Return to Pappinbarra

As Nic and I headed north on the six-hour Countrylink train journey to Wauchope (pronounced Waahope, not Wa-chopy as Nic learned from a local!) it felt a bit like I was going home, especially as George met us at the train station as a surprise. It was lovely to wake up in a familiar bed with familiar sights and sounds. George and Jean hosted Nic and I for 4 days, along with some other wonderful friends of theirs. George was starring in 'Dimboola', an iconic Australian play performed by the local am-dram group over three nights. First staged in the 70's, this play was ahead of it's time as it involved a bit of audience participation (hence the embarrassed photo) and we were fed a three-course meal. All of this was delivered in the tiny community hall! Both the performance and production were testament to the incredible community spirit that exists there.

While George stole the show on stage, Jean hosted a wonderful weekend in Pappinbarra epitomised by a lovely afternoon in the garden drinking good wine (provided by Silva) and extremely tasty food (prepared by Jean, Doug and Ian). Doug and Ian are not only brilliant cooks they are also superb company and Doug even put up with me interrogating him for hours about his various careers. Note: idea of conceptual artist is on hold while I consider becoming an event co-ordinator.

It was lovely to introduce Nicola to the group of Wauchope people I now consider my friends – another gift that George and Jean bestowed upon me. It was also lovely to introduce her to the way of life I had been leading for so long, a life in rhythm with nature; feeding the chooks and the sheep and lambs (which she loved and even held!), the big fig tree, the monkey chorus of the kookaburras in the morning, the harvest of pumpkins and citrus fruit (so wonderfully alien to us both to be able to wander into the garden for lemons and oranges), walking Paddy and Ella. The weather was beautiful and it was like savouring a little slice of heaven for a few days. George even gave us a tutorial on the didgeridoo.

All too soon it was time to hit the road again and George and Jean waved us off as we drove a packed Betsy down the drive for our road trip 'up north'.

Unfortunately, the one thing we neglected to bring with us was the sunshine. For the next three days it rained almost constantly while we were in Coffs Harbour being hosted by Jason and his lovely boys, who on our first night secretly put hot water bottles in our beds! Top kids. Despite the rain we did manage to visit Muttonbird island and watch in wonder as a Shearwater bird hovered perfectly still, oblivious to the gale blowing around it. Jason responded to our unwelcome gift of rain with the best of hospitality and was even brave enough to invite back again on our return journey. Another excellent Aussie host and another genuine Australian experience.

Return to Oz

New Zealand was wonderful, but it was nice to get back to the buzz of a big city again and Sydney is certainly big and buzzy. It's huge, at least twice the size of London for half the population. Situated on a beautiful harbour with interesting and well-balanced architecture it feels fresh, lively and impressive. In a soft evening sea-breeze we absorbed the delights of Darling Harbour illuminated by a million fairy lights.

Next morning Nic went up the Sky Tower while I opted for an early morning stroll through Hyde Park and St. Margaret's Cathedral in the glorious sunshine before going onto the Gallery of NSW, where I figured becoming a conceptional artist might be interesting career move... speaking of which I am now 3 weeks from the scheduled end of my trip and the much-hoped for epiphany has not transpired. Time is running out.

Apparently, a trip on the Manly Ferry is must when in Sydney so off we headed. However, the picture we had in our heads of a long stroll on a sun-drenched beach followed by a leisurely dinner on the water stayed as an image in our heads. In reality the rain lashed and the wind howled and we sought refuge in a bar instead. Just as well the views of the Sydney skyline from the water were worth the trip.

Day three was more exhilaration than contemplation as we climbed the 53,000 tonnes of steel and 5 million hand-driven rivets combined to create the 500 metre span of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Kitted out in star-trek jump suits and harnesses our efforts were rewarded by a spectacular Sydney sunset bathing the Opera House in a rosy glow while commuters in cars and ferries passed unaware 134 metres below us.

Another stunning sunset, another adrenaline adventure.

Between a volcano and an earthquake

It's a ill wind that blows no good and that applies to volcanic ash clouds too. Thanks to the Chilean ash cloud we've had four extra days in Christchurch in a hotel paid for by Qantas. Excellent! However, during those four days there have been over 30 aftershocks from the big earthquakes last Monday. We've only actually felt about 4 or 5 of them. Two mornings we have been woken up by tremors measuring 4.4 on the Richter scale. It's a very strange sensation to wake up and feel your bed, the windows, the doors, everything in the room, shaking. We also had an interesting experience where the cinema we we in started to shake...

On the recommendation of a number of people we took a day trip to Akaroa, a sweet little French-style town nestled on the edge of a harbour about 2 hours south east of Christchurch. After wandering around the town enjoying the french colonial architecture and a good coffee we headed out for a 'black cat' dolphin cruise on the huge harbour formed by a volcano a long time ago.

We were no sooner on the water when the skipper announced that the volcano crater we were sailing on had just been regraded from 'extinct' to 'dormant' due to recent geothermal activity. Great. We thought we were leaving all that in Christchurch, instead we sail out into the middle of it. Then the skipper described how he experienced the big quake on the water a few days earlier.

All that was soon forgotten as we headed out the mouth of the harbour to the South Pacific ocean and were rewarded with a school of rare Hector dolphins coming to play with us. We hung out over the bow of the boat delighted by the activity of these beautiful creatures.



At one point both Nic and I lifted out heads to see a mountain of water ahead of us. Turns out another 4.5. had hit and created some pretty big waves which disappeared almost as quickly and as we sailed back to safe harbour the aqua-green water looked like mercury in the evening sun.



Mostly we don't feel the tremors unless they measure around 4.4 or more on the Richter scale but the buildings in Christchurch certainly do. We walked around the remains of the city again today and retraced some of our footsteps from Wednesday. To our horror there was even more damage visible today than there was on Wednesday - evidence that the constant tremors are taking a heavy toll. Disturbingly, we could also see lots of scaffolding on the ground, twisted, mangled and covered rubble making it painfully obvious that the repair work that had started on some of these building has been a waste.

It also dawned on us that the reason the streets were so deserted on Wednesday might be because only 48 hours after a major earthquake most locals were probably avoiding unstable areas. Once again, I'm amazed how quickly people can adjust to seemingly impossible circumstances and a new, if uncertain, normality emerges allowing life to go on.

Stirred, not shaken in Christchurch

As predicted, our stay in New Zealand has been extended due to 'natural catastrophe', i.e. grounded flights due to volcanic ash. But, rather than this being a really tense and stressful experience (BA take note!), Air New Zealand have refunded our flights while Qantas have, without quibble or request, rebooked our Sydney flights and put us up in a hotel for 4 nights while we wait for the skies to clear! I LOVE this country.

Christchurch really has been hammered by earthquakes over the last few months. There was 5 and a 6 two days before we arrived and a 4 took place as we sat in a car-wash – so we didn't notice! As we drove across the city to drop off our campervan we started to see the effect. Very sobering.

Navigating our way back on foot through a partially closed city we found ourselves dead-ended in eerily deserted residential streets; nothing but red and yellow placards pinned to front doors indicating whether a family could return home or not. Although a missing gable-end wall is a pretty good indication that things will never be the same again.

With all the media images of damage we are confronted with daily, it's natural to develop a certain numbness to the emotional trauma that lies behind that damage. But walk down a cracked and buckled street and see the wall of a house ripped off, as if it was made of Lego, exposing personal belongings, like the towel hanging in the bathroom, and it suddenly becomes shockingly real and heart-breakingly sad. Everything feels surreal, wrong.

Deserted streets, damaged buildings, eerie silence, it feels like a war-zone. I suppose it is a war; man against nature and nature is definitely on the offensive right now. I'm filled with awe and respect for the people here as they take another deep breath and start again, and again, and again. I also love their resilient attitude as illustrated by the “You crack me up” message scrawled in bright blue insulating tape across the cracked pavement. I did take a photo of that and put it on on facebook but photos of damaged houses feels too voyeuristic and disrespectful.

We walked for a long time before we found an open coffee shop and decided that if businesses were working that hard to stay open the least we could do was support them. So we also went out for dinner and have decided to spend as many of our tourist dollars here as possible.

Between earthquakes and volcano ash, you do begin to wonder how much more this city, these people have to take.

C'mon Mother Nature, give them a break.

Roadtripping

There's a sign in our van which says an adventure starts with a leaky tire and an broken fan belt. The elements of our particular 2500km adventure included a flat battery, a lockout (note: whatever my next career will be it won't be breaking into campervans), a kiwi cop describing our ride as 'a piece of crap', missing an earthquake in a carwash and accidently taking a short cut across the highest public road in New Zealand.

It served us well as a kitchen, a laundry, wardrobe and general talking point around the wood-stove in the hostels at night. Everybody waved at us on the road, (yes, we were driving on the correct side of the road). We enjoyed good camaraderie with the drivers of other rented campervans, which at this time of year makes up the majority of drivers on the road. Locals are busy keeping warm.

We've also being enjoying some classic road signs – but they deserve a blog of their own.

All in all we had a pretty wicked time in our Wicked van and will miss it but time for a new set of wheels in a new country.

Chasing rainbows and waterfalls

Having driven from the top to the bottom of this beautiful country we decided to let someone else take the strain for a day and took a coach tour to yet another World Heritage Area, Milford Sound. This is going to be a short blog because neither my words nor pictures can do justice to this part of the world.

Our five hour coach trip started at 7am (groan) and all hope of a snooze went out the window as the the coach driver started his five hour commentary (bigger groan). At least we were able to watch the sun rise over the miles of mountains that stretch all the way from Queenstown through to the Fiordland National Park.

It was interesting to see the landscape morph back and forth between the heather and red tussock of the alpine ranges to the more temperate, green fern and flax covered ranges, but the towering, snow-covered mountains and crystal blue rivers and lakes were a constant feature.

       

Most memorable were the breathtaking 'Mirror Lakes'. The name gives you a clue. See? I've run out of words and we haven't even started on the Milford Sound Cruise!

 

 

The two hour cruise around the incredibly green and inaccurately named Milford Sound (it's actually a very big, very deep fiord) was just wonderful.

Our very skilled skipper nosed the boat right under a two of the countless waterfalls that decorate the steep walls of the fiord and encouraged us to try a once-in-a-lifetime waterfall shower, which I did. I got very wet but spent the rest of the trip grinning from ear to ear. Absolutely exhilarating, especially when Mother Nature topped it all off with a series of stunning rainbows.

 

As we cruised back the sun was starting to set over the Tasman Sea and we were treated to another natural lightshow as the mountainous walls, emerald green water and clear blue skies transformed into a mercury coloured lake against a monochrome backdrop with the now familiar low-hanging white clouds. Another great day in the land of the long white cloud.

Living like royalty in Queenstown

Queenstown is a very pretty and modern tourist resort wedged between Lake Wakatipu and the base of Bobs Peak in the Remarkables mountain range. It is also a very mountainous  town making the walk back to our accommodation a work-out in itself but the views make it all worthwhile. From our bed we can see a dusting of icing-sugar soften the stark, angular face of the Remarkables as it sweeps down to the lake.

The view from the top of the gondola ride on Bob's Peak is also quite remarkable, especially when we realised that the 'short-cut' we took from Wanaka to Queenstown is actually the highest public road in New Zealand. We stopped counting the hairpin bends when they started to number in the double digits.

The town centre is well-planned with stylish architecture and is buzzing with life. During the winter it is a ski town and when there's no snow it's adrenaline central with power-boating, hang gliding, sky diving, white-water rafting, bungy jumping... the list goes on. Nic and I have been very restrained here and limited ourselves to five luge trips from the very top of Bob's Peak down to the top of the Gondola ride. That, and an impromptu, Tarzan-style attempt to cross a river on a swing-rope. We did, however, stop to take time to smell the roses in Queenstown gardens.

After two weeks on the road staying in one place for three days and night is bliss, especially when the converted garage we are staying in has excellent views and central heating! On our first morning we were disturbed by a second world war air-raid siren wailing across the town. For a brief moment we wondered what it meant. Avalanche? No snow. Earthquake? No shaking. Volcano? No way. It was warm in bed and we figured we would wait to see if anyone else moved. They didn't so neither did we. I guess the Kiwi sense of 'C'est la vie' is starting to rub off on us.

Despite the freezing temperatures (and the 'extreme fire-risk!), we don't want to leave here but maybe we should be careful what we wish for. It turns out that the beautiful red sunset that welcomed us into Queenstown wasn't an ordinary winter sunset - it was an ash-cloud sunset that may well mean a delayed departure from this wonderful country. Oh well, there are worse places to get stuck. :-)

Feeling good on Franz Josef

The last few days have been a bit of a whistle-stop tour from the beautiful art deco town of Napier, onto Wellington, the capital city and coffee capital of NZ, over the Cook Strait and into the stunningly beautiful Charlotte Sound which looks as if it is straight out of the 70's 'Beachcombers' TV programme.




From picturesque Picton on the South Island we headed down the west coast in search of glaciers and arrived at the aptly named 'Pancake Rocks' just in time to see the sun setting over the Tasman Sea. We heard the waves thundering on the beach all night from our beach cabin.

It is incredible how quickly the landscape changes here. From traversing knee-knockingly high mountain passes to crusing through acres of bare vines in Marlborough wine country, weaving around dramatic coastal roads with huge waves rolling in, to chasing unbelievably aqua blue rivers through fat, flat and green glacial valleys. Then we rounded yet another corner and were rewarded with out first breath-taking view of the Franz Josef glacier.

The Franz Josef town is tiny and built to facilitate the tourist industry that has attached itself to this fast-expiring natural beauty. One of only three temperate glaciers in the world, (one is down the road and the third is in Argentina) it has an alpine climate at the top of the glacier and a rainforest climate at the bottom. This creates a lot of 'warm rain' resulting in one of the fastest receeding glaciers in the world. While we were hiking on it today, it receeded by, at least, another 1.5 metres. This knowledge is a little unnerving when you can clearly hear the ice cracking, dripping and flowing with some force beneath you.

The 'warm rain' didn't feel so warm this morning however. We have been very lucky with the weather since we arrived in New Zealand but this morning we thought our luck had run out. As we stood in the middle of hard, driving rain we seriously thought about pulling out of the hike up the glacier. But, figuring we were wet anyway we stuck to the plan and joined 16 other hardy individuals on another trip of a lifetime. Good decision. By the time we tramped the 3km to the glacier terminal (unfortunate term) the rain had eased, the wind dropped and the sun was fighting to get out.

I don't really have the words to describe what followed. The colours: aqua blue, brilliant white, slate grey, dusky pink...

 

The textures ranged from razor sharp shards to baked alaska fields to smooth pools.  It was physically exhausting, even before we got to the stage where we had to use crampons, but totally exhilarating.

We even got to slide through ice crevices and Nic and I led a small group through an ice-cave. Yes, a definite case of the blind leading the blind.