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last updated September 25th 2007

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Part the first: Through hollow lands.

In early 1999 Alice and I took off on a trip around the South Island, calling at such exotic points as Blackball, Granity, and Ian, the state forest. Despite the general frazzledness we felt after fifteen days together in a station wagon, the idea of repeating the experience on a three-week trip around the North Island sounded fun (this is, I believe, much the same concept of 'fun' enjoyed by the astronauts in Apollo 13). So it was that on a warm, sunny day in mid January, Alice and James loaded up Dominique the Toyota and pointed her up the northern motorway towards Christchurch. The sky greyed and darkened as we headed north, but remained fine. There were brief stops for photos in such places as Timaru basilica and at the Rakaia trout (both local places of worship). The fields turned pastel shades of purple, yellow and pink around Morven. I don't know what the crop was, but it must have looked fantastic from the air. To Christchurch we went, for an early night before the long haul north continued.

On the way through Christchurch, however, we had the first indication that this year's holiday would not run as smoothly as last year's. Water was pouring from Dominique's engine. We limped to a garage in Manchester Street, where a mechanic chopped up a block of 'great American plug block' (his words) which sealed the leak within a couple of minutes. Whereas a radiator full of water had disappeared in the five kilometres between Riccarton and Manchester Street, no more top-ups were needed until Wellington.

Taking a friend's advice (and against Alice's better judgement) we turned inland at Waipara. Both of us wanted to travel via Kaikoura and then inland from Blenheim to our next port of call (Nelson), but were told that it was quicker and easier to travel across north Canterbury and over the Lewis Pass. Normally, that might have been true, but we faced two unforeseen problems: road works for the first 40km, resulting not only in slow travel but also in a chipped windscreen; and, on the winding route down towards Nelson from Murchison, we followed that most despised of motorists, the Driver Wearing a Hat. She would have been about seventy; her average speed would have been about half that in kilometres per hour. Alice and I kept ourselves amused by noting the 'true New Zealand' roadside buildings. It would be wonderful to do a photographic study of some of these disappearing dilapidated sheds, barns, and run-down houses. Because of the delays, we didn't get to Nelson until late, which was sad, as it meant that we had to forego swimming in the waters of the bay (something we had greatly enjoyed the previous year).

The following day dawned bright and hot. Much of the morning was spent getting the car windscreen seen to and doing the sightsee-y thing in Nelson, including buying a sun hat that nearly garrotted me and finding a great second-hand bookshop that seemed to specialise in (among other things) books on flags. After this, we headed along the coast to Picton, where the ferry was waiting to take us north. The Aratere is something of a jinx ship, but it is as comfortable as the older ferries, and (as I was to later find) much more enjoyable than the fast ferry Lynx. We slipped quietly and serenely down the Tory channel (luckily we were on board the ferry at the time). The sun was sinking behind the Brothers Islands and the sunset was enough for me to temporarily forget my nascent sunburn. It was deep twilight as we arrived in Wellington for the embarrassment of Dominique failing to start. Eventually she chugged sheepishly out of the ship and onto northern soil. From there, it was up the gorge to Newlands for the night. We spent the following day in and around Wellington.

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The journey really began on Thursday. The first step was a small one, into the Hutt Valley. I wished to look at a second-hand record shop in Lower Hutt, and we needed one or two supplies, so we detoured into what is basically Wellington's biggest suburb to do a tiny bit of shopping. Here, we encountered "Mallworld". Queensgate is possibly New Zealand's most infuriating shopping complex. Seemingly larger by a considerable amount than any other mall we encountered on our journey, it rambles in a desultory fashion over the equivalent of a couple of city blocks. It has one entrance at either end, and at no point in it is there any semblance of a map or signposts. I guess that there are people in there who have been born, reached maturity, reproduced, and lived into their senescence without ever having known the world outside.

Eventually freed from this trap, we wound our way past pleasant parkland stretching along the Hutt River and up the Rimutaka incline into the Wairarapa. Here we passed pretty small towns, seemingly largely untouched by history, but still showing the slight signs of wear that all small town New Zealand now shows. Featherston, Carterton, Masterton. We stopped briefly at the lazy hazy township of Eketahuna, then on past Pahiatua, Woodville, and the proudly Viking town of Dannevirke.  Along the skyline at Hau Nui, near Martinborough, we passed an array of windmills pumping power into the national grid.

By Dannevirke the weather had closed in considerably, and we spent the latter part of the afternoon outdistancing a massive electrical storm that had plunged the sky behind us above Palmerston North into fierce gloom. The land was familiar - much like the northern South Island, except for the strangely shaped hills. Fnally we arrived at the north's great riviera city of Napier. Flattened by an earthquake in the early 1930s, the city was thoroughly rebuilt over the next few years, and as such boasts an outstanding array of Art Deco buildings.

The next day brought ill omens. We were both shaken by the sight of the remains of a van burning by the side of the road by the giant Awatoto industrial works - hopefully the occupants had escaped. That and the insufferable heat (35° outside the car, God knows what inside) darkened our mood, so we took time out to look around central Napier before heading northwards.  An ice cream stop in Bay View followed, and then onto the first part of the treacherous and winding road to East Cape - Matahorua Gorge. We passed delightful Lake Tutira, and several huge rail viaducts, before returning to the coast near Wairoa, then another winding section before travelling past the outcrop that is Young Nick's Head - Captain Cook's first sighting of New Zealand - and into Gisborne. Gisborne isn't too bad as small provincial cities go, and very prettily lit at night (when it was also a much more reasonable mid 20s temperature-wise).

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When I mentioned this trip to people before leaving Dunedin, the part which attracted most comment was the journey to East Cape. Most travellers heading north from Gisborne head inland along SH2 and travel about 145km before reaching Opotiki on the Bay of Plenty. Alice and I intended to travel around the Cape along Highway 35 - 330km of some of the North Island's most picturesque coastline. Many of the comments were along the lines of: "I'd like to travel round there sometime, it's supposed to be nice, but it's a lot longer." Believe me, it's worth it.

This was clearly not the same land as we had started the journey in. Whereas Hawkes Bay could masquerade as Marlborough, the East Cape could not pass as anywhere south of the strait. It wasn't so much the scenery in general, although that was a little different, but the little things. There were no starlings or blackbirds; mynah birds strutted across the roads like they owned them. The shape of the hills was rougher, older somehow. Small fertile plains lay in valleys between the bones of hills. And the average settlement contained just four buildings: a dairy, a school, a pub, and a marae. In the southern south, a city the size of Dunedin might have two marae; near East Cape, the population is 60% Maori, and every settlement of 100 or more people has a marae. We also saw the (in the south extremely rare) sight of a travelling community: half a dozen buses parked at a traditional fishing site. It would have passed for a gypsy community if not for one tell-tale sign (to me, at least) - the red ensign: a flag used officially by private boats, but also used as a symbol of ethnic pride by Maori in many parts of the north. It was a little odd, but also a very welcoming feeling in some ways, to be travelling in an area where we were ethnically in the minority.

There's no real tourist industry in this part of the country, which is refreshing. The most touristy town would be Tolaga Bay, and that isn't really - it's just a small settlement of about 600 people. You could tell it was a 'tourist town'  - it had more than two shops, and one of them sold t-shirts. The temperature was hot, the people were friendly, and the day felt good. The temperature required a change to suitable clothes, so in the town's second-hand-and-new clothes shop I bought a thin t-shirt, and Alice bought a purple sarong. We headed down to the bay, and along to the wharf. Tolaga Bay has New Zealand's longest wharf, some 1,000 metres long - a relic of the days when this area had more ship trade, before the road was put through. We walked the length of it and stood watching anglers pulling fish from the shimmering water. For the first time since arriving in New Zealand many years before, this truly felt like a South Pacific island nation to me.

From Tolaga Bay we travelled on past the hot springs of Te Puia and the distant, grey, sacred peak of Mount Hikurangi, detouring into Ruatoria for a snack - it is a strange town where every second building sees to be a church. On the road again for the last few kilometres to the cape. We didn't get to see East Cape itself - the road cuts the last corner of the land and the cape itself is only reached by a 20km rough gravel road that neither of us felt that keen on adding to the day's journey. Still, the whole trip was in some way more of a scouting expedition than a simple holiday, to find what places would be good to spend longer in in times to come. And this is one region that I would like to spend more time in.

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We had decided to stop for the night at the Te Araroa holiday park, a series of cabins which were, according to the guide, situated at "State Highway 35, Te Araroa". We trundled into Te Araroa, a settlement on the edge of an infinite shining. No holiday park. We travelled three km down the highway, out of sight of the settlement, until we reached a small bridge over a creek. Still no park. Reluctantly, it was back to Te Araroa to find out where the place was. Small town backwoods pubs in New Zealand are notorious: either very friendly, or the exact opposite. Thankfully, this was the former, although with my typical odd clothes and pale skin, I was bound to be poked fun at. I went into the pub and walked up to the bar. "Do you know where the Te Araroa holiday park is?" I asked the woman behind the bar.

A big guy at the bar whose manner, dental work and skin colour suggested Billy T James's big brother looked me over and said "You not from round here, eh?" .

"No," I said, "I'm on holiday from down south - Dunedin."

"Oh, I heard of there. Carisbrook, right? The holiday park's up the road. Keep heading along the bay and over the bridge. You can't miss it."

"Thanks! I drove as far as the bridge but though I must have missed the place, so I came back."

"Jeez!" he said with a big toothy grin, "We put that bridge there so's jokers like you could keep going!"

The camping ground itself was good. We slept in a simple cabin which cost next to nothing, and ate a meal of the best fish and chips I've tasted for years, caught locally in the bay (the fish that is, not the chips). The weather was cooler, too, which helped - down to a mere 28 degrees. The forecast, however, was for a dramatic change for the worse in the weather.

From Te Araroa the road turns west, past Hicks Bay and Cape Runaway, before clinging to the coastal cliffs that make up the eastern edge of the Bay of Plenty. Road warnings of wandering stock are to believed. There are no fences, and the best fodder is often found right next to the road, so it often felt like we were driving through the middle of herds of cows, sheep, or pigs. The average family unit in this area seems to include horses and a few other livestock. Travel on horseback also seems to be the norm rather than the exception in this area. Settlements now consisted almost entirely of marae. Near Raukokore a small white church stood on a rocky spit, flanked on three sides by the sea, and everywhere steep sided streams seemed to rush down to the bay. The road became increasingly narrow - in places only one lane circled a cliff, preceded by the sort of give-way bays seen before narrow bridges. From Opape, however, the land began to open out again, with views down the coast to Motuhora Island, and soon we were in the small farming service town of Opotiki.

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Whakatane was the last port of call before heading inland towards the lakes of the geothermal region. The weather was clouding over for the first time on the trip, obscuring the top of Mount Edgecumbe and adding a sullen backdrop to the industrial monster of Kawarau. This was unlike anywhere we'd been: a small town nestling against a giant industrial complex; road signs warning that the sounding of alarms might mean a gas leak, and noting assembly points. From the fields around the complex came the unmistakable sight of steam venting from the ground. We headed on without stopping. From there, we passed a succession of small attractive lakes: Rotoma, Rotoehu and Rotoiti all fell away to the right, and then over a crest was Rotorua itself, ominous and yellow grey. The land around was becoming increasingly bizarre. Steam rose from roadside bushes and the middle of otherwise normal fields.

After settling in, we walked into town. The notorious sulphur smell of Rotorua wasn't as bad as I had been led to believe, although it was very noticeable. The town itself was extremely strange, and seems to have three main areas. First, the city centre itself. Rotorua has been a tourist centre for well over a century, and it shows. Streets were full of tourist-trap shops, and one whole street was dedicated to restaurants and eateries. Alice and I had our evening meal that night at a very good Indonesian restaurant along that street.

Second was the ever present geothermal activity. Steam rose from roadside drains and from gardens. The centre of the city contains a large park with walkways going around and across steaming sulphurous pools and bubbling mud. One or two of the most active geothermal areas were designated as pay-to-enter reserves, most notably that around the famous Whakarewarewa geyser.

Finally, just when the town itself seemed surreal enough, we came to the area around the bathhouse. Long closed as a true bathhouse, this stately Victorian structure is now the city's museum, and lies in a very English park surrounded by bowling greens and odd statuary. It has the definite feel of something out of The Prisoner. We came upon this place at dusk, adding to the unearthliness of the setting. At the west end of this park, a road travels through a gate seemingly modelled on the construction of the Eiffel Tower, and heads down to the shores of the lake itself.  We spent some time early on the Monday around this area taking photos of the buildings, the parks, and Mokoia Island, brooding under pregnant black clouds across the lake.

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We had decided to use Rotorua as our base for the day, travelling down to Taupo and then back up by the evening. The road south took us along what was probably the best road I've driven on in New Zealand - wide, smooth and gently curving, SH5 moves through state forest plantations, making the distant hills look like they are swathed in green corduroy, and past such oddments as an ostrich farm. The trees were soon stretching continuously on both sides of the road; endless ranks of dark conifers with lighter coloured ferns nestling at their feet as it heads south to Wairakei thermal power station and beyond to the big lake, Taupo. The lake is formed in the 30-kilometre (20 mile) wide crater of a long-dormant (hopefully extinct) volcano. Some 2000 years ago, much of the North Island was devastated by its last eruption, which is listed by the Guinness Book of Records as "[the] most violent of all documented volcanic events."

At Taupo we stretched our legs for a while, admiring the scenery, but (sadly, because this was a flying- visit- to- as- many- places- as- possible holiday) we did little more than that before heading back north. On the way out of Taupo we detoured to the spectacular Huka Falls, where the young Waikato River is forced through a narrow channel and gushes over a 15 metre (50 foot) drop.

We had intended to spend only a short amount of Tuesday around Rotorua before heading on, but events conspired a little. The morning was spent shopping. It was drizzling as we pondered whether to visit one of the spectacular pay-to-see thermal areas around town, but were put off the more well-known Whakarewarewa by two things: its high price and the touristy 'look at all the happy smiling natives' show. Although it is probably an excellent experience for overseas tourists (and a good basic crash-course in Maori culture), to residents of the country like us, it seemed very false. Instead we opted for Hell's Gate, 10km north of the city. This turned out to be very impressive - very alien terrains of sulphur and soda pools, yellowed sulphur plains, a small geyser, and much boiling mud. The weather was tolerable though drizzly. Just before leaving, I discovered that the film in my camera had jammed, and decided to quickly change films and try to get a couple of photos. At exactly that moment the skies opened to monsoon strength rain. Thankfully Alice had also taken some photos!

After a quick trip back into Rotorua, we headed out of town towards the shore of Lake Tarawera and the Buried Village. When Mount Tarawera last erupted in the 1880s, two small tribal villages were buried in the ash fall, making Te Wairoa into New Zealand's equivalent of Pompeii. A small museum and a trail round the archaeological site took us through the sombre remains of several buildings, including the local tohunga (tribal priest)'s whare (house), the blacksmith's shop, and the local inn.  The weirdest feature of the site was a row of poplar trees which had grown from incorrectly cured fence posts which had somehow not only survived the ash fall but had taken root in the ash.

We drove on the three kilometres to the shores of Lake Tarawera. It was an odd feeling knowing that the mist on the other side of the lake shrouded, ten kilometres from us, the peak of a volcano that had caused so much destruction only a century before. One hundred and twenty years ago, this region had been a major Victorian tourist attraction, with visitors from around the world coming to the natural thermal spa of the famous Pink and White Terraces, the 'eighth wonder of the world'. One hundred and ten years ago, the terraces were gone, lost forever to the power of Tarawera.

Finally freeing ourselves from the Rotorua area we set out north, across the isthmus between lakes Rotorua and Rotoiti, and up onto the coastal plain near Te Puke. The weather continued torrential as we detoured into Mount Maunganui and skirted the edges of Tauranga, where we encountered the worst traffic jam of the trip. We caught the 5.30 rush-hour at the point where all of the traffic north out of west Tauranga has to give way at the junction with the main road to Auckland. We crawled along in this traffic jam which oddly stretched from the Judea bridge to the township of Bethlehem. I idly wondered who had named that area's towns and settlements. Eventually, we were free, and grateful to finally arrive at that night's destination, Waihi.

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Waihi looks like a town waiting for something to happen, and afraid it might know what that will be. The town is dwindling, and over the hills, Auckland moves closer at the rate of 100 metres per year. There is a distinct feeling in the small Thames Valley towns that their fate is to be commuter townships. The same is true further down the line in Paeroa, Thames, Ngatea. Waihi has a proud history - both coal and gold were mined nearby, and the Martha Hill mine has been reopened in recent times. It was also a leading centre in the early trade union movement, with a strike during the early years of the century leading to the death of a miner - an early martyr to New Zealand's unionist cause. Even today, a casual enquiry in the town as to the history of the strike will stir up deep emotions (as I found out when I asked about it at the town's information centre). The mining around the town has one distinct downside; there was a detour around one of the main roads on the outskirts, which is currently unsafe due to subsidence.

As with Rotorua, this was to be our base for two nights. We stopped at the Waihi motor camp, where we had a cabin - a real one, constructed entirely of logs. On the doorstep waiting for us when we arrived was a hungry assortment of geese, ducks and other 'wild' fowl. One blackbird was so used to tourists as to actually hop inside to look for food scraps.

The weather had cleared by the morning as we headed into what turned out to be the longest day's travelling, right around the Coromandel Peninsula. We travelled north through Whangamata, Hikuai and Tairua to Whitianga, each town becoming less obviously touristy and also more attractive. A lot of money has gone into these settlements - it is clearly a region for Auckland's better off to holiday. The scenery, though, was something special. Just north of Tairua we stopped for a breather at the Twin Kauri - two giant trees beside one of the twistiest stretches of the road.

Oddly, most of the small towns we passed seemed to be twinned with a smaller settlement on the other side of a harbour: a ferry crosses the Whitianga harbour from the town to the settlement of Cook's Beach, and from Tairua the view across the harbour is of the settlement of Pauanui. The road wound on through beautiful rugged hill country, but beyond Whitianga there came a sudden change. No more tourist retreats; this was the real Coromandel. The trees became thicker and the road more twisty as we rounded the Whangapoua Harbour. Great Mercury Island could occasionally be glimpsed some 15km to the east. Thankfully, most of the road is now sealed, and there are clear signs that work is continuing on the remainder. But from Te Rerenga over to Coromandel itself is a clear indication of what most of this road must have once been like. We drove through thick forest, then up one of the roughest roads I have been on. Narrow, twisty, camber like nothing on earth, and covered with lumps of gravel the size of your fist. It was, however, an experience that was worth it for the view down over Coromandel Harbour into the Hauraki Gulf beyond.

From Coromandel, rather than travel straight back down the west coast of the peninsula to Thames, we continued north, as far as Colville. Colville lies at the end of the sealed road, and is the last settlement of any real size on the peninsula. As it turns out, it was a good decision in one way, as the scenery along the road to Colville was some of the most magnificent on the whole holiday. From Amodeo Bay, the sight of the Motukawao Islands standing out rugged against the silver waters of the Hauraki Gulf was awe inspiring. Beyond them to the south, in the greying distance, the bulk of Waiheke island loomed, and against the far horizon a thin line of grey indicated the Whangaparaoa, 45 km away on the other side of the gulf. The minus side to this detour was that it added a lot of time to the journey, and left us both very tired.

Colville was our furthest point north on the holiday. The vegetation had changed so much that even the Nikau Palms were gone here, and the edges of several of the small bays and harbours were dotted with mangrove. After a brief stop at Colville Bay, we started back south - the first 'apex' of the journey had been completed. From a hilly section of the road near Manaia we had our first view of the second 'apex' - the distant skyscrapers of Auckland, 50km away on the other side of the Hauraki.

To call the Hauraki coast of the Coromandel less scenic than the eastern side of the peninsula would be unfair, as it is very picturesque, but it's a less grand picturesqueness. Small settlements of a handful of houses each follow close after one another along the edge of the water as the road winds its serpentine way around to Thames. As we approached Thames, the clouds started rolling in across the gulf, dark and heavy. It looked like there was an electrical storm brewing over the distant Hunua Ranges. The weather continued dark as we passed down through Paeroa and back to Waihi. Sadly, it was the lesser of the two storms which was to develop as far as our trip was concerned that day. Alice phoned home that evening, and bad news was waiting - Alice needed to return to Dunedin by February 8th at the latest. Here it was, January 26th, and we were in Waihi...

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Alice and I discussed possible options, which ranged from heading straight home to doing as much of the remaining holiday as possible at breakneck speed. In the end, we hit on a compromise plan. We would continue with the holiday in its slightly reduced form, but she would fly from Wellington to Dunedin, arriving back on the fifth. I would continue the last of the journey by car alone. We weren't in the best of spirits when we left Waihi, but at least we knew what we were trying to get out of the rest of the holiday.

We headed through Karangahake Gorge, past old mine workings and walkways which, had we had more time, we might have explored. Not that the flow of traffic on that road would have allowed us to stop easily - despite it being narrow and twisting, articulated lorries hurtle down there at 120kph without giving much thought to other road users. From Waihi through to Auckland, in fact, the recklessness of drivers amazed me. In the south there is far less traffic, of course, and on the open Canterbury Plains speeds may creep up towards the 130kph mark or even beyond, but in Auckland... but I'm getting ahead of myself. We stopped for the traditional photo next to the concrete bottle at Paeroa, then headed up around the swamplands of the Hauraki Plain. At Pokeno we reached SH1 and climbed the rise up to the end of New Zealand - the Bombay Hills - and onto the motorway. (There is a traditional saying in New Zealand: "The country stops at the Bombay Hills", which reflects the insular nature of Aucklanders, and the respective anti-Auckland sentiments of much of the rest of the country).

From Bombay on, You can basically consider yourself in Auckland. It is 30km from there to the heart of the city, but that whole distance is through a light industrial wasteland, the road flanked by legions of pylons. By Drury, open countryside has become a half remembered dream. The motorway is wide enough not to cause too many hassles - at least not at two in the afternoon (we had carefully planned our timetable to avoid the inappropriately named rush hours and accompanying gridlock). Transit NZ had graciously placed speed limit signs along the road, so that we could tell that 100kph (62mph) was the maximum allowable speed. We kept to a steady 130kph and were passed by everything on the road. I soon came to the conclusion that the only way to safely negotiate the road was to pretend it was a giant video game. One judiciously placed police speed radar on an overbridge would clear the national debt within a week.

Alice called out details of the exits I should look for while I scanned the road ahead. Soon the big pointy thing hove into sight ahead (the Sky Tower), as the little pointy thing (the Logan Campbell monument on One Tree Hill) started to move across our view to the west. We approached the heart of the city past the big knot of intersections Alice referred to as "The Great Ganglion", and veered westward. Finding the correct exit, we headed south, and somehow finally managed to navigate to the house of friends who were to be our hosts for the next two nights. Once arrived, both Alice and I needed a break - both from the car and from each other - so Alice read for a while while I went for a walk around the area in an attempt to wear off some of the adrenaline still pumping through me from the motorway. I ended up walking about 6km, down into New Lynn, then across to Avondale. It was on this walk that I got my first real exposure to Auckland's weather. It was cold - too cold to walk without my jacket on, but it was so humid that as soon as I put it on, my arms were drenched in water. I bought a t-shirt at New Lynn and wore that and my jacket, carrying the shirt I had been wearing back in the shopping bag. By the end of the walk I felt like I'd been wearing a wet towel all the way back.

Friday! One day to explore a city of one million people! Not as hard as it sounds, actually, since Auckland's city centre is no bigger than Christchurch or Wellington's. It's just surrounded by endless suburbs, each with their own interchangeable shopping areas. We travelled into town by bus, and spent much of the afternoon in the Sky Tower, where we ate an exorbitantly priced Danish pastry in the café before heading up to the viewing platform on the 60th floor. From here we got a great view across the city and the Waitemata Harbour to Rangitoto Island, and very faintly in the eastern distance we could make out the already longed-for shoreline of the Coromandel.

"Sky Tower" is a misnomer, by the way. The tower is evidently made of steel, glass, and concrete, and is actually a tower where there is a distinct absence of sky.  Fom the viewing platform, it is clear that it is the rest of the city that is covered in towers of sky. The viewing platform, at some 280 metres (920 feet), reminded me of the times when, as a young child, I used to visit the GPO Tower (now Telecom Tower) in London, which had a similar platform at a height of about 180 metres (600 feet). Since I was probably about six or seven then, it seemed a lot higher than the Sky Tower's viewing deck. It is still a great view, though.

We were later than we intended getting back from the city, mainly because when we arrived in town, we asked the bus driver where we should wait for the return bus, and were told the wrong place. When we noticed the bus we were waiting for about to pull away from a stop further up the street, I raced up to the door and waved to the driver to let us on. In Dunedin, that would have resulted in us getting on the bus. In Auckland, it resulted in a one fingered gesture from the driver. We caught a later bus. As it was, I walked the last part of the distance (I'd wanted to look in a shop some four or five blocks from where we were staying, so I got off the bus early). Then I proceeded to get lost (Auckland streets have a charming habit of having street signs at only one end). So, I asked a complete stranger "Excuse me, is this Maioro Street?" He replied in vaguely Chinese sounding gibberish. Summoning up my extremely limited knowledge of Mandarin, I said a garbled "Wo bu shwo Zhong-wen" (I don't speak Chinese). He smiled, thought for a second and said "Wo bu shwo Ingrrish!".

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Saturday, our hosts took us on a quick shopping trip into St Luke's mall, and to an excellent second-hand book shop in Onehunga. On the way, we visited a street in Point Chevalier that I had heard about and wanted to get a photo of - the only Dignan Street in the country. Eventually tearing ourselves away from the bookshop, we headed back to Avondale, finished packing, and headed off to visit my Aunt and Uncle in Onehunga, close by the shadow of the little pointy thing. My mother and I had stayed with them when we first arrived in New Zealand in 1974, and, apart from the vagaries of age (they are both about 80), they were little changed.

After some time spent trying to work out how to get onto the southbound lanes of the motorway, we were off out of the big city and down towards Hamilton. We had spent less time in Auckland than originally planned, and - apart from the fact that it meant less time with Alan and Robyn - I wasn't that disappointed. Auckland is too much of a muchness; endless suburban light industrial and commercial districts repeating each other to the horizon, with only a small, if extremely vibrant, central heart. I doubt I could really get to feel any sort of emotional pull for the city in the same way I do for Dunedin, Wellington, or Christchurch (in that order). It left me cold. It also depressed me to think, as I drove past the serried ranks of power pylons, that there are people here who have never seen the real open New Zealand that Alice and I had spent the previous two weeks travelling through.

Beyond the Bombay Hills, the land flattened out and the road bore painful reminders of the driving standards in this part of the country. White wooden crosses were dotted everywhere on roadside fences. The road itself isn't bad, but some of the driving on display made me realise the reason for the high fatality rate on the road south. Many of the drivers are so used to the Auckland motorway as their main 'open road' that they regard all open highways in the same way, even when they have narrowed down to one lane in each direction. Hedge-hopping drivers and suicidal overtaking seemed to be the order of the day, and it was with some relief that we saw the road become emptier as we got further south. By the time the town of Huntly was reached, driving standards were higher, and the road was considerably emptier. We arrived in Hamilton late afternoon, and spent the rest of the day catching up with the friends with whom we were staying.

Shortly after waking up the next morning, I was struck by a severe migraine, and although it improved during the day, my memory of the day is very hazy. It seems I went shopping in the heavy rain of the morning, having forgotten that it was Waikato's anniversary weekend. Later in the day, we went to Waingaro hot springs - a friendly and laid-back swimming, hydrosliding and spa complex north of the city. I had visited the place shortly after arriving in New Zealand while staying with relations in Raglan, decades earlier, but didn't realise it was the same place until we arrived there. It would have been nice to visit Raglan, but it became a casualty of our new, streamlined journey. We did, however, manage to see the outside of the national marae, Turangawaewae, at Ngaruawahia (a detail of one of the gates of which is shown in the picture). At Waingaro, Alice managed to badly bruise her hip, which left her very sore for a few days. That and the residue of my migraine didn't do much to help our overall mental  condition, which, along with tiredness and poor weather, made the following couple of days less enjoyable than they might have been otherwise.

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Monday, and the after-effects of the migraine left me feeling like I had had no sleep for two days; Alice was sore from her hip bruise. A further downer was the persistent drizzle. We stopped for a break not long out of Hamilton, at Te Awamutu, in order to look around the town, and particularly one of the country's more unusual museums.

Te Awamutu is famous for three things. The first of these is the rose gardens, which we didn't stop to look at, because of the weather. The second is its position during the land wars between the Maori and the colonists in the mid-19th century, where it was one of the central points of the conflict. One third of the museum is dedicated to the early white settlers, and one third is dedicated to the local Maori population. The latter includes one of the most famous (and most beautiful) pieces of Maori art, Te Uenuku - a ten foot post, shaped at the top into an unearthly coil topped with delicate spines. I saw it first at the Te Maori exhibitions which had toured the country several years earlier, and had long wanted to see it again.

The final third of the museum is set aside for the other thing that has made Te Awamutu famous, two local boys made good. Tim and Neil Finn still keep fairly close contact with their town of birth, and the local museum has a permanent display of Split Enz and Crowded House memorabilia. It seems odd to see such items in a museum, but they are certainly an important part of this country's recent culture, and as such it is good to see a permanent memorial to these two bands.

On south, through rolling bush-clad hills to the coast at Awakino, where we stopped for a picnic lunch. We pushed on to New Plymouth, which seemed a little more purposeless that many of the country's cities - probably unfair, but it is far enough from the main north-south axis of the country to seem to need a justification, and none was provided. An interesting feature of the town that was (briefly) displayed there (it has  since been removed, either by the authorities or gravity) is a giant kinetic sculpture, "The wind wand", designed by the late Len Lye. Though graceful, it didn't seem to have much more purpose than the rest of New Plymouth. New Plymouth's other most famous feature, the near perfect volcanic cone of Mount Egmont (or Taranaki, as it is also known) was hiding in low cloud. This was a major disappointment for me - I have only seen briefly once from the air many years ago. On the current trip, the cloud stubbornly refused to budge, and we were left with the impression that the mountain is a fiction created to bolster the region's tourism - that postcards of New Plymouth are doctored by adding a picture of Fujiyama to the background.

We decided to travel a short way further before stopping for the night. On through Inglewood, which was poorly enough signposted for me to take a wrong turning. The road started to thin and wind in an unexpected way, and we soon found ourselves about five kilometres from the highway at a farming settlement called Kaimata. Retracing our steps, we returned to the highway and on to Stratford, where the day's journey ended. In keeping with the town's name, most of its main streets are named for Shakespearian characters.

On Tuesday we travelled down to the coast at Hawera, and at Wanganui, we visited the commemorative plaque at Cook's Gardens, honouring the site of Peter Snell's 1961 world record for the mile at the gardens' athletics track, and, just before crossing the river, passed Moutoa Gardens, site of an infamous land protest of a couple of years earlier. Moutoa surprised me - it was a very small area indeed. I had pictured it as being a sizeable public gardens, but in truth it is probably under a hectare in size. At Wanganui, a series of bureaucratic hassles held us up enough for our combined irritations to boil over - something that had needed to happen since Waihi. This immediately seemed to lift a lot of the pressure from the journey. From that point on, our moods started to improve. The weather, as if in empathy, launched one final downpour, and then started to clear.

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There was one detour which I was determined to keep in the itinerary, and that was the largest of the trip. Instead of heading back along the coast to Wellington we went inland, up towards the central plateau. If we had had more time and energy, it would have been nice to follow the river valley up past the site of James K. Baxter's Jerusalem community, and through the bushlands that enclose the Whanganui River, but even keeping to the main road led to a steep, winding journey, the equal of many we had travelled around East Cape or the Coromandel.

The road twisted and turned its way across ridges and through cuttings. To the left, the landscape dropped away as the narrow coastal plain soon gave way to rough hill country which, in Alice's words, looked like mile upon mile of rumpled green towels. We were slowed near Otoko by a drove of sheep on the road, and stopped near Kakatahi to photograph the Raukawa Falls, which were wider by far than the Huka Falls, but nowhere near as powerful. Just outside Raetihi, we both saw the first Ratana church we had ever seen, symbol of a peculiarly Maori form of Christianity, taking its lead from the visions of the prophet Ratana in the years just after World War I.

We finally arrived in Ohakune, a ski resort in its off-season, and therefore likely to have cheap rates. I walked into town, a pretty touristy place obviously geared for the winter season. Now, in midsummer, it was devoid of tourists apart from the odd Dunedinite or two driving around the North Island. One odd feature of the town is that the children's playground has benefited from Ohakune's proximity to the country's main army base at Waiouru - not many playgrounds contain an old tank.

I chatted with a local shopkeeper about the way the town was recovering after the eruptions of Mount Ruapehu two years earlier. The town relies very heavily on ski tourism, with Turoa ski field above the town, high on the volcano's slopes. Although the town was never threatened by the eruption, the ski field had been closed all year and the town had suffered financially. He was very philosophical about it - the town was recovering, and compared with the dangers facing many people in the world, Ohakune had it very good. Also, he felt that the sight of the mountain belching huge clouds of ash was so spectacular that it was almost worth the financial difficulties of that year (as long as it didn't happen again in a hurry!). Because of the town's location, it is not in direct danger of destruction from the volcano (any ash flows and lahars tend to go down another of the volcano's slopes); according to the shopkeeper the greatest danger during the eruption was of getting caught in the stampede of people rushing to get their cameras!

Thankfully the cabin we stayed in at Ohakune was very restful. With the sound of the Mangateitei stream burbling away a few metres from us, and the distant sound of morepork in the bush reserve on the other side of it, we fell asleep very quickly and soundly (although I dare say we'd have woken pretty quickly if Ruapehu had coughed...).

There was a faint clearance in the sky early on Wednesday. It was still cloudy, but it was higher cloud rather than the low misty drizzly cloud of the previous days. We decided to risk the cloud, hoping that it would break enough to get a good view from up by the ski field. We drove into the Tongariro National Park, past road signs warning to beware of kiwis on the road, and up bush clad slopes. As the bush started to thin, the ground became hard, rugged and red - we could easily have been covering some of the terrain seen by probes on the surface of Mars. The road became nearly indeterminate in places, and it felt we were climbing across an unmarked stony slope. The road finally ended, three kilometres from Ruapehu's crater, at a height of some 1600 metres (5,250 feet) above sea level  - New Zealand's highest public road. We had climbed one mile in altitude since Wanganui. The cloud wasn't really clear enough to see much of the slopes below, and certainly nothing of the slope above us, but there was enough barren igneous wasteland for us to joke about Peter Jackson having a ready-made Mordor for the Lord of the Rings movies (since arriving back in Dunedin, I have discovered that that is very close to where these scenes were filmed!).

Back down the mountain, and then north along the highway, skirting the lower slopes of Mouth Tongariro. Rounding the northern side of Tongariro we saw steam venting from the hillside. You don't get a real idea of a volcano being more than just another mountain until you see an active fumarole on it... We stopped for a picnic lunch by the shores of Lake Rotaira. The sky had cleared and the weather was warm, but dry, unlike the mugginess of Auckland and Hamilton. There was a slight smell of sulphur in the air, reminiscent of Rotorua, reminding us that Rotaira is yet another crater, and the line of three volcanoes - Ruapehu (which is shown in the picture), Ngauruhoe, and Tongariro - should really extend to Rotaira, Taupo, Tarawera, and Rotorua. A hundred kilometres beyond Rotorua, in the Bay of Plenty, frequently-active White Island marks the last visible point of the chain.

From Rotaira, the journey resumed its southward course straight towards Wellington. We rounded Tongariro, and turned onto the start of the Desert Road. The sky was blue, and for the first time we got a proper view of the three volcanoes: Tongariro, flat and broad; Ngauruhoe, the traditional cone shape, but shorter and more snubbed than the apocryphal Taranaki; finally Ruapehu, more typically 'mountainous', rugged and snow capped. After a few miles, the road became true to its name. The vegetation became very scrubby, and beside the road deep gulches - dried stream valleys, showed layer upon layer of thick ash-laden strata. For some reason, the wind eroded stratifications looked like ranks of elderly Australian aboriginal faces in silhouette.

Nothing can be farmed on the Rangipo desert, so half of the area is used for military manoeuvres. The other half seems to be a pylon farm - row after row of metal frames stride across the plateau from the power stations north of Taupo to Wellington, 200km to the south of us. We stopped briefly in Waiouru, then continued on past the surprisingly pleasant looking town of Taihape and into Bulls, which appears to be joined to the North Island by a giant bolt. Presumably the strange structure at the south end of the town of Bulls is really a water tank, rather the bolt in the Frankenstein's monster neck of the North Island. South again: it was obvious that we were getting close to Ohakea Air Base soon afterwards - the three RNZAF planes doing manoeuvres overhead were a clear give-away. On through Feilding, Bunnythorpe and into Palmerston North, where we stopped for the night. We had almost turned full circle. Over the hills just 20km away was Woodville, which we had passed two weeks earlier.

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Palmerston North is a very pleasant-looking city, like Christchurch on a smaller scale. The central square and buildings around it are quite strange in a very English sort of way, but backed up with odd pieces of sculpture that seem somehow appropriate yet out of place. The most delightful is a bronze one outside the oddly buttressed Public Library. It features a large, almost Monty Pythonesque human arm holding a plumb line, resting on the top of a plinth. The plinth is supported on one side by a blue whale standing on its tail in a pool, and on the other by a stack of elephants. Apparently the most useful fact the sculptor learn at school is that the length of a blue whale was equal to the height of ten elephants...

South from here, we travelled past Tokomaru and Shannon, then through Levin and Otaki. At Waikanae we decided to briefly detour to get a good view of Kapiti Island. Traps for young players! Waikanae Beach is a place people retire to - not because it is pretty, but because it is impossible to get out of once you're in it. It consists of a mass of unsignposted cul-de-sacs (culs-de-sac?), and it was some time before we managed to get back on the road south. We stopped briefly at Paekakariki, under the shadow of its infamous hill, then past Porirua, and without even realising it, we found ourselves slipping into the top of Wellington's motorway system. We headed straight for the place where we were to spend the night. The following afternoon, Alice and I went an the art exhibition at the Wellington Art Gallery. From here, we walked into town and, like good tourists, we rode Wellington's cable car up the hill, and then rode back down again.

Saturday was the day of the parting of the ways. I was to travel south by ferry and car, Alice later in the day was to go back by plane. By the time I got to Clarence she'd be rising, up and away to Dunedin. At 1.30, I boarded the Lynx - my first and hopefully last fast-ferry trip. I must admit that after being used to the slow ferries, the Lynx is a huge disappointment. On the slow ferry, you get on board, put anything you might want with you (but not right now) in a locker, and you wander around. You go out on deck to enjoy the scenery fore or aft. If you want to, you go to the café and have a meal. It takes three hours, and the time goes very quickly. On the fast ferry, you sit down and listen to the muzak. If you want to, you can walk to another seat dragging all your bags with you (there are no lockers), sit down and listen to the muzak. You can go outside to the 20 foot by 8 foot space aft with all the smokers and get buffeted by the high wind and spray, which just about drowns out the sound of the muzak. There is no way to see forward. So you go back inside to sit down and listen to the muzak. If you want, you can go to the bar and buy one of the three or four small snacks that cost more than a meal on the slow ferry, while listening to the muzak. It's not a ship, it's a bus on the water. It takes eighty minutes and feels like a life sentence.

Finally back on dry land, I drove south to Blenheim and then on down some of the most scenically attractive road I know. The stretch from Wharanui to Oaro is still one of my favourite pieces of road anywhere - bush-clad slopes dropping away into rock-strewn waves. I dawdled down the coast, accompanied by a radio programme about Burt Bacharach, the soundtrack somehow suiting the drive perfectly. I reached Kaikoura by evening. After the previous few weeks' travel, I was in bed by 10.00 and asleep by 10.10.

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There was a nor'wester blowing as I traversed the switchback that is the Hundalee ranges. The sky was a peculiar pattern of yellow and grey stripes, and the air tasted of dust. On the approach to Christchurch I detoured into Kaiapoi, which I had always driven straight past before. I arrived in Christchurch mid-afternoon, and spent the rest of the day with friends, playing guitar and petanque, and chatting. Finally came Monday February 7th. Much shopping was done in Christchurch. There was a northerly blowing and very good driving conditions, with a very quiet traffic flow, so I made very good time on the final leg of the journey, despite large areas of road works. I left Christchurch in mid-afternoon, and by half past nine I was dropping off some of Alice's gear back at her flat in Dunedin. The car odometer read 5605 km more than it had read when the journey started.

So, what did we gain? Was it worth the exhaustion, the car problems, the searing heat, the blizzards, the plagues of mutant star ants? Overall it was a good trip despite it all. We got to see a large part of the country which until then had been, for us, an unsubstantiated rumour. We got to see several good friends. We experienced a lot of scenery and discovered good places to come back to again, and places to avoid. We confirmed our liking for Wellington and increased our dislike of Auckland (although it is fair to say we didn't really give it that much of a chance). We had a great break from Dunedin, and got some great memories: friendly geese and subsidence in Waihi; wandering cattle and caravan villages around East Cape; the shimmering waters of Tolaga Bay and the Hauraki Gulf; steam rising from gutters in downtown Rotorua; the view from near the top of an active volcano. Yes, it was worth doing, but don't expect us to repeat it for a while!

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