Bad moon rising

Friday, 31/08/2012 - 77 A.D. 

I slept in `til ten past nine this morning. Apparently Tim’s alarm went off and I mumbled something along the lines of, “I haven’t had my fill.” So he left me to it and I have no memory of it. I think that boy’s getting worried about me.

We got up to find that the power was out in all of the building. It had been that way since quarter to nine and the receptionist said that it’s never happened in the six months she’s been there. This didn’t affect the cornflakes but the kettle was only lukewarm, and consequently so was the coffee. Oh well, I suppose it’s good practice for Asia! 

Today was supposed to be a day of just chilling and getting organised for what was to come. The bites on my legs have turned deep red and gigantic. I left the building with dual protection of factor 30 suncream and jungle formula insect repellent – let’s hope the two don’t work against each other!

It was time to welcome back our old nemesis…

Hang on a sec, not that one...I meant this one...

Yes, there was to be lots more fun and games with the folks at Greyhound! But not so, according to Geoff, who was the chap behind the counter. Apparently Greyhound Australia is a fantastic company that does exactly what it says on the tin. Geoff knew what we were talking about when we mentioned the American firm – “Oh yeah, I did Texas to Louisiana with them!” Texas to Louisiana? Puh! We did NYC to LA via Hicksville and the rest! If I was to write a book on the trials and tribulations of travelling by bus in the US, Geoff could maybe contribute a paragraph. Still, he was a top bloke and he got us a good deal on a ticket from Cairns to Melbourne – we can make as many stops as we like along the east coast, but our route can’t go back on itself. And at least this time we book our seats online before travelling, unlike the dangerously unreliable first-come-first-served system we’d been used to.

After going back to Reef for lunch, I phoned lost property at Sydney airport to discover my iPod had not been handed in. This got me down because I’d put the whole thing to the back of my mind to try and enjoy the last couple of days – you can kid yourself into thinking that by the time you get around to phoning them some kind soul will have found it and logged it in the system. Not so, and though I’ve mentally adjusted to this most tragic of losses, it brought back some negative emotions. It’s not helped by the fact there are no second hand electrical stores selling refurbished mp3 players in Cairns. I even went down the pawnbrokers to see if they had owt! There was a machete on the shelf for 45 bucks...

And by gum it was hot in the middle of the afternoon! Back at the Greyhound booking office, Geoff had said that on a typical winters day in Cairns its about 24 degrees, and the last time it was below 20 degrees was about 75 million years ago when the last big meteor crashed into the Earth. I think the man doth exaggerate, but it was still hot. I walked past the Lagoon which is where people go to sunbathe, though I wisely kept my lens focused firmly on the palm trees so as not to look like a seedy little Grayboy (the nickname for the area is “Pervert’s Paradise”!)  

I came back to the room to find Tim lying on the bed looking very disinterested as two guys in nothing but shorts pointed glue guns at the wall behind him. He said (once they’d left and I’d stopped laughing) that they simply knocked on the door and asked if they could come in and fill up some of the cracks. There’s quite a lot of guests here who put in a few hours working around the place to get their accommodation for free (accommodation in this case means cramped dormitory). This is definitely the type of hostel where you come and simply "exist" for a while. Short stays are probably not that common. Maybe that’s just the way backpacking’s generally done in Oz. Either way, it’s our third and final day here and I’m looking forward to a change…just can’t help thinking that the next place we check into will be exactly like this one!

I spent a lot of the late afternoon waiting for the shower. Whatever bloke was in there took flippin` ages and I was wanting to do some hand washing after he’d finished, as well as take a shower. It’s times like this that you try not to ask yourself what they were doing in there, given that Tim reported seeing two used condoms in the same bathroom’s bin this morning. By the time I’d done my hand washing, the sun had moved beyond the balcony at the rear of the building so it was time to play the ever-popular game of decorate-the-window-with-socks-and-undies.  

Tonight was Eddie’s Full Moon Party that he’d organised (“Let’s Party Thailand Style!!!”) which he’d insisted we should go to the first time we met him (when he was drunk). He’d been extremely quiet last night, sitting on the couch and barely saying a word (when he was sober), so I wondered if it was still on. It was, and you had to wear something white and bring glowsticks and paint. When Tim learned they were going to throw the paint at each other (why???) we decided against attending. The only white clothes we have are White Shirt and White T-shirt and if the cool kids think we’re going to go through another bleaching operation they’ve got another thing coming!

[Note the random pair of discarded flip-flops in the background - it's just sooo Cairns!]

Dinner at Gilligans was chilli…again! In the queue for our grub we got talking to a lad from Darlington called Anthony who was staying at the hostel located above the bar (hadn’t known there was one until now). Anthony had just come from Singapore (our next destination), so it was good to get the lowdown from him, especially his story about sharing a hostel room with 26 other people – that has to be a record and puts our fear of sharing a room with more than two people to shame! During this discussion, we didn’t realise that we’d inadvertently sat down at a table with reserved seating for people who’d been on some kind of diving expedition. As bar staff came round with free beer for anyone who’d done the dive, we were more than happy to pretend we’d been underwater that day to claim our free jug of ale. What was most funny was when some other people sat down next to us and asked us if we’d been on the one day dive, rather than the three day dive like them (because they hadn’t seen us before). Tim put his bullsh*tting to the test so much that he had me believing that I had actually been swimming with the fishes today!  

[Everybody loves jugs!]

The free beer didn’t last long (it never does) and we returned to Reef to see how the hardcore people were doing. The Full Moon Party was in full swing…sort of. It seemed just the same as every other night – dance music, drink, drongos – only this time beneath a full moon. It’s the type of thing I would have lapped up at university, but not now, not after a bit of a crappy day. There'll be no howling at the moon tonight from me...I've had my fill. For now. 

Crocodile rock

Thursday, 30/08/2012 - 76 A.D. 

One good thing about Reef Backapckers Hostel is that they provide you with free evening meals – tonight’s being a voucher for a local bar called Gilligan’s a short walk down Grafton Street. I was a bit dubious that the voucher entitled us to one “backpacker’s meal”…oh yeah, what’s that? A small bowl of lentil soup? It turned out to be a tasty plate of bangers and mash (there was also some kind of vegetarian pasta option). I also had my first pint of beer for over a month…don’t think I’ve gone that long since I was sixteen!

An aside - one thing I have observed about people in Cairns is that they love to walk around in bare feet. On several occasions I have seen people walking barefoot while carrying their shoes. When we first arrived at the hostel there was a pair of flip flops abandoned on our side of the desk. When Tim asked if they were the free shoes that came with the room, the receptionist didn’t get the joke.

We returned to Reef after our free meal and cracked open the fizz. Immediately Eddie came to join us and ask us if we were going out. This wasn’t just a random approach as Eddie is…well, we’re not quite sure what he is, but he seems to arrange parties for the hostel guests. And he’s even more bubbly than the faux champagne we were drinking. Plus he’s got all of the free admittance vouchers for all the local bars and he thrusts them in to our hands, ignoring our pleas that we spent the previous night on aiport seats and we want a quiet one tonight.

Sitting by the TV and playing cards (a habit from our camper van evenings that we’ll take a while to break), two girls who looked about 13 came up and asked if we minded if they put a film on – 40 days and 40 nights. Whether we liked it or not (not really, in my case), we would have heard it from our bedroom given that the volume was very high. I was surprised no one came out to tell them they were past the 23:00 curfew for noise. Instead, one guy returned from doing whatever he’d been doing out in the Cairns metropolitan area with a face like thunder and proceeded to take off his boots and leave them outside of the room. Yeah right, as if they were going to make it any dirtier!

It seems as though there are two main types of groups in this hostel:

     
Those who sleep in late every day, spend the afternoon sitting around in the sun and being boisterous, then go out and get drunk at night – the so-called cool kids.

Those who get up early, spend the day sight-seeing, and go to bed before 10 p.m. without having anything to drink – the so-called saddos.

Then, in the middle of those two, you’ve got me and Our Kid. I am reluctant to use the tag of "the inbetweeners", but it kinda fits. 

If I remember correctly, we went to bed about 23:30. The party people next door were still going full throttle, but I had to smile to myself at the sound of some irate old guy having a go at them for noise pollution and threatening to call the police. It all quietened down after that. Good man!

Next morning we got up and found a random bloke asleep on the couch outside of our room. We were up at 8.30 because that was when breakfast was served. I say “breakfast”, but there was a packet of cornflakes and a carton of milk placed on the kitchen counter, along with a selection of jams, but no bread. Apparently on Mondays it’s bacon and eggs…can’t believe I missed that! We’d ended up drinking the previous night’s bubbly out of mugs (bright green and plastic in Tim’s case) and when I saw a Danish girl we’d been talking to filling herself a BOWL of coffee, we decided it would be wise to hold on to the mugs. We also chatted to Kyle, from Colorado, USA – sadly one of the states we didn’t get to visit, but we were able to tell him all about our American adventures. We also asked him about things to do in the area and he suggested we should go up to the botanical gardens because they have a freshwater crocodile up there. Cool! He then broke off to say that he liked my shoes and I was so surprised that I couldn’t remember the words “Sports Direct” and simply said, “bought in England”.

Upon checking on our white clothes that we’d left on the rear balcony of the building to dry overnight, it looked like Operation Bleach had, bizarrely, been a success. Okay, so a bit of the blue had now turned yellow on the arm of the T-shirt, but I roll the sleeves up anyway so no one would see it.

After freshening up, putting the sun cream on, etc., we headed out, first going to the opticians for a cheap screw (one of them fell out of my sunglasses while in storage during the New Zealand adventure). At this point I noticed that I had a few bite marks on my legs and became slightly concerned that on each leg the marks formed a triangle of bites. Still, they only itched and I didn’t feel any strange symptoms. Then I remembered that it’s bites that come up looking like a triangle of pin pricks which is something to watch out for and I left them alone (and only scratched them once the whole day).

It was quite a long walk to the botanical gardens (in fact, not just a botanical gardens, more a park and lake complex). There were lots of interesting birds hanging around, such as the Australian Brush Turkey and some mud crabs down by the river. At one point we got up close to an interesting spider before I remembered that this was Oz and not NZ – they actually have poisonous things here!

Unfortunately the crocs were nowhere to be seen at the freshwater lake. Upon researching it later, it looked as though there was an occasion where one took up residence there, but the rangers soon took it away again. Makes sense because there were no warning signs around the banks, despite this being macho Australia where compensation culture doesn’t exist. “I’m going to sue the parks department because I got bitten by a croc!” “Ya shouldn’t have been in the park in the first place ya daft bugger! Case dismissed!” Oh well, guess the croccy-spotting will just have to wait!

Upon stopping off for lunch on a bench halfway along the rainforest boardwalk, I received my first G`day from a middle-aged couple. The guy took one look at the way my sarnies, crisps and various photographing equipment was laid out on the bench and remarked, “You look well organised!” I wanted to reply with, “That’s what comes from being an MRIS manager!” but words escaped me and I simply chuckled. It was good that I had stopped for lunch as it was well-past 12 o`clock and I was starting to see birds everywhere (that’s not a metaphor, it's simply because I was in a wildlife park).

The actual "botanical gardens" part of the botanical gardens was okay, but you have to remember that coming from New Zealand I’ve seen more botanical gardens than David Bellamy. Plus my legs were really starting to itch and I needed something to focus my mind away from that temptation. And so we headed back to Reef, which is starting to feel like home now, as these places always do by the second day.

We have a faller. Water Bottle has sprung a leak and is making everything in my day bag a bit damp. Water Bottle was purchased on the second day of the trip in New York and has been with me ever since. Water Bottle made it all of the way across America and I hoped Water Bottle would make it all of the way to India, but alas it was not to be. Rest in peace, Water Bottle. Or rest in the bin.

Come the cool night air (great to stroll in), we exchanged our shorts for jeans and headed out for our free Backpacker’s Meals at Gilligans. Tonight on the menu was chilli con carne, which I know will make my Auntie Carol very happy (long story). Unfortunately it didn’t touch the sides for Tim and his tapeworm complained, so we headed towards the Esplanade (AKA “The Nard”) and found a little place serving pies and known as Pie Face. It was a long way from Wigan, but it did the job.

Before heading back to the hostel to plan the next leg of our Australian journey, we fancied a pint or two in the happening bars of Cairns. Couldn’t really find any though – where was Eddie when we needed him? I’d shouted him on my way out that night, asking where the best place to drink was, but he didn’t hear me…probably too busy whooping. Onward we searched, but all we came across were family restaurants. Just to give me the Birkdale blues, we ended up at a place called The Crown. I had a pint of Pure Blonde. Man, that was one tasty pint, or should I say one tasty “schooner” (three quarters of an English pint).

 

Shiny happy people

Wednesday, 29/08/2012 - 75 A.D. 

Tim and I had just put our heads down to test if the Sleep Fairies wanted to visit us when instead a plane load of Japanese came to visit the luggage conveyor belt we were lying beside. We couldn’t have interruptions of this kind all night, but all of the other seats were taken by fellow airport sleepers. Fortunately I checked the schedule for domestic arrivals and there weren’t any more coming until 07:15 next morning.

Things did quieten down in the terminal once the Japanese went on their merry way, the only sounds being the rent-a-car people counting up their loose change before heading off after another hard day’s work. Then it was just us and the cleaner…and her loud, noisy, deafening sweepy truck that she cleans the floors with. I swear she came and did proportionally more manoeuvres beside me. She had that thing going for quite a while, switching it on for a bit, then off again, keeping us guessing. Didn’t much matter because my mind was processing far too many things and I wondered how long it takes homeless people to drop off when they’re kipping on a park bench.

We “got up” at around 06:00, the terminal still a long way off from coming to life. Outside there was a pleasant sunrise and it was easy to smell the moisture of the tropical climate in the air. Although it was never going to be a joy waking up in an airport terminal, it’s far superior to doing it in a bus station! I managed to knock back half of my squashed pizza sub from the night before, simply to get some fuel in the tank.

At around 7-ish along came a Qantas man to sit behind the luggage claim desk. I duly went and told him that I was missing an iPod and he said that one had been handed in yesterday. This got me rather excited, but when I telephoned the office at Sydney they said it was definitely not my iPod because it had the number 46 scrawled across the back (in future I may adopt a similar policy of scrawling things on the back, such as my name, address, phone number, email, and size of reward offered for iPod’s safe return). This was a bit of a let down after getting my hopes up, but all I could do was wait and see if anything got handed in over the next few days.

We couldn’t check-in to our hostel until midday, but we were sick of the airport, so we got a taxi into the town centre, the not-altogether-with-it driver poo-pooing Tim’s suggestion of where the hostel was located, even though he was reading from a copy of google maps. Our saviour was, of course, close at hand – Macdonalds in this case, not Starbucks, and I had a coffee while Tim had two buns with some grease in the middle that filled him up until tea time. We took it in turns for one of us to stay with the bags and the other to go a-wandering and see some initial sights. Although it was early in the morning, we could tell that it was going to be a scorcher by the middle of the afternoon, and we weren’t wrong. Hello again to shorts, shades and sunglasses!

Reef Backpackers Hostel is the type of place you go to when you’re young, dumb and full of enthusiasm. What I’m trying to say is that it’s a noisy, boisterous persons’ hang-out, but without the free beer policy that San Francisco had. It’s also one of the shabbiest places we’ve stayed in, which is a shame because if they did it up a bit there’d be a nice tropical beach-style ambience. There is music coming from all sides at every time of day – if it’s not someone butchering the chords to Eye of the tiger on an acoustic guitar in the dormitories then it’s a mix of songs about California blaring out from the back garden. But I don’t mind that…during the daylight hours! I’m still a bit cream-crackered from the night on the airport seats and could do with a reasonably early one tonight. Still, if I think this place is bad, I should check out “Woodduck” next door – it’s a hostel that’s like a 24 hour pool party for all the posers of this part of the world. I’m just jealous because I’m still the palest man in Christendom and not suitable for sitting on sun loungers.

[A window, lacking.]

First thing on the agenda for Timbo and I (once I’d stocked up with some provisions from Woolworths – remember it?) was to try and bleach the blue colours off our white clothes. The bathroom next to us was in such a state that we had absolutely no reservations about performing the act in there, asopposed to one of the more industrial sinks by the “laundry wall” downstairs (it’s not good enough to get its own room in this place…mind you, there’s no need for any driers in this climate). After using the old 1-part-bleach-to-5-parts-water method, and soaking for 30 minutes, the T-shirt appeared okay at first glance. The shirt, well, it may have been done for. We’re soaking them both in hot water right now and awaiting a further assessment.

I should point out that our bedroom (one double bed, no TV) is between a bathroom and a 4 bunk male dormitory. In addition, it opens directly onto the TV lounge! Now, back in the camper van I’d curbed my drinking quite a lot, but there was no way I was going to bed without having a tipple tonight! I’d been warned by many people that Australia was very expensive for alcohol – New Zealand was bad enough – and yes, this was indeed the case, at least for beer. Wine, on the other hand, isn’t so bad, probably because they produce so much of it here. We bought a bottle of sparkling wine each…not sure why…maybe we’re celebrating being in a new country. Now we just need to find some vessels to drink the stuff from or we’re really in backpackers’ territory and drinking straight from the bottle! 

["Wot no champagne flutes?"]

19th nervous breakdown

Tuesday, 28/08/2012 - 74 A.D. 

The 24 hour period started badly when, at our final campsite, we decided to do one last wash and included Tim’s sleep sheet which he’s been using inside the sleeping bag. This is a dark blue garment and, although he claimed to have washed it before, the colours from it ran riot throughout the wash. Obviously it was an accident, but consequently my white shirt and my white T-shirt have lots of blue splodges on them, as does Tim’s white underwear. We made vague noises about getting them bleached, but personally I’m not confident and I fear I may already have two items of clothing that won’t be returning home from this mission.

Next morning we got up slightly earlier than normal and gave The Chariot a bit of a gutting, cleaning in between the nooks and crannies and making her presentable. It wasn’t a long journey to the drop-off depot where we were told that we had achieved a whopping 5,201 kilometres since she’d been in our care. I think that’s around 3,000 miles, which is the equivalent of driving from Southport to Plymouth ten times. Hmmm…doesn’t seem as much when you think of it like that!

There were two French girls already in the office, prearping to rent exactly the same model camper van as us for the next three weeks. It was funny to watch the guy going through the same spiel with them that we’d been given four weeks ago in a rainy Auckland (it was another cracking day on the south island) and I felt that I would be qualified to show them the ropes if needs be. The man at the depot was satisfied that there were no extra cracks and scratches upon the bodywork and he believed us when we said we had never used the Porter Potty. Nope, not even once.

We got dropped off at the airport and sat back to watch everything run like clockwork, as we’d come to expect from New Zealand. Not wanting to take any local currency with us across the water, we frittered our last few dollars away on things we didn’t really need, such as a crossword puzzle book. We both got through security without making the alarm beep, but I was taken to one side for the full body swab (not that kind of swab!) while Tim just walked straight past. The flight took off on time and arrived in Sydney a little bit early, which is always good, though we knew we had a five hour wait before making our next flight up to Cairns.

[You to can travel to exotic locations like Wagga Wagga!]

The Domestic Terminal at Sydney airport is a long way from the International Terminal and you can get there by shuttle bus or train, so we tried t walk it, but realised that it just wasn’t an option. Instead we went to get the train and for that we were going to need funds. Approaching a cash machine, Tim took out his money, but when I tried on three occasions to retrieve three different amounts I was denied each time, despite the screen showing plenty of funds available. Now, about a week ago in NZ I’d tried to use a cash machine for a bit of extra dough, but the request was denied. I assumed it was just the cash machine playing up, so I continued on my merry way and I didn’t end up needing the extra notes anyway. 

Today, however, I did need notes, and I found a quiet spot to go online and check my status via internet banking – it wouldn’t let me on, saying there was a problem with my card. So, now I had to give good old Barclays a ring, for which I needed change, so I had to borrow some notes from Tim and buy the cheapest thing in the airport shop (chewing gum) to get some coins for the phone. Said phone swallowed my coins like a greedy metal-eating beast, but fortunately the guy at Barclays called me back on my mobile. After going through the usual security questions, he said that my card had been marked because of suspicious transactions abroad, the suspicious transactions being me trying to take out money in NZ and OZ. This was particularly frustrating because I had phoned up Barclays in plenty of time before leaving England to tell them exactly when I would be in New Zealand and I queried this with my friend on the phone. He ummed and ahhed for a little while before the phone suddenly cut out. Now, I have no reason to suspect that he did it deliberately, but he did not call me back again, even though he had my mobile number. Fortunately, when I went back to the cash machine I could at least get out some money, so the block had been taken off. However, I ain’t filled with too much confidence – it’s one thing for a balls-up like this to happen in a country like Oz with a sound infrastructure, but what if it happens in deepest Asia? Plus if I hadn’t been travelling with someone who I could borrow money from to use the phone I’d have been totally up the creek without a paddle. I’m not one to complain, but I immediately sat down and composed an email to Barclays to get a bit of reassurance for the future.

That whole saga took up about an hour of my life, but we still had a couple of hours to kill before flight time, so we surfed the net, played cards, and I posted the previous blog entry. Later, while sitting at our gate and waiting to be called, I thought I’d put on a couple of tunes to get me in the mood for spending a night in Cairns airport. Yep, we’re back to our old ways again – eating at Subway and sleeping in public places! We have booked three nights at a hostel, but there’s no 24 hour check-in, so it’s either stay at the airport until the bus comes or get a taxi into the city centre and walk round and round in circles until dawn. Only thing was, I couldn’t find my iPod, so assumed I had left it in my main luggage (now on the plane) when I was trying to sort out my debit card.

Don’t you just love internal flights when there’s hardly any people on them? There were so few people that I was able to go and sit on the row of three in front of Tim and stretch out for a little snoozey. Despite this luxury, there was a still a baby screaming at the top of its lungs – there always is – so the aeroplane sleep was just as broken as normal. 

We arrived in Cairns at about 22:30 and went to retrieve our luggage. I discovered that my IPod was not present in big bag and suddenly felt very annoyed with myself and a bit sick. I am still feeling annoyed with myself and a bit sick. I must have dropped it on the first plane that got us into Sydney as I was using it then and I hadn’t seen it since. Normally I am incredibly careful with this, checking where it is every few minutes. This is not quite as big a crisis as a busted laptop, but it’s not far off. That iPod has all my tunes on, plus a few TV shows, family films, and 100 selected piccies to remind me of back home. When I go for my What Carcass Walks it is the tunes on that Ipod that levels my mood and puts me in back in the happy, neutral space. Plus they cost a fair bit of money and I’d already replaced the hard drive on the bloody thing last year. BUGGER!!!! STOP TESTING ME, LIFE!!!!

[The unstaffed baggage claim desk.]

And so I sit here now in Cairns airport writing these words in the hope of some kind of cathartic effect. I should be dining on the second half of my foot long pizza-flavour sub, but the smell of it makes me want to hurl and I can’t seem to get the odour out of my nostrils. There is a baggage claim desk for Qantas here, but there won’t be a person back on it until 07:00, which is currently seven and a half hours away. If by some miracle my little iPod has been found and handed in to lost property at Sydney airport then I could claim it when I’m passing through on my way south, but I fear such miracles may be out of reach. We shall have to see. And so the order of priority is this:

Attempt sleep in airport terminal.

Speak to baggage claim.

Get bus to town and check-in.

Buy bleach and bleach clothes.

Throw out clothes after bleach doesn’t work.

Enjoy rest of time in Australia.

One hell of a 24 hour period!

[Tim unpacks his pyjamas on our comfy bed for the night.]

Pictures at an exhibition - part 9

Well we're currently stuck in Sydney airport, awaiting our domestic transfer to Cairns, so what better way to pass the time than to upload some more of these...

Guess who?

There's more than one way to steam your vegetables.

"Do you know you look a berk?"

"You hum it and I'll try and play along."

The Rotorua Diving Championships were never well attended.

Try saying it when you've got a cold!

Wally with a brolly.

It's Mondrian-meets-Kandinsky-meets-what-the-hell.

The dark, brooding silhouette represents my inner turmoil at having just lost to Tim at cards.

Balanced camper van diet, full of protein and jelly. 

Make like a tree and leave, James. Or just leave.

The Kaimanu Forest Park Weightlifting Championships were never well attended.

When it's too dark to know what you're touching.

Tim reacts positively as James reads an extract from his latest screenplay.

More to come from Oz soon!!!

Goodbye yellow brick road

Sunday, 26/08/2012 - 72 A.D. 

  

Sunday, bloody Sunday!

Really don’t have much to write home about today. Essentially our time was spent getting as close to Christchurch as we could and camping up in the wild for the last time. We did a lot of driving, which was a shame, because it was the warmest day so far in NZ and the type of weather that would have given both Invercargill and Dunedin a visual boost. One highlight was when we stopped for gas and I finally worked out the mechanism that you click on the pump to leave it automatically filling the vehicle, leaving you free to do other things. It’s taken me four weeks to work it out. Like I said, it was a slow day.

We’d been hoping to use a free campsite down by Lake Ellesmere, but when we turned up we drove straight into a swarm of sandflies. We’d been warned about these way back in the first campsite we stayed at – the lady there, when on holiday in the south, had forgotten her insect repellent, so what did she use to deter the flying pests? Hairspray. Unfortunately that’s far too precious a commodity on this expedition, so we did a big volte-face and drove back in the direction from which we’d come. The piccy below probably doesn’t show many of the blighters on the windscreen, but there were countless numbers of them swirling about in the air. We did not leave our vehicle to get a closer look, though some did sneak inside through the air vents.

I know I’ve shown you countless photos of beaches that we’ve mucked about on, but here’s the final one (at Rakaia Huts)…

…this one will always stay notable in my memory as Tim finally strayed too close to the waves and got a soaking around his lower regions (his subsequent impression of Canute didn’t manage to push back the waves!)

 And that really was about it for the day. Can’t all be as exciting as the petrol pump thing and Tim getting wet, can it??? The Camping Gods smiled on us this evening and gave us a dramatic spot up on Summit Road overlooking Diamond Bay, with our ultimate destination, Christchurch, nestled behind in the distance. Oh yes, it's the Emerald City alright, and it's been a long and winding Yellow Brick Road that's brought us to it!  And we’re parked with the front end of The Chariot significantly higher than the rear…should provide some interesting dreams as all that blood rushes to our heads while we sleep!

Monday, 27/08/2012 - 73 A.D. 

Our final full day in New Zealand was blessed with fantastic early Spring weather, the clear air helping to clear our heads after we finished off our respective boxes of wine the previous evening. There was only one place on the agenda for today and that was the city of Christchurch, also known as “the most English city outside of England”. For added authenticity, they even put Hereford Street next to Worcester Street!

Any visit to Christchurch in the last two years is dominated by the aftermath of the earthquake that killed 182 people. I’d already learned there were some parts of the CBD that were off-limits, but it turned out to be pretty much the whole of the central zone east of Hagley Park.

What was once a bustling office hotspot is now all but deserted, save for the contractors engaged in rebuilding or demolishing, and the casual tourists like us. I felt a bit uncomfortable taking pictures, as if I’d stumbled uninvited into a private funeral, and I duly limited my video footage.

The photo above shows the state of the city’s cathedral and the square in front of it, both mentioned as big draws in any guidebook (supposedly where the “Christchurch wizard” casts spells and pontificates – no sign of him today! Or of the wizard of Oz - we might meet him in the next country). If the earthquake hadn’t happened then this area would be full of people (the main information kiosk, also behind the fence, is just out of shot). Now they have army personnel on hand to make sure over-curious visitors don’t stray past the barriers.

On the street in the last photo above, the traffic lights were stuck on flashing amber. Had they been like that since the earthquake struck? There was nowhere to go to find out. Even the central shopping mall had been decimated and they had set up a new temporary series of shops nearby, made out of shipping containers. The various banks were also temporary structures that could be towed away quickly if needs be. The spectacle was made all the more eerie by the fact that it was such a fine day – when seeing sights like this you expect grey skies, drizzle and a cold, biting wind. But no, it was warm and serene, nowhere more so than on the River Avon which winds through the city and advertises tranquil punts along its waters.

Despite it being the largest city on the southern island, we didn’t spend a lot of time in Christchurch's centre. We had plenty of things to sort out before tomorrow rolled around, such as trading our NZ guidebook for an Australian one and filling The Chariot’s gas canister. And maybe we’ve simply seen enough NZ cities on our travels, so one that was designed to look like a typical English town wasn’t going to hold much of an exotic draw!

Our final campsite is the grandest so far – it has a drive-thru check-in, which is something we never knew existed for these places, let alone experienced. Plus there’s a movie room, but we’ll be too busy scrubbing the floor and picking the rogue bits of food out from behind the seats to hit the flicks. And so, it is with heavy heart that I present to you, dear readers, the last ever shot of BKA559 parked up in a campsite:

I suppose, leaving aside tomorrow’s mad dash for the airport, it’s the end of our time in New Zealand and time for a few recollections and reflections. It’s been four whole weeks of fun and games on the road and, just as I felt 28 days ago, it’s now time for a change. We’ve come across (and posted pictures of) hills, streams, mountains, lakes, jungles, rivers, beaches, mud pools, cliffs, fields, coves and the ocean. Plus a few thousand shots of our camper van parked up in various locations.

Despite living in cramped conditions (which we quickly got used to), the sense of freedom was amazing. But you can go camper vanning in any country…yeah, but not always somewhere as beautiful and spacious as this one. Or anywhere so unspoilt, which is the key thing to remember when it comes to the landscapes of NZ. And the people, well, they may not have had the warm, intrusive curiosity of the Americans, but a friendlier bunch of folk you’d be hard pressed to meet.

If I ever do find Miss Right and embark on the typical human courtship rituals, I’d definitely consider bringing her here (though I wouldn’t share a motorhome in winter). Everywhere I went, I saw couples smiling, laughing, happy to let their love flourish in this most romantic of lands. And then I looked at Tim, and his beard.

However, I enjoyed the way Tim and I had to work as a team to make things happen or else we didn’t get anywhere. By the end we had it down to military precision – no more standing around watching what the other was doing, we worked in tandem like an efficient, well-oiled machine. If I was turning on the gas, he’d be plugging in the electrics. If I was getting out the coffee mugs, he’d be handling the cereal packets. If I was filling the tank with water, he’d be organising the dump. What’s the secret of living like this and not killing each other? Warm up first with seven weeks on the road in North America. And it helps if you’re related and therefore stuck with each other for life.  

So, how to sum up these last four weeks? It seems apt to return to a quote from Malcolm – he may have been conscripted to fix our computer, but he was probably also the resident New Zealander with whom we had most contact. And you may remember that he said the following:

“The good thing about New Zealand is that it’s small. The bad thing about New Zealand is that it’s small!”

And in my humble opinion, the great thing about New Zealand is…simply that it’s great. Go and visit it any time, even in winter. You'll love it.

So, you’re next, Australia…THE G’DAY GRAYBOYS WANT YOU NOW, MATE!!!