Self-styled ‘guardian of the North,’ Hone Harawira might indeed have a point about ‘hordes of potentially virus-carrying Aucklanders’ finally casting off the shackles of the latest four-month-long, Delta-inspired COVID-19 lockdown and heading north to spread mayhem and destruction amongst the good (if still lightly vaccinated) burghers of Te Tai Tokerau (the sprawling Māori electorate which encompasses all of Northland) when the borders finally open tomorrow (Wed Dec 15).
Me? Speaking strictly personally here I think that the job of manning (personing?) a COVID-19 border is one for the Police and/or the Army, not some self-appointed rabble-rouser like Harawira.
Not only that, but I can’t help think that Harawira and his ilk doth protest too much; as anyone who has spent the past four months living in Auckland knows, no one here wants to catch the bloody COVID-19 virus; let alone be ‘that guy’ who passes it on to someone else, one of the strongest drivers, methinks behind the fact that Auckland’s was the first DHB to achieve the magical 90% double vaccination figure (now an even more impressive 94%); while Northland DHB is still languishing on 81%.
Aucklanders – I believe – have learned some valuable lessons – not to mention several coping mechanisms – through the latest, longest – and definitely most socially divisive – COVID-19 Lockdown.
And they – we? – are definitely NOT the public enemy # 1 types, which short-sighted, publicity-hungry idiots like Harawira attempt to paint us as.
So come Thursday this week I will be loading up TTC (The Trusty Camry) with – let’s see – facemasks – tick – hand sanitiser – tick – and my own helmet plus several pairs of driving gloves (tick, tick, tick & tick) as well as My Vaccine Pass (loaded to my mobile phone plus printed out as a hard copy which I keep in my wallet), and heading south to Hampton Downs for a couple of celebratory sessions at the Venue’s purpose-build outdoor Go Kart track.
I’ll be back – in this case both to – Pukekohe Park Raceway and Hampton Downs Motorsport Park– this weekend as well; ostensibly to cover the first two major post-Lockdown motor racing meetings being held in the 09 calling zone – but hey, I’m not going to lie, I’d be heading south to poke my nose in on both whether I was writing about them or not.
I would because simply turning up and enjoying the ‘vibe’ of a motorsport meeting is part of my DNA. And for the first time in my 62 years living on this planet, factors outside my direct control have denied me the opportunity to get my fix for the past four long months.
Living in the epicentre of the Delta virus for so long has been a special sort of hell, in fact, one made immeasurably worse by the cavalier way Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern treated her fellow Aucklanders. Her cabinet appeared little better most ready and willing to throw Aucklanders under one of ‘our’ flash new double decker buses, if it would help keep their own electorates free from what outside the Super City seemed to appear to many as a uniquely Auckland/Delta scourge.
Never mind that daily life here in Auckland was little different to that anywhere else here in NZ.
Unlike what some idiots appeared to think, Auckland and Aucklanders adapted quickly to the heightened risk profile; and though the main roads and motorways lacked the eerie-silence and almost empty Zombie Dawn-like lack of traffic of the first COVID-19 Lockdown in early 2020, those travelling from A to B were – for the most part – doing so carefully…if not wearing a facemask while driving, at least hastily donning one upon reaching their destination.
Even I took it upon myself to ‘mask-up’ whenever I Ieft the house; meaning a lot of heavy-breathing as I’d venture out for a head clearing walk at lunchtime or longer bike ride later on of an afternoon.
Later on, as the months dragged on and Jacinda simply refused to say anything about Auckland ‘ever’ getting out of Lockdown, a rag-tag bunch of COVID-19-deniers and general misfits and social malcontents successfully managed to subvert the PM’s ‘trust us we know what we’re doing’ mantra via the simple expedient of a couple of old-skool Protest Marches.
Because the mainstream media is still very much wedded to the noise, the colour, and the frisson of danger a group of otherwise powerless individuals can conjure up ‘en masse’ you can pretty much guarantee a cache of valuable TV time.
And so it was deep into this last lockdown, though by that stage I’m thinking that Cabinet – if not the PM – had finally realised that if they weren’t already then they were in imminent risk of ‘losing the (Auckland) room’ if they didn’t do something – anything – to address the malaise that had settled fog-like, over the Tamaki Makaurau isthmus.
The silly thing was that all we really wanted were answers to a couple of key questions, even if the answers were unpalatable.
The one I wanted an answer to, for example, was simple in the extreme…. all I really wanted to know was when would l be able to travel freely again from my home in West Auckland to points south of the Supercity’s hard southern border at Mercer.
Incredibly it’s been over a month now since the PM announced that the old COVID-19 Alert System was to be replaced by a new COVID-19 Protection Framework (aka the Traffic Light System) which would take into account the number of people vaccinated in an area (using a new My Vaccine Pass) to determine what freedoms you or I might be allowed under the glow of a red, orange or green light.
But the border – while it will, apparently remain in place – will be able to be breached by those Aucklanders who are double vaccinated (like my good self) from 11.59am tonight.
To which all I can say is that it’s about bloody time!
Come Saturday morning though and any lingering anger about the glacial pace at which the PM and her Labour Government have gone about sorting out that issue and hundreds of others will quickly be replaced by that most addictive of buzzes – being surrounded by racing cars and racing drivers at an event.
First port of call for moi will be to Pukekohe Park Raceway where Chief LeMon Squeezer Dr Jacob Simonsen will be preparing to host the first part of his two-day, BadThurst 12 Hour endurance race.
Then I’ll saddle up TTC and head across the border to Hampton Downs to check on the first day of testing for the 2022 Toyota Gazoo 86 championship.
By day’s end I’ll be ready for an early night but I’’ll be back at both venues on Sunday – to report on how the BadThurst 12 Hour at Pukekohe Park Raceway, and the Toyota 86s went at Hampton Downs, plus to do two more sessions at the circuit’s outdoor Go Kart track.
At which point I should be tired, but happy…and ready to use My Vaccine Pass to travel even further afield after Xmas and into the New Year!
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