Off to see the wizard

The wonderful wizard that’s Oz. Well, that’s what the morning brings, with our first early start in months (how will we cope?) and a relatively short flight from Auckland to Sydney.

When last we wrote, we had just seen the massive and monumental sperm whales at Kaikoura. We headed to Picton for a few days of sun in the glorious Marlborough Sounds – fingers of wooded land stretching out into the Pacific, endless blue skies over hidden coves where the rich and fortunate make their homes. We spent an afternoon delivering their mail and groceries on the mail run boat: Rowan loved seeing all the different families and how they lived … a bit like going through the keyhole on a grand scale. Some of the properties way out on the Sound, where the kids learn by correspondence course and it’s a good hour by boat to the shops, are simply gorgeous. What a life.

All too soon, it was time to leave south island which we had loved, and head back across Cook Strait to the north. We had left a couple of treats for the journey back up to Auckland, and now we were pushed for time … so we took a very long drive to Taupo, determined not to repeat ourselves at any point. We drove the other side of Tongariro National Park, seeing the volcanoes including Mount Doom from the east this time, along the desert highway. Lake Taupo had lots to offer, but Rowan unfortunately picked up some non-specific something or other, which led to massive temperatures and throwing up – very neatly, for which we must commend her! Luckily she was well again in a couple of nights, enough to meet up with two kids they’d befriended in Dunedin. Drake was the boy. Now, we haven’t met any families travelling to multiple countries or for big periods of time, until this family, who put us to shame in our small adventure! They have customised a yacht and are sailing around the world. With two kids under 10, they spent a year crossing the Pacific, and their stuff is in storage for five years, initially. Their kids are very cool, and what an amazing thing to do.

Everywhere they go, the kids are just so fast at making friends. It seems to take about five minutes … while we’re still emptying our tanks and hooking up the van, they’re off seeking out the other children around. Jenna comes strutting back after ten minutes or so to announce “I’ve got a new boyfriend.” Rhys and Row just don’t come back at all, unless it’s with all their new mates ploughing into our van (sometimes at 7 in the morning!) It’s a fantastic skill they have, kids, and some of the friends ours have made have been really great people. And few cooler in how they were living their lives than Drake and his sister. Not that we’d want to do it …!

Time was moving on, and so we squeezed our two remaining treats into a 24 hour period. First off on the lightning tour was Waitomo Caves, where millions of glow worms have made their home in the top of an river hollowed cave, dropping silvery threads as fishing rods for the mosquitoes that are unlikely enough to waft in.

We rode silently along the underground river, gazing at the pinpoints of blue light in otherwise pitch dark, looking like a clear night sky out in the desert. The kids were entranced, and silent. When we came out into the sunlight, blinking, Jenna said “I think we’ve just been to heaven.” She wasn’t far wrong, in my view! I can’t imagine a place more like fairyland would be.

From the naturally sublime to the manmade, we just had to visit Hobbiton as our New Zealand finale. After all, it was Lord of the Rings that made us absolutely determined to come here. Matamata was just a small agricultural town until good old New Line spotted a farm on the outskirts, on one of their helicopter site finding fly overs. They needed a very round tree for the 111th birthday party scene, with a lake behind it. The bonus at Matamata was a backdrop of mountains (on a clear day, you can see Mordor) and very few man made buildings. So New Line cinema approached the farmer, asked if they could film for four months, made him sign a secrecy contract … all before they told him what the film was. When, presumably in reverent tones they told him the name of the film, he uttered the immortal line “Lord of the What?”

The scale of the undertaking really became clear at Matamata. For example, the NZ government agreed to a 5 kilometre no fly zone around the film site. The army built 1.5 kilometres of new road. Native ducks and geese were scared away, only to be replaced by stunt ducks. They needed a lot of polystyrene to build fake walls, and so Peter Jackson bought a polystyrene factory. They needed to create vegetable gardens that lasted throughout filming, so Peter Jackson bought a nursery. No one was allowed to take a single photo. Anal does not even begin to describe Jackson’s attention to detail: Tolkien wrote three lines in The Return of the King about children making pyramids out of plum stones. There aren’t any plum trees in New Zealand, so they transplanted sewn leaves from Taiwan onto dwarf apples trees, all for 1 second of filming.

It is very lucky for the farming family who own the site that New Zealand’s weather can be pretty fickle. After it was all over, New Line came to dismantle the set. Fortunately, it started to rain after the first week. They tried to come back, but no joy again. And then they left it: and now I bet the family makes an awful lot more from the tours than they do from sheep farming!

The weather was amazing for our last week. 25 degrees, beautiful sunshine with a breeze. You almost forget the incessant rain we had for much of our New Zealand summer … and back in Auckland it’s been wall to wall sun. It was pretty blissful, believe it or not, to repack and clean out Martha. Especially as Joe indulged the kids in a new ORV trunk to replace Jenna and Rhys’s! Obviously its Eagle Creek, just like ours, and it manages to comfortably accommodate all the acres of stuff the kids have managed to accumulate, what with Christmas and Rhys’s birthday in New Zealand.

Looking back on New Zealand, we have seen and done some amazing things, and the time flew. We loved South Island, not so keen on the North … though it does have Tongariro and Rotorua, and Auckland itself is a great city. But – there are buts. You can’t come off the back of a major trek through South America and not find it odd to be in a semi-colonial outpost, where everything is easy, clean and so, so civilised. It’s kind of more England, than England. Sometimes that’s charming, but sometimes it’s just plain annoying. “Get a culture!” you want to scream at this three generations’ old nation.

We have also heard far too many people talking in hushed tones about the downsides of too many people from ‘other nations’ living in certain cities or towns. And it’s the way its said so normally, as if out-and-out racism is quite matter of fact and acceptable. For a country with only four million people, we do marvel that they manage to complain about the simply non-existent traffic. And why, oh why when there is so much land to go around, do campsites have to be so crammed – like a car park? No offence, but the Kiwis drive even worse than the Welsh. But more than all this, it is just too familiar, too easy.

If you flew into Wellington direct from the UK and spent time only in the South Island, it would be heaven on earth. Maybe we are just getting to used to challenge and adventure, to otherworldliness, to settle for England on the other side of the world. Even Rowan has said she is looking forward to moving on. And we are more than ready to!