Author Mr A
Location: The Bay of Plenty, New Zealand
30 December – It was the day before New Year’s Eve and we headed out into the hills to have morning tea with our friends’ parents, on their kiwi fruit orchard. No kiwi involved incedentally, just lots of childhood stories about David and his siblings, and a tour of the house, accompanied by delicious scones and jam.
After a couple of hours of fine hospitality we farewelled Pat and Bill and headed off down to the Wairoa River. Initially we had thought we could cruise on down on our packrafts from the upper reaches, but Bill had advised us of flaws in our plan – firstly, the river is tidal, so we would be starting against the water, and secondly, its about 14km – about three times as far as we usually paddle in our inflatable packrafts.
Instead we set off from near the coast and cruised on up with the tide, enjoying the singing skylarks and the swooping swamp harriers over the waters’ edge. Just a short 4km paddle was all we needed, escaping the noise of the highway and relishing being close to nature.
31 December – Before we knew it, the end of 2018 was upon us, and we decided to head up into the hills behind our base at Omokoroa for a wander through Puketoki Reserve, a stunning little native forest haven, saved from the saw in 1925. Catherine of course captured some lovely memories for us to share.
1 January 2019 – Happy New Year! After a relatively quiet (for us) New Year’s Eve we were up for some paddling out on the glorious Bay of Plenty. Catherine’s dad offered to give us a lift to a Pahoia Domain beach, a couple of bays north of us, from which we then paddled back to his house.
Well, what a start to the the year! It was an awesome paddle. Our packrafts were inflated quick smart and we launched into the bath warm shallow water.
We are so delighted with these little boats, and pleased we changed them over to these new models from Kokopelli. Much smaller packed size means easier to carry around, and a narrower beam makes them a little quicker – well relatively – we are aren’t going to break any paddling records, but thats not our intention. We just dawdled along checking out the incredible scenery.
This grand mansion came into view. Wow….but are the owners happy?!
2 January – This morning we packed up the car and set off with a reasonably vague plan to explore over four or five days parts of the North Island we haven’t made it to on previous trips. Our destination today was inland and over the rugged range that runs down the east coast of the Bay of Plenty to the small town of Cambridge.
We had read about the ‘Te Awa River Ride’, a cycle route following the mighty Waikato river, with the most scenic section being between Cambridge and Lake Karapiro, where the river has been dammed.
We hired bikes from the local information centre and set off on the “river ride”. Only one thing missing – the river. After riding through the town, with mostly no bike lanes, we roads along a long straight path by the side of a main road for 90% of the ride, finally arriving at the river.
The picture of the ride that appears in all the marketing literature is actually the only really scenic 200 metre section on the whole trip (28km return!)!
Just in case you had read like me that “Cambridge is the cycling centre of New Zealand” and were panning to come – I would reconsider.
It ended up at a very cycle unfriendly road with cars racing past on narrow lanes…we turned back!We treated ourselves to dinner out at the local Indian restaurant which helped Cambridge to redeem its reputation somewhat.
Onwards tomorrow to explore new locations. We do love a good road trip!
Mr A and I drove into sleepy Canowindra to send off the last of our eBay sales, a couple of Christmas gifts to the UK, and return our tyre-pressure monitoring kit back to the factory for testing. Despite fully reinstalling the monitors from scratch in the morning, they still failed to show all our wheels on the system.
We farewelled Jo and Alan and drove to our next destination, Bathurst. There we stopped the night with friend David and his two boys, Felix and Rory, enjoying steak and salad and a good night’s sleep. This is where the Cruiser will spend the next few weeks while we are in New Zealand.
The afternoon was spent doing a little Christmas shopping and a visit to my ENT surgeon (iSGS followers – I had my first awake steroid injection into my stenosis!).
Jenny and David had invited a bunch of their friends over for Christmas drinks and nibbles in the evening, so Mr A and I helped prepare the apartment for visitors, starting with quality testing the beverages – a glass of French Champagne before the guests arrived.
A fun evening proceeded – delicious food and drink accompanied by much laughter and interesting conversations. Fabulous!
We decided to miss the hairpin bends of the Kangaroo Valley route, and headed across the top of Moreton National Park via the Nerriga road. The small rural centre of Crookwell was our destination, and a council run caravan park that I saw had good reviews… on arrival that we felt the good reputation was completely justified. What a spotless little place!
What a top bloke. Again we were reminded of why we love travelling in the country amongst these genuinely friendly folk.
This is the first time we have seen Jo and Alan’s new place. Alan was a boss of mine in our previous lives in the IT industry, and he and his wife (a former maternity nurse) have reinvented themselves as farmers. How about that for nerve! Selling their fabulous, architect designed house in Berry they purchased this 258 acre property (previously a famous horse stud) earlier this year, and are now living in the stables. They have already got one cash producing crop of lucerne under their belt and are breeding pedigree goats.
Why would they do this, you might ask? The subject of many a conversation over a good red last night. Basically neither were ready to hang their respective hats up quite yet. Jo got interested in goats whilst at Berry and had real success with breeding and showing them. Alan has the ability, it seems, to turn his hands and brain to solve any challenge.
When you see people starting new phases of their lives like this, you are reminded that we are only limited by our ambition and courage. We are lucky enough in Australia to have so much opportunity to explore what we are capable of, and often the means to do so.
The weather didn’t stop us, and we enjoyed the hike with the rain and wind at our backs, with the shower stopping in time for our return route.
We enjoyed a great evening with Barb and Omar, a delicious chicken hotpot and some fine wine of course, before retiring to our bed up on the hill, lulled to sleep by a chorus of croaking frogs. Very relaxing indeed!
We had a delicious breakfast in Berry with Barb, Omar and another friend, Joanne who happened to be in town, before taking our kayak down to Broughton Creek and launching it for a paddle. After all our hard work the past few weeks, this was finally us reaping our reward, and the morning was perfect for it.
Spring has truly sprung here, and the riverside was lined with young calves, staring in shock at this 7+ metre giant boat cruising past. There was not a breath of wind, providing us with some amazing mirror-like reflections.
We paddled just over 9km, before returning for hot showers and a relaxing afternoon. It’s been a while since we’ve been allowed such luxury!
Super smart and famous for wearing crazy shirts, Dr Karl appears on an Australian radio show on Thursday mornings, TripleJ. This program condenses all his segments within that hour in to a 30 minute podcast, answering callers’ bizarre science-related questions.
We have to admit we were somewhat latecomers to this one, but we have binged on it ever since! Richard Fidler and Sarah Kanowski interview some absolutely fascinating people about their lives. Often it is a particular event or series of events covered, frequently linked to a book the interviewee has just launched.
An academic from Canada, Malcolm Gladwell offers fabulous insight into events and situations from the past, often recent history. Much of it is USA focused (we skipped past a couple of the overly basketball or American football based ones), but also touches on relevant global events, such as Toyota’s recall of cars after a failure of brakes in 2006, or the treatment of female politicians. He revisits events, shedding new light and often turning stories completely on their head.
From the New York Times, this was absolutely fascinating, crossing the lines between journalism and documentary. We often listened to two or three episodes in succession (there are 10 in total), following the investigations of a brave journalist looking into the activities of ISIS.
This podcast we left towards the end of our day, for that final hour of our journey where we needed less education and more entertainment. Essentially this is a bunch of three friends reading out (and critiquing) a chapter of a very bad porn ‘novel’.