Celebrated essayist David Hill catches a regional bus and learns a few things on the journey.

We watched him at the first stop for the Intercity bus.

He stood at the back of the waiting crowd while they pressed forward with their luggage. (It is a crowd and a press when Intercity passengers board; none of your effete airline queues.) He was early 20s: skinny, pasty, a straggly beard. He wore a hoodie, tracksuit pants and jandals. Tats dotted his cheeks and neck.

He stood at the back not out of deference to others, but because he was finishing his fag. When his turn to board came, he took a final drag, dropped the stub on the concrete, hoicked into a nearby flowerbed and slung a soiled sports bag into the luggage compartment. My wife Beth and I stared straight ahead as he came down the aisle. We said nothing; judged everything.

Three-plus hours later, we arrived at a toilet stop. Beth’s back makes getting out of a seat a slow and uncomfortable business. As she eased herself into the aisle, making apologetic noises, a voice spoke from behind her. ”You wanna hand there, lady? No rush. Take your time.” It was – you guessed – the hoodied hoicker.

Yes, a cute and cliched narrative. Yet it typified the things we saw and heard on a long-distance bus trip last month.

We went by bus because it costs about 30% of air travel. Because there’s no longer a train service from our town. Because we’ve driven the route often, but wanted the chance to sit up high and stare into river valleys or people’s front windows. We didn’t travel that way for a learning experience, but it turned out to be one. I’ll try to explain without sounding too repellently patronising or ignorant.

I mentioned that young guy’s wardrobe and appearance. The majority of our fellow passengers looked the same, whether they were 16 or 60. And like the hoodie-wearer, most of them smoked or vaped. Every toilet or snack stop saw a strew of figures on the footpath, dragging in, puffing / wheezing / coughing out, as enough smoke for a small forest fire rose around them. They took their nicotine into the loo with them; every lungful was precious.

And, again like that young guy, they were courteous. Beth and I were the eldest by about a decade, I estimate, though it was hard to be sure among the life-worn faces. Other people stood back for us, offered help, even enquired after our welfare. Beth was addressed as ”lady….dear…darlin”’. I was ”mate….man…bro”. I have to tell you that receiving that last honorific from a 40-or-so-year-old with three functioning teeth and a head shaved to display a snarling skull tattoo was quite a boost.

The drivers were courteous, too. They welcomed us on board, introduced themselves, ran through the itinerary, thanked us for travelling with the company. I know it’s a learned routine, but all through the trip, they sprinkled their announcements with ”please… thank you… appreciate it”. They called us ”sir… ma’am”. Kristi, who looked as if she could fit into the Black Ferns’ front row, and whose hair was intricately plaited into tiny braids, laughed and joked as she loaded those sports bags and shopping bags, and finished every announcement with ”Be kind to one another”. I rather fell for Kristi.

About 1.5 million NZers ride InterCity buses each year. The ones we saw – passengers and drivers alike – well, they were Kiwi Battlers. I said before that I’d try not to be patronising or ignorant, and I can’t use the KB label without seeing our PM’s smirk.

But the phrase did push itself forward. You felt that life was largely a slog for a lot of passengers; that they relied on stoicism and endurance to get through. You felt also that it would take just one judgemental look or condescending remark from someone, for their battling to become overt, even aggressive. By the end of our ride, I admired them and liked them. I also felt a bit scared of them.

Scared? We looked and sounded different from them. How crass that sounds, but my work, my upbringing and education, my social network, even my pastimes mean I’ve acquired certain communication skills and health awareness. Beth’s teaching life, plus our move from big city to the provinces gave us a financial safety net (with a few frayed cords), so we almost certainly live more easily and comfortably than most of those bus passengers.

What else did I feel about them? Discomfort and a perverse nostalgia, because they showed how our image of Aotearoa as a land of equal opportunity is now a faded fairytale.

I also felt shame, because I know so little of them, because New Zealand’s present social structure means I seldom meet them. Up till the age of 21, I went to state schools, played rugby, did my National Service Army Training, did holiday work in woolstores and timber yards. I mixed constantly with guys like that young man on the bus. It startles me to realise that in the last half-century, such contact has almost entirely ended for me. My life has narrowed as a result, and I’d hardly noticed it.

I feel a responsibility, too. To stay aware. To never be judgemental. To try and do something practical (yes, I’m talking food banks, local charities, other middle-class conscience salves). You may add tokenism to my condescension, etc. I acknowledge the transitoriness of all good intentions, but those bus trips moved me. I’ll try to make that movement positive and useful.

When we finally got off at our stop, the young guy from my opening paragraphs disembarked as well. As we headed for the taxi stand about 100 metres away, where just one cab waited, I felt a bit miffed to see him in front of us, already claiming his ride. Miffed and surprised; I’d (patronisingly again) not seen him as a taxi sort of person.

Then, as we arrived, we saw the cab driver shaking his head. The figure in hoodie and trackpants shouldered his sports bag and sloped off. ”He doesn’t want a ride?” I asked the taxi bloke. He shook his head again. ”Said he’d get a mate to pay me when we got there. No, thanks, I told him. Ones like that, they get out of the cab and they do a runner. I’ve learned that the hard way.”

I was silent. I wanted to say how agreeable the young guy had been, how you shouldn’t spring to judgement based on preconceptions, how a refusal like he’d just experienced might alienate him even further. But hell, what did I know, after a few hours’ fleeting experience? And at least the taxi driver wasn’t being patronising.