23 November 2017 Parua Bay, Whangarei Harbour, Northland

More than three weeks have passed since we arrived back from the United Kingdom and it has taken this long to feel inspired to put index fingers to keyboard. We proved to be our fellow travellers’ worst nightmare neighbours coughing and choking all the way, in competition to the cries of unsettled babies one row ahead. For any readers who travelled London to Auckland via Qatar Airways in the last days of last month and shared our journey, what can I say? Perhaps you will get your revenge at some day in the future.

Although family members collected us from the airport, we did not spend any more time with them than necessary, cancelling scheduled visits, instead hunkering down for a couple of weeks in the Whangarei Central Holiday Park, plugged into power, with hot water and other facilities easily accessible.

Our jumping granddaughter

Eventually I ventured out to check on the welfare of my parents and the growth and development of our Whangarei grandchildren, but my husband remained in self-imposed quarantine. I had the pleasure of attending both swimming and equestrian classes with my gorgeous granddaughters, albeit as spectator and was duly impressed with their confidence and expertise.  I was able to assist my mother compile an interpretative panel for the Mangapurua track, or more specifically for the chimney marker of their once-upon-a-time home farm in that bush clad valley.

Who might head off to the circus

Last weekend we headed south again to Auckland, this time catching up with our youngest son and his family on the occasion of his youngest son’s baptism and early eighth birthday celebration. This in itself was fraught with controversy, neither of his parents supporting the religion or faith they were brought up in, however young Matthew was well supported by several grandparents, his god-parent uncle and compromising parents. His older brother viewed the whole ritual with disdain and was only appeased by the promise of a Big Mac on the way home. My husband pleaded allergies to church but did turn up for the barbeque. All in all, quite a drama. However in saying that, it was  a lovely opportunity to catch up with the family and our son’s more extended tribe. And that is something we do rejoice in;  all of our children’s partners have such warm, loving, caring “whanau”, especially since we spend most of our time chasing our own selfish touring dreams.

With my son and grandsons

The following day was something else entirely; a class reunion for the “girls” who started 3A1 at Hamilton Girls’ High School in 1967 and those that arrived to swell our numbers in the years that followed.  Having attended and enjoyed the Sonning boarding establishment reunion for the same year earlier this year, I was more open than I had been when there had been murmurings   in decades past for such gatherings. In fact it turned out to be just marvellous and our hostess, the Governor General, Patsy, made us most welcome in one of her official residences after we had all spent more than two hours at a nearby café becoming reacquainted. While one of the “girls” had remained in closer contact with me for the first ten years after leaving school, and two were fellow Sonning boarders, I had not set eyes on the rest since the end of 1970, yet strangely, once names were exchanged, recognised the teenage features in most of the warm and friendly faces. We have all gone on to be successful women in one way or another, and seem to have mostly beaten the cancer mortality odds. Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and look forward to another get together scheduled for Patsy’s last hurrah to her official post in 2021, this one to be in Wellington.

The GG & my old friend, Bronwen, at Government House

We had travelled down to Auckland early in the hope of sorting out our Sky television setup, something that is not really meant for motorhomers. Firstly we sought assistance from RSE, the outfit who installed our “box” in the van a few years ago, but they found there was nothing wrong with the box, simply that Sky had changed their system and this appeared incompatible with our card. This was all disastrous news for the television sportsman I live with, however by the end of the weekend, Sky provided us with an alternative idea, all of which is yet to be set in action. This is a situation of “watch this space”.  

While staying at the Ardmore NZMCA Park, we took the opportunity to visit Auckland’s Botanic Gardens, and while there was nowhere suitable for us to park within the grounds, we did manage to find a level spot within a kilometre of the gates outside a house up in the nearby residential area. I had noted a small campervan parked behind a wooden fence and thought they might be sympathetic to our need for suitable parking.

One of the permanent sculptures which did appeal

Our visit co-incided with a Sculpture Exhibition; this is a meandering trail about the easier accessible section of the gardens taking the visitor to see the eclectic collection of twenty or so entrants. Back in the lovely visitor centre, there is an opportunity to vote for your favourite sculpture; alas we were not impressed with any, or at least enough to imagine any of them in any garden we might have in the future. There were price tags on all of them, ranging from about $14,000 through to $50,000; my husband asked “Where do these people get off?!” Do I need to say more?

As did this

However the discovery route to these strange creations took us to corners of the park previously unexplored and suggested other routes, so we ended up wandering about the massive park for several hours and picnicked above one of the lovely lakes, deciding that the whole place was really under appreciated by the majority of Aucklanders whose rates finance the park.

The gardens are situated in Manurewa, South Auckland, cover 64 hectares and development was begun in 1973. Access is free although as I have mentioned, parking is limited. The visitor centre, also known as Huakaiwaka, is a truly splendid building, opened in 2005. Artwork is incorporated into the design and it alone is worth a visit. Here there is a café which looked inviting, but we had our sandwiches already prepared, an exhibition area cum shop with some excellent sculptures for those with money to throw around, and some very clean and modern toilets which are always welcome.

The entrance to Huakaiwaka

And speaking of gardens and sculptures, we had popped up to Whangarei’s Quarry Gardens one day to distract us from our sick beds to find a sculpture trail here as well, but  unlike that in Auckland, the organisers had their hands out for $5 a head. Had we come for this alone we might have felt more generous, but we were looking for a peaceful  gentle stroll through the sanctuary so postponed our visit for a less busy day.

We finally resettled ourselves back onto our section at Parua Bay, on “Jumbo” , the white elephant, and expect to spend the greater part of the next five months here with the occasional trip away. The tuis, kingfishers, wood pigeons and yellow-hammers are just some of the birds who have welcomed us and I have been delighted to wake up to the splendid view of the bay below and watch the gorgeous sunsets each evening. I have also enjoyed donning my version of shorts and light tops again; it seems as if we never did actually unpack the summer wardrobe whilst we were in the northern hemisphere, although I suspect that comment comes from a selective memory.

26 April 2017 - Whangarei Central Holiday Park, Northland

Our rental house all refreshed

Here we are still are, now in our seventh week, or is it eighth? The time has flown by and we have barely moved outside a small radius of the camp. We finally finished working on our rental property last Friday and shouted ourselves dinner at the local Café Divine, which has absolutely divine indian cuisine and not so divine surroundings. We do still have to return to the property daily to water the new lawns that are reluctant to establish themselves, but our agent is doing what she is paid to do and should have a new tenant settled in within a week or two; fingers and toes crossed. There is also the matter of the ripish feijoas, dropping to the ground which are better in my breakfast bowel, my mother’s preserving jars or our granddaughter’s ever eager stomachs. But today as I filled a supermarket bag, I realised that this might be the last I collected.

Out with my older son, Kit,  at the local Turkish Cafe

As I write this, my husband is polishing both the motorhome and car, ready for storage, and nursing the possibility of a cold, as you do if you are both male and about to embark upon a new adventure. Our suitcases are still empty, stashed in the Isuzu for now, but better there than in my parents’ garage loft where they have been since we returned in November last year. Suitcases are a burden to those living in cramped quarters, or quarters that would be considered cramped if they were shared with suitcases.

Walking the Town Basin with my friends Brenda and Basil

Autumn has finally arrived, we have had some gloriously clear days, cool mornings and sunshine that lift the temperatures to between 21 and 24 degrees from a cooler 10 degree start. One might have hoped to travel from these conditions to better in the early northern summer, but checking out the temperatures in the UK suggests otherwise. I expect to need my jacket, hat and gloves just as much as I did last year even though we are several weeks later into the season this time.

This time next week we will be ready to board our plane through to Qatar then on; we will have caught up with children, grandchildren, my parents and one sister, fare welling over meals, as we seem to have done all week; breakfast with this friend, morning tea with another, dinner with others, all forerunners to the social round we will have when we arrive in Suffolk, none of which is good for the figure.

So with that in mind I had better clear our debris from the camper seating to accommodate the family arriving later for takeaway pizzas, and consider that my next posting will be in the UK on my “Random Travel’s” blog. Bon voyage to us and to fellow travellers!

16 March 2017 - Whangarei Central Holiday Park, Northland

This morning I paid for a further two weeks accommodation here at this very central caravan park, a spot we have patronised from time to time over the past few years. There is always an element of “coming home” as we are welcomed back by managers Brad and Claire, and the many permanent residents with whom we are acquainted.

The lull before the next round of travel further afield has been rudely interrupted by work; yes, that activity we have mostly avoided with success over the past six or so years. And this is real work, hard physical work, to which we are unaccustomed. Our one remaining rental property demands our attention, however I should be grateful that we were able to shift the squatters out with greater ease than expected. It seems that even squatters are accorded the same rights as legal tenants, which further emphasises that landlords are a hard-done-by lot, despite the bad rap they are given by the media.

We were left with a house-lot of furniture, little of which was collected in the extended period of grace we offered, and rubbish, all of which filled a nine cubic metre jumbo bin. Cigarette burns across the vinyl, years of splattered fat throughout the kitchen, carpet so ridden with spills that it had to be torn up, the garden overgrown with rampant feijoa and grape vines, and a fast growing litter of kittens who had to be re-housed. I could go on and on and on, but will not except to say that my very practical and talented husband has once more stepped up to the plate and as I write this is preparing walls for repainting while the plumber does his preparation for the extensive plumbing fittings we are installing. The floors in the plumbed areas have all had to be torn up and rebuilt, and the walls in part re-gibbed. Yesterday my efforts were limited to assisting with moving the heavy construction stuff up into the house. My strength is abysmal, so poor that I was guilty of causing one sheet of gib to break. I am best left out of all this, although will no doubt be required to move these same sheets into position when The Carpenter, my husband, is ready for them.

We have been on the job for almost three weeks now, although during that taken time out to attend the anticipated wedding which was, as most weddings, just beautiful; the weather gods, the bride’s exceptional organisational skills and the tireless efforts of her team of friends and parents must be given all credit.

Intrepid or crazy tourist campers

The following week saw us head down to the Waikato for my boarding school hostel reunion, and again the weather stayed with us. We stayed at the Classic Car Museum in Hamilton which opens its car park to fully self-contained campers, not just members of the NZMCA. While there is a water tap in a rather obscure spot, the facilities are limited to those within the café, which is obviously closed during the night. We were quite shocked to find a roof camper parked up beside us one morning, with little or no other facilities, then even more shocked to see a young couple and baby emerge from the canvas. To their credit they did go in and spend an inordinate amount of time at the café, more than the use of the bathroom facilities would demand, so one can only presume that their spend made their stay more profitable to the museum than ours was. 

We four were the boarders of A1

Initial reunion at Sonning Hostel, now a carpark

And as for the reunion which I had been both looking forward to and dreading; this turned out to be a wonderful success, all credit to the ‘girls’ who spent so much of their time organising the event. This eclectic group of women, all approaching their mid-sixties with little in common but having lived their childhoods in isolated rural parts that required moving away from home to attend high school, embraced each other with warmth and laughter and there was no need to engage in  quizzes which were organised as awkward-silence-fillers; there was absolutely no silence to fill!  

Personally I attended the luncheon, the river cruise and the dinner, but left the Sunday activities to those others who stayed on, some of whom attended the church where we had once had to walk to in crocodile fashion, dressed immaculately in our Sunday dresses, panama hats, gloves and blazers, then sit before the congregation in the choir stalls where we were least able to escape notice. 

Instead we headed across to the Bay of Plenty to catch up with Larissa and her family, staying at our regular spot at the Waihi Beach RSA. Here again the weather was with us and we took full advantage of the east coast sun. We lunched at the Surf Shack, where our two teenage grandchildren were working. While they slaved away over sink and tables, we enjoyed huge platters of gourmet delight, enough to feed an army which we managed to consume without such help.

Later when the children were free of their weekend work, we all headed out into the Tauranga Harbour in the family’s little motor boat, settling into a secluded little bay. We paddled our legs in the fish filled saltwater while watching young Jackson and his mother take wild rides on a sea-biscuit and admiring India exhibit her growing skill on skiis. We would not be enticed into the water ourselves, even though we had secreted our togs into the bottom of our bags. I was a little tempted but then wondered how I would dry them out in the motorhome; a poor excuse I know.

Sea-biscuiting grandson

The following day with everyone returned to work and school, we headed north once more, now with the trailer which had been holidaying at the beach, and swung by our son’s place in West Auckland to collect our lawnmower, all in readiness for the task ahead of us on the southern edge of Whangarei.

Since then, the North Island has seen a deluge of weather; flooding, slips and other storm damage particularly throughout Northland, the south eastern reaches of Auckland and Coromandel. Fortunately for us and ours, there has been no residual damage. In fact my daughter-in-law sent through photos of the two city grandsons playing in surface road flooding. There it was a novelty, just miles away it was a catastrophe; such is the random nature of weather events. 

For me personally, despite the hard grind tales at the beginning of this post, I have had down time in which to catch up with friends and family, some of the former not seen for some years. The weeks ahead will give me opportunity to fill in the gaps of time and friendship, so long as I apply myself to the priorities: being available to gopher for The Handyman and see that he is fed well and in a timely manner, that his clothes are washed and his slippers warmed; in essence I have only to play the perfect wife.

So you see there has been little news by way of travel adventures to interest anyone but ourselves, however I did think I should check in. We are almost one month from our departure, and with such time pressure, the weeks will fly. We have yet to figure out how we will get ourselves from motorhome storage spot to the international airport, but solutions to this and other minor matters will evolve, as always.

14 February 2017 - Parua Bay, Northland

We drove out of Petone and the Hutt Valley mid-morning on Waitangi Day, after listening to radio discussions about this our “National Day” and arriving at the same conclusion we had the day before. Waitangi Day has indeed become a “cultural cringe” as our new Prime Minister suggested some weeks ago, and there are few who wish to see it as more than an excuse for a day off work and school.

Wanganui River from the Aramoana viewpoint

Instead of returning toward Wellington and heading north on Highway One, we drove up over “the Haywoods” coming down onto the west coast at Paremata, then continued on north after shopping for fresh bread for lunch and the Wellington newspaper, which we decided is not a whole lot better than the Christchurch Press; perhaps even worse because at least two of the feature articles had been published two days before in the Press. 

Our journey saw us meander slowly up the North Island with plenty of time to return to our home base. The weather did take the shine off some our tikki-touring, but there is not much one can do about that apart from remarking from time to time that we thought we had left the lousy weather down in the South Island.

On a whim we decided to come up the Wanganui River Road, a road untraveled since it has all been sealed. The sixty four kilometre road which follows the river from just north of Upokongaro on State Highway 4 as far as Pipiriki was first opened in 1934 and took thirty years to construct. Since then nature has made sure roadwork teams have been kept busy; more recently after the floods of mid-2016. When we drove south almost three months ago, then travelling on the Parapara Road which was beset with devastation during the same weather events, this lesser road had been spent periods of time totally closed and others open for limited periods. Fortunately for us, now months on, the road was passable, although still pitted and pot holed, narrow, slumped and slipped.

A sleepy section of the river

We stopped at the top of the one real hill along the way, the Aramoana Viewpoint. I have taken photos from this very spot throughout the years, and am never bored with the view. The Wanganui River at this lower reach is more sluggish than further up where there are untold rapids that challenged the riverboats in the first part of last century, and these days thrill and excite the canoeists and jet boat travellers. 

Roadside pigs

There are numerous maraes all along the route, evidence of a strong Maori presence in years gone by, long before Europeans settled upriver themselves. While some of the whare nuis have disintegrated into the landscape, some have been restored to their previous glory and are in use for locals or those who are invited. Naturally we did not fit into either category. There are still Maori families who live along the way, and others who live in the same casual manner, as was evidenced by the number of pigs loose in domestic gardens and in a couple of instances, all over the road.

There are also a couple of Catholic Churches, one at Ranana and the other at Hiruharama / Jerusalem, this latter home of the recently beatified Mother Marie Aubert and later to poet James K Baxter and his hippy cohorts. In fact that community did not close until after Baxter’s death in 1972. There are still nuns and the like wandering about the place or at least there were when we called up to the convent ten years or so ago. The church features a beautifully carved altar in Maori design and kowhaiwhai panels adorn the walls. Once the home of an orphanage where little Maori children were converted to Catholicism, and hopefully nothing else, the convent now hosts retreats. 

A local about to head upriver

Not too far from Jerusalem is Moutoa Island, the scene of a short and fierce battle in 1864 between Wanganui Maori and an invading Hauhau force. The battle helped to establish a close bond between local iwi and European settlors. The battle has been memorialised with a monument in the Moutoa Gardens down in Wanganui itself.

We arrived at Pipiriki by lunchtime and parked up just above the wharf where a local man had just arrived with his son, daughter and grandchild in his dinghy. We learned that he lives upriver and the only access is by boat. The rest of the family were heading back home, wherever that be, after spending part of the summer with him in isolation. We watched as he headed back up river; he was a taciturn type, well suited to his otherwise solitary life.

Today Pipiriki is gateway to the upper Wanganui River and all the adventures that tourists enjoy thereon and thereabouts, but once it was an important staging post for the paddle steamers that plied the river with cargo and passengers. My mother remembers the hotel that stood grandly above the wharf, hosting those like her family who were obliged to pause their journeys here before taking smaller vessels upriver. The hotel burnt down in 1959 and is now only a memory and part of the paddle-steamer history of the river and the entrepreneurial Hatrick family.

Arrival of canoeists at Pipiriki

We watched canoeists straggle in off the river, some wet from having been tossed out in the rapids immediately upriver. The plastic barrels being unloaded reminded us of our own river journey taken about eighteen years ago, and while I remember it fondly, particularly the fact that Chris and I did not capsize our Canadian canoe, I would not like to tempt fate by trying to relive the experience. 

From Pipiriki, we travelled eastward back to Raetihi on a better road, twenty eight kilometres up through high dense native forest, many of the aged trees bedecked with Old Man’s Beard moss.  Pungas and manuka grow down to the edge of the road and where repairs had cleared the edges, Himalayan Honeysuckle is taking over. We continued on the short distance to Ohakune where we camped up Mountain Road at the Mangawhero DOC camp, one of only four parties for the night. The weather had turned as we came away from the River, and by nightfall, rain was falling steadily.

Unfortunately the morning was little better and we ditched our plans to walk The Old Coach Road at Ohakune. This is a fifteen kilometre walkway, now part of the Mountains to the Coast cycleway, this part from Ohakune up through to Horopito, which lies 150 metres higher than Ohakune’s 610 metres ASL. We were keen to do the first section to take in the views of Hapuawhenua Viaducts. The Old Coach Road formed an integral link between the two rail heads between 1906 and 1908 before the Main Trunk Line was completed. Alas it was not the day to see this for ourselves; the clouds were low and the temperatures low and mountain weather can change at the drop of a hat. Next time hopefully!

Makatote Viaduct

And so we came on north sooner than expected, on past National Park, the central mountains and paused for morning tea beside the Makatote Viaduct, which is still very much in use today. This is 79 metres high (the third highest rail bridge in New Zealand) and 262 metres long, built between 1905 and 1908 by a Christchurch crowd, although the steel was actually fabricated on site. This viaduct, the last structure on the line to be completed, has always impressed me, ever since I first passed this way as a small child, but now it looks even more impressive with its new red iron-oxide coat of paint.

We were delighted to find ourselves only the third ever party to overnight at the NZMCA’s brand new park over property at Otorohanga, adjacent to the Waipa River. Right now it seems an absurdly large area, but no doubt as members learn of its existence, it will become as popular as Ardmore or Taupo. After dinner, as the starlings settled down to roost in the boundary trees, we watched the changing skies as the sun disappeared beyond the horizon, the horizon lying in the direction of Honikiwi, the rural area I spent the first nine years of my life. I thought it quite fitting that we should be among the first here at this park, when it was this very town that had been “our local” as I spent those formative years.

Further north on our journey, we detoured to Lake Puketirini on the western edge of Huntly for the sole purpose of exercise. We had happened upon this recreational lake a few years ago after driving up from Kawhia through the mining area. This time we were intent on walking its perimeter.

The lake is a relatively new feature of the township, developed from a disused coal-mined pit and ready for use in 2007. The Waikato District Council owns the park and promote its existence for use such as kayaking, water-ski-ing, boating, waka ama and of course walking. 

Huntly's diving school

En route, we came upon a Scotsman with three very boisterous dogs, and fell into conversation with him after the dogs had settled down from their excitement about us. There is a large diving platform in the centre of the lake and we were curious as to its purpose, given that it more like dredging equipment. It turns out that this is the operational centre for the New Zealand  School of Commercial Diving, which according to the local dog-walker, charges about $40,000 for a six week course, and if you graduate from here you have one of the best diving qualifications in the whole world. Further checking did substantiate the fact that the school offers courses internationally and you can graduate with a screed of letters after your name, however the training time and cost must be left as hearsay only.  This same man told us that the water in the lake is very clear and that mining machinery was left in the bottom of the mine which serves the same as shipwrecks for the learner divers. True or false? It’s a good story anyway.

As we passed through Auckland, we did a drive-by of the house we worked on last year before it was sold; the property we had restored the driveway by hand, blood and guts, had the fence repaired and generally restored the tidy little house standing on a large corner section. We were appalled to discover that a tiny little brick residence has been squeezed onto where the driveway was, not only negating all the hard work we did, but surely creating one of the ugliest little unliveable homes in the city. We guessed the new owners were reaping the greatest rentals from this now double producing property, and most likely far in excess of double what we had earned ourselves. In fact we would guess they are earning five times as much! We were shocked, numbed, although glad to have rid ourselves of our troublesome South Auckland investment.

We have been “home” for a couple of days now. Our motorhome is set up on our bush boundaried sea view section “Jumbo” (our white elephant for those not in the know). The weather has been warm and sunny, quite tropical and a far cry from that experienced over the last couple of months. We have yet to catch up with all the family, but have managed to book our air tickets for our next stint in the UK. In the intervening ten weeks there is much to be done, not least the wedding of my niece to attend and a boarding school reunion, the get together of a gaggle of sixty-somethings after a separation of fifty years. We do intend to get away travelling at least once more before we head overseas, even if it is simply to attend that dubious reunion. (I dare to say “dubious” because I am always wary of social gatherings and it will require courage on my part to walk into the room, although I know in my heart of hearts that it will be an absolutely brilliant “homecoming”. The anticipation of reunions is the scary part.) In the meantime I shall languish in the humidity and not complain at all!