Jessie Casson

I feel like we are in a time warp outside of the box. We do not travel at the pace of tourist, there is no sightseeing and little eating of ice creams. We do not have the routine of the 9-5 but move as the book dictates, making sure we are not behind schedule – 3 people a week, we must get 3 people a week. Typing up the interviews consumes the evening but by the time Dylan has decided it is dark enough to go to sleep it is almost 10pm. A huge break though occurred tonight with some freshly purchased black material. The material was pegged outside over all windows that shine into his wing. He pulled back the curtain and exclaims “it’s dark!” Hurray.
I do not complain about our time bubble that envelops us. It is enjoyable to be out of synch with the other people around us. It makes life seem almost dream like. We are on a mission to make a book.

Until 24 hrs ago all was well. We sailed from Wellington to Picton on an easy crossing and we were making good time heading towards Greymouth to meet our champion coal shovelers. Then without warning something went very wrong. Matt looked in the rear view mirror to see the curtains blowing wildly in the caravan. We pulled over and the whole front window of the caravan had been blown in and smashed. The back left hand window had been blown out with the through wind and the front right hand side of the caravan had come away from the base. We were shell-shocked. We were in the middle of nowhere 66kms from the nearest town (Murchison). 10 mins passed where we were kind of dazed just gazing at the state of our treasured caravan. Then two guys, Graham and Marti, stopped and set about directing us as to what to do next.

They reckoned that the back window was now weakened and would blow out if we left it in so that had to come out. Unfortunately it broke while we tried to move it. We then removed all the curtains and 45mins later we were traveling slowly towards Murchison. Graham and Marti drove behind and we wondered why they had disappeared from view. The reason, they were collecting cushions and various pieces of clothing that were blowing straight out of the back window. We reassessed what could no longer travel in the caravan.

We got a cabin in Murchison and felt overwhelmed at our misfortune. The campground owner very kindly lent us a tarpaulin to put over the caravan in case it rained. Today we taped up the windows, bolted the right side back on and traveled to Westport where there is supposedly someone who can return our caravan to its former glory. Tomorrow we will know more.

On a positive note there are a family of woodchoppers many of whom have won national competitions living in Westport, and if all goes to plan I will be photographing them tomorrow.

We are off! Goodbye comfy bed, goodbye daily showers, goodbye convention, hello adventure. The blue skies and sun that I had always existed in my leaving town imaginings isn’t in place but there has been no rain for the last 2 hours so things might brighten up. I think we will be more acutely aware of the weather living in such confinement. The caravan is bulging at the seams with stuff we think we need. I have whittled down my clothes 5 times since my first edit. We have bikinis and gloves, as we will run into all temperatures. Hopefully more of the bikini kind though.

And now I am just sitting here unable to put into words the excitement and uncertainty that the unknown holds.

I got some great news last week, Random House Publishing have agreed to publish the “Winners” project. I woke my Dad up at midnight, in England, to tell him and then sat and smiled for a while. In fact I am still smiling, although at times I feel the magnitude of the mission ahead. We leave in two weeks. The caravan arrived back from the spray painters today with a fresh coat and a 1970’s orange stripe around its middle, it looks like its just stepped out of a very funky show room.

Two weeks ago I bought a semi-pro video camera to document the trip. I have had two lessons from the lovely Alan who is patiently showing me the ropes, but I am still firmly in the all-the-gear-no-idea camp. Moving pictures unfortunately do not translate perfectly from stills, in fact there seems to be few rules of thumb that apply to both. But I am on a learning curve that is almost perpendicular.

Two things have happened in the last week. Firstly the project ‘Outside the City’ has taken a little turn in its subject matter and the focus is now on winners of competitions. The competitions will range from sports to jam making and I am having a great time researching unusual competitions. Near Greymouth there is a coal shoveling competition that has a heat for women. They compete to see who can shift half a tonn of coal in the fastest time. (see website www.jessiecasson.com “Winners” for more details about the project)

Secondly, the wallpaper has been hung in the caravan and looks fantastic. It took Matt and myself a whole weekend to do the job. A ‘domestic’ broke out when we cut the first piece of wallpaper too small. Matt said he wasn’t going to do the job as it was a waste of time. The toys flew out of my cot and I made it clear that I needed wallpaper in my caravan. An hour later we had cut the second piece the correct size and glued it into place, the sun was shining, “Shine on you crazy diamond” playing and life felt good.