A Brit and a Canuck Down Under

Our first night on the South Island was spent in a real dump of a campsite in a place called Blenheim, about ½ hour south from where the ferry landed. We had a train track about 20 metres away from our van and the site itself looked a bit like Glastonbury festival on a rainy year. Fighting our way through the sludge, we ambitiously decided to make pancakes for breakfast the next morning, having managed to melt the spatula on our first attempt earlier on in the trip. Proving that having a degree doesn’t equate to having common sense, we put the first experience down to bad luck and used the now semi-molten spatula again. And again it started to melt. Well fed on plastic pancakes, we decided to head across the north coast to Abel Tasman National Park before beginning the journey south. I’ll admit that my Abel Tasman knowledge is slightly sketchy, but what I am fairly sure of is that he was an explorer and probably Dutch, and from where we were in Abel Tasman National Park, you’d have to say he’s done pretty well in the ‘naming things after himself’ stakes. (Abel Tasman National Park looks out onto the Tasman Sea, over the other side of which lies Tasmania.) Though the park is New Zealand’s smallest, it must be amongst the most beautiful; with secluded beaches and bays, waters ranging from turquoise to emerald, and a resident colony of seals.

Seals in Abel Tasman

We decided to do a half-day kayaking tour of the park, which involved getting a speedboat to drop us off at one point and pick us up at another, with a couple of hours of kayaking in the middle. What somehow hadn’t really occurred to us was how much colder it would be kayaking in New Zealand than it was kayaking in the north-west of Australia. And we managed to forget my camera. Besides that though, we had a really good time, and Angela particularly enjoyed seeing the seal pups. (Luckily, I had the foresight to remove any clubbing equipment from her bag beforehand.)

Ollie skiing, Mt Hutt

We then had a 7 hour drive down to the Mt Hutt ski field near Christchurch, which took us past some amazing coastline and the top of the Southern Alps. We had time for a day’s skiing before my mum and dad joined us for the rest of our time on the South Island. Neither Angela nor I had been skiing for a few years, so we were both a little unsure as we stood at the top of the ski field at the top of a massive mountain, but after a lot of pride-swallowing snow-ploughing, we managed to inch our way down the slopes more and more quickly as the day went on. We only fell over once each, and mine was on the last turn of the day when I was getting a bit too cocky and promptly landed on my ass.

Thankfully, we managed to avoid hitting any penguins

The next day Mr and Mrs J landed in Christchurch after more than a few problems on route from England. (for greater depth, see my dad’s blog.) They still had one more issue on arrival - the place they’d booked their campervan from had decided to close early, so they had to make do with a chalet on our campsite and hope that it’d get sorted before we wanted to set off the next day. Luckily their campervan company pulled out all the stops in the morning, and after a taxi to the office, they quickly upgraded the olds before dad had a chance to get shirty. Now travelling in convoy, we headed to Oamaru to do some more bonding with nature. We got seats in a little stand, and watched as blue penguins (the smallest type in the world) came ashore at dusk and waddled with various speeds to their nests after a day frolicking in the pacific.

Moeraki boulders

Apparently the frolicking was not limited to time spent in the water, as we’d managed to catch the penguins in mating season, so we had the dubious pleasure of seeing our little exhibitionist friends go at it with wanton abandon. Unsurprisingly, given the adult content of the ‘show’, no cameras were allowed in, so unfortunately we have no images of this to share with you. However, we can show you a picture of the Moereki boulders, which we saw the next morning. These are just big round boulders half buried in the beach, and no-one really knows how or why they’re there. They look pretty good in photos though.

Queenstown from the top of the gondola

We’d planned a trip in Milford Sound, which is just one of dozens of fiords in the south-west of the South Island. As we arrived at the campsite the night before we hoped to leave, it was pouring down with rain, and had apparently been doing do for some while. This meant that the road to Milford Sound was closed due to avalanche risk - we were offered a trip on Doubtful Sound instead, which was meant to be just as beautiful but without all the tourists. This sounded like a load of crap to me, but seeing as it was all that was available we booked on for the next day. We went up to Queenstown and spent the day seeing the sights there. We caught the gondola up to the top of a mountain which overlooks the town, and gives amazing views of not only the town; but the lake by which it lies; and the surrounding mountains, the Remarkables. Angela and I went on a street luge track at the top of a mountain; surprisingly, Mr and Mrs J gave this a miss. My dad did, however, get his long zoom lens out on his camera and get some good shots of me zooming around the track (and almost managing to fall off,) with Angela slightly more sedate behind me, holding up a few nippy little Koreans.

Doubtful Sound from the lookout point

First thing the next morning we caught the bus from our campsite down to Doubtful Sound. For some reason unknown to any of us (even the middle-aged ones), the first part of the tour was to take us around some power station (powered by the water of the lake.) It kind of felt like one of those school trips, where you weren’t allowed to do the fun stuff until you’d done some boring ‘educational’ bit first. This involved being driven deep down under a mountain in a rickety old bus, while the driver explained that we’d just stay down in the power station as long as we all wanted to. I looked around the bus and tried to guess who it’d be that would make us all wait down there. Odds on favourites were a Belgian group, who looked easily capable of absorbing as much power-station information as New Zealand could throw at them. The most interesting part for me was hearing that the engineers that designed the tunnel (only 40 years ago) through the mountain had ‘allowed’ for 50 deaths in the construction, so it was really quite good that only 16 people had died.

A waterfall in Doubtful Sound

When it was explained that the tunnelling process consisted of the not exact science of blowing holes in the rock with dynamite, in the dark, this began to make more sense. I came to the conclusion that engineering degrees at Kiwi universities couldn’t be very competitive. Then came the fun part - we were taken to the bit with the big noisy machines, where some woman shouted over the noise to give a lecture about something or other. In the end, the Belgians surprised me by being the first out after me and Angela and some weird American girl that insisted on taking picture of absolutely everything (including many of the inside of the rickety bus, in the dark, as we made our way in and out of the tunnel.)

Seals on a big rock

When we did finally get out onto Doubtful Sound, we saw what all the fuss was about; dramatic landscapes with vast sheer mountains surrounding us, dipping their feet into the maze of waterways in which we chugged along. We were taken right up into the mouth of the fiord, where it became the Tasman Sea; and there we saw another colony of seals on a rocky island. On the way back through the fiord, we stopped to see some giant waterfalls cascading down the mountainside, before beginning the journey back to civilisation.

Franz Josef glacier

All that was left on our loop back up to Christchurch was a flying visit up the west coast, where we stopped to sea Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. Both had carved out huge valleys before them, but clearly were now nowhere as near as impressive as they once were. Apparently they had bucked the global trend by actually advancing between the 1960’s - 1980’s, but had since begun retreating again.

On the road with Rick and Sue

Angela and I got one last taste of dramatic kiwi landscapes as we cut through the top of the southern alps on our way back to Christchurch, where we were saying goodbye to our campervan, and temporarily, my parents too. Unfortunately, the campervan place had a little surprise for us on our return, as we were told that we’d scratched the side a little and chipped the windscreen. A few days later we got a bill for $250. There was a small silver cloud though; we were on our way to Sydney.

The 4WD, Trevor, taking a break from all his hard work

It was a 5:00 wake-up for our trip to Fraser Island. On the plus side, it meant that we’d probably avoid the weird old landlady. We were renting a 4 wheel drive truck for our 2-day journey onto the island, and we had to attend a mandatory instruction and safety briefing before we were allowed out of the paddock. Never one to enjoy reading instruction manuals before being allowed to play with new things, I was up for more of a ‘trial and error’ approach to our adventure. But apparently cars are a bit more complicated. I learned that there were 2 gearsticks in our new wagon. One was normal, with numbers for all the different gears; but there was another one that you weren’t allowed to touch while you were in motion, and had 3 angles you could push it in, called ‘High 4 wd’, ‘Low 4wd’ and ‘2 wd’. I found this confusing. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if they were just called A B & C. Luckily though, there was an easy system to help remember what to do with it all. You just had to leave weird gearstick alone unless you got stuck. And if you got stuck, you just had to ask dad what to do. Sorted.

The ‘safety’ aspect of the session involved the company doing just about everything they could to scare my mum out of any vague notion she might have had about driving on the island. What I took from it was this:
a) don’t get stuck in the sand, it’s really hard to get out.
b) the softest (and therefore most difficult to drive through) sand is along the top of the beach. If you want to get through it you have to drive as quick as you can.
c) don’t drive too fast on the beach - you might cross a massive drop in the sand (a washout) and flip the car and kill everyone.
d) don’t crash, there’s no ambulance on the island.
I can pretty easily spot when my mum is nervous about something. As we left the rental place I could see that she had her nervous face on.

Me and Ollie in Eli creek

Fraser Island is around 120 kms long and 10kms wide, and famously, composed entirely of sand. As such, it is the largest sand dune in the world. Somehow though, an impressive variety of vegetation has found a way to thrive on the island, and with it an impressive variety of fauna. Fraser Island is particularly well known as the home of large numbers of dingoes (an Aussie type of wild dog). Off the coast of the island you can, on a good day, see dolphins, tiger sharks and humpback whales. Finally, there are a handful of amazingly beautiful freshwater creeks and lakes, ideal for a cool swim on a hot day, and it was these I was particularly looking forward to seeing.

To get over to the island, you have to catch a ferry from the mainland. Apparently the captain of our little ship was a ‘hands on’ kind of guy, as he backed the cars in through a megaphone from his bridge overlooking the car deck. Half an hour later, we had landed on Fraser and were on our merry way. Dad was in charge of driving us for the first bit - we’d decided to head to our accommodation on the island to drop our luggage off before investigating properly. This hour-long journey proved to be a bit of an eye-opener. The sand was really soft in some places, in others there were giant bumps and dips in the track, and throughout the track was ridiculously narrow. We had to stop in front of a soft patch of sand to let some cars pass in the other direction, and when we attempted to get going again we didn’t have enough speed to get through. This led to the first occasion of the four of us on our hands and knees digging out the wheels on the trip. It took a couple of attempts to free us, and we were pretty grateful when our apartment came into view a few minutes later.

The Maheno Shipwreck

Having got refreshed we decided to head up the beach to visit a couple of sites to the north of the island. And it was my turn to drive. We had to get through the soft sand first though before the easy drive along the beach. More than aware of the problems caused by getting stuck, I got a bit of speed up before we hit the sand and fought the steering wheel as the truck attempted to follow several different sets of tracks at once. Then I saw someone trying to do the same up the same bit of track coming towards me. Neither of us wanted to stop, which meant we both ended up having to do so. He managed to reverse, I failed to move. Sure enough, in my first 5 minutes behind the wheel, I’d managed to get us stuck. We all jumped out again and began digging away around the wheels and underneath the engine, and were soon joined by an surprisingly helpful group of French teenagers. With the help of a shovel and a bit of a push we made it on the firmer sand pretty quickly. Just as soon as we became free however, another car had become stuck. Me, dad and Ang did a turn at the Good Samaritan while mum couldn’t be arsed and ‘watched over the car’. It took at least another 10 minutes to free this chap, during which time me and dad had our faces sandblasted a couple of times by free-spinning tyres while attempting to give a push from behind. Now wearing a good deal of the island, we continued on our journey. Mum had perfected her stabilisation technique in the back seat of hanging on to the ceiling grip with both hands, while wedging an inflatable cushion underneath her. What worried me in the driver’s seat wasn’t so much her wide-eyed panic as the hysterical laughter that accompanied it.

The Maheno shipwreck

After a few minutes we came to the wreck of the Maheno - a ship that was being towed on its’ way to be scraped when a violent storm hit and wrecked it on Fraser’s shores. Slowly being consumed by the sand, the rusting wreck’s hull, bottom third and stern are now no longer visible. Soon after the Maheno we came upon Eli Creek, and while mum and dad had a walk along the path beside the creek, Ang and I went in for a paddle, before we began the journey back to the apartment.

Lake Birrabeen

The next day we decided to have a look at the lakes on the island, taking in the deepest (Boomanjin) and the 2 most picturesque, Birrabeen and Mackenzie. All were freezing cold. Boomanjin seemed a bit dirtier, maybe because of algae, but whatever the reason, we saved our swimming and photos for Birrabeen and Mackenzie and it was well worth it. As you wander down from the car park you emerge through the bush onto startlingly white powdery sand, which slowly dips into the crystal clear waters of the lake. The sand is so fine it actually squeaks a little bit as you walk on it near the water’s edge. The water is so clear that it appears white for the first few metres, before deepening in colour as the waters themselves deepen, giving the lakes a distinctive turquoise halo when seen from a distance. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay for too long, as we’d been booked on the afternoon ferry back to the mainland. One final bumpy journey back to the dock and overly-complicated loading procedure later, and we were on our way.

After dropping our truck back at the rental depot, we made our way back to our apartment in Hervey Bay - this was the weird old lady’s place again (we’d already booked it before our first night’s stay). It turned out that she really wasn’t joking when she’d said ‘you’re lucky you’ve still got your room’, when we’d arrived the first night. We arrived at roughly the same time in the evening - my mum went up to the weird old lady’s place to get the keys and made it about halfway up the stairs before a rather confused looking old lady came down to greet her. Apparently all she did when my mum tried to talk to her was just shake her head, say ‘oh dear oh dear oh dear’, and mumble incoherently. It was only when they’d walked back to the car that she began to elaborate. ‘I’ve done something naughty’, she admitted. By this, she meant she’d let our room, which we’d already paid for, out to someone else. Cue frantic searching through the Lonely Planet and desperate calls on the mobile to find anywhere with space. We eventually found somewhere not too far up the road that could put us up for the night, and in a lot more pleasant surroundings too.

A koala and her joey

The next morning we drove back to Brisbane via the Glass House mountains, and even had time for a frantic 20 minute stop at a Koala sanctuary (so that Angela and mum could see them - though there wasn’t enough time for any hugging) before dashing off to the airport to catch our flight up to Cairns.

A Brit and a Canuck Down Under

a travel blog by olliejohnson

Journeys on the South Island

Christchurch, New Zealand

A fun city, a boring city, and some whales

Sydney, Australia

Off-roading on Fraser Island

Fraser Island, Australia

The Great Barrier Reef

Yorkeys Knob, Australia

Tropical North Queensland and a stressful check-in

Port Douglas, Australia

Hawaii part 1

Honolulu, United States

Hawaii part 2

Honolulu, United States