The Sometime Coast

The coastal path to Kings Beach

We traveled north of Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast. I am calling it the Sometime Coast because sometime we'll have to come back and have more of a look about. Coming here was part of a home exchange with Jerry and Cathy McBrien, who stayed at our family's house in Lake Tahoe during their "Ski Around the World trip" (I love this: three months on the same ski pass to resorts in Colorado, Lake Tahoe, France, Switzerland and Japan!). This exchange gave us two weeks in Pelican Waters, in their lovely, new, and very comfortable home. We were lucky enough to be met by Lyn and Jeff Freebody who live across the street and who gave us a great intro to the local beaches, shopping and the coastal trail. They have been our constant source of local knowledge, beer, laughs, and all around assistance. And just his morning, Jeff delivered our dive gear which we weren't sure was ever going to make it through customs, quarantine, DHL, and the robots. Long story but Jeff and Lyn are our heros.

Rainbow lorikeets boozing it up

When we first landed here Jeff said "We went to sleep in Brisbane and woke up in Florida". He was right, this area closely resembles where I grew up on the west coast of Florida with lots of water, development, retirees, and holiday rentals. As we got to know the place, the differences became more apparent. There is the vast open ocean and accompanying surf; the nearby mountains and hinterlands; the amazing birdlife; marsupials (kangaroos, wallabies and koalas which we have seen nearby out in the bush), and the charming Aussie accent. OK, so not so much like Florida when we got to know it more.

The vegetation leans towards more tropical species but two ubiquitous trees there remind me of Florida: Australian pines and Melaleuca trees (paper bark). Those are two trees introduced to Florida for various reasons and have become invasive species there. This is their natural habitat and you see swaths of them. One difference here with the Australian pines is that they feed several incredible birds including the glossy black cockatoo, corellas and the riotous rainbow lorikeet. We've seen flocks of them in the coastal trees. Apparently they get a little sauced on the sugars in the cones causing them to squawk up a storm and sometimes fall from the trees. The other tree, Melaleuca were planted in Florida to drain low lying areas and spread to cause many problems. Here's they are quite lovely and produce tea tree oil. But I digress...

Paper bark tree forest

With two weeks in one place, you think we would have gotten out and explored all the area has to offer: the nearby Glass House Mountains, numerous small hinterland towns, Steve Irwin's Australian Zoo, the Big Pineapple and so much more. While we did get out in the mountains a bit and got to explore Noosa, we've seen very little. And that's OK. There are four simple reasons for this:

1. The house is too comfortable. It has central air, a great kitchen and lots of room. It's hot here and, like Florida in the summer, inside is the place to be after, say 10 AM until the late afternoon. 
2. We have both have had colds. It was bound to happen sometime over this year and it's really good that it happened here where we can recuperate and before we start the Great Barrier Reef portion of our trip. 
3. It is so nice to cook our own food. We'll be on Lady Elliot Island eating their food for a week and then on a liveaboard dive boat for another week soon after that. So for now, we cook our own food and enjoy what we like to eat. 
4. It's a very relaxed vibe on the Sunshine Coast. We've enjoyed just riding bikes along the coastal trail (see above), watching the surfers and swimming. Inside the shark net* and flags, of course. It's serious ocean out here folks. 

The concept of  Shark nets are a new for me. Apparently they sprung up along the Queensland Coast in the early '60's as an attempt to control the incidents of shark/human interactions that may actually bring more sharks in to feed on things that get caught and die in these huge nets. Baited drumlines were also a part of this scheme. While swimming one day, I heard the lifeguards come over the loudspeaker and announce "there's been a few sharks spotted in the area and we suggest you stay in knee deep water". Of course, no one moved. I decided to use that as my cue to get out. And it made me think about sharks a bit more than I'd like to, especially since our upcoming liveaboard trip includes several shark dives... yikers. I discovered a new favorite website, Shark Tracker. The website tracks shards from around the world that have been tagged with GPS to collect data on their natural history. I've adopted a tiger shark named Maroochy as my totem shark, she lives off Hervey Bay and travels around the lower reef, and out around Lady Elliot Island where we are headed. I hope that I don't see her. 

There, again we are lazy, bad tourists. Or easily entertained. From here we drive north to Hervey Bay to fly out to Lady Elliot Island. Let the diving begin!

The Glass House Mountains

Noosa Head National Park coastal trail

Can you find the rainforest wallaby in this picture? 

Welcome to Oz!

Welcome to Australia! 

Brisbane was our first port of call into Australia. We left the cool temps of Christchurch for 90+ F in tropical Queensland. Unseasonably hot, all the locals say, summer hasn't broken. The thermometer reached 104 F the first day we were here. Movie time, a nice air-conditioned cinema that serves cold beer in walking distance of our house... sign us up! Luckily it cooled off to 90 after that.

Queensland Art Gallery

Brisbane is a lovely city build along the Brisbane River. We stayed in Paddington, an up-and-coming neighborhood just a few miles from the CBD. Getting around was easy since Brisbane has the same bike share program that Paris has (and many other cities). It was an easy ride to the river and then dedicated bike highway along the river. Riding through the Botanical Gardens that grace the CBD along the river, it was easy access to everything we wanted to do. Across the river from the CBD is the South Bank Culture area with the Queensland Art Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art, both fabulous with good examples of Aboriginal artists, current and historical.

If we didn't feel like riding, our other fun option was the City Cat, a water taxi service that cruised about ten miles from one end of the Brisbane suburbs to the other.

the deadly cassowary 

Our time here was highlighted by visiting with Jane and Bill Hopsick and their wonderful daughters Sophie and Emily. Jane was my sister's housemate in grad school and threw a traditional Aussie barbecue for us with heaps of local delights (lamingtons, lemon-lime bitters, tasmanian cheeses, and of course, vegamite!) along with heaps of meats on the barbie. We also met them for dinner at the historical Breakfast Creek Hotel. Thanks guys, hope we see you in our neck of the woods to return the hospitality!

We also visited the classic Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary. This low-key tourist attraction had tons of koalas, kangaroos and wallabies, Tasmanian devils, platypus, wombats, many great birds, crocodiles and, our favorite, the cassowary. We could get so close to this massive bird (a good six feet tall) that it was easy to see the stiletto claw that is reputed to slice open it's prey, or a human that's annoying it, disemboweling it's victim. Yikers. All the pens are very accessible pins where you could get quite close to them. Now we can pass on the Australia Zoo, the late Steve Irwin's major attraction.

Brisbane is a great gateway to Australia. Now we are just north of there in Pelican Waters doing the house exchange. Looks a bit like Florida here until a cockatoo flies over or you hear people talk. I'll post about this place as soon as I get done relaxing in this comfortable home and actually see something besides the coastal bike path and the beach.

City Cat makes getting around Brisbane easy, scenic and fun.

Feeding the roos at Lone Pine. 

Pedestrian bridge connecting the CBD and South Bank Cultural Park

Kookaburra, the largest of the kingfisher family and what a laugh!

Done-in in Dunedin

The beach at St. Clair is popular with many mammals

We pulled into Dunedin on a crystal clear, sunny summer day. After finding our beach house in the St. Clair neighborhood (I know, they misspelled it) we headed to the beach. Surfers out riding the perfect break, outdoor cafes and people enjoying the day. Picture perfect little beach town. Our plans for exploring this far end of the south island from Dundedin kind of faded away when we realized how sweet it was right here in St. Clair. It was obvious that we were going to be very bad tourists this week.

penguin ponderings

The weather didn't hold of course, it's rather dreary here quite often. Although there are some very good museums in Dunedin, we didn't see them. We did walk through the beautiful old campus of the University of Otago and into the Botanical Gardens, a rather remarkable, large, well-curated botanical garden. Other than that we didn't see much more of the town.
Instead we saw penguins! The nearby, beautiful Otago Peninsula has nesting colonies of the little blue penguin (smallest penguin in the world) and beaches where the solitary yellow-eyed penguins nest. Our first attempt was Sandfly Bay. We dutifully followed the Dept of Conservation instructions on how to approach the beach, where to find the hide to watch them and what not to do. We made our way into the hide and proceeded to watch a great deal of human/sea lion interaction as groups of people walked onto the beach to take pictures of the sea lions. No self-respecting penguin would ever come ashore here. Why didn't these people follow penguin protocol? Struck out.
Earlier that day, a local restaurant owner in the nearby town of Portobello told us about Allan's beach where she's seen both little blues and yellow-eyed penguins. We decided to give that a try the next night. We drove out to the car park and found a beautiful, deserted beach. It was looking good. We found the large rock she mentioned and parked ourselves in front of it as we heard the penguins are near-sighted on land and don't see you. Luckily for us and the penguins, a local fellow came a long who told us to move behind the rock, otherwise they won't come ashore. They have very good land eyesight (can't believe everything you read on the web!). He knew their behavior and told us it's a colony of little blues who come up in rafts of 5-6, lift out of the water and congregate on a flat rock at the waters edge. Then one will make a run for it right by the rock we were behind into the cliffs behind us. By now there were six of us behind this very large rock, it was getting dark and we heard them start vocalizing and could make out the first raft waddling up to the first rock. Sure enough, one made a run for it to the left of the rock, passed very close to us and then waited at the base of the cliff. The others followed. Even in the dusk you could make out their little bodies waddling along, it was so fun to watch. And they are amazing cliff climbers as well. We watched a couple of more rafts come in and called it a night when it was just too dark to see anything.

Crested Fiordland penguins recuperating in the hospital

But that wasn't enough of a penguin fix, we needed to see the larger, more solitary yellow-eyed penguin. We elected to visit a private conservation project called Penguin Place. Their work started on their sheep farm in 1985 where they began restoring habitat, trapping predators and building nesting boxes. As they learned to care for sick penguins, a "hospital" developed and people began sending wounded birds there from around the island. At the time of our visit they had 50 penguins in for rehabilitation including two crested Fiordland penguins that live in remote areas of the very south end of the island. They were brought in starving a few weeks ago, have put on wieght and will be released in about a week back in their normal habitat. In small groups, we then went out on the extensive reserve that stretched out along a beautiful beach. The penguins feed all day and come in at night and the yellow-eyes don't come in together like the little blues but individually. We were lucky enough to see two come up out of the water and travel across the beach and up into the habitat to find their young. I managed to catch this video of one of the determined little trucker as he passed by our hide. It's fledgling time for the birds so the young still rely on their parents for bringing food. The nests are pretty informal so we could see a number of young (almost as big as their parents!) among the bush. It was amazing to see the work these people had done to foster the survival of these endangered birds.

click to expand map

So that was it for being tourists. We rested and relaxed in St. Clair, caught up on life at home and a few movies. Another great thing about this neighborhood: best ever outdoor saltwater pool! Built on the cliff, right by the ocean. Spectacular. A nice ending to our time in New Zealand. It's been a great journey.
We've landed in Brisbane and it's going to be around 104 degrees today. We mailed our cool weather clothes home, we won't need much more than shorts, jandals and swimming costumes where we are heading. We will no doubt miss the cool, cloudy skies of Dunedin as we explore tropical Queensland and the great barrier reef until the end of April.

The beach at Penguin Place

St Clair salt water pool

Riding the Rail Trail

Big sky country kiwi style

We left Christchurch and headed west and south towards Queenstown. Everyone told us that we had to go to Queenstown and we are not going to Queenstown as it is overrun with tourists celebrating Chinese New Year. Instead, we opted to ride some of the Otaga Rail Trail instead. This is an old railroad line that was decommissioned in the sixties and made into a 150 km bike trail. Like the Tasman Great Taste Trail, it's one of the Great Cycle Trails. It goes through dry farmland with massive rock formations resembling the American west. The whole trail takes about four days, staying in small accommodations along the way. The good folks at Trails Journey dropped us off at the top of the grade and rode back from there, mostly downhill, but it's not a steep grade. Spectacular day. We also rode the Roxburgh Gorge trail and with more time we would have been able to explore the Clutha River trail. Next time: Alps to Ocean Trail!  And maybe Queenstown after that, at a quieter time.

Wildlife encounter on the trail

Best carrot cake ever along the trail at the Station Cafe in Lauder

The Ring of Fire Strikes

The YMCA hosts the Street Art museum, a former stadium transformed. Jeff points to Seattle in the sticker room.

The Catholic Church is in limbo. 

Do you remember the 2011 Christchurch earthquake? I know, neither did I. As a fellow inhabitant of the, ring of fire, I probably should have taken more note of it. Here's a wikipedia link to refresh your memory (if you click on the photo of the church, you will see more images). Sobering.

ReStart: Brining retail back into the central business district

As a tourist, what you see in the central business district are empty buildings, damaged building (like the Catholic Church) and heaps of construction areas. You also notice a certain lack of people and sort of a ghost town feel. Except for the area around the Canterbury Museum, botanical gardens and the fabulous ReStart Mall it's pretty quiet. It's hard to imagine what it was like in the months after the quake and all the work that's been done over the past four years. Many of the city's gothic buildings were permanently damaged, liquefaction caused flooding and major damage, and infrastructure problems. Everyone would have been touched by someone who was either killed or injured during the quake. But what would terrify me was the aftershocks. The wikipedia link above gives a chart of the significant aftershocks that continued for months afterwards. It would take a strong stomach to stick around many people simply left.

Jeff is the speck at the bottom 

The Kiwis are a practical bunch and are turning their heads to the future. It's easy to see that in ten years, Christchurch is going to be an amazing city, one it wouldn't have gotten to without the earthquake. It already is an amazing city. Signs of resilience are all around. The city strives to be the Street Art capital of the world (at least some do!) and new artwork appears on building daily it seems. The new buildings that are state of the art. And who knew you could do so many creative things with containers?
I am so glad we came here, it's inspiring to hear the stories and see the resilience. When the next big one hits us in the US, I am sure we will be drawing on what happened here to learn how to recover.

We arrived in Christchurch by the Transalpine train (Kiwirail) across the south island. Relaxing and spectacular scenery.

New Murals appeared daily while we were here thanks to the Rise Festival

The nearby Banks Peninsula

South by Northwest

Claire Great Taste Trail

We traveled by ferry from Wellington to the South Island through the Marlborough Sounds. The boat leaves windy Wellington Harbor into open ocean, passing through 22.5 kilometers of Cook Strait before entering the intricate, beautiful, and calm water sounds at the tip South Island. The strait was rough enough, even on the huge ferry, couldn't imagine being in the water. There was a plaque on the boat about swimmers who have made the crossing.  The first woman to swim between the north and south island was Lynne Cox, (American) 12 hours and 7 minutes. She battled heavy seas and at one time a ferry pulled alongside to block the wind, flying an American flag to show their support for her effort. A much easier crossing for us and the seas calmed down when we entered the Marlborough Sound channel and we spent the final hour passing by very scenic inlets into the town of Picton. From there we headed to the Tasman region and the small village of Mapua, our home for ten whole days.

Mapua was on the Great Taste Trail, one of the developing New Zealand Great Cycle trails. The government began building trails all over the country about 10 years ago to build a cycling system to rival the Great Walks (think Milford Track). The coastal portion of this track is completed from the town of Nelson west to the Abel Tasman National Park.  We managed three days in on the trail, riding through estuaries, along beaches, through forests and along ridges. It's called the Great Taste for the opportunities to eat and drink along the way... a vicious cycle, eat/ride, eat/ride. A great way to see the country side.

The Abel Tasman Park to the west of Nelson/Mapua and offered some spectacular hiking along the well-worn coastal track. We boated in and out one day to see the middle part of the trail. Lumpy seas made that day a bit rough but it was a beautifully easy way to see more of this beautiful park.

Abel Tasman National Park coastal trail

Take away wine tasting

Our friend Rick at the Wild Ginger in Seattle used his wine connections to get us tastings with two wineries in the famous Marlborough Sound wine region. The first was Forrest, founded by two doctors. Trevor showed us the vineyards and we tasted some great wines with him. They produce 50 different wines with vineyards in the Hawkes Bay and Otago regions as well. Felt like being in a medium-sized Napa winery. The second tasting was quite the opposite, with Jules Taylor wines. It was the most relaxed tasting we have ever experienced. We met George Elsworthy in his office where he'd laid out ten different wines. We talked for almost three hours about travel, New Zealand, Seattle (George had been there many times) and occasionally, wine. By the end of the conversation, I realized that George was actually the very understated owner, being married to the winemaker, Jules Taylor. George sent us home with the open bottles we tasted which we happily managed to finish off over the next couple of days. Don't think that would happen in Napa! Jules and George got their start at Kim Crawford before starting their own project. If you see their wines in the store or on the wine list, give them a go, you won't regret it!

Jeff on the beach at Abel Tasman

We really enjoyed the small community of Mapua, our house was near the wharf and the grocery store so we could make meals or eat at one of the restaurants along the small wharf. Trail Journeys, the bike shop there was awesome and fitted us up for our rides. There was even an Iyengar Yoga teacher at the community center and I really enjoyed getting to practice with kiwis and with a very good teacher.

We left there this morning and drove along the West Coast on a spectacular, sunny day. A rare treat. When we pulled off the road to a nearly deserted beach, a fellow walking his dogs gave us a piece of greenstone. The beach was littered with it, along with what looked like agates and quartz. Tomorrow we catch the TransAlpine train to Christchurch. More from there! xoxo

Mapua Wharf 

The beach off the coastal track in Abel Tasman

What's the capital of New Zealand?

Southern Walkway into town.

Wellington. There, now you are ready for when you get hit with that question. We've spent the last week here in what's been called the quirkiest national capital in the world. Our host Gay says it's because of the weather, Wellington's location between these two islands with mountains and open ocean all around makes for quickly changing days with not always the best weather. We've experienced rain, sun and 40 knot winds, off and on the whole time here. Apparently half the year has winds over 32 knots. That kind of weather keeps the cool people here, according to Gay.

Cool has always eluded me but I can verify that these Wellingtonians do seem to be hardy. The city lies in a valley surrounded some quite steep hills. A town greenbelt surrounds it with the beautiful, natural Wellington Harbor out front. Great waterfront with heaps of people riding, walking, running and enjoying. We've enjoyed seeing the botanical gardens, the national museum (Te Papa) along with some great galleries and restaurants.

Seriously windy here...

We've been staying in the Hataitai neighborhood just on the other side of the hill from downtown. Our house clings to the side of the hill and we walk up through winding paths, by walk-in houses, up to Mount Victoria and then down along the Southern Walkway which runs along the ridge and then down through the forest into town. An awesome walk. From our deck we can see the final mountains of the North Island along with all the ferries that head out of Wellington Harbor to the South Island. We'll on that ferry tomorrow, heading for the Nelson area of the South Island, ten days in one place exploring the north end of the southern island of New Zealand.

The view from Mount Victoria towards downtown and the harbor on a rare, clear day. 

Portugal's rugby team working out in the water along the esplanade. The Sevens international rugby tournament begins.

A pose in the nose of an Air New Zealand 737

I think we have some subversives here...

The Coromandel: Beaches, tractors and volcanoes

Since leaving the Northland we have had a week on the road. Driving in New Zealand is mostly

Our North Island journey 

on two-lane roads, windy and scenic.  The only trick is staying left. Our Kerikeri friend, John Aish used to tell his kids that they made roads in New Zealand too long and had to add lots of curves to use it all up. That explains why we've had so few straight roads.

First stop down the North Island was visiting our Vashon neighbors at Hahei Beach. Becky and Richard Jenke are fabulous hosts and Hahei is a truly remarkable beach on the rugged Coromandel Peninsula. The weather didn't cooperate to get out on the water so we enjoyed long meals and story telling with Becky, Richard and their fantastic neighbors. We worked off the a little of the eating with some beautiful  hikes in the hills, to nearby Cathedral Cove, and the mile-long Hahei Beach.

One heard a fabulous story about a wounded Orca that had a crayfish pot wrapped around his tail. The Jenke's neighbor Russ owns the dive shop so he and his son, Rhys, went out to rescue it. Rhys jumped in the water with his Go Pro camera and cut the rope off the exhausted Orca's tail. He said he didn't worry much about being in the water with this huge mammal until the five other Orcas in the pod came swimming around. Click here to see a good news story and Rhys's video footage of the amazing rescue.

The Hahei locals have an interesting way of launching boats here using old tractors. Richard says some people have a boat just as an excuse to have the tractor. His neighbor Perky has two, big red and little red. It's good clean fun watching people launch and retrieve boats through the surf. Old timers sit by and watch knowing they are going to have to pull out a rookie or two. And then some tractors just make good sunbathing decks as demonstrated below.

Sunbathing Hahei style

Looking back at Hahei from the nearby Pa (fortified Maori village)

From Hahei Beach, we followed Richard's sage advice and headed southwest into the middle of the North Island to National Park. Established in 1887, Tongariro was the first national park in New Zealand and the fourth in the world. It is a dual World Heritage area, a status which recognizes the park's important Maori cultural and spiritual associations as well as outstanding volcanic features. Three mountains dominate the skyline and one was active as recently as 2007. More like two huge craters (much like our Mount St. Helens after it blue) and one remaining intact cone. Our hotel is on the flanks of Mt Ruapehu, the most active. After we check in we notice the room has instructions for what to do in case of a lahar flow. Escaping that kind of event is a bit like a jet aircraft attempting a water landing, highly unlikely chances of survival! Nearby is a perfectly shaped cone of Mt Ngauruhoe and beyond that the crater where Mt Tongariro was blown off a few hundred years ago. Beautiful scenery that was quite different from anything else we'd seen so far and fine hiking in subalpine meadows.

Jeff looking out at cone-shaped Mt Ngauruhoe. Mt Tongariro is the hard to see crater to the left.
We are standing on the flanks of Mt Ruapehu. 

From there we stoped off in Waikanae, a lovely beach area just before Wellington on the Kapiti Coast. Great open beach with not many people on it. We stayed at the Konini Cottage, hosted by the lovely Maggie and Bob Smith. Stop by and see them if you come this way, a wonderful, relaxing place and wonderful hosts. Be sure and try the local ginger beer as well!

The Waikanae beach stretches for five kilometers unobstructed.

After a week on the road, we find ourselves in Wellington, the capital located at the very southern tip of the North Island. It is the hilliest town I have ever seen, even steeper than San Francisco. Nice to be in one place for a week before we catch the ferry to the south island. And lots to see in Wellington, tons of good eateries, coffee, funky shops and walks to check out in the meantime! After all, it is the home of the Flight of the Concords... cheers!

Tractors in use in Waikanae for launching sightseeing boats for the nearby Kapati Island Reserve. 

Jeff and Richard on Hahei Beach after a hike to Cathedral Cove

The wonderful Becky Jenke along the estuary that flows to Hahei Beach