Headed to New Zealand we stop for a few days in Australia’s sunny capital of Brisbane. Strolling to artsy South Bank through the bougainvillea-smothered steel arcs of the ‘Grand Arbour’, we come to the Collective Markets beneath a steel cable dangling a sculpture of a bare-footed man painted white from top hat to toes and sitting atop a unicycle. It’s a great spot for unique gifts, funky fashion lots of food treats; and makes for a good start to our stay in ‘Brissy’.
Our second morning is most atypical, as Christine and I are subjected to a both a breathalyzer test and full body scan at 8:30 in the morning! Nope, not criminal related, just criminally insane! With the breathalyzer cleared we must prove we’re carrying absolutely nothing; including a wallet, watch, coins, camera, phone, passport etc.. Finally, we are forced to don a one-piece jumpsuit before facing the beast before us.
Spanning Brisbane River between Fortitude Valley and Kangaroo Point is the famous Storey Bridge; 13,600 tons of steel held together with 1.25 million steel rivets. At 3514’ long and 262’ high it is one of only three bridge climbs in the world, and for us today’s challenge!
This venture is Christine’s idea, but sweating like a snowman in August I follow her up the metal monster’s 1,088 stairs despite every primeval instinct in my body telling me not to. Hesitantly making it to the top, a puzzled pelican glide past likely questioning what normal sidewalk shufflers are doing way up here in its airspace. This is hardly surprising, as right now I’m asking myself the same damn question!
My fear of heights has my mind so focused on getting safely down that I cannot appreciate the 360 degree views nearly as much as Christine. Truth be told, I’m just thankful for a good bowel movement earlier this morning, as it prevents a really crappy commute for a mass of morning traffic zipping along several hundred feet below us!
Today the land ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’ calling and we fly to Christchurch New Zealand. Knowing full well this striking country should come with a pause button, we rent a car at the airport and drive to the Arthur’s Pass National Park for a stop at the quirky Otira Stagecoach Hotel.
Built in 1865, the former stagecoach stopover has an eclectic interior with everything from old western paraphernalia to pool-playing possums. Outside, a Lord of the Rings theme is going on with a grimacing Gollum creepily perched atop the roof and dangling his golden ring. Now, isn’t that just ‘Precious’?
After a bush hike to Devil’s Punchbowl we drive Greymouth and spend the night. Continuing to Franz Joseph Village, our planned treks have disappointingly been sabotaged by heavy rains badly damaging the unstable area. Two days later, with the sky still leaking like a political document, we push further south to the pleasant town of Wanaka.
Walking along the shore of Wanaka Lake we come to one of the most photographed trees in the world. The iconic 100-year old ‘Wanaka Tree’ began its life back in the early 1900’s when a sheep keeper chopped a branch off a willow tree and plugged it into the lake’s shallows as part of a fence to restrain his herd.
Not easily daunted, the determined branch apparently was uninterested in life as simply a fence post. Showing a tree-mendous will to live the little post marooned out in the lake put down roots and slowly grew into a stunning phenomenon that now has the appearance of a gorgeous calendar page.
Today’s strategy is to engage our inner mountain goat on a 16 km hike with 5,177 feet of breath-robbing vertical. At the summit of Roy’s Peak we go from ‘grin ‘n’ bear’ to ‘stop ‘n’ stare’ with stunning views for days! Now comes the hard part. Uphill hurts, but downhill destroys. The unrelenting pounding of our toes has turned the outing into a hobble-fest by the time we reach the bottom and our catastrophic calves are twitching like Medusa’s hair net. Nonetheless, we have truly adored our delightful four days in Wanaka.
Driving through the village of Cardrona we spy the rather titillating sight of an immense collection of feminine lingerie dangling from a roadside fence. According to rumor, years ago a group of women got pretty sloshed at the Cardrona Hotel and decided to shed their brassieres and hang them on the fence in honor of a friend with breast cancer.
As news of the ‘Bra Fence’ spread it inspired many other women to unhook and leave behind their own flopper-stoppers. Now fluttering proudly in the breeze, the bosom-buddies hang out together on this humble Kiwi fence in an unde-niable show of ‘support’ for the cause!
Next up is tackling Crown Range Road. Mimicking a seismograph registering an earthquake we zigzag up to the summit the highest main road in New Zealand. Once over the mountain and through Queenstown, the road starts to live up to its accolade as one of the most beautiful drives in the world, with Mother Nature displaying New Zealand’s natural beauty in the raw.
After a bushwalk to sapphire-coloured Bob’s Cove we stop and spend the next four days in the itty-bitty village of Glenorchy on Lake Wakatipu. Outside our cabin, sleek horses busily consume a grassy field with a majestic mountain-scape depicting Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy as a backdrop.
Meandering a path through a peaceful lagoon near Glenorchy’s iconic ‘Little Red Shed’, the ‘connoisseur of catastrophe’ clumsily triggers a possum trap. In another one for the blooper reel, the snap of the trap causes me to leap into the air like a salmon on amphetamines; proving that levitation is indeed possible by a human in his seventh decade! What can I say – it’s a gift!
Waiting in the car at Routeburn Track and hoping for the sky to dry, we are joined by several Kea Parrots. Since Christine is the one with a raincoat she gets out for a photo, and surprisingly becomes involved in a game of ‘kick the can’ with one of the impish parrots known as the ‘Clowns of the Snowline’. Discovering a tin can in the bush, one of the birds drags it over to her wanting to play, and as she kicks the can away the bird repeatedly hops after it and rolls it back to her feet like a dog fetching a stick!
With an unrelenting rain drumming like a Buddy Rich solo we opt to pull the plug on our hike, knowing that hiking for hours with no rain gear is not going to end well given my susceptibility to hypothermia. On the circuitous drive back we encounter a washed out section of gravel road and have stop and fill a small section with rocks up to a level where we can safely bully the car across.
Next stop is Twizel, a teeny rumor of a town where the most entertaining feature seems to be a fish-and-chip shop serving the ‘long-snouted elephant fish’. Seeking something a wee bit more exciting, we drive alongside the turquoise toned Lake Pukakit, reeling in the glaciated beauty of Mount Cook National Park with every mile.
Despite a teeth-rattling wind trying to shove us off a boardwalk on Hooker Lake Tract we finally reach the base of Mt. Cook. The floating glacial ice in the lake adds a touch of frigid beauty to the view of NZ’s tallest peak, busy playing hide and seek with the swirling clouds.
With the mornings and nights a shivery affair up here in Alpine Country we are grateful for our Merino wool sweaters and gloves. NZ has over three million of the curly-horned Merino Sheep and 90% reside here on the south island as they’;re the only sheep resilient enough to handle the bitter cold.
Browsing in the shops we smirk at an interesting item on display called a ‘willy-warmer’. Made of insulated possum fur it is meant to guard one’s manhood, and frankly with the brutal arctic air, I’m giving serious consideration to becoming a customer!
Oamaru’s intriguing Steampunk HQ Museum promotes recycling to create mind boggling versions of retro-futuristic art forms with a wicked sense of humor. Although the museum is absolutely fascinating, our main purpose in Oamaru is to investigate another type of art about an hour and a half south; the extraordinary Moeraki Boulders of Koekohe Beach.
Formed in thick sea sediment about 60 million years ago, the massive spherical wonders scattered along the beach may have some questioning if they are either alien pods or dinosaur eggs! Due to erosion over the passage of time, the ravishing round rocks embedded in the cliffs occasionally birth themselves and roll down to find a new home on the sandy shore.
Wrapping up our remaining couple of days in ‘Windy Wellington’, we’re molested by a cold mean wind seemingly keen to prepare us for home; which has just endured the second coldest February on record with 23 days below zero! Now don’t get me wrong, we believe Canada to be an absolutely wonderful country to call home; unless of course it happens to be winter time, when it’s bloody cold enough to chip a tooth on our soup!
Mark Colegrave 2019