The Final Run - in New Zealand

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The Final Run - in NZ

The little Hippie Camper has gone home and so have we - more or less and for a while. When we handed the camper back to the Apollo people we found out why we have seen so few other similar vehicles on the road around the country. There are just 5 in the entire Apollo fleet in NZ. The Hippie is their eco-friendly camper, Apollo’s contribution to Global Warming you might say. So, even without knowing it we have been being planet friendly for the last 31 days. Just imagine what we might have done if we had known? Perhaps we would have driven it a little less? We have done a little over 5,500 km, hit most of the key tourist icons for NZ, circumnavigated the South Island and gone - almost - from top to bottom of the country. We have only spent 2 nights in a couple of places, although there have been days when we haven’t driven very far.

It feels like we have come a long way but the distance comes into perspective when we consider that back home in Australia we would allocate 3 days to travel this distance. Probably wouldn’t have seen much beyond the white line and few roadhouses though.

It has been an easy country for us. While they speak a ‘luttle duff’r’nt’, we have generally been able to understand and be understood, without having to repeat things too often. The best language experience, to date, was an Asian lady in a Thai takeaway who asked me to repeat my order - for 2 seafood lahksas and a diet coke - 3 times, checked that I was Australian, and then mimicked me to the other servers telling them that she could now speak Australian. That was all fine but I couldn’t really see any difference from the standard Kiwi accent in what I said. She was happy though to have increased her repertoire.

We finished the last post in Paihi after the day walking in the rain. Typically, for NZ, the next morning was bright and clear with hardly a cloud in the sky. First thing in the morning our breakfast was interrupted by a group of 25 or 30 young Maori launching a ‘waka’ (a large dugout war canoe) from the boat landing a few meters from our van. They were all under the direction of a formidable fellow with one of the best moustaches I have seen. Some of them clearly had some experience but a fair number didn’t know a lot about the process.

A very proud lady who was part of it all told me that it is part of a program that has been put together partly to sort out some fighting that has been going on between two groups of kids. It requires them to cooperate, gives them a shared activity and a shared identity. It would also tire them out considerably I suspect. They looked great and, after a few stuff ups, were handling the boat very well going around in circles, stopping, reversing and such.

We headed on up the Island aiming for Kaitake and were intending to motor on up to Cape Reinga, pretty close to the northern most tip of the North Island. The country in this area was becoming increasingly sandy and certainly less fertile. Few sheep, just a few cattle with the vegetation becoming increasingly rough coastal shrubbery. There still seemed to be pleny of water but it doesn’t seem to be doing them much good.

On the run up we debated whether we would take the run up to Cape Reinga and eventually decided we wouldn’t. It didn’t look promising. There is a 90 km beach on one side of the road and the other is inaccessible, mainly Maori land. We decided that it wasn’t worth 160km just to tick off the northern most point and headed west and south.

The west coast of the North Island, like the west coast of the South Island, is rougher and harder than the east. The North is more temperate though and there are a lot of nice beaches, including a number that are obviously very popular with the surfing fraternity.

Kauri forests are important in this area of the country. There are a couple of parks, although they aren’t as extensive as you would think given what seemed to us to be the relatively low economic value of the primary alternative usage for the land. The clearing campaign that occurred as the land was turned into farmland has a bit to answer for here.

We camped close to one of the kauri forests - Trounson State Forest. The bloke who owned this area of land had apparently cleared much of the surrounding area and either had an attack of conscience or was tired and he donated an area of about 500 hectares as a state forest. The forest is beautiful and well managed to cope with a reasonably high visitation by tourists. It is a pity that it is not more extensive, although there has been another area planted back to natives and this will extend the area over time.

We were interested in the kauri trees, partly because they seem to grow best in company with other rainforest species - thus making for very nice forests - and partly because we were keen to take the opportunity to see if we could actually spot a kiwi, and they were supposed to be in this area.

Camping at Department of Conservation campsites throughout NZ has a lot to recommend it, provided that you don’t want to have a shower too often. If showers are in place they are generally cold and, with the weather the way it is, that isn’t always attractive. The camps are normally in lovely spots though and we found that a night or two here and there was a reasonable way to go. Not at Trounson though. The camp sites were fine alright but the place for the vans was a parking lot. That plus no shower = no way. We camped instead at a commercial park down the road - Top 10. This was in a beautiful spot by a creek and the bloke who runs it also operates a sideline in taking people for night walks of the Trounson Forest.

The walk through Trounson was great. We had to wait till dark, about 8.30 in these parts at this time of the year. A little unfortunately there were 10 or so other people who had the same idea. Walking through a forest quietly with 10 people trying to sneak up on animals - not easy. Still, we received a lot of information about the kauris, the insects and animals. We spotted some very large eels, glow worms, native fish and weta - all of which that are only seen at night. Weta are very large insects that feed on rotting timber. As with most NZ animals, they are harmless to humans and hide most of the time, but they are impressively large.

And we did get to see a kiwi! Not, I must say, the most impressive bird that there is about but they are rare, endangered and different. This one was a female and was minding its own business feeding on the edge of the forest and near a grassy area. It seemed pretty relaxed with a couple of infra red lights trained on it but became less relaxed when some people moved a bit too close. It tried to hide behind a tree that turned out to be a large American woman who, for some reason, leapt about and squealed scaring the daylights out of our kiwi and everyone else. She was on some specialist wildlife adventure tour where they drive around and look at strange beasties. Would have thought she would have had more sense.

It struck us both at night and in our walk through the same forest during the day that the NZ bush is very quiet in comparison to the Australian bush. There is a lot less rustling, scampering, squeaking, thumping and general hullabaloo that is normal at night in most Australian bush. I suspect that the NZ bush is normally pretty quiet but that things are worse because a lot of the native animal habitats have been removed in many areas. It is noisier during the day with birds calling but not as much of that as you might expect. NZ birds seem to be a pretty quiet and genteel lot.

We had bought ourselves a little bird identification book early in the trip. It turned out to be pretty useless really. We spotted most of the birds listed pretty quickly and were left wondering what the others were. The version of the bush hen or bush turkey they have here is much more colourful - red topknot, black wings, dark blue body and white tail - but it looks like it might do just as much damage to gardens. It is called a pukeko I think.

And now we find that the same bird is in Queensland. Don't know yet what it is called here.

The Lonely Planet notes that any place that advertises itself as the Kumara capital of the world can’t have much going for it but that Dargaville does have an interesting museum. We decided to give it a go, partly at least because we were intrigued about the gum digging that had gone on here years ago and the museum had a display. It was a great little museum. Seems to be run by some locals. Doesn’t get the tour buses and seems to have just one paid staffer with the rest volunteers. It was very well set out, had an informative display about gum digging, an excellent marine museum and other interesting stuff about the area.

I wont try to give you a potted version but the area was home to a lot of Dalmation migrants who came out to dig the bogs for the gum from old kauri trees. The Dalmations gravitated to this area of the country in the early part of the 20th century because - well they were Dalmation and not really the sort of people that other people got on with. They got on a lot better with the Maori than they did with other Kiwis. This explains a couple of Maori All Blacks with Croation names.

Gum digging looks to have been one of the worst jobs that you could find. Digging trenches in swamps all day, grubbing out the gum from the old trees, chipping and cleaning it and sleeping in hessian tents at night. Pretty basic in the sort of weather they get here.

We can certainly recommend the Dargaville museum.

We rolled on down the west coast basically following the coast until we were relatively close to Auckland. Camped at a beach that seems to be a local beach for Auckland called Muriwai. A good camp in a well looked after camping area. Obviously very popular and for good reason. It was a nice spot and one of the better beaches.

A woman we had met along the way recommended taking the run into Auckland along route 16 which takes you around a scenic drive through the hills down on the western side of the city. A spectacular drive. We took the run into Karekara, another nice and secluded beach, but this one is apparently the place where Neil Finn has a holiday 'bach' - Kiwi for holiday house. Didn't spot him but had some fun speculating on which house was his. Apparently the singer from Pearl Jam almost died in the surf here. And that pretty well exhausts my knowledge of NZ related rock music trivia.

Auckland is an interesting place. One of the guide books, probably Lonely Planet, says that Auckland is a junior Sydney and this is not a bad description. We caught a bus into town from the motor camp and for a fair distance I was the only European on the bus. The language being spoken was all either Cantonese or Mandarin. When the bus driver suddenly told everyone that we needed to switch to another bus we seemed to be the only ones who knew what he was talking about.

We travelled through a Chinese area and there must be an Indian area somewhere as well. Indian people are much in evidence, particularly in the shops in the city. The rules seem to be that the Indians and Chinese work in retail, the office workers are pretty heavily white Europeans and nothing would get built or cleaned up without the Maoris and Islanders. The divisions were most clear at lunchtime in the city when the officer workers came out to eat their lunch. Before that we were wondering where they all were.

As with most places I guess, some are not keen on the changes that immigration is causing in the country. A number of white Kiwis felt the need to express Howard type views about the new people. We had the impression that a fair bit of this movement in population is relatively recent. It is gradually having an effect in the type of food available in the food halls of malls and shopping centers, although there are still more places than you would find in the NT selling roast food, fish and chips and such.

The harbour is pretty good. We took a ferry ride over to Devonport - where it seems that some of the rich people live, and where the last man was hanged in NZ - and took a walk around the coast inspecting along the way the guns that were to be used to fight off the Russians during, I think, the Russo Japanese war in the early part of last century.

Back to Brisbane early on 5 December. We will now be moving among relatives - moving frequently so that we don't wear out our welcome too much until Christmas and New Year is over and then the plan is to head off to Vietnam. We wont post again till then. I hope that your Christmas is as good as ours will be and that your New Year hangover doesn't last as long.

Travel Tip

When you are camped over 500 meters from the showers and it is raining always remember to take money for the coin operated showers.

When you are in a motel for the first time for a long time and you have searched high and low for a room key - through bags, under beds, in cupboards - check the slot near the door for the power.

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Photos

Waka Launch
Took them a while to get it in the water and a few were very wet by then but, in the end, it was successful.

A 'But' of a 'Slup'
We did wonder what might happen if we were on one when it went.

Good Camp
By a creek in the sun and a good breakfast. What could be better?

Kauri
This one was hundreds of years old

Bungy Jumper?
Trust you can see why it might be known as this.

Gum Diggers
A mural but you might get the idea

Rainbow Warrior
Masts from teh sunken boat. Kiwis still have neither forgiven nor forgotten

Beach
A nice beach but the black sand does make Bondi look good.

Stone Shed
Checking out the design

Totem
Front of the Auckland Info centre

Customs House
in Auckland being dwarfed by the city

Flash House
In Devonport across the harbour from the CBD in Auckland

The Reason
We needed to be back here on this day

Looking Good
It was a top night

The Kids
Or perhaps they are getting to be the oldies?