Wild West Land Blog

If there’s one thing I miss downunder it’s decent TV shows - sure NZ has the usual crop of American imports including House, Lost and numerous others - but you don’t get so much of Channel 4’s output including the Essex boy chef himself, Jamie Oliver.

So what do I find I’m missing on TV this week? Part two of the foodie’s fabulous American road trip in the Kerouac style but probably featuring far more restaurants.

The Times features a selection of southwestern influenced recipes to make up for it: Flavoursome food from Arizona. Looks like I’ll have to investigate more options for tricking the 4oD system into letting me watch or else wait for the DVD.

When I posted back in March about my move to New Zealand I said that Big Ben pies were:

a reassuring sign that the cowboy is a global icon recognised wherever you are

What I didn’t realise some 8 months ago, stepping off that plane at Auckland airport, was that instead of opting for the City of Sails I should have set up home down in Cowboy Paradise in Hokitika in the South island!

Who’d have thought that all the way down here I’d be able to dress up and shoot real bullets and real guns just like a gunslinger from the Old West!

Whether you’re travelling around the South Island of New Zealand catching in the beauty of the mountains, planning a corporate team building excursion or a professional marksman/markswoman, Cowboy Paradise welcomes you.

You don’t get much of a chance to shoot the pistols and rifles of the Old Wild West in South London, that’s for sure. I’m heading to grabaseat.con.nz as you read this…

I came across some old holiday photos tonight of a trip to a real classic style theme park called Blackgang Chine on the Isle of Wight, a small island just off the south coast of England.

“Frontier land is a full sized cowboy town in wild west setting”

A wild west setting, if you can see past the British climate, flora and fauna and proximity to chalk cliffs that are occasionally sliding into the sea!

Here are a couple of photos of the cowboy town - first off a small scale western railroad engine with gunfighter mannequin in the background:

Next a shot of the ‘Last Chance Saloon’ painted in gaudy colours and complete with rooms available at an hourly rate.

It’s well worth a visit if you’re staying on the island, the chine itself may have been swallowed up by the encroaching sea but wild west fans can tour a tiny (and child friendly) frontier settlement without having to take a plane all the way to the US.

After a 3 month hiatus here at Wild West Land it’s time to climb into the saddle again and start blogging about all things western.

Why the silence at the start of 2009? Well the truth is I’ve been busy. Not busy in the household chores sense of the word and not busy as in locked up in the stockade either. I’ve been busy moving to the other side of the world, New Zealand to be precise, the land of Big Ben.

Big Ben you ask? Who he? Do you mean that big clocktower in London that appears on the HP sauce bottle? Did the Kiwis build Big Ben?

The short answer is no - ‘Big Ben’ downunder is synonymous with pies. In fact, Big Ben as a brand is New Zealand’s most popular pie. And Kiwis love their pies…

Western-themed marketing for the humble pie company appears everywhere in New Zealand, even on the side of V8 Supercars. In fact the company’s advertising campaigns have pulled in some odd comments for the way they embrace the masculinity of the cowboy tradition.

Ben’s pies are “great value for money for students” and, for me, a reassuring sign that the cowboy is a global icon recognised wherever you are. It makes me believe that running the Cowboy Country store from the bottom of the world is going to be possible AND fun in the Auckland sun.

Now that the container has been unpacked I’ll be posting regular updates with new scans from some classic cowboy cartoons and annuals. Plus did I mention the 2 week road trip from Phoenix to LA?

Pictures and video to follow but for now help Big Ben put together a classic Kiwi pie.

is the La Posada Hotel. At the intersection of Route 66 (now called 2nd Street) and State Route 87 in historic downtown Winslow to be precise.

That lyric is more commonly associated with the 1972 hit by The Eagles “Take it Easy”, the song that put Winslow back on the map again after it was bypassed by the new I-40 Interstate that replaced the historic Route 66:

Well, I’m a standin’ on a corner in Winslow, Arizona,
and such a fine sight to see
It’s a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford,
slowin’ down to take a look at me

Whilst I like The Eagles that’s not what interests me about Winslow. When I pass through in January I’m looking forward to seeing one of the most outstanding buildings associated with the Fred Harvey empire:

La Posada embodies the visions of both Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the hotel’s renowned architect, and Allan Affeldt, its current owner. But the story really begins with Fred Harvey, who “civilized the west” by introducing linen, silverware, china, crystal, and impeccable service to railroad travel. (He was so legendary that MGM made a movie called The Harvey Girls starring Judy Garland.) Harvey developed and ran all the hotels and restaurants of the Santa Fe Railway, eventually controlling a hospitality empire that spanned the continent.

Harvey brought good food and lodgings to the American railroad network in the 19th century in the shape of ‘Harvey Houses’ - his legacy is so interwoven with travel in the American west that there’s now a wiki set up for interested parties to share documents and information about the Fred Harvey Company.

When Harvey died in 1901 there were 47 Harvey House restaurants, 15 hotels, and 30 dining cars operating on the Santa Fe Railway.

The La Posada was built by architect Mary Colter in Winslow, site of the the Arizona headquarters for the Santa Fe Railway. For more on the history of the build and for a review of the restored hotel read Ron Dungan’s travel piece on the Arizona Republic website.

For more on Winslow - the town ‘frozen in time’ - read the Legends of America site.

Cameron Wilson gives Middle East bound travellers an insight into the heritage and top tourist destinations in Wyoming for this story on the EmiratesBusiness24|7 website:

My visit to Wyoming began in pursuit of a cattle rustler named Robert LeRoy Parker and his sidekick, Harry Longabaugh. A little more than a century ago, the pair achieved fame for carrying out a string of robberies of banks, trains and mine payrolls… Men such as these are not well-suited to prosaic names like Robert and Harry, so it was as Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid that the pair rode across the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming for a decade, beginning in 1889

Wilson’s journey takes in the Occidental Hotel in Buffalo, the five museums that make up the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming and then he moves on to nearby Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

The story ends with Wilson ruminating on the possibility that “our roguish heroes may not have died in Bolivia at all”, with Butch dying as an old man in the 1940s! A great read for a quiet Sunday.