From Australia’s sunny capital of Brisbane we stroll to artsy South Bank; the cultural heart of ‘Brissy’. Tunneling through Grand Arbor’s 443 steel arcs smothered in tumbling bougainvillea, it feels like we’re inside the rib cage of a Pepto Bismol colored prehistoric serpent; and at the market we find ourselves below a fiberglass sculpture of a bare-footed man in a top hat balancing from a high wire on a unicycle.
Most atypically today, Christine and I incur both a breathalyzer test and full body scan at 8:30 in the morning! Nope, nothing criminal, unless of course you consider criminally insane! Once determined that we have not consumed alcohol, nor carrying absolutely anything with us including watches, passports, or wallets, we are enveloped inside one-piece jumpsuits to face the beast before us.
Spanning Brisbane River between Fortitude Valley and Kangaroo Point is the famous Storey Bridge; 3514’ long, 262’ high, and 13,600 tons of steel held together by 1.25 million steel rivets! The magnificent bridge is one of only three bridge climbs in the world, and for us, today’s challenge!
This venture is Christine’s idea, but not wanting the shame of chickening out, I follow her up the metal monster’s 1,088 stairs, despite every primeval instinct in my body telling me not to. At the top a puzzled pelican glides past, likely questioning what normal sidewalk shufflers are doing way up here in its airspace. This is hardly surprising as 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 surely prevents what could be a really crappy commute for morning traffic several hundred feet below! One of these days I must get some counseling to see why I engage in such adrenaline-filled situations.
With the land ‘Land of the Long White Cloud’ calling we move on to Christchurch New Zealand. We quickly rent a car, knowing full well this striking country should come with a pause button, and our first stop is in the heart of Arthur’s Pass National Park at the quirky Otira Stagecoach Hotel.
Built in 1865, the former stagecoach stopover has an eclectic interior ranging from western paraphernalia to pool-playing possums. Outside there is a Lord of the Rings theme 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 spend the night in Greymouth then travel to Franz Joseph Village, where unfortunately, a planned trek has 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 delightful town of Wanaka.
Stretching our legs with a walk on the shore of Wanaka Lake we come to possibly the most photographed tree in the world; the iconic 100-year old ‘Wanaka Tree’. In the early 1900’s it began its life when a sheep keeper chopped a branch off a willow tree and plugged in the 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, and showing a tree-mendous will to live, put down roots. Slowly the little post marooned out in the lake grew into the stunning phenomenon that now has the appearance of a gorgeous calendar page.
Today’s plan is to engage our inner mountain goat on a challenging 16 km hike with 5,177 feet of vertical. Zigzagging up breath-robbing slopes to the summit of Roy’s Peak we go from “grin ‘n’ bear” to “stop ‘n’ stare”, taking in the massive views we’ve worked so hard to attain. Now comes the hard part. Uphill hurts but downhill destroys. Our descent the unrelenting pounding of our toes has turned the outing into a hobble-fest and our catastrophic calves are twitching like Medusa’s hair net. Nonetheless, we have absolutely loved our four days spent 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 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; and 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!
The Crown Range Road, the highest main road in New Zealand, mimics a seismograph registering an earthquake; but over the mountain and past Queenstown, lives up to its accolade as one of the most beautiful drives in the world with Mother Nature presenting New Zealand’s natural beauty in the raw.
After a bushwalk to the turquoise-toned Bob’s Cove we drive to the itty-bitty village of Glenorchy on Lake Wakatipu. Our cabin for the next few days has sleek horses consuming a grassy field next door, along with views of a majestic mountain-scape famously depicted as Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
Meandering a track 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, I 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 hoping for the sky to dry, we’re joined by several Kea Parrots. Since well-prepared Christine is the only one with a raincoat, she gets out for a photo, and 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 Christine wanting to play, and as she kicks the can away the bird repeatedly hops after it, rolling it back to her feet like a dog fetching a stick!
With unrelenting rain ruining our mind by drumming like a Buddy Rich solo we opt to pull the plug on our hike, knowing that 3-4 hours with no rain gear is not going to end well for me given my susceptibility to hypothermia. During the circuitous drive back we encounter a washed out section of gravel road and stop to fill it with rocks up to a level where we can safely bully the car across.
Next layover is Twizel; a teeny town that’s most entertaining feature seems to be a fish and chip shop serving the ‘long-snouted elephant fish’. Seeking something more exciting we drive alongside turquoise Lake Pukakit, with the glaciated beauty of Mount Cook National Park getting reeled in with every mile.
Despite a teeth-rattling wind trying to shove us off a boardwalk on Hooker Lake Tract we make it to Hooker Lake at the base of Mt. Cook, where floating glacial ice adds a touch of frigid beauty to NZ’s tallest peaks playing hide and seek with the swirling clouds.
With the mornings and nights a shivery affair up here in Alpine Country we’re grateful for our Merino wool sweaters and gloves. NZ has over three million of the curly-horned Merino Sheep, and 90% reside right here on the south island as it is the only sheep resilient enough to handle the bitter cold.
Looking around in the shops we smirk at an interesting item called a ‘willy-warmer’. Meant to guard one’s manhood it is made of insulated possum fur, and frankly with all the arctic air up here, I’m giving serious consideration to becoming a customer!
Oamaru’s intriguing Steampunk HQ Museum combines elements of the past and future to create mind boggling versions of industrial art with a wicked sense of humour. However, we are here to investigate Koekohe Beach and its fascinating and almost perfectly round Moeraki Boulders.
The spherical beauties scattered along the beach were formed in thick sea sediment around 60 million years ago, and their surrealism has many questioning if they might be alien pods or dinosaur eggs! Due to erosion over the passage of time the ravishing round rocks occasionally birth themselves from the clay banks and roll down to find a new home on the sandy shore of the magical looking beach.
Wrapping up the last couple of days of our stay in ‘Windy Wellington’ on the north island, a molesting icy wind seems keen to prepare us for our return home, which has just endured the second coldest February on record with 23 days below zero and the most snow since 1941!
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 in winter time when it’s bloody cold enough to chip a tooth on our soup!
Mark Colegrave 2019