock news, what's the news?
They need to get the paper and read it. And
then there was always talks about politics, religion. It didn't
really matter what you talked about as long as you're
talking about something. My father had opinion on anything. You
could talk about anything for maybe three minutes. It didn't matter.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
And your love of nature, because that when you read
your books, you obviously loved people that are in these places,
you love the stories behind them, and you love the
nature that's around them. That's what makes these books so readable.
You must have got your love of nature from somewhere.

Speaker 3 (16:16):
Team.

Speaker 4 (16:17):
Well, yeah, when I did these short walk books, and
the publishers said, well, short walks board, you know, there's
lots of books on tramping, and I thought, no, you know,
unless you get out in your environment and you get
out and see nature, you're never going to care about it.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
So anyone could do a short walk. They can do
a fifteen.

Speaker 4 (16:34):
Minute walker, half an hour walker, two hour walk. And
it came from, really, I think, where I went to
a Catholic school and we had Sister Lawrence, and Sister
Lawrence would get us all in the kids and we'll
drag us all through the bush. And she had we
had looked at native plants and birds and all the
rest of them. And they were very outgoing nuns. They

(16:57):
were they had a strong sense of social connection and
they had a strong sense of connection with nature, and
they built at the build little greenhouse at the school
where we grew native plants. So that I think has
had a big influence on me.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
Just the Lawrence she was sound us through the bush.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
She hiked up her habit and rolled up a sleeve
and off we go kids.

Speaker 2 (17:24):
It's not the impression I have of many nuns. But
that's a wonderful positive picture of the nuns. So you're
a fan of nuns.

Speaker 4 (17:30):
I'm a fan of nuns because I just at school
we went.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
To the nuns were great.

Speaker 4 (17:35):
They were you know, they were they were and they
had they had it was tough, you know, two classes,
and nothing phased them. And they were calm and they
and they were.

Speaker 3 (17:48):
Quite they were quite open people.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
Uh, certainly nuns we had were anyway.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Okay, So look that that sort of challenges a stereotype.
And just before the show, you were challenging enough sort
of an impression that I had of Iraq, and you
lived in Iraq for a number of years and you
were painting this picture of lovely people.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
I foolishly was traveling around.

Speaker 4 (18:11):
This was not all that long ago, and I got
an invitation through through Vegas connections to go to the
northern part of Rakha, Kurdistan to look at a project
that UNESCO had had there that had gone a little
bit of ry, a publishing project, and that was my background,
and they said come for a month, and so I
said all right. And then as I was flying into Ubil,

(18:36):
the Kurdish capital. I thought, you stupid man, you stupid,
stupid man. You're just flying into a ruck.

Speaker 3 (18:42):
What are you have a year's habit. I certainly did,
but it.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
Was fantastic and it just they just kept renewing the
contract for three years and I was working on a
Kurdish online encyclopedia. And again, a New Zealander is really
great because you don't have any You're not an Arab,
you're not an American, you have no political connection. And
as they said, if this all goes wrong, we'll just
blame you because you're from New Zealand. And they were

(19:08):
great people. They were incredibly quite liberal, you know, women
half of the university were women. Women dressed ordinarily with
there was they they disliked completely veiled people, that was.
And they were very very anti Isis and they were
It was safe, incredibly safe, and you I was walking

(19:32):
through a park at night was maybe a half plust
eleventh night, and it wasn't the lighting wasn't very good,
and it didn't occur to me that I shouldn't walk
through there because I thought nothing would happen there were
they no one stole anything, people didn't there was a
car company, and it had piles and piles of new
car tires just stacked out outside the front. No one

(19:54):
would think about taking anything. It would be dishonorable to
be a criminal. You don't dishonor your family.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
I'm just sticking the head out of the window, hearing
the crashing of preconceptions and prejudices hitting the ground.

Speaker 3 (20:06):
It was and look to it.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
I'm not surprised that you well, I'm surprised by that.
I'm not surprised that it's a person like yourself that
sees that type of stuff, because this is what you're
doing with your travel books. You're opening people's eyes to
things that people walk past all of the all the time.

Speaker 3 (20:24):
In fact, I'm going to just round out. I'm just
asking you about a few things.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
Like, what is something that perhaps thousands of people in
a city walk past and never see that you see
and think people should take a second look at.

Speaker 4 (20:37):
Oh, I think I take you, for instance, Auckland right
for a start, and we have a surprising amount of
nature toys are common in Auckland, and we just take
that for granted. They get up there in the trees
and are noisy and all the rest of it. And
I just think we take our bird life for granted.
We think, oh there's a tooy, you only find them

(20:59):
in New Zealand, nowhere else. And I think I think
we just need to just slow down a little bit
and just take and people people. People, make a little
time with people, making a conversation with people without overdoing
it of course, and just engaging with people. And it's
amazing what people will will that that what enhances your

(21:20):
life through conversations with people on a random basis.

Speaker 2 (21:23):
Shyness must rob people so much. You know, you sound
like you're a type of person that can rock up
to someone and start a conversation about asking them about
places and things, and that must be a real gift.

Speaker 4 (21:35):
And also it is a bit of an art because
you don't want to be too personal. There's a real
there's a there's a there's a way where you engage
people who are essentially strangers, but you don't scare them off.

Speaker 3 (21:49):
You know, it's it's an.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Art, now, get it right. You could become an interview.

Speaker 3 (21:55):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
I think I'd just be too gabby and talk over them.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Peter, it's been wonderful talking to you. Thank you so
much for what you've done and opening up my eyes
to so many things around New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (22:05):
We're going to go out on another song. What are
we going to be listening to?

Speaker 4 (22:08):
It's Crosby Stools and Nash and Southern Cross and it's
it's just again a very upbeat song about I'm not
really a sailor, but it's.

Speaker 3 (22:16):
A person who.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
There's the one line, a couple of lines that where
he's talking about his ship and you know, I'm like
a ship with all my flags flying, and I think
sometimes we forget to do that. You know that we
that we we've got a lot of a good side
and an interesting signe to ourself and we should show people.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
Okay, put on your penance and head off for a
Sunday drive and discover this wonderful land. And Peter Jensen,
it's been wonderful drive, wonderful encountering your books, encountering you.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Thank you. This is real Life. I'm John Cown.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
I'm looking forward to being back with you on Christmas
Eve for and I'll be hosting Till Midnight with a
Cot with a Christmas Music Request program and back with
you again with Real Life next year. So have a
wonderful Christmas and I'll catch you in twenty twenty six.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
Okay, m H.

Speaker 3 (23:16):
School which heated, and we're live, and we're tested.

Speaker 5 (23:23):
And we never failed defailed. It was the easiest thing
to do.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
You will survive being invested.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Somebody fine will come along, Daly forgive a lot of love.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
In the Southern Cross.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
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