Golden days

I meet Flora at the traffic lights, waiting with other pedestrians to cross the busy intersection. Tour Leader and I  are on our bikes, about to pedal off to another exciting session of Commonwealth Games hockey semi-finals. Flora is on foot, anchoring herself firmly to a lamp post as she waits for the little green man.

Games volunteers, always willing to give a big hand

She clocks my yellow hi-vis vest and offers, "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie?" Given that almost the entire Gold Coast population, those who haven't fled town, are wearing yellow and green this week, it's a natural assumption to make. She's had a bit much to drink, hence her attachment to the lamp post. But I've drunk two glasses of (erggh!) Aussie pinot gris with dinner - perhaps not the best choice before a 20km ride in the dark.

In this passing moment, we connect over our otherness. We shake hands and exchange names. Learning that I'm a New Zealander, Flora is quick to share that she's mixed race, aboriginal with some kiwi in there too. Like Flora, we're outsiders, witnesses to Australia's golden extravaganza that is the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Unlike Flora, we will soon be flying over the ditch to where we do belong.

Dancing security guards

These are, of course, the Friendly Games, not to be compared with the drug-infested winner-takes-all culture of the Olympic Games. Or so we are reminded. A lesson that  gold medallist Sam Gaze had to publicly learn this week too. And, to their credit, organisers of the Games and the accompanying festival events have attempted to embrace indigenous culture. Not everyone is happy about this, of course. It's Queensland after all. Pauline Hansen excelled herself in her, er, considered critique of the opening ceremony. "Disgusting" was her response to the 20 minutes or so of indigenous story-telling in the interminable event beamed to the bits of the world who cared enough to watch. If you open that link, above, you'll also learn that Hanson is not a racist.

Mountain bikers Cooper and Gaze

We can laugh at the likes of Pauline Hanson and her skewed world view. She's a ridiculous woman and a ridiculously easy target. Taika Waitati's recent comments, on the other hand, I find harder to gloss over. This Stuff article provides a short summary, if you've been living under a rock, or on the Gold Coast, lately.

I grew up in a casually racist era. We routinely mangled Maõri place names. In my grandparents' and parents' world, it was perfectly okay to say of a relative, "She married a Maori, you know.  But a good Maori". I've never forgotten that snippet of overheard adult conversation. We've come a long way since then for sure. But the journey is far from over. And the difference is that we now know that sort of casual, thoughtless racism is anything but okay.

Meanwhile, back in the endless summer that is the Gold Coast (forecast to be 32 degrees tomorrow and I packed three jerseys for this trip. Really?), the Aussie gold rush continues. Right now, the Lucky Country has won 72 gold medals, with plenty more to come. The local paper carried an article this week that was crowing, there's no other word for it, over the hapless English athletes who have managed only 40 golds so far. Only. The headline read, Hey Team England, where the bloody hell are you?

We've watched so many Ocker victories that we respond like good Pavlovian pooches now, springing to our feet and mouthing the words as 'Advance Australia Fair' fills the stadium again - and again. But how can we begrudge the Aussies their enthusiasm if their population can roam the streets and shopping malls of the Gold Coast in yellow shirts, accessorised with hats big enough to land a helicopter on and flags worn like Superman capes?

We'll just savour the sweet moments. Beach volleyball as a spectacular spectator sport. (And nothing to do with what plàyers were wearing.) The gold/silver double by our mountain bikers. The stunning gold medal performance of our Black Sticks women. Oh, was that a victory over the Australian team? Where the bloody hell were they?

Bloody great sparrows they have over here

Freewheeling thoughts

It is the greatest irony of my life that I spend so much of my time riding a bike these days. At secondary school, it took me until the 4th form to understand that PE classes and I needed to part ways. It wasn't just the rompers, those hideous sports bloomers for girls, made from yards of material and designed to reveal what should have been hidden. Rather, it was the realisation that I had no co-ordination, no ability to read a game of hockey or netball, and no interest in doing so.

After that epiphany, I took to hanging out behind the stage during PE classes and lunchtimes while my friends practised their instruments. Taita College believed in educational punishments. For my sins, I was given multiple pages of the dictionary and the Bible to copy out.  By the time I reached 7th form, the backlog had reached triple figures. I think winning a few academic prizes at the end of my school career may have helped to wipe out that debt to society. I hope so.

Other active opportunities were declined as well. I remember one weekend refusing to join my father and sister on a tramp into the Tararua ranges because a certain boyfriend had said he would phone me. (He didn't.)

The writing was on the wall, if I may continue the chirographic motif, when said boyfriend morphed from a reluctant part time university student to a fully qualified physical education teacher. At which point I promptly married him. Oh the irony.

Anyway. Forty years later, here we are on another stunning cycle trail, this time the Alps to Ocean ride. At 300-plus km, this is NZ's longest trail ride, encompassing a number of our biggest hydro-electric power schemes along the Waitaki River. We began at Lake Tekapo and will finish in Oamaru tomorrow. All of those scenic kilometres allow plenty of time for thinking. So I've been doing just that about cycling's role in saving small rural communities.

The Otago Rail Trail began it all, of course, and famously a number of local naysayers were against the proposal.  John Key has never pulled my ponytail, but I have to give him credit for proposing the National Cycleway Project in early 2009. Since then, cycle trails have popped up all over the country, and generally in areas that desperately need a boost to their economy.

The tiny settlement of Seddonville on the West Coast still has a pub thanks to the success of the Old Ghost Road, now an internationally renowned ride. The West Coast Wilderness Trail further south has provided the impetus for the refurbishment of Kumara's landmark Theatre Royal hotel. In the remote Pureora Forest, cyclists are flocking to ride the Timber Trail, staying in a newly built luxury lodge at Piripiri (I wrote about this here ).

But good things take time, as the old bugger on the Mainland cheese advert used to remind us. And not everyone is happy with changes to their world. At first, anyway.

We saw this when riding the two-day Twin Coast trail a couple of years ago. Graffiti along the trail suggested that cyclists weren't particularly popular. Yet,  on every trail we've ridden, throughout New Zealand, we've met welcoming locals. Many have taken the opportunity to offer accommodation or food. Others are at times bemused by the helmeted hordes but always willing to offer help, or just pass the time of day.

On the Alps to Ocean trail, the only cafés in town have recently closed in both Duntroon and Otematata, making it a long ride between coffees. But let's hope these establishments can reopen in the future. And why not? This cycling renaissance is driven by time-rich baby boomers, and no doubt helped by the increasing numbers of e-bikes on the road.

This trip reminds me of last year's long distance adventure, following Hadrian's Wall on foot across England (which I wrote about here , gotta keep those reader numbers up). The Wall was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1987 and the dedicated pathway became an official national trail in 2003. But the walk itself is delightfully undeveloped. Amenities are limited (don't get me started on toilets), while pubs open at 12 noon so a morning coffee is out of the question.

Things might be slow in New Zealand's rural hinterland but Emperor Hadrian would have had more chance of sending out a minion for a flat white in Featherston than in his own back yard.

Down the Rabbit Hole

H-town, Cowtown, the Tron ... Population 156,000 and rising. However you know it, Hamilton (or HamiltON as it's currently promoted) has had its share of knockers over the years.

Well-meaning city bureaucrats and councillors have not helped its cause. Fountain City. Really? Where? And, most memorably, the unfortunate Hamilton - More than you expect.

I've been there. I've sledged Hamilton, sniggered at its pretentious ways while sipping my flat white down the road in Cambridge (oh, the irony), laughed at its branding issues. But I was wrong.

I was wrong because...Hamilton Gardens.

This world-class attraction at the southern entrance to the city is home to over 20 themed gardens. There are expansive rolling lawns, with paths for strolling,  dog-walking or toddler-triking. There are vast drifts of  camellias and rhododendrons. There is the fragrantly alliterative Rogers Rose Garden.

But it is in the smaller walled gardens that I have been delightfully lost this week. I've felt like Alice plunging into Wonderland while negotiating hidden doors, twisting pathways and regimented plantings. Many of these small spaces, each one carefully curated, are performance venues for the Hamilton Gardens Arts Festival (So worth a visit. Here's the website)

There's the Japanese Garden of Contemplation. The Italian Renaissance Garden. The Chinese Scholars' Garden. Te Parapara Garden. The Sustainable Back Yard. To name just a few. They just make you want to stroll right on in, don't they?

Waikawa Audio (We make you sound better than you are) is on the job at the Festival this week and next, providing sound for dancers, opera singers, actors and comedians. CEO Bruce plans where to run cables and set up amps, hoists speakers and sends his minion off to find left-handed screwdrivers. This minion follows in his wake, loaded with gear and absorbing techie terms. And stopping to take photos, of course.

So, thank you to those foresighted 1960s Hamilton city governors who had the vision to create these gardens out of a rubbish dump. And to today's green-fingered staff who lovingly tend the gardens in their care.

The Waikawa Audio (We hear you even if no one else can) gig at the Gardens Festival really is a family affair. Larry knows his way there. And Bill is a regular too. For the past two years, he has been the official Green Room for the percussionists of the Sunset Symphony orchestra. This year, his role is support vehicle to Waikawa Audio (We're all ears). Happy families.

Plan B

Just after midnight on November 14, 2016, the landscape of North Canterbury changed forever. The 7.8 magnitude earthquake took lives, destroyed homes and businesses and forced the massive rebuild of SH1 and the main trunk rail connection between Christchurch and Picton.

Yarn-bombing: rebuilding
Kaikõura one row
at a time!

Like many others, we were keen to travel the new highway south as far as Kaikõura township, to see for ourselves what engineering feats the NCTIR (North Canterbury Transport Infrastructure Recovery) team had achieved.  

Bill handled the trip beautifully. Meanwhile, his people were kept busy responding to the army of stop-go sign wielders who grinned and waved at us all the way down the coastline. One now knows how the Queen must feel when out and about.

Kaikõura itself was bustling with an eclectic mix of independent travellers, bus tourists and construction workers. And nosy parkers like us, of course. The pub where we ate our gourmet burgers asked that patrons leave their hi vis gear and work boots in their vehicles. So we did.


After some tootling around town looking for the best spot for the night, we settled on a park next to the beach at South Bay. Cue sunset pic:

The plan for the following day (Plan A, shall we say?) was to fill in some hours as best we could until Coffee o'Clock then to head off into the hills above the town to visit friends.

There's nothing like a good bike ride to take the mind off things. The roads of South Bay and the new cycle path that ran alongside the highway south of the town provided the necessary diversion until the hunt for the elusive flat white and long black. Regular, single shot. Cheers.

Back on the road, Bill and his caffeinated cargo left the main highway north of Kaikõura after crossing the Hapuku River. We'd been told to expect a 40 minute drive; the word "hairy" may also have been bandied about. Google Earth had already led Bruce to expect the tarseal to last approximately half a minute. And so it came to pass.

But things were going swimmingly. We squeezed past vehicles leaving the DOC camp. We negotiated hairpin bends and massive slips. (No NCTIR crews here to repair earthquake damage.) We crossed fords. And then we didn't.

A ford too far

The final ford was too deep and rocky. It could almost be described as a raging wee torrent, if one were feeling poetical. (At the time, one wasn't.)

 The alternative was a rickety bridge designed for vehicles slimmer than Bill.

Time for Plan B.

Lunch was transferred to a chilly bag, the bikes were downloaded and Bill was left behind, with time on his hands (tyres?) to reflect on the consequences of being overweight. And over-wide.

With some 10km of uphill riding to reach our destination, the wheat quickly sorted itself from the chaff. Bruce powered off into the distance. I did what any self-respecting chaff would do. Phone A Friend. Or, more accurately, message a friend in the hope that intermittent cell coverage would work in my favour.

Five dusty kilometres later, our rescue vehicle met us. Mike and Sue, old friends from the North Island, were staying with their son and his family in this remote yet stunningly beautiful spot. To help with the logistics of bikes + babies in the car, Bruce once again powered off into the distance (No, he's not on an e-bike. Yes, he likes going uphill. Yes, we're possibly mismatched but it's taken me 40 years to realise this), leaving me and my bike to hitch a ride to the homestead at road's end.

What could possibly go wrong?

The gearbox, that's what. Situation status report follows: Stationary car takes up most of the narrow road.  Gearbox refuses to leave Park. No phone reception. Two hungry babies on board. It's an hour to the nearest mechanic.

Kiwi kindness and ingenuity saved the day. The passing stranger delivering a trailer load of fenceposts managed to turn back (more than a 3-point turn needed!) and deliver a message to someone who got a message to... well, you can imagine how it unfolded. While we mentally totted up the huge cost of having the dead gearbox replaced, the car's owner (and babies' daddy) arrived and tinkered underneath the car.

We were on our way in minutes.

I began this blog with the vague idea of saying something about the impact of the November 2016 earthquake on more than just the high-profile coastal corridor. And that's certainly the case. The slopes surrounding us were scarred by slips; DOC huts had been swept away; high in the hills above us, a tourism venture was in ruins. The condemned hunting lodge, at the end of a now impassable access road, used to greet its guests at the helicopter pad.

But wait, there's more. This wee jaunt took us to a part of New Zealand that seemed a million miles away from the reconstructed state highway. The sheer scale of high country farming is enough to inspire awe in this townie. The Seaward Kaikõura mountains, clothed in mist that day, towered over the farm, their majesty felt if not seen. Faraway ridge lines marked its boundaries.

We are very fortunate to be able to travel the byways as well as the main highways. It was such a treat to experience this spectacular landscape - just on the other side of the ford too far.

Tree-hugging on the Timber Trail

Tree-hugging was pretty cool in the 1970s.

Just too tempting...

It wasn't necessary to LITERALLY hug said tree, mind you, but to be branded a tree-hugger, a derogatory term for environment activists, was probably a badge of honour amongst greenies of that generation.

A badge of honour because, as Kermit the Frog knew so well, It's not easy being green.

Today,  Pureora Forest Park, to the west of Lake Taupo, is home to majestic 1000 year old trees, remnants of the native podocarp forests that blanketed the central North Island.

Thousands of trampers, cyclists and campers enjoy what the DOC brochure describes poetically as "a hidden wonderland of tall trees, clear rivers and rare wildlife ". (The English teacher in me revels in the alliteration, assonance and triple construction therein.)

Scroll back 40 years though to 1978, a far less enlightened era. Those greenies who risked their lives perching on treetop platforms to bring native logging to a halt provided the impetus for creating today's forest park of some 78,000 hectares.

Carving a path from Pureora village to Ongarue, the 84 km Timber Trail is a most excellent two-day bike ride through the forest, following a network of bush tramways built when logging began in 1946. Signboards are dotted throughout the trail, documenting not only the logistics of the forestry operations but also the daily lives of the families who endured this harsh and often bitterly cold environment.

To start this adventure earlier this month, Bill the motorhome took us on a long and winding road from SH 4, via Ongarue. Long and winding, and dusty, I should add, with the final 15km on gravel. We left Bill to his own devices at the Piropiro DOC campsite (basic but free) and decamped to the new Timber Trail Lodge just up the road.

Later that evening, the young ones arrived to share this adventure with us. They kept Bill company overnight while joining us for meals in the lodge.

The young ones in action

This place is a gem. It offers dorm and en suite accommodation, hearty home-cooked meals, as well as packed lunches and shuttle transport (if you opt for the package deal).  And loads of TLC. Wet and muddy after our first day on the track, we arrived mid-afternoon to be greeted with freshly made pizza and banana cake.  The team behind the lodge have created something special.



And though less than a year old, it's already hugely popular. Local bike shuttle businesses are also stretched to keep up with the numbers of middle-aged men and women in lycra (Mamils and Mawils?) keen to ride this trail.

It was with a great sense of satisfaction, along with a good coating of mud, that we rolled into the Bennett Road car park near Ongarue at the end of our second day. And there was Bill, ready with cold beers, cups of tea and a shower on board. What a legend!

Golden Bay...good as!

Undulating is a lovely word. Say it slowly. Savour it. Un...du...la...ting. Ahhh.

I often think of this word when on my bike. With gritted teeth. What may seem like a delightful drive through rural New Zealand becomes a hard grind on two wheels, generally into a head wind. Every joyous minute spent freewheeling downhill is tempered by the expectation of the uphill slog around the corner.

Yesterday's short bike ride turned into such a series of upward and downward swoops.

Nowhere...with a café in its midst

We set off from Puponga mid-afternoon, leaving Bill to snooze under a tree, intent on reaching the top of the West Coast at Wharariki Beach. Despite the inevitable undulations and a ferocious full-face wind, we reached the trailhead for the walk to the beach. Temptation lay in our path, however. Earlier that day we had driven past the only two cafés known to exist west of Takaka. According to Google Maps, that is, and who am I to doubt its infinite wisdom? Both of these potentially delightful establishments were shut.

So you can imagine our joy, nay excitement, when we trundled up to The Archway Café, officially in the middle of nowhere (see map). But it has a Facebook page, of course, attesting to the vision of its owner. Coffee ensued.

The café offers "spiritful trees" and a "hamac" for napping in

On the return journey, we took a detour to the Pillar Point lighthouse, an upward trek that rewarded us with spectacular views of Farewell Spit and the top of the West Coast. The DOC sign promised an EASY mountain bike trail. Yeah, right. We eventually ditched the bikes in favour of walking unimpeded up the boulder-strewn track.

Pillar Point lighthouse itself was certainly no majestic sentinel of the seas.  The charmless rectangular box with an aluminium ladder bolted to its side looked more like a home handyman project on a $50 budget. Its outlook was worth a million dollars though (or 10 million if, heaven forbid, we were in Auckland).

Farewell Spit snakes away in the distance

Feeling virtuous, and with a tail wind for the return journey, we were ready to move on. My motorhome app pointed us in the direction of the Pupu Hydro Power Station near Takaka, where we could stay overnight in the carpark - for free. (We Grey Nomads LOVE that word 'free'.) Just up the valley from the better known and, in fact, world renowned, Waikoropupu Springs, this spot is a hidden gem. Literally, hidden.

This morning, we clambered up a steep zig zag track to the water race, followed this along a narrow boardwalk to the intake weir and then returned by a meandering access road to ground level. All up, it was a 90 minute loop, climbing and descending through spectacular native bush and alongside incredibly clear water.

The story of the restoration of this defunct little power station is testament to the commitment of a bunch of volunteers who took it over after it had been abandoned by the local power board in the 1980s. Thousands of borrowed dollars and man-hours later, it now contributes to the national grid. Here's the Wikipedia link, if you're interested.

The impetus to take a trip to Golden Bay was basically in response to feeling sorry for Bill, who had been sulking in his car park all winter. It didn't take long to load him up on Sunday morning and drive across the top of the South Island, so we were comfortably parked up at Totaranui, in the Abel Tasman national park, that evening. (And, yes, it's perfectly normal to anthropomorphise things with internal combustion engines. I miss you too, Larry.)

Totaranui from the headland walk

Not only is this one of the most beautiful beaches in New Zealand, but it must be one of the largest DOC campsites, with capacity for nearly 900 people. It's fully booked in peak season but felt like our own private estate this week.

The drive to Totaranui involves crossing the notorious Takaka hill and then an unsealed, steep and winding road into the bay. Undulating it is not. Our first stay here, in the 1990s, was memorable for the persistence of the weka population - and for our being under-prepared for a week without power or hot water. We all survived, though the access road was a challenge for one son, and it took only a couple of strong blokes to push-start our station wagon at the end of the week.

This time, we were entertained by cheeky pukeko, the drunken antics of kererū and the daily meanderings of a family of native Paradise shelducks. A fortnight earlier, a motorhome blogger that I follow reported that Mum and Dad were caring for four chicks. By this week, they were down to one baby, the others having fallen prey to weka and pukeko.

Precious only child!

Such are the harsh realities of life, even in Paradise.

Pupu Hydro walkway

On the Abel Tasman track to Awaroa

The day the big shiny thing came to town

The America's Cup win was a Big Thing for Picton.

Born and bred local sporting hero Joseph Sullivan was a cyclor/grinder on board ETNZ in Bermuda. After rising through secondary school rowing ranks to Maadi Cup, Joseph won gold at the London Olympics five years ago. He now has a street named after him in Picton. And the local sailing club, the Queen Charlotte Yacht Club, has a proud tradition of junior sailing successes. It's the little club that could. And still does.

So it was no great surprise that a campaign sprang up months ago to get the cup here. Bring on social media.  Numerous Facebook likes and insta hashtags later, the Auld Mug made its way to Picton on the Interislander ferry this week.

We joined the flotilla of small boats waiting just out of the harbour to help bring the cup to town. There was a choice. Two local boat companies were offering spaces on board for the occasion. One involved a glass of wine, the other didn't. I had a 50% chance of getting it right. Oh well.

To clarify, we were two 60-something women with a 5 year old and a 7 year old. I had warned his sister that Bruce would rather stand on melting tar than be involved in a flag-waving event celebrating the exploits of the rich and famous. And so it proved. We were just doing it for the kids, of course. And, yes, I may have had a silver fern flag in my hand...

As the ferry hove into view (I've always wanted to use that word in a sentence), it was impossible to miss the massively tall and shiny thing sitting casually on the handrail at the bow.

Whoever was steering the Kaitaki that night did a sterling job bringing her into the berth while avoiding the dozens of yachts, fizz boats, water taxis and launches alongside her, hooters blaring. Meanwhile, we disembarked and found ourselves a spot to wait for the street parade.

This was the best bit. Forget the fancy floats, blazered dignitaries and ticker tape. That's for big city folk. We got a pipe band,  marching girls, ranging from midgets to, er, masters in age, trucks and fire engines and a monster of a machine that had something to do with harvesting grapes. Then, after a longish wait, some blokes in Team NZ uniforms hove into view. Oops, sauntered around the corner.

How they did it elsewhere

And there was the America's Cup,  carried casually on foot along the length of High Street and into London Quay. Apparently, at the last minute, the plan to drive the Cup on the back of a ute was ditched in favour of walking with it. This took longer because, of course, people wanted to take photos of it, touch it even. Full disclosure, yes, I Touched The America's Cup. I've also kissed the Blarney Stone and stroked the standing stones of Stonehenge. I'm a tactile person, OK?

Joseph with the silverware. Photo credit: Marlborough Express

Sometimes, small towns get things just right. The night the America's Cup came to Picton was one of those times. This was a Kiwi celebration without glitz or hype. But with a proper sausage sizzle on the beach afterwards.  Thanks, #ETNZ, we loved every minute of it.

And who knows what local amenity will be renamed to mark the occasion? The Joseph Sullivan Town Square has a nice ring to it...

You've gotta love Picton on a fine day😎