Author, ca. 1976
The first trip to New Zealand was my first trip overseas at all, and my first flight. In those days passports were not necessary for travelling across the ditch (even if it meant it was a little tricky getting through the international airport that Tullamarine surely already was). From Tuesday, December 10, 1974 to Friday, January 31, 1975, starting in Christchurch we completed an almost figure-of-eight of the two islands.
Taking the road down south, first to Kurow and then to Dunedin we quickly reached Invercargill and crossed the Foveaux Strait for a couple of days on Stewart Island, including an ambitious tramp that only got as far as Big Bungaree. Back on the mainland we spent Christmas at Manapouri, taking in a couple of very touristy cruises in the Doubtful and Milford Sounds and embarking on another, less ambitious hike to Hope Arm and actually reaching the summit of the Monument. New Year’s Eve was celebrated in Queenstown. Then it was up the west coast, past the Pancake Rocks (Punakaiki) and across to Picton where we spent a few days at the Blackwood Bay “boatel”, an isolated near paradise.
Across to the North Island, we took the tractor ride to the gannets at Cape Kidnappers and then stayed about a week near and in Rotorua for the thermal attractions, first in Golden Springs, then in Rotorua itself. Then it was to the far north via Auckland and Whangarei to Paihia.
Then one final slog all the way through to Waitomo to see the caves and then past Mt Egmont to Stratford, with one stop just before Wellington and one more in Lower Hutt before returning to Melbourne in the evening.
My diary records every day where we went and what we did, and the photos that I took, but which are no longer in my possession. Apart from that there are only memories, and what more than a quarter of a century could do to memories I could only test on the next journey, which was for a long time uncertain when, if at all.
Author, ca. 1976
There were the motorcamps; Dunedin being a sand dune away from a surf beach; and at Greymouth the beach was only a short walk away. The expanse of Manapouri, and the bamboo, the swimming pool and the spout baths at Golden Springs, the canopied river at Paihia. The thermal park (which one?) whose track lead through a forest down a valley to the east. And somewhere up north there has been an intense fit of homesickness, when after being away from them for so long a plantation of light-soaked eucalypts replaced the cool darkness of the Southern beech forests.
Hope Arm, first visited December 26, 1974; this photo: February 26, 2009
Of course, there would be plenty of contamination of the old memories with newer images, particularly of the very touristy spots; but our lives change, changing our memories imperceptibly. But this was a lesson I was yet to learn.