Today we are on the way to New Zealand, a small group of islands off the East coast of Australia. Many years ago we would have been able to travel there overland, but these days that is not to be. Following centuries of rule by Australia, the dissidents simply drew anchor and drifted away.
And so here we are on our way there by aircraft. We are travelling cattle class on a Boeing 777 which to the untrained eye has a remarkable likeness to theUGlyDuckling. In addition to the obvious similarities, the astute reader with 10/10 vision may also have noticed that the photograph of the B777 is actually a picture of a B787, Boeings newest plastic fantastic.
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| Note one engine forward of the windscreen |
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| Note one engine under each wing |
Well here we are at 34,000 feet and the snack and drink we have ordered is on the way. Please excuse us while we dine!
So after a very smooth flight and a 9/10 landing at Auckland followed by a five-mile waddle through customs, bio-security etc, we have arrived at our miserable, crappy, booked-on-line motel, near the airport.
Shithouse would be complimentary but at only $190 for a night who are we to complain. In the morning we will proceed breakfast-less to collect our very modest hire car, and bugger off into the April fools’ traffic.
Friday 1st April
Thirty years ago in the depths of a very ‘dark space’, my darling youngest daughter and I visited my brother in New Zealand, basically to escape reality for a while. My world had fallen apart and I only survived by having Schnook to lean on.
Saturday 2nd April
Explored this beautiful area a bit, the wharf
area, and inland a bit to the Haru??? Falls. Here we found the flightless Kiwi
birds, all lying around waiting to act as guides for visitors. Nothing like
emus at all.
Tuesday 5th AprilFriday 1st April
Picked up our small, ageing Toyota and headed off northwards until a diversion off the freeway led to the Burger King breakfast department.
Adequately nourished, it was then on with the Bay of Islands as our destination for the day. Very heavy traffic and lots of road works, leading inextricably to another diversion at Dairy Flat, to the North Shore aeroclub.
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| Dairy Flat Airfield |
This visit was mostly a very hazy blur however in a moment of sobriety I did a N.Z. flight rules test and my logbook shows I had a local flight out of Dairy Flat. It was interesting to visit this airfield again in far more pleasant circumstances, with my stable rock, my loving wife heather.
This little island is very hilly, very green and pretty. And it has rained on and off most of the day.
We have booked into the Bounty Motel at Paihia which the locals pronounce ‘pie here’. Heather so loves this area of the Bay of Islands that we have booked another night!
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| From our motel |
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| Natives this way!! |
Saturday 2nd April
A great nights sleep, and nearly missed
breakfast. It pissed down raining all night, but is fine and sunny today; infact
quite warm and so its back in shorts and t-shirt uniform.
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| Yes, it didn't take long, did it! |
Heather went surfing and almost got her ankles
wet at high tide.
Very fresh fush and chups for lunch and superb
local iceceam.
Sat outside in the evening and Heather sipped on
the local three (not four) liter handbag and the best beer I could find was
Coopers!
A still, sunny day, and we will head off looking
for more friendly sheep and their loving owners. But before we do, now I
After Breakie at the motel it was off southern wards, hoping to bypass Auckland and towards Hamilton and Rotorua. By eleven it was morning break time and we called into a great little café for coffee. With a great name! They also had beer on tap at 5 cents a glass—I wasn’t sure how big the glasses were, so used great restraint and drove on.
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| Ralph, the Mollusc, the Kiwi, the Plumber, Chris and Joey. Also Alan G was there, Aston (photographer), and P.Mc missing.! |
After Breakie at the motel it was off southern wards, hoping to bypass Auckland and towards Hamilton and Rotorua. By eleven it was morning break time and we called into a great little café for coffee. With a great name! They also had beer on tap at 5 cents a glass—I wasn’t sure how big the glasses were, so used great restraint and drove on.
Not much further on we came across one of the
inevitable ‘Sheep Worlds’! I think this is where the locals can select a ‘bride
for a day’! At a price!
A great freeway took us right past the centre of
Auckland and we decided we would call it a day at the next town and find a bed.
That next town was a further hundred clicks down
the track and it was after 5pm when we got to Matamata.
This place is ‘famous’ for, of all things, Hobbitts,
which I think are strange,
diminutive characters with pointy toes and hats. Many of their race of
midgets lived here years ago and a film was made about them a while back.
We have found a motel for bigger people on the
edge of town, and might catch up with some of the little people in the morning.
We have driven over 400km today and so after
Chinese take-away it will be early to bed.
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| Add caption |
Monday 4th April
Virtually a day off for the driver today; only
about 75km to the geyser capital of this little island: Rotorua. And this ‘ole
geyser was happy to book into the Rose Court Motel and take a short rest before
attacking the hydrogen sulphide atmosphere.
If you think farts stink, this place is
something else!
We did the ‘tourie’ thing and explored the Te
Puia place with bubbling mud pools, geysers spewing steam high in the air, and
boiling pools where the locals cook their hangi!
The visit however, was well worth the drama of arthritic
hips and stuffed ankles! We will sleep soundly tonight.
Lots of walking for this old bugger, so we are
happy to be back in our room, ready for a spa bath after the Indian food
settles.
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| Hobbits? |
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| Bigger than what?? |
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| Cooking |
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| There she blows!! |
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| Sulphur |
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| Spot the Aussies/Kiwis?? |
I assume real Indians don’t have cornflakes, or
bacon and eggs on toast for breakfast, so it seemed reasonable to fuel up on
the curried lamb and rice left from last night before refueling the car at
180c/liter and heading off. I guess avgas is a bit over the top here also!
The local 15% GST certainly more than scrubs out
the otherwise favorable exchange rates, however, Aussies over fifty are unable
to migrate to New Zealand so we’ll just have to bear it and see what Malcolm
finally comes up with!
This morning we headed off towards Taupõ and before
long came across many more steaming springs and boiling mud pools and waterfalls. This area is
certainly fascinating.
And then on through lush rural farming areas
with herds of Holsteins, Jerseys, Guernseys and the occasional Murray Grays
wandering out from the dairies to feed till next milking time.
Through ever changing and contrasting countryside; steep hills, pine forests
and more open farmland until arriving at Taupõ and its large lake.
A long row of motels along the lakeside and
tourists everywhere. We tourists eventually settled on the
Twin Peaks Lakes motel, overlooking the lake, where we were told we would have
excellent WiFi. That was not to be however, but the real pub adjoining more than made up for that.
Country pubs as we know them in Oz are not
common over here and it was great to have a beer or two and mix with some of the
real locals.
Just like a genuine ‘pommy pub’ where people
meet for fun and not just to get pissed. A great selection of local and
international beers for the hops and malt aficionados and the food was superb. A genuine house of worship for the devout.
We both had seafood chowder with crusty bread; so fresh and very
filling.
Wednesday 6th April
Wednesday 6th April
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| Snow on peaks across Lake Taupo |
Spent quite a while
driving round before heading off towards Napier.
Had to check out the DC3 turned into a kids playground at Maccas. 
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| Opepe Falls |
Stopped at the Opepe Falls where the river
streams down into a very deep ravine.
On through ever changing scenery from
steep hills, much winding road and then onto flat grazing country and miles of
planted pine forests. And then more rugged steep country again approaching the
coast.
Arrived at Napier late afternoon and it was just
on dusk by the time we booked into the Marineland Motel.
Had hoped to go further down to Havelock North
to call and see our neighbor’s parents, but with limited time on this flying
trip, we will move on in the morning and visit Amy’s family farm on the way
back north. (Amy lived next door to us at Faraday for about two years before
returning to Kiwiland.)
After superb seafood chowder (again) at the
restaurant attached to the motel and a beer to clean the palate, it was off to
bed.
Thursday 7th April
Amy took us on a Cooks tour of Napier, including
past many of the art deco places, which were build following the 1930
earthquake, which virtually destroyed Napier.
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| Kaiwaka Romney Stud |
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| Ditto |
And then out of town for about twenty km,
followed by 16km of extraordinarily steep twisting and narrow gravel road to
their farmhouse perched on the side of a hill about 1500 feet up.
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| Amy and Heather-no flat land here! |
This farm is something else! Extremely hilly in
every direction, but with lush feed for some 1500 Romney lambs and fifty Angus
cattle on something like a thousand acres of ski-runs.
Charles took us for a drive around the property
in the 4WD Toyota, a ride not for the faint hearted. With a ‘cropies’ 340 metre ‘airstrip’ perched on the top of
a hill at 2250ft AMSL.
Lime and phosphate are spread from here with a
Fetcher a/c which lifts off with up to three and a half tons of load! Cropies
over here are very brave, very stupid, very skilled or sadly sometimes very
dead.
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| 'Runway' across centre of pic!! |
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| Looking down "09" |
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| Charles at threshold of "27"!!!! |
Fencing and mustering on this steep land would
be very trying.
From a further rise above the ‘strip’ the sea at
Hawkes Bay is visible to the east and deep cliffs leading down to the river Esk
to the west. The strip slopes down to he east and the cropies need a good
easterly to lift off!
In 1989 a Beech Baron with three on board
ploughed into the hill beside the homestead, killing all instantly. Charles and
his wife Jill witnessed this, only about 100 metres from their front door.
Apparently in marginal VMC, and the a/c had been
asked to ‘hold outside controlled airspace’ while a large jet approached into
Napier.
The damaged engines and a few instruments were
salvaged by insurance, and the airframe was eventually chopped up and sold for
scrap by Charles.
After a nice homemade lunch we headed off back
north, and eventually stopped at Taupõ again for the night.
Same WiFi-challenged motel and same great
‘pommy’ pub next door for dinner.
Friday 8th April
Set Hamilton into the GPS and headed off
following the whining female voice. She gets very overbearing when we are only
a bees dick over the speed limits. It’s 100K maximum anywhere here, and
strictly fifty though towns. We try to obey.
It soon started to drizzle and then constant
rain for about an hour. Wish we were getting some back home, but I hear only
about one mm so far.
South of Hamilton we pulled in to a small country
town for a break at Tirau.
A quaint little village with a few shops and not much else.
We met the old bloke who was just opening his
musical instrument shop at 11am. Used Sax’s, trumpets, ‘wog boxes’ and a few
new classical recorders and the like.
I guess he was retired and this was a hobby; I
doubt there would be a great demand for serious musical instruments in a tiny
place such as Tirau. Hopefully I am wrong.
After contemplating the shepherd and his flock,
we continued onto and past Hamilton.
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| Was he an ANZAC??.. looks a bit Middle Eastern to me.... |
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| Baa baa....! |
This is a quite large city and we hoped to
find a smaller place to camp. Several clicks north we fell upon Huntly which is
a long way from Bendigo; but has a fine lone Motel beside the main highway to
Auckland.
We have booked in here for the night. The best
motel we have chanced upon, very clean, comfortable and with great wifi.
I drove back 4km to town and we have stocked up
on meals for tonight and breakfast. Tomorrow it will only be a leisurely drive
to somewhere near the airport to return the ‘grottmobile’ and find a nearby
bed.
Flyday 9th April
Sunday 10th April
While a few stalwarts sit around the campfire at
YKTN, pie-less, we move on at ground level in heavy morning traffic towards
Auckland.
As the creeping concrete jungle nears, we are
again thankful we live in the country.
Finding any half-reasonable motel close to the
airport for less than a grand is a serious exercise.
It was really pot luck, but I put Oakwood Manor
into the GPS and we were directed to a very smart looking place within a stones
throw of the terminal.
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| Nice place run by nice Chinese bloke |
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| Ditto |
At only ¥M118(Merino dollars) for the night it is not only
reasonably cheap, but is neat and clean, has a shuttle to the airport for the
morning and a nice restaurant attached.
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| Old Chinese saying |
I have surrendered
the ‘grottmobile’ to the depot after getting hopelessly lost and we are now
relaxing in the lounge. After dinner, it will be an early night..............
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| ....Brace yerself luv! |
............ lots of sheep to count!!
We get the shuttle to the airport at 6am!
We get the shuttle to the airport at 6am!
Sunday 10th April
