Welcome to the land down under

 
November 23rd-26th

I sit next to a Japanese woman obsessively applying moisturiser to her face, hands and arms throughout the 3 hour flight from Christchurch to Melbourne. She is intent on using a whole tub, and when her own skin can absorb no more, she rubs the remaining cream in her husband’s hands. Find myself transfixed by the bizarre process.

My first day in Melbourne is equally odd. After three weeks of seeing more sheep than people, the crowded streets come as quite a shock. I’ve always thought of myself as a city chick, but perhaps I’m a country bumpkin after all. Just kidding! Melbourne is the fashion capital of Australia, and 48 hours later, I’ve bought a new summer wardrobe, had a pedicure and my hair blow dried - all’s well again.

Melbourne is an interesting city, but at first, I don’t find much of it attractive. The downtown towers are functional rather than aesthetically pleasing. There are enormous motorway road bridges, which obviously serve a purpose but looking good isn’t one of them. And the city also has a large working dock yard – where they invented the static cranes now used all over the world for unloading container ships. Again, not pretty. You pass all this on a 1 hour boat trip along the Yarra River from the city centre to Williamstown, the original settlement in 1837 and the spot where the river meets the sea in Hobson’s Bay. Despite the promise of attractive historic buildings here, I thought it was a bit of a dump, but I trudged past a large BAE Systems site to see the Timeball Tower – where a large stone ball used to drop from the top of the tower at 1pm each day, so that ships could set their chronometers before setting out across the ocean.

Back in the city centre, I shoot up the 92 storeys of the Skydeck in an ear-popping 30 seconds. This is the southern hemisphere’s highest viewing platform, not to be confused with the southern hemisphere’s highest tower, which Auckland claims (one of many small rivalries between the two countries – the most important being who created the Pavlova!) From this great height I could finally see the City’s green parks – all uptown of the Central Business District (CBD) and harbour areas – and taking a walk round them, they are indeed oases of calm. In Fitzroy gardens, I stumbled across “the oldest building in Australia” – which is actually Captain Cook’s cottage, built in Yorkshire in the 1700s and re-erected here in 1934! The Japanese tourists loved it. They also loved the conservatory in the same park – filled with hydrangeas and a central water feature, and obviously a setting for many wedding photographs.

Once I get used to the pace of life again, Melbourne scores highly for the city vibe. The grid system makes it easy to get around the central area on foot, and there are many buses and trams (some free) to take you further afield. The shopping is great – in particular the attractive arcades and laneways, which do meander through late 19th and early 20th century buildings. If you get tired, there are many, many cafes, restaurants and bars to while away some time, all perfect for people watching. Opposite the old brick built Flinders Street station, Federation Square – surrounded by abstract, glass fronted arts centre buildings – is a popular gathering place. A sign says “poetry is the space between silence” – in the early evening the silence is broken both by the chatter coming from the bars and from the arty cartoons projected onto a 42-sheet wall.

Suitably revived, I walk across CBD to Wednesday’s Victoria night market. By day the old market sells fresh food. But each Wednesday evening leading up to Christmas it’s transformed into Melbourne’s version of Camden crossed with Borough markets. I wander through the clothes, jewellery, and massage stalls, sample the health giving properties of the local herbal teas, and finally settle for a tasty kangaroo burger and a bottle of Boag’s blonde, a low-carb beer that can only be good for you.

Melbourne was – and remains – the gateway to many of the country’s immigrants. Their stories are well told in the fascinating Museum of Immigration. The original POMs (prisoners of the motherland) have been far exceeded by un-enforced migrants from the UK, Germany, Italy, Croatia, Greece, Cyprus, China, and increasingly from other SE Asian countries, as well as those seeking refuge from conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. 1 in 4 Australians were born overseas. As someone who remembers school friends leaving as £10 POMS, I particularly enjoy the home movie footage of families travelling from England by sea in the 60s and 70s. And the exhibits don’t forget other immigrants – some less welcome than others – including rats – reason for immigration “we go anywhere we can”; cockroaches “we eat anything we can”; and cats “looking for fresh hunting opportunities, and needed to amuse humans.”

I’ve joked about the lack of history and heritage, but I find it truly refreshing how new many things seem on this trip. In different ways, both New Zealand and Australia are immediately striking for their cleanness, freshness and brightness. The very lack of history is a large part of the appeal.

Who's a pretty boy?

 
November 22nd & 23rd

Our final stop in Kaikoura brings another exotic creature. Tonight’s cosy B&B is called the Admiral Creighton – and Creighton the cockatoo seemed to take a shine to me. We tried to add to his repertoire of phrases, so he may well greet the next guests in a mix of London, Brooklyn and Queensland accents. On our final morning, we briefly check out the seal colonies off the beach – the gash on my leg means I can’t squeeze into a 7mm wetsuit and get in the freezing water – shame(!) - but you can see plenty from the beach. Once again there are lots of new borns on show; it’s spring here, after all. Sadly there is not time to hop in a boat and go whale watching – but at least the boats only go to view them now. When I visited the maritime museum in Auckland, I was horrified to see relatively recent footage of whalers in action, including a gruesome kill using a rocket propelled harpoon.

Then it’s back to Christchurch, where I say goodbye to my companions for the last two weeks, and spend my final 24 hours in New Zealand. Known as the Garden City, Christchurch has a very English feel – with many parks and green spaces, and punting on the River Avon which runs through the town centre. The B&B I stay in, a pretty clapboard house built in the early 1900s, has a garden full of large, gorgeously scented roses, probably brought over from England originally, just as the huge weeping willow trees that line the river were. I’m told that everything grows more quickly in NZ as it is so near the ozone hole over Antarctica. I don’t know if that’s true, but plants here definitely seem bigger.

The B&B is next to Christchurch Art Gallery, a striking modern building that houses an ever-changing series of exhibitions of work by NZ artists. Two of those I chanced upon were little gems. The first was a series of large scale photographs of the storage facilities at galleries and museums throughout NZ. I particularly liked the natural history stores, with their bizarre groupings of stuffed birds and beasts – some standing, others knocked over, still others lying corpse like in drawers. And the photograph of a moving image library, that inexplicably had a car bonnet and radiator grill nestled amongst the cans of film.

In another gallery, I sat on the floor and watched a film loop of the rippling blue water of one of NZ’s many lakes, listening to Gregorian chanting. It was strangely hypnotic and after a few minutes you start to see the black and white surface ripples as figures dancing over the lake. After seeing so many lakes, rivers, lagoons, fjords, sounds and seas in this country, I really enjoyed this simple, contemplative piece, which captures the essence of New Zealand.

Downhill diva

 
November 19th-22st

After spending 10 days together it feels strange that our intrepid group is splitting into hikers and bikers for two nights. We bikers wave a smug farewell to our hiker comrades at St Arnaud – the gateway to Nelson Lakes, where they will spend a couple of days trudging up and down yet more hills with heavy packs on their backs, and staying in very basic huts with no showers and the infamous long drop loos. The bikers travel on to the beautiful Marlborough Sound, where we will spend a day and a half cycling Queen Charlotte Track. Although the heavily wooded track is primarily for hikers, it is also a fantastic single track mountain bike route – one of the most famous in the world, and certainly one of the most beautiful. Winding through forested cliffs, to clearings along the ridge, it overlooks Marlborough Sounds – a complex coastline of drowned valleys that could well have been designed by Slartibartfast – and was used by Captain Cook and Maori traders for shelter and plentiful food.

We found ourselves staying at a boutique B&B, complete with outdoor Jacuzzi, which we definitely need to ease our aching limbs after a 30km off-road cycle on day two. Even better, our hostess Linda, a former baker, is a fantastic cook and while our hiking comrades are on rations – they have to carry anything they plan to cook on their trip – we eat like kings.

For expert mountain bikers, the track is not particularly technical. But I’m not an expert mountain biker, and have an irrational fear of narrow tracks, particularly hilly ones covered in tree roots, rocks and muddy puddles that loop round cliffs with sheer drops to the sea. I may not be an expert, but my friend Suzi is – so I remembered her advice and did the entire track looking at my front wheel rather than the view. And guess what, it was fun! Though I still managed to fall off in a gully and am now sporting the mother of all bruises on the inside of my knee, and a gash that should probably have been stitched on the back of my leg. Thankfully we had a doctor and a midwife on the trip to patch me up. Think I should stick to the road in future.

The following day I took it easy in the van as we drove through the Marlborough wine region, renowned for its sauvignon blancs. All the vineyards are planted in a dried up river valley, which apparently provides ideal conditions for them. Looking at the map is like reading the names on a wine list, so I guess it must be. We met up with the hikers at Forrest, one of the less well-known vineyards, and celebrated the end of our adventure with an afternoon of wine tasting.

Food glorious food

 
November 18th

Our journey up the west coast continued, with a brief stop in Hokatiki – famous for NZ Greenstone (or Jade) where we did a little window shopping and had lunch on the beach. I opted to try out a NZ pie – they are famed for them, apparently - a tasty chicken satay number.

This is another gold rush area, and the largest NZ nugget was found in nearby Westport. But it seems the gold prospectors here are not too enterprising – the fist sized nugget was used as a door stop in the local pub for a few years, then someone had the bright idea of giving it to the Queen. Bad idea. She had it melted down and put into a tea set.

At Punakaiki we took a look at the famous pancake rocks – which really do look like layers of black pancakes. No-one knows why they have this appearance, but geologists say they were pushed up out of the sea.

It had been a pretty staid morning by Active New Zealand standards, so another uphill hike was in order – but first we had to link arms and cross the fast-flowing Punakaiki River… in our walking boots. I tried rolling my trousers up above my knees, but they still got wet. Fortunately our socks acted like mini-wetsuits keeping our feet warm in our boots. The first half of the hike was up over a muddy pass, through a subtropical forest with palm trees mixed with tree ferns and beech trees, then down the other side to the Porari River, where we encountered our first weka – another of NZ’s flightless birds. The final section of the hike was flat, and could have been tackled by mum’s in flip flops, pushing prams. But my poor old boots, which I bought years ago to do the Inca Train and which had been patched up by a very nice man at Timpsons in Twickenham before this trip – had finally had it. I left them in the van for out guides to tie them to one of the boot fences we had passed earlier in our journey. A fitting tribute – to the boots and this trip.

Back in Punakaiki we had our second culinary treat of the day – FISH AND CHIPS! Not sure the American contingent new what to make of it, as they smothered theirs with tomato sauce, but the Brits agreed these were far better than those you get at home – fresher fish and a lighter batter. De-lic-ious!

A day at the beach

 
November 17th

We woke to bright blue skies with no sign of yesterday’s clouds and the joyous news that there wasn’t a bus ride today – we were spending the day at the beach! Okarito was the first NZ landfall spotted by a European, Abel Tasman, in 1642. Today it is a tiny settlement, with a permanent population of 35 – including Keri Hulme, the author of The Bone People, which is set here, and who doesn’t much like visitors. Unlike Richard, the town’s very hospitable mayor, who also runs the local coffee shop, kayak rental shop and nature tours, including kiwi-watching. Sadly we didn’t see the shy national bird, but Okarito Lagoon is a wildlife haven. Right now the lagoon is closed off from the sea by a sand spit and the main channel is relatively deep, with no mud flats emerging. Several tributaries branch off this channel into the surrounding forest, narrowing into creeks that have you performing 20 point turns or backing out. As you could stand up in most of the water, we were kitted up in our kayaks and sent out into the lagoon with only a map to guide us. With no instructor to make up for my paddling shortcomings, I paired up with Wendy, my very fit roommate, and suggested she also did the steering. This may have been a mistake, as we zig-zagged our way along the lagoon, and ended up in at least three overhanging bushes, but I suspect I would have done a lot worse. Drifting along another world reflected back at us in the mirror-like creeks. We could hear all manner of birdsong in the trees, but our main sightings were black swans, with signets, and the rare white heron – only 150 in the whole of New Zealand.

After 10km of paddling, it was time for lunch and the Trig Walk - steep and rocky, not one for prams or flip-flops – to a magnificent viewing point for the lagoon, and then a leisurely stroll back along the stone and driftwood strewn beach. Days don’t come much better than this.

Glacier blues

 
November 16th

By now we were on the western side of the Southern Alps, and as we headed out of Makarora, we soon hit the coast road and our first sight of the Tasman Sea – which under a cloudy grey sky looked just like the North Sea. The Franz Joseph Glacier was our main destination today, and I was looking forward to another helicopter ride, this time to the top of the glacier for an opportunity to hike on the icefield. Both the Franz Joseph and nearby Fox glaciers are currently growing by some 50m a year due to high snowfall in the area. But with the top of the mountain masked by heavy cloud, all helicopters were grounded.

The alternative was a tiring four hour technical hike up and down – hikes in NZ are never flat – a steep, rough track that wound its way through a dense forest of wet, moss-covered trees, ferns and craggy rocks. In its own way, this was quite beautiful – and I fully expected elves, goblins and orks to appear from the tangled undergrowth – but it wasn’t the fabulous white wilderness I was hoping to be in. In fact, there were just three view points through the greenery, the first overlooking glacial meltwater flowing out to the sea, and the second two – Rata Point and Christmas Lookout – overlooking the glacier itself. But with much of the mountain shrouded in cloud, I didn’t even see the snowy, white glacier to its best advantage. My only real disappointment of the trip. We consoled ourselves with cold beers and hot potato wedges in Franz Joseph village before driving to our overnight stop. This turned out to be the coolest beach house at Okarito Lagoon – with a lovely open plan living room, a cosy log stove and a huge dining table with the two biggest dining chairs I’ve ever seen. Like Alice through the Looking Glass, they made anyone who sat in them seem tiny.

Mums with prams

 
November 15th

By Sunday lunchtime, Jean was calling and it was time to burn off a few more calories. We headed out of town via Arrowtown and the Shotover River, the centre of the shortlived 19th century gold rush. Arrowtown is smaller than Queenstown, and its quaint buildings reflect its history - Victorian England meets the wild west. The road took us over the Cardrona Pass, with a great viewpoint, and towards the skifields of Coronet Peak and then onto Wanuka, where we stopped to hike/walk./stroll up to another viewpoint overlooking Iron Mountain.

In order to decide if we need to get our hiking boots on, the group has taken to asking our guides what type of walk we are about to encounter. Their answers have to be taken with a large pinch of salt. We have already learned that “I’ve done it in flip-flops” means it’s really steep but there aren’t too many rocks to scramble over. Today’s code, “mums with prams run up here”, actually meant it’s dry, dusty, windy and really steep, but it’s mostly gravel, with just the odd rough bit. And for the record, I didn’t see a single baby buggy on the track. We did, however, have a fantastic view of completely different scenery, with green fields and poplar trees in foreground surrounding an impossibly blue lake, with mountains behind. School field trips here would clearly show how glacial valleys are formed.

Our final destination today was Makarora – population 65 – staying at the Wilderness Resort, code for a few draughty A-frame chalets, and a pub that closed on Sundays. They are advertising for investors – but not sure if this one would make it through the Dragon’s Den.