Meeting more Nelley's - and a chance meeting with Seriah

We, like most other campers, left very early this morning. I suspect they had probably, like us, discovered how awful the facilities were. We couldn't wait to get out of there...! The most expensive caravan park we've used, and the equal worst with several other very poor parks (most ranging from acceptable to very good).

So we traveled towards Aron Nelley's farm using the local car ferry.

On the way we had yet another "God-moment". We had stopped after leaving the ferry, me for coffee, Kura for a craft shop (!). As we were about to leave, a slender young woman stood in front of the van some 20 metres in front of us and stood there with an wistful expression.

I said to Kura "what does she want...for us to give her a lift?". The girl then stuck her thumb out to make it clear.

So we decided to help her out. Seriah sat in the rear seatbelt right behind us and spent most of the time telling us about her travels in NZ and the people she had met. In one of those coincidences that maybe are not, we learned that she was from Fremantle, had lived in Boya as a child, and that she had just spent some time living with a young NZ family who were radical Christians living a simple lifestyle (solar power, grow own food, process food manually etc). Seriah was impressed even though she said "she was not religious", and told us about their simple and loving lifestyle. We felt that we were once again presented with evidence of God working in a person's life.

We offered to take her to the town that was next on the road we were travelling along but she needed to get to Auckland quickly so she opted to bail out at the appropriate intersection. As we parted ways where our road to the farm diverged from her's, to Auckland, I encouraged her to keep thinking about what she had seen and heard on the little farm.

We were concerned about her safety as a single woman hitch-hiking, and prayed that God would watch over her and keep her safe - and thinking about the things she had seen and heard.

When we arrived at Aron's and Lynne's farm, we were welcomed for lunch and spent a pleasant time talking family history. Aron then took us both on the quad bike for a tour round the farm, up to a high hill where we could see the tidal river going through his place. Eat your heart out Liam (:-)

We then traveled onto Ahipara where we booked into a simple but very nice, clean campsite with an easy-going, friendly manager - and it cost only $25. Good to know that yesterday was an aberration!

A much better day today.

Storms in the north island [29 March]

Well, what a day. We waited until 945am before leaving Manakau, near Auckland, in order to evade the rush hour. Even that didn't help us too much...the traffic was thoroughly jammed up to Auckland. It took us about an hour to travel to the CBD because of the stop-start driving in the pouring rain.

Crossing the river bridge north of the CBD was a nightmare as we ended up in a highly constrained lane with concrete walls one side and other lane edge hardware on the other. The wind was blowing strongly and there was little room for error. I was thoroughly relieved to reach the end of the bridge.

We decided to go to the west coast to escape the rain, even though we had no idea of the extent of the rain and flooding. It wasn't until we started westwards and began encountering creeks almost mat the level of the road that we realised that the weather was quite severe.

We made an early decision to book into the Matakohe Top 10 as soon as we arrived, before going to the Kauri Museum. We were lucky enough to get the last self-contained unit, so we are snug and warm tonight.

The Kauri Museum was very, very good, and even though we spent two hours there, we need more, so we're going back first thing tomorrow morning to continue. Lots of examples of ancient Kauri trees exhumed from swamps in excellent condition after tens of thousands of years; a complete sawmill set up and operating slowly so you can see how it works; stationery engines; bushcraft exhibits, heaps. Excellent.

Betty, a relative of Russell Nelley, is collections manager at the museum, but she is still on leave so we did not meet her.

From quiet bush to hectic suburbs [27 to 28 March]

27 March

Spent a longish day driving south from Tapu. We stopped at a number of small towns to look around, including a drive inland on a very narrow blue metal road with sheer sides to look at a very large Kauri tree that is still alive, the "Square Kauri" that was preserved by loggers because of its unusual shape.

I bought plugs and points for the van, having become quite frustrated with performance. The van toolkit has now EXPANDED to include a feeler gauge to enable me to set the points. It would also have had a cheapie spark plug spanner, but Repco had sold out :-( However, I was offered the loan of a beaten up shop demo wrench, very kind of them, so I replaced the plugs there and then - all except for number 4, which like our own bus, was almost frozen in. When the borrowed wrench started bending, I abandoned any intention of replacing the plug, imagining either a smashed and stuck plug, or an embarrassingly broken wrench. So we're now operating on 3 new plugs and one old.

However, our main activity was to drive into the Karangahake Gorge to do a walk. A brief conversation with a DoC staffer identified a 3 hour walk into the hills to see a large remnant Kauri as appropriate, "as long as we didn't mind getting our boots wet".

Well, the significance of that statement emerged as we travelled onwards. In all we made 7 or 8 creek crossings, balancing on randomly placed, slippery rocks - then of course, the same number coming back. Somewhat frustratingly, we keep crossing what I judge to be the same creek, to and fro...someone in DoC had a sadistic sense of humour. Although we didn't fall in, there were a number of occasions when we slipped and came very close to getting in the drink.

The walk became very steep towards the end, and Kura commented that the steps, where laid, were clearly for someone with longer legs than her.

We emerged muddy and tired some hours later. As it was getting dark, we started travelling towards Russ and Mary-Ann's place at Whangamata. They had kindly made a bed up ready, so we scoffed baked beans and fruit along the way so as not to make any last minute imposition (we had not decided to go there this night until we had emerged from the bushwalk and were on our way).

It was lovely to drive up the familiar road to their place, "like coming home" Kura said.

28 March

Up early talking with Russ before he went to work. Then replaced the points and went for a test drive...much better now, motor missing nowhere near as much...very pleasing.

Rain pouring down and power went out, so noone could have a shower due to no water pressure. However, shortly before Maryann went to work, it came on again, so she left us there enjoying the hot water!

Before we left Whangamata, we explored a quarry that had taken Kura's interest for it's geological formations. Couldn't find the main feature after a walk, so we left. On the way we travelled through Kauaeranga Gorge, so we stopped and walked a bit, getting quite drenched.

Travelled north on the motorway and reached Manakau on the outskirts of Auckland about 330pm. Traffic getting very heavy and I was tired, so we bailed out looking for a motel or somesuch. Even that was stressful due to the traffic (we'd come off, then back on the motorway in the search for reasonable accommodation).

After some highly stressful wrong turns and recoveries, we ended up at a Top Ten park that had a single motel unit that I took on the spot, as the forecast is for 35 to 45 knot easterlies and increasing rain tonight...not a night to be in the van with a long walk to the facilities.

A gentler day than expected... [26 March]

Left Coromandel for areas north. On the way we decided to go no further than Colville, as the driving is quite tiring, and there was a lot of winding gravel road to travel to get to the next place north of Colville.

I (Ian) was also feeling rather drained. So we cancelled the intended trip to the northern tip of the Coromandel peninsula and instead had a relaxing drive with a number of stops on little rocky coves. This included a stop for carrot cake from the Colville Caf? (per Lonely Planet), cappuccino for me and a blueberry smoothie made with soy milk for Kura. The lady was very helpful, giving Kura a try with a small glass of the brew before committing to it, as the smoothie wasn't cheap. It was very tasty, so she went the whole hog - and had no ill effects, which was great.

We had a number of very nice encounters with people as we traveled southwards again.

We stopped at Woodworks, a rampant bush block in the middle of nowhere where we met Greg, a talented maker of furniture from cypress pine slabs. His very impressive repertoire was shown in his photo album...pieces shipped all over the world.

After we had chatted for a while, Greg revealed tentatively that he was a Christian, and we had even more to talk about. It was a case of mutual encouragement, ended only by the revelation that he had to get back to tending his roasts - it was his birthday and he had guests coming. So we wished each other well and carried on our ways.

Stopped at another little bay and prised Pacific Oysters from the rocks, managing to get some off successfully and cooked them with chili sauce. Some we had to discard as once cooked, they do not open like mussels and we could not get them open. Only later when talking to Ray and June (see below) did we discover exactly what they were and that you have to smash them open....

We decided to stop for dinner on a patch of lawn right on the beach in a tiny seaside hamlet. We ate as the sun was low on the horizon - very nice environment. After tea we walked over to where an elderly couple, Ray and June, were fishing for snapper. We talked for a long time and June let Kura handle the rod for a while - that was her fix...

It was very pleasant watching the sun set over the sea and the more distant Auckland region (we were just across the Firth of Thames so for us the sun appeared to set across the sea). After the sun set we said goodbye to them and carried on to Tapu where we set up camp in the dark.

Railways, hydro-mechanics, and spirituality [25 March]

The title sounds a bit like that classic "Zen and the art of motorcycle mechanics"....!

After our walk to Cathedral Bay, I was knackered and just wanted to stop driving, and just eat and sleep, so I gave up on Hotwater Beach...the only hot water I was interested in was a warm shower. So we drove on to Whitianga, a fast growing holiday house location several hours from Auckland...think of Busselton+Dunsborough.

In the morning realised it was Sunday so we abandoned our morning plan and found the Whitianga Baptist church. Great welcome to us, followed by a very practical and useful address by an older guy, Brian, who was standing in while the pastor was away on holidays. Brian's prep for his address today was clearly overseen by an all-knowing power.

Last night I had spent some sleepless hours worrying about the sale of our campervan. There had been no useful nibbles from potential buyers and our flights home on 8th April are now only 2 weeks away. Silly really, but the wee small hours can be like that sometimes. I eventually gave myself a talking to and reminded myself that I needed to trust the God who loves me. That's a little harder than one might think, because I'm not one of those who believes that because I'm one of God's people, I will naturally inherit health, wealth and happiness. I think that is not a sensible interpretation of the Bible message. All of us see times of pain, worry, loss, as well as the welcome times of ease, enjoyment and happiness.

The next morning while sitting waiting for my wife to return from her shower I was prompted to read the first century Christian leader Paul's letter to the Roman church, chapter 8 verse 9, where he says "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him". The point is I think, that in the development of the Christian, whatever happens, God can turn it into a useful experience for him or her.

While reflecting on this, it struck me that a development area for me is trusting God. By nature I want to ensure events around me are 'controlled' (I tend to have risk mitigation strategies for everything... :-). But right now there's little I can do about this camper-sale issue and it's been eating me up. The right thing is to trust that God will use whatever happens to develop us, and having done what I can to advertise the vehicle in a sensible way, to leave it in his hands and not worry about it.

Well, that was a fairly big realisation for me. You can guess my surprise when Brian at the Whitianga Baptist Church turned his attention - in the middle of his address - to the issue of anxiety and the importance of trusting God. It was a very useful time and I was glad we made the effort to find them.

It has been an interesting day!

Alongside all these 'deep' things, the somewhat more mundane business of sightseeing and eating continued.

The twisty-turnies returned again and we had heaps of hilly corners with recommended speeds of 25 kmh and one even at 15 kmh.

We enjoyed immensely supporting the local fire brigade at a tiny beachside town by scoffing two of their big mussel fritters each at $2 a time. Divine!

Had a very enjoyable time on the narrow gauge Driving Creek Railway at Coromandel. It developed from one man's obsession with railway to an amazingly complex, enormously popular narrow gauge railway. It provides a one hour return trip through multiple tunnels, a half-figure 8 and dual layer loop, a zig-zag section, and a number of bridges. Very good value.

After that we spent some time at the WaterWorks' theme park also at Coromandel (really just a very, very large lawn area with a pathway that led you past many very large hydro-mechanical devices).

The owner's father invented a 3kw 230v hydro scheme that ran for 8 years until scheme power was introduced. The son obviously inherited his father's genius, as there were numerous fascinating water-powered exhibits that were absolutely ingenious. Examples: water powered pendulum clock that must have been 6m high; stream-powered device (clacker valve) that pumps water metres into the air just using the shock wave produced when the valve opens and closes; and numerous other intricate, but large-scale mechanical devices powered, triggered, or using water.

Kura let off some steam here by flying down a flying fox. When she hit the end I though she was going to fall off....but she didn't. It was obviously fun as she had another go after that. [Dad, I wished you were here, you would have LOVED the waterworks visit, probably even more than the narrow gauge railway....and that's saying something!]

Left there at 6pm and back to Coromandel township to stay the night.

Up the Coromandel Peninsula [24 March]

Left whangamata with an offer to return for a night once we have completed our trip round the Coromandel. Day is overcast but every now and then the sun breaks through and it's quite warm.

Heading north up the peninsula we have once again struck the narrow, twisty, hilly roads [2nd gear, left lock, right lock, left lock.... And so on]. We've been warned that many of the roads to the north are even more narrow and to hope not to see a truck coming the other way!

I am writing this after muffin and coffee at a caf? in a little town. Kura is browsing a gift shop while I sit here. Enjoying the quiet. Today we intend to walk to Cathedral Cove and back, then visit Hotwater Beach at low tide around 5pm when we should be able to sit in geothermally-heated hot water pools dug in the beach sand.

Possum shooting with the Nelley's in Whangamata [22 to 23 March]

Our course northwards from Rotorua went faster than expected and we arrived in Whangamata before managing to contact Russell and Mary Ann Nelley, so we called into a caravan park and set ourselves up. Later that evening we managed to contact them and agreed to drop in in the morning.

We received a lovely welcome. Mary-Ann's 50th birthday party is on Saturday so we have been helping them set up a 9m x 3m tent, make bon-bons(?), decorations etc. We had a lovely home-smoked salmon meal last night, and will have a BBQ will lots of their friends tonight. Although we have been invited to stay on for the party, we will probably leave on Saturday morning and start making our way north, up the Coromandel peninsula. We had intended to leave after setting up the tent, but there were parts missing last night, then we had troubles fitting itonto the timber decking, dodgy connector, and then to my immense mortification, discovered once up that one of the pieces was in the wrong place....somehow we overlooked moving it when the missing parts arrived. I knew it had to be moved, but in the bustle of activity (there were lots of friends and relatives), it was overlooked by all.

The decking was a dangerous place to be for about half an hour as we attempted to move the two pieces around. Unfortunately as in all systems, the removal of one piece destabilised the whole structure and we had other pieces falling from the heavens.....

Last night I shot my first possum with Russell's .22 rifle. In NZ, possums are a pest like rabbits in Australia. Possums were introduced from Australia to create a fur trade in NZ; unfortunately, they have no local predator and an almost boundless supply of food. However, they are steadily destroying Rata trees (of similar local significance to Jarrah and Karri) because of their prodigious appetite and the fact that they have a birth-rate about twice that of Australia. Consequently, possum shooting is a routine activity in all the areas we have visited.

Incidentally, yesterday I managed to reverse into a tree with the roof vent up. You guessed it, smashed another piece off and bent all the metal pieces (again). However, this time I knew exactly what to do, so out with the screwdriver, duct tape and Araldite and it was all back together in 30 minutes or so. I was SOOOO frustrated with my forgetfulness....

Pongs and belches [20-21 March]

20-March

Visited Orakei Koraka in the morning. It's been partly wiped out by a dam in the adjacent river, but what is left is pretty interesting. We didn't see any geysers, but there was constant belching going on (no, Doris, not me) from the mud pools. Some of the water wells up from deep vents in the ground. It's boiling hot but is the most fascinating blue. Worth visiting to get a sense of the geothermal stuff.

By the time we got to Rotorua we felt that we'd 'done' geothermal stuff and were happy to omit any further visits. Rotoroa stinks with the Hydrogen Sulphide being emitted everywhere. Even the town park has clouds of steam and pong being emitted. And we hadn't seen SO MANY hotels and motels anywhere else. Talk about commercialisation - I think it was worse than Queenstown.

We booked into a caravan park in Rotoroa in the last afternoon. Kura wasn't well but perked up a little later on. Which was fortunate, because we managed to book into a Maori cultural evening (songs, costumes etc) and a hangi, and it went later than we've normally been retiring.

The event was OK, but not managed very well. As a result a significant chunk of our group missed a lot of the guide's remarks given during a walk through the nearby bush. I have some process and presentation ideas to send to them once I can get them onto paper. The meal was OK. In short, while interesting, there was nothing really to write home about....so I won't!

21 March

Traveled round the edge of Lake Rotoroa on the way north. Lots of access points for fishermen-lucky them. On the was we stopped to look at what we though were Okere Falls. Fortunately we saw a rafting company's van, and chatted with a girl on the staff. Turned out we were looking at the head river, not the falls themselves. So we took a side road and waited for the rafts to arrive at the botton. Good-oh. Then we followed the road back up and this time stopped at a recreation reserve, which turned out to have a very interesting story about yet another hydro project,, as well as even bigger falls. Don't know how the rafts got down the thunderous, narrow and high falls in the middle. It was a pity we were at the end rather than in the middle of their river transit!

Turns out that a local publican wrote to Thomas Edison in the late 1800's (quite early...) with regard to getting an electricity supply set up for his NZ hotel. We think the world is small now, but it's fascinating that even in a world where letters took probably months to travel from NZ to the USA, interest in technology was very keen.

Drive from Okere Falls to Whangamata (Fang'a'ma'ta) was tedious and twisty, complicated by fast drivers who menaced from behind. Pretty tired and fractious tonight.

Made contact with Russell Nelley and will visit them in their house at Whangamata tomorrow. Funnily enough, we think we passed their house while looking for a DOC campsite (we abandoned that because the DOC place was so far out, and took a campsite in a town caravan park).

Geothermals of all kinds [19 March]

Travelled to Taupo where we learned the full significance oif the delayed departure of the Overlander Auckland to Wellington train from the National Park railway station the other day. I've never heard of a lahar before, but we narrowly missed being caught up in the large traffic congestion that resulted.

You see, first we were late leaving the farm. I think Terry really didn't want us to go, so it was after 10am before we left southwards to Wanganui to pick up Highway 1. The continual rain also slowed us down. Kura had identified two alternative highways by which we could travel to Taupo: the western-most route State Highway 4 (SH4) and the eastern-most State Highway 1 (SH1) via SH49. Smack-dab in the middle of our two alternate northwards routes is the crater of Mt Ruapehu.

As we left Wanganui city some time around 12, I saw a very large highway sign that stated that two highways were closed. Because I hadn't caught the detail and Kura hadn't seen it at all, we did a U-turn and approached it again. It was clear that the eastward route she had considered was closed, while the westward route was open - so we chose SH4, which runs about 15 km west of the crater

We had assumed the reason for the road closures was the heavy rain and the debris that was very obvious as we travelled. We noticed a very large amount of traffic travelling against us and assumed it was end-of-weekend traffic from Lake Taupo.

Only later did we hear that the 7 metre high crater wall of mud, ash and stone had been breached, as the NZ Govt has been expecting since Christmas Eve 1953. On that occasion, 153 people died when their train was overcome by the torrent of mud, rocks, trees and water unleased by the last time the crater wall gave way (and that's what a lahar is....).

We were lucky to be late leaving the farm, and also to notice the road sign or we would have been stuck bumper-to-bumper on State Highway 1 with everyone else....! I'm not claiming providential intervention, but its interesting to reflect on the coincidences.

It's a big news story here, and much credit to NZ civil defence as it appears that their contingency plans worked very well. Temperature sensors indicated that the water temperature had risen to Vibration sensors started giving the first warnings 1 hour before the torrent was unleashed. Pagers issued to residents downstream gave them adequate notice of the incident. There will be a very interesrting study to be had of the preparations and the actual performance.

Travelling past Lake Taupo is like being near the sea. Whitecaps from the very strong easterlies, waves crashing on the sea, and yacht pens around the edge. We passed people collecting mussels on the beach as we drove around the lake perimeter. Note that we are talking about a lake that is at least 30km by 40km....big.

Spent most of the morning in Taupo doing banking, shopping, email, and booking our flights back. We were surprised to find that with 3 weeks to go, Air New Zealand was pretty much booked out except for the very expensive seats. However, Qantas had tickets available on Easter Sunday, so we decided to book them immediately, even though we're not sure when our camper will be sold.

Visited a geothermal area that puffs huge clouds of steam and acideic fumes into the air. Very interesting that it was created by the activities of a geothermal power station built in the 1950's that changed the dynamics of the underground water and steam reservoirs, drying up a large geothermal field including geysers and mud pools, and creating new ones where we visited. A change of the environment had significant unexpected impacts....

The caravn park we booked into tonight, in Golden Springs, has its own geothermal stream and pool, so we got into our bathers and soaked for some time. Not deep, but full of bubbles and perhaps at around 27 degrees.

We intend visiting another geothermal field tomorrow at Orakei Koraka, but will probably bypass Rotorua as our impression is that it's very commercialised.

On our way again (18 March)

Terry and Heather gave us wonderful hospitality and we thoroughly appreciated their welcome.

Left the farm around 10am and drove towards Taupo. We saw some amazing country, particularly as it had been raining so heavily for about a day. Large waterfalls cascading down only a metre from the roadside, tumbing through a culvert under the road; Landslips next to the road with rocks and boulders freshly eroded from the steep sides and fallen either onto the road or the verge; chocolate brown, foaming rivers that one would stand litltle chance of surviving.

The early part of the trip was steep and twisting, but as we reached the plateua, the terrain became flatter and very harsh; since many of the areas were also ski areas, we guess that the plateua is mostly snow-covered in winter. It was a dismal day, so we stopped at the National Park railway station for a hot drink and something to eat.

The Overlander train was still there, an hour after it should have left for the downhill run to Wellington at the southernmost point of the north island - we speculated that the kinds of landslips we had seen near the road may also have been a problem for the train. The conductor was fussing around arranging for a fax to be sent to the station, which supported that suspicion.

We were both pretty tired so stopped in a tiny town about 40 km short of Taupo for the night.

Wellington and northwards 14 March

The caravan park in Picton was underneath an overhead railway line that trains periodically thundered over during the night. Not a comfortable night, and the alarm was not at all welcome at 6am.

Still, we got out of the park by about 645 with the aim of getting into the ferry queue at the designated 7am, for an 8am departure. After being in the queue for some time, when it was our turn we found at that you cannot pay on the way in through the "turnstiles" (if only their telephone operators had provided this critical piece of information when I called that day).

So we were waved to one side where I parked and went into the building to pay, get a docket and then walk back to the entry point. While I was discomfited about the whole situation, I was impressed by the disarming friendliness of the Picton terminal staff, who were not put off balance by my failure to fit their procedures. I found them a happy lot whom I could only smile back at. Top marks for customer service to Bluebridge Ferry service.

We had an interesting ride on the ferry, sitting with an older couple, Bill and Joy, who we later talked to for most of the 3 hours. Bill and I talked for a very long time about spirituality and Christianity. His background was long-time involvement in charismatic churches as well as community aid service in the Solomon Islands, but . I have no idea why our paths crossed, nor why the conversation went the way that it did, but as we shook hands to say goodbye, there was a mutual sense that the meeting had been a 'God-event' of some kind.

The drive up from Wellington was the worst driving experience of my life. The winds was so strong and unpredictable that we felt like giant hands were pushing us to the left and to the right. It confirmed Bill's comment about Wellington, that "it's people walk between lamp-posts, hanging onto them because of the wind"!

After about 3 hours of hair-raising, teeth-gritting driving through shredded branches, complete with gusty winds, lightning and hailstones, we started looking for an oasis, having given up the idea of reaching Wanganui, where Kura's relative lives.

We ended up hiring a motel unit at Foxton Beach at around 3pm. It's been a relief to not be driving, to have a bit of space (even if it is about three times our normal accommodation fees per night). The wind is still howling outside, but we have an oasis of calm and warmth - complete with TV.

Tomorrow, hopefully the wind will be less and we will make Wanganui.

Sea-kayaking at Abel Tasman National Park

Well, I had a quiet day while Kura went sea-kayaking. I decided to go for a walk in the national park, but didn't get myself properly organised. My main concern (given the day and the fact that Kura had the sunscreen) was that I would get sunburned. However, within an hour, the issues had changed. It was steadily raining and the sun had gone...but I had not brought a jumper, nor a raincoat.... Hmmm. Walked for another half an hour, but as I was getting wetter by the minute, I decided to bail before I got to the intended destination. Amusingly, by the time I had walked out of the park and within a few minutes of reaching the van, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Anyway, I consoled myself with a large flat white, carrot cake and a paper at the local caf?. Very bourgeois! After that, I traveled to the nearest town with an ATM as we were out of cash, got money, Telfast, copied the photos to a CD, used the internet, got petrol, and then returned to Marahau to await Kura's return. I had still several hours so made tea while waiting.

Kura had a great time.She learned how to paddle a kayak properly because she was in a double kayak with the guide during the trip. Also, she learned how to say her name properly when the guide introduced her to the other trip participants: Ku'Rha (quiet Ku then an emphasized Rha).Interesting. I commented that it may be time for a mid-life name change :-)

When she got back, we started our 3 hour trip to Picton. Looks a short distance on the map, but as with most travel in NZ, the time taken is much, much longer that we would expect in Aus. So 3 hours later we had traveled the 187 km from Marahau to Picton, arriving pretty tired at 8pm.

Takaka and Marahau [12 March]

The clouds had settled over the mountains overnight and rain started. It was further encouragement to move on, so we packed up and headed back over the mountains. Surprisingly, the return trip was heaps easier than going over. This appears to be because on one side of the mountain, the road is more like the Kalamunda zig-zag (long straight sections with hairpin bends) and easier to ascend, whereas the other side of the mountain is full of hairpin bends with very few straight sections (so we ground up in low gear most of the time). Today we got up really fast, then coasted downhill through the countless hairpins with ease.

Kura really wants to do some more sea kayaking near Abel Tasman National Park, so we got her booked for tomorrow morning at 8:30am. Since my back was problematic when we were using sea kayaks in Akaroa, and it is still recovering from the disk injury of last week, I'm not participating.

Instead I will be cooking tea, as we will be high-tailing it to Picton as soon as she returns at 330pm and won't have time to cook tea. Our aim is to be on the ferry to the north island early the next morning (i.e. Wednesday morning). We haven't booked yet but will find out the likely free spaces tomorrow and work from there.

It has rained a lot today, but Kiwis need the rain. It has been a surprise to see how dry NZ really is. Much of the agricultural land we drove through has very extensive irrigation to be productive, including an enormous canal that is about 10+ metres wide and goodness knows how long. We were very surprised at the use of huge boom-based sprinkler systems, often with ten or so joined end-to-end, and rotating (self-powered we presume) from the end that is connected to the water supply, thus describing an arc across huge grassy paddocks. Also surprising to us has been the use of sprinklers of the kind we might use on an oval - on huge paddocks that are many times the biggest oval, some sprinklers even appearing to be embedded in the ground.

The sandflies are still biting, and the old bites are still swollen and terribly itchy, including a generalised itching across entire chunks of skin near a bite. We have a range of creams to reduce the itch, none of which really work well. On a pharmacy's recommendation, we tried telfast tablets. They appeared to help reduce the overall effects, and we have consumed the whole packet - and now need more. Pity the poor pioneers with no medicines and no flyscreens!

Kura has been collecting seashells and is currently sanding and washing them to see whether they might be good enough to take home. She has just discovered that vinegar works well, although it is a little weak The third suitcase looks more likely every day ;-)

Seals, fish, beach, springs and home-grown hydro schemes [11 March]

Our van is now for sale in 4 web-based advertising venues: sellmefree.co.nz, autotrader.co.nz, trademe.co.nz, and bbhnet.co.nz. We've already had 20 viewings on one site, but the cynic in me wonders whether those are just web crawlers! We are now on the last 4 weeks of the holiday and expect to take the ferry for the north island sometime this coming week.

Got our schedule all sorted today, thinking there was no church here in Takaka (Tuhk'uh'kuh). Then as we drove through the town, we saw a Church of Christ church building. A quick re-jig of plans ensued and we joined with them for their time of worship this morning. Afterwards, we drove to the 'famous' paddle crab caf? on the far north-west corner of the south island and had (you guessed it) crabs, mussels, and cold meats for lunch. At $20 a head, this was our biggest splash-out on food this holiday.

We then drove onto Wharariki Beach (Far'a'ri'ki) where we left the car and walked a fair distance to get to the beach. Lovely place, but hot getting to and from it! Small fish were cruising the rivermouth and constantly jumping out of the tannin-stained water. Should have seen Kura, she just wanted a fishing rod....

We were also surprised by a young seal popping up and down through the waves and then starting to come ashore until it became disturbed by people nearby who jumped up and pointed at him. We have heard it said that seals are like the inquisitve dogs of the sea - pity this one was scared off.

We started our journey back quite late, and on the way decided to visit Te Waikoropupu (the locals call it Poo-Poo for short :-). Here there were two interesting things. Firstly a home-grown hydro scheme that was established in the 1920's using water courses and races established for a gold mining operatioon in the 1800's. It ran until the 1980's producing 0.8MW until they had a flash-over that destroyed the windings. At the time, all the powers said it was just junk to be sold for scrap, but there was a surprisingly stroing community backlash led by some key characters, one of whom reminds me of my Dad by his approach to broken things. These are paraphrases of quotations from this fellow from the storyboard at the hydro plant "they tell me it's not worth fixing. But I won't have that. Anything can be fixed if you have the will" and "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well".

Well, the story goes that the army helped with engineering work, the company that supplied the original generator in the 1920's (ASEA I think and still around!) rewound the windings, and some people in the town even mortgaged their houses. A huge community investment of time and energy, all to achieve the goal of getting the system back up again...that's commitment!

The generator is now humming away, contributing to the national grid, with payments from the grid managers going back into the Golden Bay community. It's now also a tourist attraction too, with a nice walk around the water collection area and a glassed viewing area to see the control unit, the flywheel and the generator.

Great little story. I would like to have got it exactly word-for-word. Hopefully if you do a web search for "PuPu Hydro" you will find a website with more details.

Due to a navigational error on my part, we then journeyed to the other site in PuPu, the PuPu Springs (I though they were all together in one place but miscalculated - give me a steering wheel rather than a map any day....!).

Apparently the largest freshwater spring in Australasia, with very pure water. The water constantly surged up at a great rate from a rock vent 2.7 m below the surface, creating interesting ripples on the surface.

Due to concerns about introduction of the didymo (rock snot) diatom (see previous posting) no-one is allowed to get near or touch the spring water with body, clothes etc. Seeing the number of ducks and other birds happily swimming around, I did wonder how long it would be before birds naturally did all the damage that we are being asked to prevent, just by flying from an infected waterway to an uninfected one.

Got back to Takaka late, about 7:30pm and decided fast food was the best option, so fish and chips were duly ordered and consumed, followed by a very nice phone chat with Liam.

On our way again [8 march]

i'm finding it a litle easier to move today, so we've left, heading for points north of Christchurch. I am very thankful for the blessing of relative mobility - I had not expected to be moving so easily so soon.

My need to not-sit for too long has given kura an excellent opportunity to stop at craft stores. ;-) We're at the second one now and while she is browsing, I am flat on the floor of the van.

Our first visit was to a home-based craft shed near where we were camped. The woman there was also christian. it was good to talk with her and look at her home-made possum-skin coats and hats. Possums in nz are as big a problem than rabbits in australia so theres a thriving market in killing them for their pelts or for plucking their fur (which is spun in with merino). Possums are not native to nz (wre introduced from Australia) and are fast destroying native nz forests.

Second stop is a quilt shop. Hope I do see kura again today.....

Yes, she returned, with a bag of goodies - gunna need another suitcase to go home....!

Quiet day [7 March]

I (Ian) am still moving very gingerly. A short trip in the car to the shop to extend our stay was enough to freeze me up again. So I am on my back on the bed in the van and kura has gone on one of the forest walks we had planned to do before we arrived.

Kura did another 2 walks while I lounged on the bed.

Frustratingly, none of these places had gsm signals so I could catch up on blogging, but I am enjoying continuing to read 'Spiritual Leadership' by Blackaby. When I first started reading it I didn't like the book's style and what I felt was its experiential focus; however, i'm now thinking that's probably because my naturally cerebral/clinical approach needed re-balancing! I'm now finding it very useful reflecting upon the ways that spirituality can be expressed in the corporate context.

Blackaby includes a number of fascinating quotes from Harry Truman's biography; it has given me a real interest in reading more about Truman.

Roof vent repaired [3 march]

Reassembled the roof vent onto the van - seems to be working well, but I'm not sure it would survive being left angled up while driving; we will need to be very disciplined in remembering to wind it down before driving off again.

It has been surprising how warm it has been in NZ on so many nights. We always need the roof vent open to get some airflow in the van. We even bought some mesh from a curtaining shop to make flyscreens for the two sliding windows (and used some uhu-tack to stick them outside over each window) so that we can get airflow but no sandflies at face level.

How a campervan can be built in NZ without flyscreens I will never understand. While WA rightly has a bad rap for bushflies and mosquitoes, NZ has terrible sandflies and mosquitoes.

Left Manipouri heading for Mt Cook. A good drive, lots of flat roads. We followed the Lindis Valley so for much of the day we were bounded to the right and the left with huge hills, while we followed the twisting countours of the valley floor and the Lindis River. Became quite hot later on.

Instead, we travelled to a little town (whose name I will not attempt to spell) and camped overnight in a motor camp. There was a very pretty turquoise lake there. It was being used for rowing races, so very early the next morning we could hear the rowers being urged on by the coach.

Cruising Doubtful Sound [2 March]

The cruise on Doubtful Sound was in 3 parts. A small ferry took us from the Manapouri jetty to the Merdian Energy Hydro plant, then a coach took us overland to meet the cruise vessel at the Deep Cove jetty which is in the landward end of the fjord. This vessel then took us all through the fjord to the sea, and then the process was repeated until we arrived back in Manapori.

The scenery was wonderful, the commentary laid back and reflective. It's hard to put into words the scale of the mountains each side of the fjord, the height of the waterfalls. Or the ferocity of the sandflies, but I will address that in another posting!

We enjoyed watching a seal repeatedly thrash the water as he chased a large fish, which we also saw jump out of the water in an attempt to escape. I'm not sure the fish was that impressed! The boat was stopped and allowed to drift as we all watched the shenanigans. ALso some tiny blue penguins floating in our path, although they were swift to dive when they saw us coming closer.

The engineering in the hydro plant was fascinating. What grabbed my attention was that even in a very large project such as that, the engineers 'got it wrong'. Expecting to produce 700 megawatts of power, they were disappointed to find that they could only produce 580 MW. Why? They had miscalculated the friction of the water against the tunnels they had bored through solid rock, and the tailrace tunnel could not get rid of the water fast enough. It took another 25 years before a second parallel tailrace tunnel was approved and funded. When this extra tunnel was completed they were able to achieve 710MW of power output. Interestingly while the first tunnel was made using explosives, the second was bored with a huge (looked about 20+ metres in diameter) tunnelling machine that made a smooth circular bore, perhaps explaining the extra, unexpected 10MW!

We sat with an older couple in the vessel who were very pleasant. We exchanged addresses as they are visiting WA in June, and we will be passing their home later this month. They also shared with us some rock code fillets from their recent Stewart Island fishing expedition, which were very nice and solved that night's dinner menu...

Before returning to the caravan park, I purchased araldite and duct tape to effect repairs to the camper's roof vent. The caravan park manager obligingly loaned us a rickety old ladder which enabled me for the first time to see what I was dealing with on the top of the van roof. That evening the two of us put the jigsaw of bits back together, with copious amounts of glue and duct tape holding in shape. At one stage I was getting rather concerned that I had so much Araldite on my fingers that I was in danger of getting them glued together (and with no nail thinners to help...). Fortunately, the glue came off quite well on damp rags, so I was saved that indignity.

We placed a rubber mat on the gaping roof vent to keep the sandflies out and left the cover to glue.

Marking time at Wanaka [28 feb]

Drove to Wanaka. Interesting scenery, Lake Wanaka is like a vision of the deep blue Mediterranean Sea against rocky Greek islands. Lovely. Wanaka is a real tourist destination and appears to be full of German tourists. Imagine Mandurah in the Med. Come to think of it, NZ is full of German tourists. NZ must be a safe and monetarily attractive place to visit, to come so far.

In Wanaka, we decided to have the brakes checked, as they were grabbing and producing scraping sounds. Proved to be an expensive job ($360) that delayed our departure by a day. A new front brake disk was required one side due to very bad scoring (a pebble lodged between pad and disk).

Prior to knowing we would need to wait another day for the car part to arrive, we had booked an early morning departure cruise on Doubtful Sound in 2 days time. This was to rather complicate our week...

I spent a very enjoyable time visiting the NZ Fighter Pilots Museum in the morning. A refurbed Hurricane amogst others, and a range of WW2 transcripts and photos had me totally fascinated - as well as sobered by the short life expectancy of so many.