From going to and fro in the earth, and from riding* up and down in it.
— Bible, Job 1:7
* My reading of the original may be corrupted.
Into the Coro-mandalaAround the beginning of 1986, I bought a second-hand bicycle. I used it for local (i.e. within a five to ten kilometre radius of Te Aroha) travel for a while before I bought a set of pannier bags and other accessories and converted it for cycle-touring. Now I could begin the exploration of the nearer North Island that I had been looking forward to for so long!
One pleasant aspect of the job of managing Te Aroha was that my relief manager — Dannie — was always keen to take over the job for a while. (As mentioned, he had long contended that a resident manager was an unnecessary expense on the hostel’s slim funds; I was inclined to agree.) He was quite happy to have whoever was resident at any time go away for a few days and let his family and the local Branch run things. In fact, he encouraged this. It fitted in with my own plans, so I was only too pleased to do so.
My pattern was to work seven days a week for a month or so, then take several days off at once — joining the “saved” weekends together. Whereas a mere two-day weekend could never have allowed me to go very far away, a four- or six- day one would.
In sitting down to check dates and places for this report I discovered that I had been on rather a lot of trips on my bike. To talk about all of them would require more space than reasonable. Besides which, some of them tended to blur together in my memory. So I’ve decided to talk about a few of the major ones, and drag in occasional references to events that happened in the ones that I’m not reporting. In the case of my Opoutere visits in particular there is a certain element of “reconstruction” in the tale here. Everything I report, I did; but I don’t guarantee it happened on that particular trip! Memory is a wonderful process.
My very first tour was quite cautious in terms of daily distances; but given the shape of the land I intended to explore, an ambitious milage would be asking for trouble.
The Coromandel Peninsula is the northern end of the group of fold-mountains that Mt Te Aroha figures so prominently in. It projects from the body of the North Island like the dorsal fin of a shark; eighty kilometres north to south and from twenty to forty kilometres east to west. The spine of the peninsula reaches forested peaks of three-quarters of a kilometre, and except for small pockets of alluvial plain where streams and rivers come down to the sea, the spine makes up the entire area of the peninsula. On the east it is beaten by the Pacific Ocean; on the west washed by the tranquil Firth of Thames. The Firth is gradually shortening as the rivers running down from the Hapuakohe & Ruahine/Coromandel Ranges silt it up and add the new land to the Hauraki Plains.
In 1986 there were five main towns on the Peninsula, which was rather more densely populated than the Marlborough Sounds. Thames, the largest, had about 6,000 people year-round. Whangamata, next largest, had a variable population of about 2,000 in winter (now 4,500) and 25,000 in summer (yes, a twelve-fold difference between seasons). Whitianga was about the same size as Whangamata is in winter. Coromandel and Pauanui were both around or below the thousand mark. Apart from these towns, and scattered around, there was a large but variable number of people who could not be said to live in any town — retired, holidaymakers, the rich and the poor, the dropouts and the hermits.
Travel on the peninsula in 1986 was hindered not only by the landform (the shortest route from Thames to Whitianga involved cresting a 448-metre pass just eight kilometres inland) but by the condition of the roads. Despite mammoth efforts by the Ministry of Works, most roads — including sections of State Highway 25 — were not yet paved. Dirt roads are bad enough in a car; on a bike they cause agony!
§
I set out from Te Aroha a couple of days after my 28th birthday. I whizzed down the hill from the hostel, made a tricky speed-turn onto Highway 26, and headed north. I was quite pleased with my 55-minute run to Paeroa (21 km from Te Aroha), and started to feel that perhaps this cycle-touring business was not as hard as the hostellers made it out to be. I had a drink and pushed on, following the highway along the base of the Coromandels. I was in new territory, now. I had been through Paeroa many times in the past, but always via State Highway 2.
My second hour was not quite so easy, and I was glad to stop for a rest at the hamlet of Puriri: a petrol station, a small store, and a handful of houses. Forty kilometres from Te Aroha, two hours fifteen minutes used. Not so good, and the day was getting very warm. But on average there was a slight seaward slope to the land. That helped a lot. When I moved on from Puriri I dropped down a gear from five in high ratio to four in high ratio (or ninth to seventh out of ten gears). The land was starting to fall and rise a little and I needed the help that the lower gear offered.
Shortly I crossed Highway 25 at Kopu. The map says I was close to the Waihou River, but I don’t remember seeing that. But even without looking at the map, I could tell that I was nearing Thames: there was a rapid increase in the density of houses, and I was passing occasional factories.
It took me three and a half hours to cover the 55 kilometres from Te Aroha to Thames — a miserable average! But I felt quite good as I filtered through lunchtime traffic to Sunkist Lodge, a private hostel where I planned to stay the night. My modest first step in cycle-touring had proved successful.
I remember little of this particular stopover at Sunkist; I ate, worked on my bike, went downtown to look around, and then went to bed. If anything else happened, my memory has not bothered to record it.
Thames cramped itself into the narrow stretch of flattish land that separated the mountains from the water. I was able to walk the width of the town in five minutes. But it rambled along the shore for several kilometres, as I noticed the next day when I cycled on.
The morning was cloudy, but that later cleared and the day became very hot and cloudless. The road undulated along the shoreline: there was only a narrow strip of flattish land between the water and the slopes of the mountains. The first 30 kilometres went quite smoothly, though my legs (and my bum!) were sore from the effort the day before. A painful derriere is the price a cyclist pays when setting out after a break of more than a few days. I don’t remember how long the first section of this day’s ride took, but I do remember a break at Tapu for a drink.
This “honeymoon” 30 km ended at the base of a hill. The road swerved inland and climbed (it seemed, looking up from the base) vertically into the sky. Hot, sweaty, and not at all eager to face this ogre, I wheeled my bike down to a nearby beach and went for a swim. The water was in icy contrast to the steam my body had been exuding. Ten minutes in the salty water left me refreshed and ready to tackle the hill.
I had a speedometer on my bike, so I know that the first grade was 2 kilometres of grueling climb. I walked my bike most of it: the first hundred metres convinced me that either (a) I needed a finer first gear for the bike or (b) I needed to fitten up before attempting hills with the insouciance of the experienced cyclists I’d seen while hitching around …
Half a kilometre of glorious downhill travel, then another 2 km climb. I had to stop half way up this one and rest: I overexerted myself and felt quite faint from the heat. But I had my reward — a four kilometre freewheel down to the flats around Manaia Harbour. Then a short stretch of level riding before a three-kilometre hill (three up, three down). (A side note: on the downgrades I hit 60 kph, and thought this noteworthy. If someone had told me that within a couple of months I would be coasting at up to 95 kph I’d have told them they were nuts (and that I would be too, to do that). But it happened, and why I am still alive to tell about it I don’t know!)
I cruised into Coromandel township feeling tired, but exultant. I had handled some hills! Following a set of signposts, I took the “Long Bay” road at a crossroads and found myself a tent site and all the salt water I wanted in a motorcamp, for the very reasonable sum of $3.50 per night. Ten cents in a slot gave me a very good shower, and after resting up on the stony beach till after sundown (the sunset was beautiful — brilliantly coloured, with a few wisps of high cloud to add contrast) I went to my tent and fell asleep.
I declared the next day to be a rest day. My bum was too sore to let me ride far. Instead I went into Coromandel and had a look around. There was a small museum devoted to the gold and kauri days. I enjoyed the three hours I spent wandering and looking. I bought a few small fragments of gum as keepsakes. Then I went back to the camp and had a laze on the beach. The holiday season was well-advanced, but there were still many families staying in tents and caravans at the camp. I spent a while talking to a young couple from Auckland, but the details of the conversation have slipped away. All small talk, I suppose; but it passed the afternoon pleasantly. Another good sunset, and again to bed and sleep early.
So far the road had been good — well maintained and, more importantly, topped with asphalt. My next day’s effort showed me the other face of the Coromandel. I had been hoping to cycle north to Cape Colville, but had foolishly set out from Te Aroha with no spare tyre. Since all my gear was stored in a pair of rear panniers with an overnight pack secured above them, my back tire was carrying quite a load. If it became irreparably damaged north of Coromandel, I faced an inconvenient delay and a humiliating dependence on hitching back to Coromandel for a new one. (Why I didn’t just buy a new one before going north, I can’t remember. I wasn’t particularly short of cash, as I proved later on when the back tire did die under me. It’s a mystery to me today.) So I decided to go to Whitianga. Hearing that there were extensive patches of gravel on Highway 25 between Coromandel and Whitianga, I said “what-the-hell” and took the scenic route — the secondary road which follows the courses of the Waiau and Mahakirau Rivers. More fool me. Instead of isolated gravel, I found myself on almost twenty kilometres of almost continuous dirt! What’s more, the road climbed much higher than Highway 25 would have demanded of me. I lost almost an hour on the far side of the pass, repairing a punctured tire (I’d hit too large a stone too hard while enjoying the freewheeling downgrade). But I did enjoy the sensation of isolation and independence. There were many beautiful views as the road crawled along the face of the mountain with deep, green, forested valleys and deep, sun-faded sky.
When I met Highway 25 on the other side of the peninsula, I turned left and made my way into Whitianga to look around and have a rest. The place was dead, so I hailed a taxi and — well, actually I did hail a taxi of sorts: to get me across a very narrow gap of water I used a ferry. 90¢ to cover 200 metres of water. But it cut more than 10 kilometres off the distance I still had to travel that day. I followed a set of winding dirt roads through moderately-well-settled holiday area, that finally brought me to Hot Water Beach.
Hot Water beach was an otherwise ordinary beach that had as its sole distinction a couple of springs of thermal water which trickled their boiling liquid up through the sand near the bases of some boulders. The springs were covered by the sea at high tide, but when the sea withdrew the area was rapidly covered by another tide: one of people busily digging the pools in which they hoped to enjoy a relaxing salty wallow. By the time the sea returned, the area near the springs resembled a relief map of Venice with the intricate network of little sandy canals that had been dug to divert the water — hot from the springs, cool from the sea to keep the temperature bearable — where it was wanted. On occasion, latecomers, desperate to fend off the advancing waves as long as possible, reared massive dikes of sand on their seawards side. I’m sure we’re all familiar with what one small child can do to sand between one tide and the next; imagine fifteen or twenty adults, equipped with full-size shovels and spades, cooperating frantically in a similar endeavour, egged on by their bonelessly relaxed friends. And all their efforts in vain: the sea rose inexorably and crashed through their barrier, flushing the bathers from their holes and erasing all signs of human works — until the next low tide.
Here I stayed two nights. Nights — ah, yes, that brings to mind the after-dark frolics. By day the population of the wallows would be families, in full bathing attire; but by night the young adults would make the area their own. Torches were forbidden, and the typical attire was the skin one was born with. Not that much happened that Mrs Grundy could have called “promiscuous”; sand and hot seawater worked together to discourage that! But in the anonymity of the darkness, hands and feet found their way into very strange places, even if you were perfectly motionless and in a wallow you’d thought you had all to yourself.
The beach itself was set in a beautiful semicircular bay, surrounded by green hills and open to the Pacific. I can’t remember what I paid for the tent site I used, but I believe it was about $5.00 per night, which in NZ at that time, especially considering the 20¢ showers, was quite a high tariff. On the other hand, the cost of supplying the amenities in such a remote location must have been quite high — perhaps this balanced the equation. Certainly, it was nice to be able to rinse away the salt with a hot shower.
Rested and thoroughly refreshed, I finally rode away. My first three sections of cycling — 55 km to Thames and 54 to Coromandel, then 48 rough ones to Hot Water Beach, had hardened my muscles. I now intended to try another small 48-kilometre stage, but this one involved features from all three earlier stages: flat, undulating, hilly, and dirt road. An interesting challenge.
I’ll pass over most of that ride — you’ve read similar passages already. The only incident that stands out in memory is discovering, while coasting down a long slope near Tairua, that my back tire was going flat. I’d hit 60 kph a couple of times and assumed that in one of those peaks I’d pinched the tyre on a stone. You can imagine my horror when I got off the bike at the bottom of the hill, only to discover that the reason it had gone flat was that the tire had worn through in places, and in one such place contact with the road had finally worn through the inner tube as well! I am here today to bore you with my adventures only because the air escaped slowly. If it had blown out while I was doing 60 on a turn, I’d have reached the base of the hill the fast way — over the edge.
But my luck held, and a man stopped and gave me a lift in to Tairua, where I managed to find a garage that stocked both tires and tubes. My only loss was the $30 that these necessary replacements cost me. (An indication of the wear that cycle-touring adds to a bike can be gained by considering that the tire had been new when I bought the bike, and that when I left Te Aroha it still looked practically unworn. About 175 km of Coromandel roads had simply destroyed it.)
Towards sundown I turned off Highway 25 to take a familiar road to my day’s destination: the YHA Hostel at Opoutere. It felt like coming home; for if the hostel at Pittwater (north of Sydney) became my favourite Australian hostel, that at Opoutere was my favourite in New Zealand.
Opoutere YHA was located by the Wharekawa Harbour, a tidal estuary of the river of the same name. It was quite popular, registering four to five times the usage of Te Aroha, which put it into the small-medium range for NZ hostels (which range from less than 1,000 hosteller-nights (“overnights”) to more than 22,000). Even more than Te Aroha, however, Opoutere survived because those who come there stayed several days; the hostel was somewhat difficult of access for those without wheels, since the bus service was infrequent and the hostel was several kilometres off the main road. [The hostel closed in 2017 and despite efforts to revive it in 2019 as “Wharekawa Lodge”, now seems dead.]
The hostel comprised three dormitory buildings, a house for the Manager, and a fairly large set of grounds. It was rated at 32 beds but could fit quite a few more people at need. It snuggled beneath a moderately high cliff, from which some good views of the area could be obtained, and was set in native bush. (One interesting feature of the grounds was two young kauri trees planted by the manager in around 1981 and 1983. By 1986 the latter was a slender sapling a bit taller than a man, and the former was a solid young tree about four metres high. Kauris are slow to grow but are enormously long-lived. These may [did] outlast the hostel.)
Walk left out of the main gate and down the road a hundred metres or so, then turn right past the public outhouses. Down a track to a car park, cross a bridge slung over a branch the estuary, walk through the pines — and you emerged on my favourite NZ beach. Opoutere Beach: four and a half kilometres of golden sand backed by dunes and trees and cliffs, one end the mouth of the estuary, the other a rocky prominence.
There was a bird sanctuary at the estuary end, facing onto the estuary. The estuary itself was a cornucopia of edible shellfish. The waves on the outer beach were gentle or rough as the mood and the tides took them, but on the estuary side the surface lapped gently on only slightly muddy banks. The hostel boasted a couple of kayaks (usually out of commission) with which the estuary’s corners could be explored. (But watch out for the rip at the mouth on the ebb!) An afternoon with a pair of binoculars would prove rewarding for the birdwatcher.
The surf-lashed outer beach was often almost deserted on weekdays (at weekends, particularly on Sundays, families moved in), maybe four people in the whole length. As a bonus, by tacit agreement of most of the locals, clothing on the beach was optional. The pursuit of the all-over tan was thus simplified.
Towards the north end, a small stream came down to the sea. Cross the stream and the remaining sand, and suddenly cliffs drew in close to the shoreline. Follow the cliffs around and you found a quiet retreat, built partly into a cave, where you might spend a night or two if you were short of money or just wanted to be away from civilisation for a while. (Definitely slum quarters, unfortunately, but you could always sleep outside if you didn’t trust the filthy sponge-rubber mattress.)
The sunsets were pretty, too, to me, who was raised to watch the sun descend into the sea. At Opoutere the sunset was behind anyone gazing out to sea, but the constantly changing play of the light as the night crept up the eastern horizon was endlessly fascinating. The subtle golds and greens and blues in the sky, reflected by the water and merging with the water’s own darker swirling and the fading pink sea-foam, framed by the gold sand and the heavy green trees, were very lovely.
Several islands were visible from the dunes. The closest was a group of three: in order of proximity Rabbit, Penguin, and Slipper. The largest and farthest was Slipper, and this island figured in world news a couple of years back when possible graveyards for the Rainbow Warrior were being considered. At one time it looked as if the ship would be scuttled in shallow water near Slipper island, where people could come and see it, a perpetual reminder of an infamous deed by a country “friendly” to NZ.
The night was sultry. After tossing for several hours in my little room in the corner of the big building, I gave up. I pulled on my togs and scuffed into my jandals; stuffed towel, t-shirt and shorts into a bag, along with a torch, and stepped out.
I paused a moment, listening, on the planking of the covered walkway that joins the hostel buildings together. The night-sounds were muted, stifled by the heavy air. A faint wind-sigh, a rustle of leaves. Somewhere an opossum grunted. Through the open door of the dormitory behind I could hear the snores of hostellers not cursed by an attack of insomnia.
Leaving the door open to allow the almost nonexistent breeze what circulation it could, I stepped forward, off the walkway, towards the main gate. The cloud overhead blocked off the stars, the moon was elsewhere, flirting with the sun, and except for the hostel lights the darkness was nearly absolute. I didn’t have any particular place to go, but there was a half-formed idea of walking down to the beach. In this dark, I preferred the open gape of the gate to the overgrown short-cut past the Manager’s house that was my usual, daytime, route.
I crossed the area of lawn that lay in the shallow triangle formed by the hostel buildings. My left foot came down on a protruding foot of a wooden table, and I stopped to rub it. I remembered sitting in this very spot this afternoon, chatting with the others and sharing travel stories with them. I had recounted my own recent experiences at Hot Water Beach, and the moment of shock when I discovered my worn-through tire. Others added stories about hitching, about driving, and about the odd goings-on when they had camped for the night in a field full of heifers. (This last item involved dim light and a beast that decided the tent ropes made a good place to scratch. Seeing the small horns and the absence of an udder’s silhouette, the two incautious Canadians had sprinted ingloriously for the fence for fear that the “bull” might decide to rub up against them. The heifer, startled by the eruption of two noisy and unexpected humans from the tent, ran hastily in the opposite direction.)
My foot was still sore, but I hadn’t left my bed in order to squat at a picnic table. I suffer these attacks of sleeplessness from time to time, and have learned through experience that the only way to deal with them — short of slugging myself with an unhealthy dose of aspirin — is activity, since otherwise I fret and toss and get up in the morning with aching muscles and a pounding headache.
Leaving the table, I walked carefully into the dark until my toe brushed one of the logs that marked off the driveway from the lawn. Previous Managers had nurtured a bamboo hedge on the grounds. This hedge, left to itself for a long time, had spread its children across the hostel grounds. Ken, the present Manager, was gradually reducing the upstart growth, but here and there in the lawn there remained sharp spikes of bamboo, tips shorn off by the mower. By day it was safe enough to wander around in jandals, or even barefoot, but I was not game to risk a needle in the dark.
I drifted down the driveway, past half-sensed trees and bushes. At the younger kauri seedling I paused, to stroke its trunk and leaves a while, wondering how long it would live after I was gone and forgotten. Or would it be cut down in its prime by some as-yet unknown agency? I hoped not!
Down the slight slope to the gate, left open by some late-arriving hosteller. Cross the road and carefully clamber down the rude track to the graveyard made by generations of hostellers disposing of the attire of their latest meal by dumping the empty shells into the estuary at this closest point to the hostel. I sat on a hummock of grass by the edge of the water, listening to the gentle waves and sniffing the pungent odour of that mud not presently covered by water. I could see a couple of lights gleaming on the far bank. One of them was moving — another mid-night walker, perhaps, or a possum-hunter.
The breeze felt cooler here, perhaps because it had lost heat in its passage over the cool water. I would have liked to stay here a while, thinking, in the dark, but after the muggy hostel this cool tingle was almost unpleasantly cold. Rather than pull on a t-shirt I pulled out the torch, using it to light my way back up the tricky bank. At the road I put the torch away again: my mood was still for darkness and the privacy of the night.
On impulse, I pulled the idea of a walk along the beach out of the forgotten corner of my attention where it had been festering. The breeze would be cooler still down there, and maybe stronger, but the activity of walking would counteract that, and — well, I did have warmer clothes to pull on if required.
So I walked down the road, moving faster and straighter now that I had a destination in mind. Everything was changed in the dark, and only familiarity with the route stopped me from getting hopelessly lost. Through the picnic area near the toilets (there was a caravan there, and the sound of snoring). Down through the car park and onto the small footbridge that arched so picturesquely over the tidal waters.
There was a ritual to crossing the bridge, for when I was young I had been exposed to the game of poohsticks. In crossing this bridge, I would drop a small twig over the edge and see which way the tide was running. Habit led me to drop a twig, now. I couldn’t see it fall, and the sound of its impact on the water was lost in the whispering night. A pointless exercise, really, and I laughed at myself. But I suppressed the impulse to get out the torch and relocate my emissary twig. Instead I stumbled on over the bridge and down onto the sand on the far side, entering the trees.
Until now I had thought that the night was dark. Under the pines lay a shadow that defied penetration. I suddenly realised how dependent I was on what faint visual cues there had been: the white road-edges, the white sand, a half-sensed sheen from the light of those stars that occasionally managed to send a glitter around a corner of the clouds. Now the last trace was gone, and I was truly blind. But I pushed on for several minutes, stubbornly refusing to push back the dark by recourse to my torch.
The darkness lay around me, but I found my ears, my nose, and my questing limbs were able to pour into me such a volume of information that I was unable to process it all: a whole world of sensation that my normal dependence on sight blocked away. Trees sprang into existence before me and faded away behind, each a breath of echoing stillness, an area of dead air. My toes felt after the sand of the track, testing the texture for twigs and grass-clumps, shuffling cautiously along the true route. My out-stretched hands encountered bushes and tree branches, warning me when I strayed to one side of the path or another. Through the trees ahead of me came the sound of the surf. Stretching my hearing, I could hear the calls of the night life: the more pork! of an owl, the grunt of a hedgehog, a distant crashing of tree-branches that was probably opossums at play. Once a dog barked.
The belt of trees that backed the beach had long fascinated me. Although in places there was a healthy native undergrowth, elsewhere the trees rose from ground clothed only in fallen needles. This in itself was not so wonderful, but the nature of the trees made it so: for I am used to the bulbous silhouette of the native NZ forest. To walk through these stands of tall pine was an eerie thing, and where the pines stood alone was strangest of all. By day it reminded me of a cathedral, all tall spaces and arches, carrying a stillness and time of its own. I would walk on the fallen needles and fantasise about sleds fleeing through the European forest, wolves slinking around the trunks, a young love walking to meet me. The birds would sing and the wind would blow, and the trees would hold this place apart from the rest of the world, my imagination expanding the forest across half a continent and populating it with ents and elves (and hobbits). Science fiction cannot entirely free us from the fantasies of our youth, particularly in such an alien place.
I did not take the track that would carry me to those long open avenues. By night, even with the torch to help, I could not do other than get hopelessly lost. In my present mood, I would soon be fantasising dangers creeping towards me from behind, dropping from above, or waiting beside the track for me to come past them. In younger days, I was deathly afraid of the dark. I can remember that when I was a Sea Scout, the only routes to or from the scout den from my parents house would take me through lightless streets. One route took me along a houseless street, lupin-lined and spooky; another took me past a junkyard which had a particularly nasty watchdog that sometimes got out and once chased my bike, snapping at my heels; and the third was the route I took, through an industrial area, deserted and silent but the best route left to me. It was a long time before I outgrew this fear, and to this day it can be invoked by the right circumstances. So I stuck to the thread of sandy track that led through banked undergrowth to the sea by the shortest route.
Finally I did resort to my torch, at a fork in the path. Once the light was present the sounds and sensations of the darkness receded, and I became timid, clinging to sight like a castaway to a broom handle. I did not turn the torch off again until I came out of the trees and started up the shoreward side of the dunes.
So I came over the last crest with my night-sight weak and my other senses only slowly picking up the slack. In front of me was a vast, continuous roar, taking up half of my world. A coldness that had nothing to do with the breeze was coming to me from out of that sound: perhaps a psychological feeling, perhaps a phenomenon connected with the heat-sink represented by the Pacific Ocean.
The clouds were breaking up slowly, and there were more stars out now. As I walked down to the edge of the tide and scuffed my jandals through stranded sea-froth, I watched out of the corners of my eyes, gradually picking out the pale glimmer of the overlapping arcs of foam left by the waves. Then the sea itself came up, a darkness that heaved beneath a frail lace garment.
I took off my togs and jandals, putting them carefully into my bag. Naked, I saluted the sea, lover to loved.
I stepped on a stick of driftwood. On impulse, I picked it up and began writing in the invisible sand with it. My name, first, then sentences half-intended for whoever might walk here in the morning before the tide banished the scratches with an offhand wave. Banal phrases, worthy of neither recollection nor record here. Then, bored already, I trailed the stick behind me, an unseen plow, as I walked north along the shoreline. Finally, half an hour later, I climbed a dune and stuck the stick into the sand beside me when I sat down, claiming the beach for my own with an imaginary flag.
Seated, I pulled on my t-shirt to avoid a chill; the temperature had fallen several degrees since I started my walk, and even in the lee of an enfolding dune I felt a bit chilled. But it was an automatic action; my mind was out in the darkness, musing, playing with ideas. People I had known, places I had been, people I had not known, places I had never been, people I could never know and places I could never go. My life had been a pilgrimage; I was never satisfied with wherever I was; I always wished to be beyond whatever horizon I might walk within; and I did not know my destination.
One close friend confided once that I had always seemed to her to be someone who was pretty sure of what he wanted to do. I found it hard to explain the difference between the series of plans that I worked on from moment to moment and the long-term blankness that lay beyond them. Once I envied those who planned out their life in adolescence, and spent the next thirty or forty years working out that plan. But I must confess that by the time I found myself sitting on a sand dune above this lovely night-time beach, that envy had turned to pity. Those people had security, and options were open to them with their high-paying jobs and special skills that were not available to me. But few of them ever used those options! They’d chug along in their career, perhaps even marry and raise a family, and then one day they’d wake up and find that they had run off the end of their track. It’s called “mid-life crisis”. But my whole life had been a mid-life crisis. I was used to it, and resigned to the comparatively wretched old age that faced me unless I Did Something to mitigate it. A good part of my internal search, 1985—86, was spent in thinking through just how I could accomplish the things I wanted to do and yet set up a lifestyle that would help me when I got too old to travel.
I jerked myself out of my reverie. The clouds were gone, and a cold wind had sprung up. The sky over the eastern horizon was lightening to the coming sun, still hours away. And now I felt sleepy. Whatever had been going on in the back of my head to keep me awake all night had resolved itself during this walk. My next step was obvious — to return to Australia and, this time, make a success of transplanting myself to a new country; then use Australia as springboard to travel on around the world. How to go about the later stages of this plan, and what I would do after the five years or so allocated to its accomplishment had expired, I still did not know. But I would think of something.
Rising, I turned my back on the beach and the sea and walked through the dunes into the forest; needing no torch in the growing light that trickled in through the ranked trunks behind me, turning everything into a cut-out shadow-play; feeling no imaginary dangers in the darker reaches of the forest.
The morning came when the last of my hoarded weekends for this trip ran out and I had to go back to Te Aroha to be a hostel manager again. I was not unwilling: I loved the job, and I loved Te Aroha, and even Opoutere was best taken in carefully-rationed doses. So I loaded up my panniers and stuffed my sleeping bag into the overnight bag, piled the load on my hapless bike, said goodbye to Ken and Karen Griffin and the various Griffinlets, and set out. This leg would be some 86 kilometres, my longest day’s ride yet. But I was confident: for I would be retracing my normal bus/hitching route between Te Aroha and Opoutere, and I knew the terrain well. Hah! Now was the time to discover that a section of road that looks fine from a car or a bus can be a horror to a cyclist.
The lesson was not long in starting: a few kilometres down the highway, I found myself in an undulating section of road. Somehow the downgrades never seemed so long nor so steep as the upgrades; and what was more, a breeze had come out of nowhere to blast itself into my face — strengthening if I went downhill, dying out entirely on the slow uphill slogs when I most needed the ventilation. I was learning one of the oldest cycle-touring maxims: the wind always comes from ahead. The cyclists’ hail — “May the wind blow up your arse!” — took on true life and meaning to me for the first time.
Down to Whangamata, through the new bypass, then on to Waihi, where I turned right onto Highway 2. This brought me into the beautiful Karangahake Gorge, which divided the Coromandel from the Kaimai Ranges. It was an old gold-mining area, and in recent times steps had been taken to help preserve that heritage. But more immediately important: the river that ran through the gorge provided good swimming for overheated cyclists!
Paeroa … left over the bridge and slog 21 kilometres uphill … left and up the mountain to the hostel. 6½ hours from Opoutere. Home.
Across to WaiukuAt Norcon ’84, that year’s New Zaland National SF Convention, I had fun. I had plenty of money and plenty of time and I spent the con having a Real Good Time. Somehow, very early one morning late in the con, I found myself walking the streets of sleeping Auckland with a blonde woman of compact build and round, impish face. I think that we had happened to leave a late room-party at the same time for a breath of air, and had started talking. I cannot now remember anything much of what we said, except that it was all pleasant and entertaining and that conversation was all that passed between us. Her name was Maree, and she had come to the con from a place called Waiuku. We talked about our respective hometowns, and somewhere along the way she mentioned that I must come and see Waiuku some time. Naturally I said that I would do just that — but I must admit that I didn’t expect to go through with this promise. The con ended and I went back to Wellington and then I quit my job and started my wanderjahr. I thought of Maree every now & then, but there didn’t seem much hope of getting around to visiting. Waiuku was quite isolated on one of the peninsulas that bound Manukau Harbour, and I saw no easy way to get there.
But then I bought the bike, and started cycle-touring. And one day I looked at the map and realised that I was now fit enough so that the distance from Te Aroha to Waiuku by road — some 127 kilometres — represented no more than a single hard day’s ride to me. So I wrote Maree a letter and told her what I planned and when I planned to do it, and she wrote back and gave me exact directions on finding her place, and one day I loaded up the bike and set out to cycle to visit Maree.
I’ll gloss over the standard details. What started out as a long but not-too-hard-looking jaunt became a nightmare. I had left Te Aroha at 08:00, but with rest stops and hills that demanded I stop and walk, night fell about the time I was passing through Waiuku. (If I could remember exactly when this happened I could place this trip more precisely in time, but I can’t.) Maree lived about 10 kilometres out on the far side, and I perforce pushed on into the darkness with the aid of a torch. (I had no lights on the bike, since I hadn’t envisaged doing any night riding.) Fortunately there was little traffic. But it was with some relief that I finally picked out — having gone past it once and having a moment of panic when I suspected I was lost (suspected? I was certain!) — the box-thorn hedge that marked the turnoff to the farm where Maree lived with her mother. My state of mind — and exhaustion — can be gauged by the fact that try as I might, I cannot bring a single memory into focus to help me with retelling my arrival. As I wheeled my bike around the back of the house, did a door open and spill warm yellow light onto the grass? Or did I prop the bike against something and knock? I have half-images of doing both these things, and they are mutually exclusive.
About other events I can be more circumstantial. Maree had just returned from an overseas trip (another reason it had taken me so long to get around to dropping in) during which she toured parts of north America and Europe. At a moment when conversation was flagging a bit, her mother suggested that she should get out her photo albums and tell me about her trip. “Ah!” I said, “This is one of the reasons why I came here!” And so Maree brought out several huge volumes packed with photos.
Looking at photos of someone else’s trip was the sort of thing that I normally did as much as a duty as because I was particularly keen to see one more shot of my friend standing self-consciously in some spot where I would prefer to have been standing myself. When Maree showed you her photos, however, the experience was something as far above that as Star Wars was above a still shot of a tomato. Normally somewhat placid, suddenly she lit up. Although you could participate in a conversation with her if you liked, you could equally well make nothing save the standard encouraging sounds and let her enthusiasm carry you away for an hour or two. This was not a trip report, a travelogue, or a recounting of events; this was a story — a coherent narrative illustrated by the photos, having beginning, middle, and end, dotted with plot twists and surprise guests and odd characters. It was easy for me to recall now how it was that I should forget what we talked about in 1984 but remember how pleasant it all was. Then to my sleeping-bag on the floor, and a deep sleep.
The next day passed in very lazy fashion. I was stiff and sore after the ordeal the day before, so we spent the day wandering around the farm in leisurely fashion, meeting the sheep, the chickens, and the other resident critters. We wandered down to the beach that looked out onto an arm of the Manukau. Mud, grey and slimy, dotted here and there with mangroves migrating onto the property from a neighbour’s attempt at land reclamation. Maree found the presence of these self-sown seedlings offensive, and as she walked along she would bend down and pluck out any that came within reach. This activity proved infectious, and soon we were both hunting back and forth across the beach, pulling out the invading plants like birds after worms. Then we stopped, flushed and laughing, and sat down on a driftwood log for a while to rest, and Maree talked a bit about the area while she put her shoes back on.
One of our shared interests was Leslie Charteris’ Saint books. That night we rediscovered this mutual interest, and spent much of the evening discussing the books, the Saint, Charteris, and the club that was named after the character (set up after WW II to help build and support a hospital in blitzed London). (A few years later I got a card from Maree with her new address in Auckland and a note to say that she was now a member of the Saint Club. ***Green*** I never got myself that far together — but maybe while travelling —) Winnie-the-Pooh and other abiding loves got dragged in, and we dug out the various Saint and Pooh books and started quoting favourite passages at each other. All very silly, perhaps, but it was fun. I didn’t get to my sleeping bag until after 2am.
The next day I started home. Maree, wearing a straw hat, saw me to the gate, and my last view of her was a slouched country yokel leaning on a wooden stock-gate, chewing on a stalk of grass. All carefully posed, of course. She worked as a librarian and was doing quite well at it, and if she was any less at-home in the city as in the country, she concealed it well.
I decided not to tempt fate by trying to cycle all the way back to Te Aroha that day. I’d only reached Waiuku in a day because I had the broad flat Hauraki Plains to speed across while my legs were fresh. Going back I would reach the plains tired, and still with the legacy of the outward trip hanging on me. But I had heard of a motor-camp at a place called Miranda Hot Springs, over on the western shore of the Firth of Thames. It was about 65 kilometres from Maree’s place and about 75 from Te Aroha, a perfect two-stage journey since the short stage was hilly and the long stage flat. So I retraced part of my outward route, then struck left up a side-road as I descended the hills towards the plains. This took me into more hills, but the views from the peaks were wonderful! I stopped at one point when I saw a movement in a tree beside the road. A possum, blinking at me with sleepy day-time eyes.
Most of the route was in bush, but towards the end I came out onto naked summits and rutted farm-tracks. Then the final peak, and suddenly I could see the Firth of Thames below me, with the long green-grey dragon-back of the Coromandels beyond. It amused me to think that I might be standing on one of the very spots that I had looked at with so much curiosity during my Coromandel excursions. The scene inspired me and I sketched it on a card, which I addressed and later posted to Maree. I wonder if she got it? I’d like a copy of that card — I recall that the drawing was, by my standards, quite good, and I added notes commenting on the various shades and colours.
Down a twisting road and onto a narrow stretch of flat land that divided the Firth from the hills. I had taken the wrong road and found myself about six kilometres north of where I wanted to be. Turn and ride until I found the signpost, then up a stone-strewn road to the Miranda Hot Springs Motor Camp.
The tent site cost me $5 for the night, but I paid it cheerfully, for that price included access to the hot pool that was the camp’s main attraction — entry to which was normally $3.50 anyway!
The pool turned out to be a huge rectangular basin with a number of steps leading bathers from the shallow edges to the deeper centre. It was an open-air affair, which proved amusing when it rained (as it did, just after dark). In one corner was a huge tv-repeater-screen. The hot water (not really hot, just warmer than tepid) came up through many small vents in the concrete that sheathed the pool. Apparently there was not one major spring, but rather hundreds of small seepings through cracks in the underlying rock. The pool-builders had tracked down the larger cracks and channelled them into the pool. I made the acquaintance of the camp’s owners, and we got on quite well. I told them about Te Aroha and they told me about the relatives they had in the area. I admired the T-shirts advertising the camp that were selling for $15 from the camp store. “You like them? Have one! — all you have to do is promise to wear it every now and then!” I told them that I planned to go back to Te Aroha the next day. “But it’s going to rain tomorrow. You’ll get soaked!” Well, yes, but I had to be getting back. “Well, we’re going shopping in Paeroa tomorrow. If you can wait until midday, we’ll give you a lift that far.” And so it happened. Very nice people and a very nice camp.
Through The Heart
I went and worked on the Kiwifruit again in May 1986, using my annual leave for the purpose. Nothing like being paid twice for my time.
I did not, however, spend the whole month of my leave picking fruit. Towards the end, I got pissed-off with the way my employer was running his teams of pickers, decided that enough was enough, and cycled off into the sunset. Well, not the sunset exactly, but in the same general direction. I had been working near Te Puke (actually some distance out on the far side from Tauranga). When I left the orchard I went back to Tauranga for a few days, then decided to make my first day’s staging the approximately 85 km from Tauranga to Rotorua.
The first part was relatively easy — cross the small peninsula that central Tauranga squatted on, cross the harbour via a railbridge (shorter than using the main road), up a connecting road to Highway 2, then along to the Rotorua turnoff at Highway 33. But then things turned difficult.
I found myself dropping gears for no obvious reason. I was used enough to cycle-touring by now that I could judge my progress fairly well even without looking at the speedometer and doing mental calculations of time versus distance. It soon became plain that I was not making as much distance for effort as I thought that I should be. It took a longer period of observation before the reason came to me: I was climbing up from sea level onto a vast plate of volcanic debris, vomit of ancient activity by the volcanic zone that reaches from Rotorua to Ruapehu. This “Volcanic Plateau” (as it was called in my schoolboy geography lessons) surrounded the mountains and stretched east to the sea, forming the coastline of the bay of Plenty. But the layer of debris thinned very gradually as you left the volcanoes behind. There was no noticeable slope by very reason of the gradual nature of the change: the land was tilted, and the horizon matched it. Lacking the means of comparison, the eye assumed that the landscape was horizontal — but it wasn’t.
I persevered. The vegetation gradually changed from the lush green of the coast to the darker green of inland forest. Then I passed between two lakes and entered the region of thermal activity that surrounded Rotorua. I cheered to myself as I passed through Te Ngae, the turnoff to “Hell’s Gate” at Tikitere — the milestone that told me I was almost there. To my right lay Lake Rotorua, with a green island set in it — Mokoia, setting of a famous Maori love story. At my left, tall pillars of white steam marked thermal areas.
Rotorua was a city of about 58,000 people, built on the shores of a volcanic lake. If the reader is familiar with any part of NZ at all, that part is probably Rotorua. (The next most likely places are the Bay of Islands and Queenstown.) So I won’t go into much detail here. The place was a tourist trap — prices high, and everything of honest culture sacrificed for the Tourist Dollar. The air reeked of sulphur. The inhabitants were very proud of their geysers and mud pools, but are welso addicted to having their own private hot pools in their back yards, with the result that the water table was dropping disastrously, killing off the geysers and mud pools. Sad (but all too human).
I had been here before, of course. This trip I only stayed two nights before pressing on the 82 kilometres to Lake Taupo. Rugged countryside, red soil (an unusual colour for NZ, though common in Australia), climbing into the centre of the island, then a swift descent to the shores of Taupo. Taupo, filling the blasted-out roots of ancient volcanoes, was the largest lake in NZ, and it was famous for its trout fishing. On the way into Taupo city I stopped at the Honey Village, a complex dealing with various varieties of honey and the odd combinations resulting from adding such things as fruits and nuts. Samples were laid out on tables, with wooden spatulas supplied in jars nearby. Take a spatula and dip it in whatever honey takes your fancy, lick the specimen, dispose of the stick. Not a place for gluttons! Some hostellers I’d spoken to went there and made themselves quite sick by pigging out on the free tasting. (Similar to getting drunk on wine-tasting expeditions, I suppose.) If you wanted to, you could finish the expedition by purchasing jars of your favourite flavours when leaving.
At Taupo I stayed in Rainbow Lodge, a private hostel built and run by a couple who once ran hostels for YHA. In 1986, the two best non-YHA hostels in NZ were run by ex-YHA Managers. (The other was in Christchurch.) Rainbow Lodge was very new when I was there; the interior was not completely finished (it had opened in order to get some cash coming in).
§
It started raining, so I stayed two nights at Rainbow Lodge. By the time the rain eased, the visitors had formed a tight-knit little community, and everyone was sorry when it came time to move on. (Several of these people later came through Te Aroha, some while I was away, a couple while I was in residence; which made for several pleasant nights of story-telling and comparison of notes.) Of course, like any group, not everyone liked everyone else, and there was the inevitable untidy element who would leave dirty dishes lying around, not bathe for days, or come noisily back from the pub in the early hours and throw up on the floor, leaving the mess to others to clean up if they themselves weren’t caught and firmly made to clean it up themselves. (Such creatures were found less in YHA hostels than private ones — the YHA system policed and eventually purged itself of persistently offensive characters, before these individuals could do real damage. In the private area, supposedly mature adult people would do the most amazingly antisocial deeds before the community banded together to get rid of them — and even then, the offenders would often turn up again and again elsewhere.)
Now came the day of folly: I set off into the drizzle, determined to try the 137-kilometre leg from Taupo to Ohakune. I should have known better: 137 kilometres is a long day’s cycle at the best of times, but now it was approaching the shortest day of the year, I wanted to pass the highest mountains in the North Island, and I compounded it by setting out late in the morning. (I was not totally bereft of wit — I did intend to leave Highway 1 at Turangi rather than follow the main highway down the desolate Desert Road on the east side of the mountains to Waiouru. That area had a reputation for being dangerous to benighted travellers.)
I cruised easily along Highway 1, following the rolling shoreline of Lake Taupo, admiring the beauty of the lake in the rare moments of sunshine. The far shore (or rather, the hills behind it) was barely visible on the horizon, and the waves that came in were larger than you might expect from a lake. I made good time for the first 50 kilometres — just over two hours. But then I decided to take the scenic route, Highway 47a instead of Highway 47, to pass by the western slopes of the mountains. I had forgotten just how high the first step of the mountain-base was: when I passed through Tokaanu and saw what was waiting for me, I quailed. The road climbed to 745 metres to cross the Te Poninga saddle. (Of course, the land was something like half a kilometre high already, so I had only a few hundred metres to climb, but most of the extra height came in a single winding slope about four or five kilometres long.)
Nothing for it. I pushed my bike up. Took me three hours, which put me past 2 pm, with perhaps three hours of usable day left and almost seventy kilometres of hostile up-and-down to cover if I wanted to reach Ohakune that day. Couldn’t be done.
Having reached the saddle, at least I had a couple of kilometres of coasting ahead of me. I climbed back onto my bike and pushed off, the peaks on either side (1160 and 1325 metres) acting as starting posts. I bent low over the handlebars, holding the lower grips fiercely, flicking occasional amazed glances at the speedometer as it swung around and around, finally quivering on 95 kph — terminal velocity, I guess. The wind was vicious, even with sunglasses protecting my eyeballs from the worst blast. I swung wide on the curves and prayed that I didn’t meet a car at the wrong moment. Gentle tests with the brakes assured me that there was no way I could stop other than catastrophically before I reached the bottom. What slowing I had to do from time to time was sufficient to overheat the pads, leaving a thin black circle of rubber on the wheel-rims, even though I tried to alternate between front and back to minimise the friction. I certainly had no desire to pull back with full force: I have a vivid memory of my childhood, when I tried that on a hillside in Wanganui we called “the Death Track”. The rubber shoes popped out, leaving me to accelerate horribly and finally crash through a corral-type fence at the bottom, knocking myself out but — by some fluke — collecting only a few bruises and scratches otherwise. I could hope for no such happy ending here!
Even so, I had time to watch the scenery and to note the green waters of tiny Lake Rotopounamu as I passed high above it.
I made it down safely, and stopped to pee at the roadside, feeling shaky at the knees, when I finally halted my mad career on the flats near Lake Rotoaira.
I pushed on, but the road was crossing the long ridge-lines that radiate from the mountains. Already tired from mounting the saddle, I found myself walking more and more. Then dusk fell, and I finally found a small flat area well off the road to use as a camp.
Snug in my thick sleeping bag and windproof tent, I slept well. Next morning I stepped out into -4 degrees of heavy frost. When I rode on, I was so well-wrapped against the cold that I looked like a ball.
The land was wide, covered with brown tussock, plunging in one direction into a distant complex of hills, rising in the other into an intricately-patterned and snow-capped wall of stone: the three volcanoes at the heart of the North Island — Tongariro, 1968 metres; Ngaurohoe, 2291 metres; and Ruapehu, 2797 metres. The latter two are classified as active, but this day only a slight steam from Ngaurohoe showed it.
Although there were three major mountains in the group, only about three kilometres separated the peaks of Tongariro and Ngaurohoe, with a wide, relatively low saddle between them and Ruapehu. (The higher of the two peaks flanking the Te Poninga saddle was called Pihanga, and Maori legend claimed the mountain was female — the wife of Tongariro. It seems that a third mountain, Taranaki, once stood nearby, and he coveted his neighbour’s wife. Angered, Tongariro fought with Taranaki and finally drove him away with fire and rocks. Taranaki fled to the sea, wounded foot digging the valley now filled by the Whanganui River; then he waded up the coast and finally settled down in the centre of the western fin of Maui’s fish. Today, after many years of being known as “Mt Egmont” (so-named by the white man) he again rules his wide domain under his own name.)
After a while my eyes adjusted to the scale of the countryside — I thought — and I suddenly noticed a child’s toy house standing on a hillside some way off the road. It had obviously been patterned after a European manor-house. It was blocky, multi-storied, and slope-roofed. I was surprised that such a beautiful and detailed toy should be left out in this desolate place — and then I realised my error. I should have realised earlier: I was looking up the long flank of Ruapehu at the Chateau Tongariro. What looked small and close was really more than fifteen kilometres away, and was the only man-made element in the landscape capable of making itself noticed against the grandeur of the mountains.
I slogged away until I met the turnoff to the Chateau. On impulse, I essayed the six-kilometre uphill climb and spent a couple of hours looking around the ski village that had grown up around the imposing building (which was a ski-hotel run by the Tourist Hotel Corporation). Someday I shall stay there. The family went there once on holiday, but I was too young to remember it very clearly.
My back tire had gone flat, so I fixed it. I left my pocket-knife lying on a step beside where I fixed my bike. Didn’t realise it until I wanted to use it to shave some kindling for the fireplace at the Ohakune YHA.
The return trip to Highway 47 flew by, and I laughed into the wind. This random side-trip was proof to me that my long nights and days of introspection and self-analysis were not going to waste — the person I had been in 1984 would not have turned aside from their pre-planned route to snoop around the Chateau! Now I could settle down to killing the 44 kilometres that separated me from Ohakune.
The YHA hostel at Ohakune was an older structure, somewhat run-down, and relied on the ski travellers in winter to keep it profitable. When I was there this trip, it was being run by Tomoko, a Japanese hosteller who had been supplementing her NZ trip by relieving at various hostels. I’d heard about her through the internal communication of YHA and by reputation from hostellers, and was very pleased to meet her at last. She had a very sweet, somewhat “lost” personality that was very appealing. Not surprisingly, she was very popular with the visitors at the various hostels she ran. We spent quite a while talking about our various adventures. Some time later, in her final days in NZ, she came to Te Aroha. We kept in touch for years. I hoped someday to get to Japan and visit her in her own country, but now I think that won’t happen.
Two nights at Ohakune, and it was time to attempt the final leg: Ohakune to Wanganui via the Parapara and Highway 4. 100 kilometres of winding hill-road, with the three great hills of the Parapara looming at the gates of my home town. It was hell, though I made it through as planned. I was in familiar territory and couldn’t lose myself in the scenery the way I had elsewhere, but some interest was provided by playing leap-frog with a Japanese traveller, Joichi, riding a 50 cc motor-scooter. He would pass me as I walked or cycled upgrade; then I would catch and pass him on the far side. He didn’t finally leave me behind until we reached the willow-covered banks of the Whanganui River.
Although I took no particular notice of the scenery, Highway 4 was nevertheless one of the prettier roads in NZ, with its steep hillsides and many rows of stately poplars.
Wanganui. I cycled in along the riverbank, relaxing as Aramoho appeared on the far bank. The River was about fifty metres wide, filled with very muddy brown water. When the tide was on the ebb it flowed placidly to the sea. When the tide was on the flood it flowed placidly from the sea! I came in through Wanganui East and crossed at the City Bridge, cycled up Victoria Avenue (the main street) and made the final easy section to my parents’ home in Castlecliff.
I stayed a few days, then, not having time to cycle north before an important appointment, bussed to Hamilton, cycling on from there to Te Aroha in the early hours of the morning, arriving home to an empty hostel. Sigh. But My satisfaction at having completed this odyssey was enough. Now I was a real cycle-tourist.
The Hard Luck RideThe last of the four main cycle-tours was a Rotorua trip in August. It was the shortest and is the quickest told and the hardest to forget. It was a hard-luck trip if ever I had one, with moents of brilliance.
Before I even got out of Te Aroha I discovered that two of the struts supporting my rear wheel (the two diagonal ones that meet the frame near the seat) had come loose, requiring a quick stop at a local garage to get them welded back into place. Then I found I’d left my cheque-book in Te Aroha and had with me only my Post Office Savings Bank passbook — with almost nothing in it. If I hadn’t been able to arrange with Dannie and Helen to telegraph some money through to me, I would have been forced to make an ignominious return to Te Aroha. (A friend had offered to lend me money, but I didn’t want to ruin my trip by worrying about getting it back to her later. Better to cancel the trip and try again another time.)
This was my final trip before leaving NZ, and despite the travail it left me very pleasant memories, for I met up with a German hosteller, Inge, and we spent three happy (and quite platonic) days exploring the place together. Inge was bright and was one of those people who can walk into a strange place and, in ten minutes, strike up a friendship with someone. She visited me in Melbourne in 1988, before setting out on a month’s bus-back exploration of the country. The day she went to Adelaide, I left her at the bus terminal cheerfully — and sure enough, in the twenty minutes or so between the time we parted and the time the bus left, she met up with an interesting German couple living in Adelaide. The man had a passionate belief in the evil of supermarket waste, and had gotten into trouble several times for his habit of salvaging goods from supermarket rubbish and giving the still-edible or usable items to poor people who couldn’t afford to buy them new. Inge made the perfect foil to my own reserve, given that I was in travelling mode at the time and less staid than normal. So we went to the fisheries at Rainbow springs and soaked at the Polynesian Pools and visited Whakarewarewa, the major thermal area closest to the city, and which also has a Maori Arts Centre.
More things went wrong on the way from Rotorua to Tauranga, and the final section, back to Te Aroha via the Karangahake Gorge, saw me: (1) hit a stone and destroy a tire (as well as denting the metal rim, leaving the bike with a permanent bump-bump-bump sensation when in motion); (2) try to turn too sharply, resulting in the bike stopping dead while I cruised on to skin my palms on the road; (3) swerve too wide on a turn and come within a few centimetres of going under a truck. In short, if it hadn’t been for three idyllic days in Rotorua, I’d have come out in worse condition than I entered the trip.
In SummaryApart from these four main trips, I made a number of lesser ones, mainly into the Coromandel and starting or ending at Opoutere. I folded those into the Opoutere section above.
One short trip was a brief half-day out-and-back along the Kaimais to run the bike in after repairs. I turned around two hours out, at a sleepy, boring little farming town called Matamata. Today it’s better known as the filming location for Hobbiton in the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.
I think that the pleasures of touring by bike was one of the best discoveries I made at Te Aroha. With my bike, and with the extended weekends made possible by the setup at Te Aroha, I was able to get the feeling of travelling, even though I never really went anywhere. The environment — surrounded by travellers from all over the world — was pretty much what I could have expected had I been travelling myself, yet if I’d been confined to the area around all the time it might soon have palled somewhat. But whenever things started to feel closed-in, I could load up the wheels and take a spin someplace else.
The cycle-touring idea was helped along by the nature of the area. The regions covered in this report were some of the most scenic in the North Island, packing in more goodies per square kilometre than almost any other area of comparable size in the world — so the various visitors from all over told me. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity Te Aroha’s location offered me.
A month or two after the Hard Luck Ride, YHANZ reorganised, shutting many small hostels and franchising others to their managers. Te Aroha, with its vibrant local branch, survived the cut (it finally closed in 2017) — but its paid manager did not. I was given the option to move to some other hostel (there were several available), but I decided instead that it was finally time to take a second try at moving to Australia. This time I succeeded, but until about 1999 I continued to cyle-tour in a small way, never getting very far from home, just weekends away when time and money allowed. Then in 2000 I started my series of large overseas trips, and cycle-touring gradually fell out of my lifestyle.
