Easy Tiger

Moss Vale to Goulburn – 50 miles and 763m climbed

Goulburn to Canberra – 55 miles and 443m climbed

I have in my mind’s eye, as I was thinking about my tour, what a great campsite is and this was. Reluctantly I made a leisurely exit in the mist and set sail for Goulburn.

It’s hard to get fit for a 1,100 mile bike ride. I simply try and remain fit prior to departure knowing that I’ll survive or get fitter as the weeks elapse. However, yesterday was pleasing in that I got up the Macquarie Pass but it came at a cost, my legs were now sore. Today I wanted minimal climbing. So I opted to go down the motorway!

On most motorways in NSW you can ride on the hard shoulder. The shoulder is wide, usually swept although the proliferation on bolts, kangaroo carcasses (seven seen so far) and broken bungees are prolific. Of course road builders minimise the gradients and it’s an easier ride. Less comfortable are the vehicles passing on your right at 70mph plus but they’re a long way from you.

One really pleasant bonus was motorway services. Of course a nice roadside cafe with real filter coffee and home cooking may have been more desirable but a cheese and tomato sandwich and an air conditioned seating area are not difficult compromises.

Arriving in the medium sized Goulburn I found the centre and a ubiquitous Coles store. It seems that they and Woolworths have coverage of the country and, as supermarkets go, they’re quite well stocked. I ventured in and bought a meat pie, bread rolls, bananas and peaches for dinner. I then pedalled off in search of a campsite on the southern outskirts. I made a mess of the navigation here and found myself retracing my route up some unforgivably steep hills before the entrance came to view.

From here the weather made a challenge of washing clothes. It started very hot and sunny (good), became furiously windy and blew my coat hangers off the line (challenging) through to a heavy downpour (bad). I wash my used kit every night. I carry the concentrated washing liquid you use in your washing machines. A little goes a long way in a hand bowl.

As I’m carrying out my chores in the ‘Amenities’ block Terry comes into view. Terry’s a chatty 66 year old burly former miner. With his wife he pulls his caravan to a selection of sites camping for a few days before moving on. Like many retired folk he also has a part time job and his is driving a concrete mixer. It’s not for the money he says. He’s interested by my cycling and touring and it gives him the opportunity to tell me about his motorbike touring days and his e-bike that he hauls around on his truck. As the wind picks up and I worry that my lightweight tent may be picked up and disappear like a kite and so I have to breakaway. He seems disappointed.

Washing and dinner completed I found my way into my tent before 8pm and shortly thereafter I found myself looking at the inside of my eyelids.

Early to bed means early to rise. Early departures are cooler and can get you to your destination in good time. So with this in mind I was back on the saddle before 7.30am and again on the hard shoulder. Canberra offered a rest day and the meet up with a very old friend. In fact all the way back to 1973.

The legs were better and the route easier. In line with all the thought processes of a pessimist I rued the steady descent into Canberra knowing that my eventual northern exit meant a steady climb!

Eventually I left New South Wales entered Australian Capital Territory state and entered this large open city with wide cycle lanes. As the country’s capital it looks quite grand with lots of offices, probably many of them international and governmental organisations. Tonight was a hotel, yippee!

Up, Up & Away

Wollongong to Moss Vale – 48 miles and 1,143m climbing

So I woke up feeling hungover after minimal sleep thanks to my noisy neighbours. Their stupidity and inconsideracy was astonishing. I was leaving the site and the potential for future abuse wasn’t a problem for me. ‘Reception’ was shut and so I couldn’t complain but I later emailed the site office outlining the miserable night. I received a prompt reply advising they’d grip it. I hope they did.

Meanwhile I looked at my pre-planned route and decided to abandon some of the nice country lane detours and to cycle down the calm Princes Highway. This made it quicker and less hilly.

Cycling navigation Apps have an algorithm to avoid car traffic. That’s logical but for a cycle tourer with many miles to do you often can’t tolerate the stopping and starting of cycle paths and their meandering routes. I had to get a move on. I had planned all my rides with Ride with GPS under the tutelage of my appointed ‘Tour Digital Navigation Consultant’ (Nick from Harrogate) but I always knew I would adapt. Interestingly enough Nick always planned on the ‘car’ route option rather than ‘bicycle’.

Not having breakfast I stopped at a McDonalds and had a large gross type of breakfast burger. I need the calories but I won’t ever eat anything like that again! Now replenished I set my sights on reaching ‘the wall’. The story is that inland from the coast the terrain rises 700m in the form of a large cliff. In a car, by driving a long way south or north, you can do this more easily but ultimately you need to ascend to the Highlands.

My route, which was the one all the Apps couldn’t avoid, was the Macquarie Pass. This joyous road was 6.5 miles long and via a tortuous set of hairpins, at a fairly constant 10% gradient, it achieved the 700m.

In 38°C I wended my way up with several stops. On this gradient my heavy bike is very skittish as regards balance as there is 20kg of luggage on the rear wheel. I rode at 3 or 4mph for over a couple hours. This route was a jolly good outing for Saturday motorbikes who zoomed noisily up the pass; they weaved in and out of the cars and whistled three feet from my hip at 30mph. It was awful, not least the sound that suddenly appeared from nowhere and was always distracting.

As you cycle you don’t properly know when it ends but remain hopeful that you’re getting near the top on each bend you turn. A check on that optimism is the smell of overheated brake pads on the vehicles descending. Obviously there was a long way yet and judging by this burning smell I could tell that vehicles had been standing on their brakes for miles.

A few club cyclists went past on their carbon road bikes. Two quick lads shouted ‘Allez, allez, you’ve got this!’ as they sped quickly past. I appreciated their encouragement. Emerging eventually at the top I found the Robertson Pie cafe. I kid you not. So gasping for air and needing to replenish the two and a half litres of drink I consumed I popped in. Along with the water I indulged in a peaches and cream pie. As fab as this was it wasn’t sufficient reward.

Pretty jiggered I laboured on for another 15 miles to the town of Moss Vale. Here I pulled into a calm yet well set up campsite and erected my little tent. I’d spoken to Barbara the day before. She’d said if I got there by 4.30pm she’d have a space. Frankly if I’d got there by 7pm I’d have still had a field! It wasn’t busy.

The kitchen or ‘cook house’ had a microwave, hob, kettle, fridge, toaster, benches and tables. All I needed. However, I chose to dine out at The Returned and Services League of Australia club (RSL). It offers a bar and restaurant as well as karaoke (!) and some sports facilities. They are plentiful in the country and I’ve visited before. The dinner selection was wide, the food not fancy yet delicious, the setting comfortable and the beer cold. I became a temporary member and was in.

Back at the campsite I got talking with some Queenslanders from Rockhampton, a place Anna and I stayed in April. They’d come to the Highlands to escape the summer heat on the coast. Typical of many sites are residents who are contract workers. In the cook house on my return were three young guys in hi viz. They were working on a railway contract nearby but all came from Newcastle, just north of Sydney. These boys worked late and rose early. This was a Saturday night and when asked if they missed home they just shrugged their shoulders. They went where the work was.

I dived into my tent and enjoyed nine hours of solid sleep. Bliss.

Off!

Sydney to Wollongong: 53 miles & 1,214m climbed

So after getting some sleep (after jet lag) and generally getting set eventually Friday morning saw me join the heavy rush hour traffic including workers and school drops.

Sydney is a busy place and it took me 2 hours and 350m of climbing alone to get out of the city and into the Royal Park. I could have stuck to the Princes Highway but it’s a dreary fast road although I was to join it the next day. There’s an unswept hard shoulder and there’s was no appeal as there’s nowt to see.

So I ventured into the park. The traffic was light but the climbing was ferocious. However, despite numerous weather forecasts the rain never appeared and in drenching humid conditions I trundled south.

Eventually I emerged on the coast and views were a sight for sore eyes. I’d had an earlier coffee ‘pit stop’ but this time I had a proper lunch, again with a sea view. Nutrition is always on mind. Frankly, you need to keep eating. You will ordinarily burn twice your usual calorie consumption by touring and so it’s all about eating what you see.

The cycle ride was fine and the legs didn’t like hills but they kept going. My road bike at home weighs c10kg. My loaded touring bike weighs over 30kg. It has more hears but such weight is immense and my average speed is a lot slower. The ride was straightforward up until they closed the road! There was an awful crash and it involved a very crushed truck at Stanwell Tops. I said to a policeman “I hope they’re okay”. He just shook his head.

As regards the diversion a lady appeared from out of a house and seeing my distress said “Aw mate…. No need to take diversion just follow this footpath”. I did and passed two grounded helicopters including an air ambulance and a selection of blocked, being ghouls, taking photos of the crash.

I seldom book camp sites, after all will I get there? However, being the weekend and the holiday season I did book one is Wollongong. This was expensive at A$50 for the night, a bit more than £25. All you get is a piece of grass and a free shower. Not much but the views nearby were special.

I have a lot to do when I arrive. Pitch the tent, shower, visit a supermarket to shop, cook, clean up and then set up my air bed, sleeping bag and clothes for tomorrow. It was dark around 8pm before I crawled inside my little castle.

However, some neighbouring tents partied until 2am. The site rules stipulate a 10pm curfew. There’s no sound insulation on a tent and I listened to an African tongue amid much hysterical laughter and raised voices as the alcohol kicked in. At 1am an Aussie visited the party and remonstrated. In fact they turned a boom box briefly then just carried on for another half hour before the women turned in and the men continued to talk until 2am. In the surrounding tents were fishermen looking to have an early start and a cyclist needing every piece of shut eye he could lay his hands on. More in the next blog!

Arriving and Planning to Depart….

So it was a week spent being very grumpy and quietly stressed but the outcome was fabulous as I’m penning this note from Sydney, Strathfield, to be exact. At the time of being denied boarding I had no useful idea of when I would fly. After the initial Qatar Airways rejection, due to a ‘damaged’ passport on the Monday, I went to Liverpool and put getting a new one in motion. That was delivered to my home on the Thursday – 4 days. Then I applied for an amended Australian visa. Again the instructions on the Australian Immigration website were clear as to how to amend but as to whether I’d got one wasn’t! So I rang up a chipper Aussie in Canberra, on a Help Line, and to paraphrase his answer to my question about a new visa amendment being issued he said “Aw mate, you just need to look at the website, I’ll walk you through it.” So he did, there it was, and I said “it isn’t like the form I got when I originally applied?” “Aw mate, this screen is better than your form it’s more up to date. Grab a tinny, chuck a shrimp on the BBQ and chill. She’ll be right.”

So confident that Australia would take me I re-booked my outbound flight. This whole reschedule when you include a new flight, another overnight stay in Manchester, a new emergency passport, lost accommodation cost in Sydney, driving to Liverpool and Manchester and back etc. totted up to c£1,200. Booking accommodation a week later was virtually double the price in Sydney. I think the Chinese New Year may swell the demand in the city?

Check your passport condition.

(As we stayed near Terminal 2 the night before I did pop down to Check In the night before for them to confirm I could fly: they checked the system and the computer said yes.)

Anna has been magnificent through this miserable week although whether power washing the drive is what she expected in return we will never know.

The flights are long ones: the total time including stopovers to get here was 25 hours. The first jet, a Boeing 777, was also fully booked and the seat space approximated, in size, to a small gap where I’d managed to wedge my upturned wheel barrow at the back of my garage. However the longer flight on an A380 would have been a wheel barrow and a half. The flights were delayed but uneventful and some sleep came. It certainly came to my neighbour, a middle aged Brazilian lady with no English, whose snoring was redolent of the breathing pattern of two Clydesdales pulling a heavy dray up a steep incline. I must ask where else do you now see signs for a ‘lavatory’? Very 1960s.

Anna had steered me toward an apartment in Strathfield. A suburb I knew nothing of (neither did she but it existed on Booking.com.) A very expensive taxi got me here and eventually I gained access. It being morning according to my body clock I dumped my bike box and luggage and went in search of groceries. With a new SIM card not yet bought I was navigating using photos of maps I’d downloaded. I got lost in the dark. Ambling along were two Chinese lads and so I enquired as to where the supermarkets were? To cut a long story short they went out of their way to escort me to a couple. They were both Chinese nationals. One had residency the other had citizenship. The major difference seemed to be that one could vote and the other couldn’t. I thought this not much of a benefit but given the absence of democracy in the PRC then maybe it had some cache. One worked in logistics the other in banking. They both had great English and couldn’t have been kinder. Sadly my interrogation ended when they brought me to the last supermarket and I had to set them free.

Strathfield and Burford are virtually exclusively Chinese or Korean with maybe some Vietnamese. Yorkshiremen are not common. That was of no concern other than that led to no bars or western food restaurants but a myriad of Korean BBQ restaurants and other variants. Judging by how busy they were it seems they all dine out regularly. I had a Vietnamese dish on one night.

On my first full day it was a matter of getting items. My airline luggage weight restrictions had been pernicious and I needed stuff like mosquito repellant, powdered milk, tins of tuna, a gas cylinder etc. on top of this I needed a SIM card. For 50GB of data I paid A$ 22. Public transport is affordable and the train station outside my apartment took me to Circular Quay and the iconic bridge and opera house.

So next it’s trying to catch up on some sleep, completing the cycle route planning, a test run of the velocipede and last minute final purchases before I head south. I’ll pick up next when on the road. Beep beep….

The World’s Smallest Dolphin

So after the issues at Doubtful Sound we were ‘compensated’ by G Adventures with a windy drive to the south of Christchurch to Akaroa to have (another) cruise. Now you’ve got to feel for the guide. This detour was a demanding drive but also meant that instead of getting to Christchurch at lunchtime we got there in the early evening. As a consequence she had to dump us at the hotel and then go and drop off the bus somewhere else in town. Before leaving the bus she had to clean it internally and externally, in the dark, and get back to the hotel to join us for our farewell dinner. If this wasn’t busy enough she then had to be up the next morning at Stupid O’Clock to get a flight to Auckland for the next tour. Let me tell you guides are not well paid, hence this and the weariness means that there’s a high turnover in guides.

However, back to the cruise… I also sympathise with captains who have to take passengers out to sea hoping to satisfy their desire for wild animals. Will you be lucky and find any? On the agenda were dolphins, seals, various birds including one called a shag and penguins. Well the captain got a full set apart from the penguins although Anna said she saw one. (I think not.)

The Hector’s dolphin was about the size of a large haddock in a decent portion of fish and chips. It was a very small chap.

As we’re peering over the sides expectantly one wag did bellowed… ‘ORCAS’. Of course he hadn’t seen one but the boat listed as 50 passengers bolted to starboard to look for a whale!

The captain had some good patter and my favourite was his advice for those on the bow to hold onto their hats in the wind. ‘If you do lose it then immediately raise your hand. Also any other passengers seeing this hat fly off should also raise their hand. You can then all wave the hat goodbye!’ Another piece of information he gave that was fanciful but he qualified it by saying ‘I did take a drop of whiskey in my coffee earlier. Nah, that not true, I don’t drink coffee.’

I wrote earlier about Christchurch’s earthquake in 2011 and the horrific loss of life. The town as a consequence consists mainly of one storey buildings and is laid out on a grid system. It looks like a provincial English town. The name originates from being named after an Oxford University college.

The guide did eventually make our celebration dinner and was feted for her work. Envelopes, with tips, passed across. I had a burger, obvs. One guest a few days earlier had said she’d asked her travel agent in Canada what was the going rate for tipping. ‘Well you could take something with you from Canada like, say, maple syrup.’ was the advice. Frankly if I’d been given a jar of syrup the donor would have needed surgery to have it removed. 

For her hard work and dedication over two weeks, between the two of us, we gave her £100. Judging by the ever so grateful personal WhatsApp we got back thanking us profusely there’s a chance I fear that the other guests were less appreciative and that she’s well provisioned with her pancakes for some time to come.

The party departed home in dribs and drabs with some literally getting up at 3am to catch planes the next day and others hanging on for a couple of extra days. Hugs and email addresses were swapped and then one guest, after departure, advised that she’d tested positive for Covid, a legacy and memory nobody wanted.

In our time we spun round Christchurch dining well and seeing the town, river, memorials and cathedrals. The original cathedral was damaged in the earthquake and that’s being rebuilt but won’t be finished until 2027. In the interim they’ve built a transitional one. This uses shipping containers and cardboard.

I’m not really much of a plant person but I was knocked out by the selection at the Botanical Garden. Not least my desire to eventually see a giant redwood tree. 

Christchurch is the largest city, port and airport for Antarctic access and several countries have operations based here. We visited the International Antarctic Centre that was quite interactive (read children running around pushing buttons and not waiting for the outcome before sprinting to the next button). Anna wasn’t very engaged with all the graphics explaining the history, exploration, geology, ice, wildlife etc and I did suggest that somewhere they’d be a room with photocopied outline pictures of penguins she could colour in with crayons and I could be left in peace to read all the walls without being urged to move along. However better than that she found real penguins, again these were blue ones and the smallest, of the breed, in the world and then a couple of huskies to stroke. In fact the dogs are a legacy as none, quite rightly (!) work in Antarctic any more.

I was struck by Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his achievements and ultimate demise in the Antarctic. He initially achieved the greatest distance in 1904 of getting toward the South Pole but was beaten to the actual pole by a Norwegian, Roald Admundsen, in 1912 by weeks. Ultimately Scott and his follow explorers perished on that trip. 

When you think of the clothing, nutrition, navigation technology, fitness, support etc that these men had it was beyond brave to attempt such a mission. I cannot imagine the deprivation and suffering ultimately leading to a terrible death.

From here we walked to the airport where our separation began as she contemplated the hell of three flights in Business back to Blighty and I revelled in the luxury of Economy. So goodbye New Zealand. Beautiful beyond expectation.

It was a long trip back back and I was bedevilled by unruly children, howling, seemingly unmanageable or small babies who wailed for hours dealing with weariness, the build up of pressure in their ears and the disorientation of clocks moving backwards and forwards.

Being one helluva guy I endured it through gritted teeth (for hours.) as I waded through my seven meals. As I type this a half dressed little three year old girl is running up and down the aisle at 15 mph. The good news is that she’s doing it quietly and, best of all, she’s irritating the stewardesses. It seems no one is claiming her; I wouldn’t. I’ve counted that she’s been past eight times in 10 minutes.

As always thank you for following the story (you have immense stamina.) I worry that I am too often curmudgeonly about folk and places I pass through but Anna and I had a wonderful time with lifetime memories and an appetite to revisit some of the places we’ve been. So where next? That’s half the pleasure.

PS  STOP PRESS – Fourteen times and counting

The Beginning of the End

The departure from Queenstown was, in reality, the beginning of the end as we started back north to arrive in Christchurch and a flight home. Today we were heading for Twizel, no not Twizzle, think of the same pronunciation as twilight. The heavens opened on leaving Queenstown but we had few complaints as the weather had been very kind throughout New Zealand with lots of sun and seldom nithering. The road north included a stop in Cromwell where I espied this cycling joy of a tool centre that could help you inflate your tyres or tune up the bike whilst en route.

The front passenger seat was vacant on the bus but if so inclined you could jump in and join the guide. One benefit apart from the better view was the opportunity to commandeer the music selection and so I plugged in my phone and treated the passengers to my eclectic record collection. They were captive, they had no escape for several hours.

One of the deficiencies about the bus, amongst several design flaws eg. no internal storage and seats as wide as Economy on a Ryanair flight was that you could barely hear in the front of the bus the music that was, possibly, blaring out in the middle of the bus.

The guide’s automatic reaction in any case, when moving, was to play music, not that she heard it! For the guests to drink in the views to a bit of hip hop, Meatloaf or ABBA wasn’t the right soundtrack for sumptuous valleys, rugged coastlines or gazing at those magnificent big wide open skies over the distant mountain ranges. She really thought she/we should always drive to music. A partial solution was at least to play some songs you liked, I took the initiative.

We had lunch in Twizel but afterwards continued to the end of Lake Pukaki where most of us embarked on a 6 mile hike to get closer to Mount Cook (named after the Yorkshireman).

At the end of the path we saw a lake with the remarkable sight of bits of glacier plonked within it, they had slid down here from the main glacier.

Unfortunately the top of the mountain was obscured in mist/cloud on this overcast day but it didn’t diminish the pleasure of the walk or the sense of achievement of adding another decent hike to our holiday.

One of the guests had wanted to organise a wine tasting evening as entertainment. Only New Zealand wines, of course, were to be considered. It was all ad hoc in arrangement and I have to ruefully note that the House of Ives unwittingly brought nearly 30% of the night’s wine to the party, for the 10 imbibers. Needless to say wine tasting turned into an elderly piss up whilst the five youngest didn’t attend!

It was a long night and during the merriment I personally had time to go into Twizel for a Thai meal with non-imbibers and return to find them still knocking it back.

I was very disappointed with Anna and her reckless pursuit of pleasure in my absence. In the end I dragged her back to the room as we had to get up and be away for 7am the next morning.

The night was a great success with all except the guide who had her own pre-arranged plans changed through the ‘grey’ drinking soirée. We’d had our third birthday fall on the holiday! In the guide’s world of pre-ordained responses this activated a cake, a communal dinner and singing. The fact that the latest guest to have this befall was really not bothered to celebrate her birthday; truth be told she’d already had quite a few before!

Given the ‘wine tasting’, dinner had to be cancelled and whilst I saw the cake it was never cut up or shared. (Chocolate for those interested.) To add to the woes of the guide she was booked by G Adventures into separate lodgings, a hostel, and appeared bleary eyed the next morning advising that her room was next to a crying baby’s (all night.) Given she was working so hard and not least driving hundreds of miles a decent night’s sleep seemed recommended?

The itinerary said we were off to Christchurch the next day but G Adventures had other ideas. They had diverted us, before Christchurch, to visit Akaroa. A delightful small town and harbour where we’d take a boat out to sea to see wildlife.

Why such largesse? Well the ship’s captain on our disrupted sail around Doubtful Sound had advised, over the tannoy, that we were all entitled to a refund. I really think that the guests were not bothered, the day hadn’t been a disaster and, truthfully, boat rides and scenery were just about max’d out by then for everyone. However, G Adventures, now presumably worried, about the prospect of giving us all over £100 each back and/or worried about getting hammered in customer reviews put on this boat ride and a free dinner on the last night. As it turned out the boat ride had its moments.

Play Time

Now quite a long way South on the island we were approaching New Zealand’s peak tourist town: Queenstown. However, the drive remained dramatic and first we dropped into Wānaka on Lake Wānaka. The town is an important leisure area not least during the ski season. It looked quite upmarket. For us it was a lunch stop in the bright sunshine.

Soon we were in busy Queenstown. The three storey bag haul was inevitable and when completed we trouped into town to check it out. There were now Chinese tourists again (and a maybe lots of other nationalities, I know, Katrina) but the sight of upmarket luxury brand shops reappeared such as Luis Vuitton. For those of more simpler interests ie. me, we found an Irish pub and I enjoyed a Guinness.

The focus of Queenstown is on adrenaline rush activities. Some of our party variously signed up to bungee jump, sky dive or indulge in a gut wrenching swing that threw you out from a high platform in a free fall experience. Their videos posted on the group WhatsApp reconfirmed their bravery and my conviction never to do something so stupid. We instead enjoyed Queenstown for its other delights, namely beauty and tranquility. We hired a couple of bikes. ‘Business Class’ maintained her ‘comfort’ stance and took an electric bike. I took something you had to pedal.

On purpose built gravel paths we rode beside the lake.

It was sublime, however, we struggled to find a coffee stop until Anna noted we were near a golf club. So we ascended a steep hill to partake of a coffee and bun in an idyllic setting with views across the water. This activated the usual pantomime sketch. It involves someone attempting to type into a till Anna’s drink order. ‘A decaf cappuccino with oat milk’. All venues could stretch to such a requirement but several repeats and clarifications usually ensued. The lady at the golf club was also slightly hard of hearing.

On the next table were some kiwis up from Invercargill, about as far south as you can go on the island. We talked about their lives and how tolerable their life was with the next stop being Antarctic. As one of the party was sporting a mullet clearly there are worrying mental health issues down there.

Back in Queenstown, much to Anna’s discomfort we took the gondola to top of the hill that overlooked the town. Even though the minimum age to partake of the luge was six Anna sat out the opportunity to plummet down two courses on a wheeled sledge.

The plan is to never brake and being heavier than the majority of the teenagers on the track I did descend quickly but I must admit to suffering the ignominy of a 13 year old passing me on my second go.

Such was the popularity that the queues were long and you had to share the lifts (that took you from the gondola to the luge.) I sat beside a pale faced young couple and enquired if ‘this was their first ride?’ Then followed the kind of pregnant pause that lasted so long that you thought about calling a midwife when they reluctantly volunteered that it was their fifth ride! They were Swedish; not a loquacious nation.

Back in town we dined royally at an upmarket restaurant. I have to say our guide is a burger, fish and chips or pizza kind of girl (or ‘woman’ if my eldest daughter is reading this.) It is a shortcoming in her steady stream of information, advice and hopeless folksy tales about the Māoris. (Often a lake or mountain is introduced to us with the Māori folklore of its origin. An illustration would be that some hole was carved by immense mythical Māori who dragged a giant stick gouging the earth to leave such a feature that water poured in and it is now a lake.)

In some towns the choice of food is limited but after a while you do yearn for something else better cooked and not starting life from a freezer. One irritating dodge is the NZ addition of a tax to your bill on public holidays. In Queenstown it was Easter. This tax is to cover the higher wages of hospitality staff for working on these days. At this restaurant it was 20% and then you’re invited to add a gratuity! Kerrrching! Like the rest of the world NZ is experiencing staff shortages. This is one way to try and retain them (at the customer’s expense.)

The following day was the first misstep of the tour’s itinerary. We were bused to catch a ferry and then take another bus to catch a ship to cruise around some fjords. We’d now seen so much scenery and previously enjoyed cruising that to spend another day doing this was not a crowd pleaser.

The day had it’s challenges. We had the second bus (not ours) breakdown and that delayed the cruise starting. The ship we were allocated also had a mechanical issue and we were put on another vessel! This was slower and was unable to go to the fjord’s sea mouth in the time available. Frankly, the surprising highlight as we slowly slid beside cliffs looking at the vegetation was a 10 minute drift in silence where we were told to stop talking, put away our phones and enjoy the surroundings with their peace and quiet. Delightful.

Doubtful Sound was identified and named by Captain Cook on his first visit in 1770, however, he never entered the fjord. A ‘sound’ is carved by a river and a ‘fjord’ is carved by a glacier. He got this identification wrong, apparently. On his second voyage to New Zealand, in 1773, he had to rest up just along the coast for five weeks at Dusky Sound whilst his ship, HMS Resolution, was repaired. He’d returned from sailing through the Antarctic and also the crew were exhausted.

From here we retraced our steps of bus, ferry and bus back to Queenstown for fish and chips (with a surcharge.)

The Long And Winding Road

This organised tour of both islands concentrates mainly on the south. As a consequence today was mainly about eating up the road miles to get to our jumping off point for the south island, Wellington. This is New Zealand’s capital city.

To ease the toil of being sat in the bus all day we stopped at a few attractions on our journey south. The weather has dried up and temperatures are late teens and sunny. The route is the main State Highway 1, a single lane carriageway for most of its length and only developing into a dual carriageway when it got near the sprawl of Wellington.

Our first stop was a waterfall that was memorable.

Next we stopped for about an hour at Taupo. This town on the lake had a terrific and relaxed vibe with many outdoor cafes. I could well imagine spending a night or two here. One of its memorable attractions is the McDonalds restaurant that includes dining space inside the fuselage of a DC-3 (otherwise known as a Dakota or Skytrain.)

Back in the bus we had a brief stop at Foxton. Here they had created a tourist attraction by importing and erecting a windmill, as you do. An interesting decision!

I noted this sign on a window to a visitor/community centre. The gangs allude to some seriously violent groups who are involved with controlling and selling drugs. The ethnic mix swings across all the people of NZ and can involve firearms. Quite a surprise really and it seems, with my brief research, to have started with Hell’s Angels in the 1960s.

Our hotel in Wellington was in the heart of the ‘downtown’ on Cuba Street. This busy strip was full of bars and restaurants. Finding a Mexican restaurant was a really welcome change but this had to wait until we watched the climax and finish of the Australian Grand Prix. It made a change to watch the race at the end of the day Down Under rather than at dawn in Yorkshire.

The promised rain made an emphatic appearance the next day and I wandered off to see the National War Memorial, a wonderful monument that seemed completely fitting of the sacrifice of so many servicemen.

From here I found the Museum of New Zealand (Te Papa Tongarewa). I love museums and this was a truly an excellent celebration and explanation of the peoples, wildlife and geology of New Zealand. As regards the latter there was a small room that behaved as if an earthquake was happening ie. it shook and rocked for several intense seconds. I chose to experience this on my knees under a table in order to ‘live out’ the experience. There was much merriment amongst the other occupants of the room that an elderly nutter was sheltering under furniture!

I learned a lot but also gained a real appreciation of how young the country was even though the Māoris had been here several centuries more than the Europeans. The introduction of so many species of animal and plant now seemed fraught and I read that the innocent introduction of goats had proven calamitous and the attempted cull and control had worked out at NZ$250/goat! For an economy dependent on food production you can appreciate the controls that exist at the borders.

The Gallipoli campaign in WW1 was an attempt to invade Turkey along the Dardanelles after the country joined the conflict on the side of the Germans. The invasion in April 1915 was up steep cliffs held by existing (underestimated and disrespected) Turkish troops. The Allied forces were mainly Australians, British and New Zealanders. In Australia and New Zealand this failed campaign saw a horrific bloody agonising loss of life in a hopeless set of attacks against well held strongholds. The Allied forces had also to deal with heat, dehydration, disease, infestation and on occasion a shortage of supplies whilst contained by the enemy above in cramped spaces on the shoreline.

It was catastrophically ill-conceived, on distant shores, and personifies Alan Clark’s phrase for other WW1 battles as Lions being led by Donkeys. The lions being these young men slaughtered endlessly in attack after attack. The Turks fought bravely to defend their country and after months of stalemate, deprivation and loss the Allies withdrew exhausted and, frankly, beaten.

Nations can be built on this type of sacrifice, ironically. A spirit and resolve develops as heroes are made and legends written. Gallipoli is tragically the hill that New Zealand (and Australia) died on yet represents how magnificent they can be as nations. It was, however, never worth the price of nearly 9,000 Australians and 3,000 New Zealanders dead. The Turks lost 87,000 and the British, Irish and French also lost tens of thousands.

The exhibition worked its way through the campaign and told the story of the experience through soldiers, an officer and a nurse.

In the area of the graphics and models there were videos and accompanied by stirring yet melancholy music that fitted the funereal atmosphere. I was so touched I nearly shed a tear. Gallipoli is not a new story but relaying the spirit, initial false optimism, injury, death, squalor and family loss is a difficult task in a world where we’ve become probably hardened and indifferent to tragedy. Wellington is a long way to go but it would be worth the trip to see this exhibition. I won’t forget it. So powerful.

Later that night was another holiday highlight as Anna and I met up with Paul.

Paul and I knocked about and shared a student house in 1974 to 1976 in Altrincham whilst both at Manchester Polytechnic. We hadn’t met up since the late 80s in Amsterdam. Apparently our regular contact lapsed because I unfollowed him on Facebook? Something I can’t recollect but maybe guilty as charged.

Paul now lives mainly in Wellington and continues to work in IT, a very global and transferable profession. Candi Staton has a line in a song… ‘people change, but not much’. As I meet and still have contact with old friends I can confirm it is true. Sadly we all look different and life shapes our budgets, relationships and locations but the values, interests and affection never changes.

We had a couple of beers, a bottle of wine and an Italian whilst Anna and I interrogated Paul about the intervening period. Discoveries included his energetic love of cricket and an ability to play the ukulele. It was great to reminisce about days back in Manchester and the ability to park for free near the Poly. This included finding a parking meter and then feeding several handily available ring pulls off the pavement into the meter!

Music was always a common interest and spookily it seems Paul relatively recently went to see Nick Lowe in Pocklington. We were also there, oblivious to his presence! We’ve ensured that doesn’t happen again and plan to meet up when he’s next in the UK.

Kia ora

It’s unusual and unwelcome to wake up to the smell of last night’s fish and chips. However, were sharing a lodge with two bedrooms and the lady in the next room was heating up the remnants of last night’s meal in a microwave for breakfast. She’s Canadian, which might explain this eccentricity.

It was an early start down to Rotorua for more activities, unfortunately zorbing, zip lining and something else expensive and energetic didn’t appeal to ‘Business Class Hiawatha’ and we were to take a walk into town when we got there as our activity.

Soon after getting underway we stopped at Tairua to buy some pastries and coffee for breakfast. I had great expectations of my pick yet it was neither cheesy or particularly marmite tasting. I absorbed the blow as the bus trundled south.

What was clear was that apart from near the large cities it was single carriageways all the way and in this part of NZ lots of cattle in the fields. In fact dairy products and meat still remain the major export with this and other products going to their largest buyer, China. The UK and Europe are negligible as buyers nowadays but I long remember ‘New Zealand Butter’ as a popular brand back in Blighty. The other great export to the UK was lamb. This has declined as we can get lamb from nearer home now and fewer folk wear wool or eat sheep meat. When was the last time you ate lamb?

The economic importance of China comes at a price I read. As Australia kicks back against China’s growing regional military threat and takes actions such as the AUKUS submarine initiative then New Zealand chooses to emphasise its ‘independent’ foreign policy in order, probably, not to antagonise the inflow of Chinese dosh (£11 billon pa or about half of all exports.) The Chinese are also developing a greater profile and increasing subsidy of the Pacific Islands such as Samoa. Access to these countries could be militarily useful to a roaming Chinese navy and loan indebtedness to China helps solidify the loyalty of the island governments. These islands have traditionally looked to New Zealand as a developing or defensive partner.

The countryside remained very verdant, and rolling, as rain started to fall. It was the first time in a few weeks since we’d seen the heaven’s open. Rotorua is a largish town of over 50,000 and apparently 80% of the population is Māori. The town sits on the edge of a large lake and has considerable thermal activity. A reminder is the pungent aroma of bad eggs that greets you – sometimes as a faint background smell or occasionally quite halting. As a settlement it has loads of hotels but the town held little charm apart from a striking early 20th Century Bath Hall.

This was built to develop the therapeutic attraction for visitors of taking the waters. The visitors being of European descent. Throughout New Zealand the Māori heritage is emphasised and a ‘catch up’ appears to be underway to atone for 19th and 20th Century European settler racism and abuse such as suppressing the culture and language with the inevitable marginalisation. Unlike Australia these Polynesian people only beat the Europeans by 5 or 600 years to the land mass but when the white man got here, with his superior weaponry, the Māori independence and way of life was to be fatally eroded. Formally the Treaty of Waitangi of 1840 made all the 500 tribes cede sovereignty to The British Crown. I think we can well imagine that wasn’t an arrangement that was between two equal partners. White settlers had differing attitudes, and laws, as to land ownership and the type of farming. The deforestation is awful to behold from the 19th to the 21st Century.

There are over 850,000 Māoris in NZ today (out of the 5 million) but despite the fine words, positive law provision and increasing promotion of their indigenous identity and rights many Māori people have their challenges socio economically. This manifests itself with lower educational achievement, higher substance misuse, worse health outcomes and high levels of penal imprisonment. However, away from this misery the tour party had a splendid night of Māori culture.

We were driven to a ‘village’ where some of the tribal traditions were explained, formal greetings were demonstrated between tribes and there was much wonderful singing and dancing. In our introduction we were asked to repeat Māori language words, the first, a welcome greeting of ‘Kia ora’. Yes, this phrase does not originate from a carton of orange squash I regularly consumed at The Odeon during the 1960s.

After this we were given a banquet where the meat had been cooked traditionally underground.

To elevate this ‘exchange’ we finished on a Q&A session with our Māori host. Merrill, she of the 7.30am fish and chip persuasion, cut to the chase and asked him about racism from the whites!

Being a class act he decided against being honest and making all the white tourists, who made up the couple of hundred guests in the room, uncomfortable and talked about the open approach of the Māoris with all people they interfaced with instead. He did identify the government as a ‘difficult relationship’. I suspect that may stretch all the way back to Queen Victoria in 1840 and the multifarious abuses and back sliding the Māoris have endured for well over a century afterwards.

Stuffed with food, culture and wiser we returned to the hotel.