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A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane Walker

A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane Walker

By Mary Jane Walker

This is the channel for the podcasts of New Zealand author, blogger and adventurer Mary Jane Walker ('A Maverick Traveller'). Mary Jane has published twelve books of travel memoirs, several of which are now audiobooks on Gumroad. For more, see her website a-maverick.com!
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Through the Catlins by Campervan

A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane WalkerJun 17, 2021

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05:46
Through the Catlins by Campervan

Through the Catlins by Campervan

This post follows up my two earlier posts about the wild Catlins region of New Zealand. I went through in a campervan at the start of June 2021. I visit the waterfalls, and list freedom camping sites. Information about freedom camping sites can be a bit hard to come by, so I have made the effort to identify all five such sites in the Catlins. I also describe other camping spots, including beautiful Pūrākaunui Bay, my favourite.

Jun 17, 202105:46
Lake Marian: Camping and Looking at the Routeburn

Lake Marian: Camping and Looking at the Routeburn

THE Lake Marian Track has lately become very popular, although tourist numbers are down at present because of Covid (so, if in NZ already, you should go there!). The track begins from Marian Carpark, one kilometre down the unsealed Hollyford Road from its intersection with the Milford Road, some ninety kilometres out from Te Anau. It now has a wooden gantry only 20 minutes in, from which you can admire the Marian Falls, which are really more like rapids. Even if you don’t do the rest of the track, you can still walk to the gantry . . . All in all, this is one of the best little short trips that you can do from the road in New Zealand! Indeed, the travel writer GirlEatWorld has described Lake Marian as “my favorite experience in New Zealand so far.”

Jun 12, 202101:25
Around Mount Taranaki by the Southern Side
Jun 08, 202108:32
‘The Town of Light’: Reefton and the Kirwans Track

‘The Town of Light’: Reefton and the Kirwans Track

Reefton, on the West Coast of NZ’s South Island, was one of the first towns to get electric light and is the gateway to many trails today.

It is the only sizable town on the West Coast that’s some way inland. The town got its start in 1871 following the discovery of a gold reef nearby, and was originally called Reef Town. To this day it’s got plenty of atmosphere (mostly smelling of coal-smoke), and is surrounded by historic mine workings.‍

The town has a lot old-time charm. The 100% New Zealand page on Reefton invites you to:

"Follow the town’s heritage walk past the Reefton School of Mines, the courthouse, Oddfellows Hall, St Xavier’s Convent and the Band Hall. At the Miner’s Hut you can sit in front of the fire, enjoy a cup of tea and watch steel being shaped by a blacksmith."

There are lots of walking and hiking tracks nearby, as well, including the start of the Paparoa Track which I talk about in another post. And also, of course, the Kirwans Track, which people generally do as part of a loop hike.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/reefton-kirwans-track

Jun 08, 202104:28
There’s more to Hanmer than Springs!

There’s more to Hanmer than Springs!

Hanmer Springs is a popular hot-spring resort east of the Lewis Pass in NZ’s South Island. It’s also the gateway to a wilderness.

You get to Hanmer Springs by turning northward, off State Highway 7 between the Lewis Pass and Culverden. The town lies in a small plain just south of the Hanmer Range, which includes Mount Isobel and Jacks Pass.

It’s a short trip from there to the historic St James Homestead, Amuri Skifield and the pretty Peters Valley, which leads into the St James Conservation Area and the St James Cycle Trail.‍

The St James Conservation area to the northwest of Hanmer Springs, named after the old homestead, has a lot of variety of landscape. It is in a transitional zone between the beech forests of the Lewis Pass area, watered by westerly winds, and the more desert-like terrain due north and east of Hanmer Springs.

In fact, many of the best features of the area are to the north and northwest of the town. As one blogger puts it, “North of Hanmer Springs exists a rugged, expansive landscape where few visitors bother to tread.”

Closest to the town, on the northern side, is the Hanmer Forest Park, where there are a number of short walks, tramping tracks and walking tracks. These include the Mt Isobel Track, to the summit of Mount Isobel.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/theres-more-to-hanmer-than-springs

Jun 08, 202110:25
Do we need a Referendum on Immigration?

Do we need a Referendum on Immigration?

That’s a question we need to ask in New Zealand. Should immigration targets be linked to positive spending on infrastructure and housing to cope?

On last Sunday’s Q+A, most of the panel and the interviewees seemed to think that New Zealand needed a larger population, built up by immigration. Or that immigration-fuelled growth was, at any rate, inevitable.

Indeed, why shouldn’t New Zealand grow its population and its cities? By the standards of many other countries, we have the room.

And yet, New Zealand has a longstanding habit of failing to make sure that all the necessary transport links, pipes, wires, schools, hospitals, houses and jobs are in place, before the population is bumped up by immigration.

As far back as the mid-1970s, this failure to plan led to the rise of Rob Muldoon’s brand of anti-immigrant populism.

Nothing much has changed since then. Except that the problem of too few houses, in particular, has got worse.

Do we need a referendum linking permitted levels of immigration to prior provision for jobs, housing and infrastructure, to force the New Zealand state to lift its planning game?

Note regarding featured image: A much cheaper house than almost any in New Zealand, at Port Elliot, South Australia.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/do-we-need-referendum-immigration-population-infrastructure-housing

Jun 08, 202104:30
The Paparoa Track

The Paparoa Track

THE PAPAROA TRACK is New Zealand’s most recently-commissioned Great Walk. The track partly follows an old gold-miners’ pathway with the hopeful name of the Croesus Track. And it partly also follows a brand-new course, including the epic gorge of the Pororari River.

This part of New Zealand is probably the southernmost place on earth where you will find “tropical” jungle with palm trees and giant tree ferns. It’s 42 degrees south. But intense and continual rainfall and the moderating influence of the nearby Tasman Sea keeps the frosts, which are the main enemy of that kind of ecology, at bay.

From end to end, the Paparoa track Runs from the historic mining town of Blackball, at the southern end, to Punakaiki, the site of the famous pancake rocks and blowholes, in the north. 

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/paparoa-track-blackball-punakaiki

Jun 07, 202112:52
Greymouth and Westport: The Heart of the Coast

Greymouth and Westport: The Heart of the Coast

THE population heartland of the South Island’s West Coast lies in the area around Greymouth and Westport, where mines in the hills are joined with a comparative abundance of flat land by West Coast standards.

The plain sits west of the South Island’s gigantic Alpine Fault: a crack in the earth’s crust that runs southwest like a ruler to Fiordland, in a way that is very striking on a topopgraphical map. The coastal plain to the west of the fault is nowhere else as wide as it is in the vicinity of Greymouth. Which is, therefore, the biggest town on the South Island’s West Coast, with its base hospital and other facilities.

Centred on Greymouth, the Grey District, also known as Māwhera, calls itself ‘The Heart of the Coast’. However, that slogan could be extended to include Westport and also Hokitika, a little further south of Greymouth. Very few people on the West Coast live outside this area, though the Coast stretches for hundreds of kilometres.

I say quite a lot about the Hokitika area in my earlier West Coast blog post called ‘Green Jungles and Waters of Jade’, so I don’t need to talk about Hokitika in this post.

Between Westport and Greymouth, there is also the isolated finger of mountains known as the Paparoa: these days, Paparoa National Park. I’ll do a post on those mountains shortly, and separately.

In this post, I’ll describe a road trip from north to south, starting at Westport and travelling southward past the incredible coastal wonders of Fox River and Punakaiki, to Greymouth and then on to Lake Brunner/Moana and the former Brunner coal mine.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/greymouth-and-westport-the-heart-of-the-coast


Jun 07, 202110:21
Karamea: A Road Trip to the top of the South Island’s West Coast
Jun 07, 202109:51
My Latest Heaphy Hike (and a flight back over the Dragons Teeth)
Jun 07, 202114:04
Thinking Small: How New Zealand tried to squash Auckland

Thinking Small: How New Zealand tried to squash Auckland

This post takes a closer look at the New Zealand state’s longstanding historical unwillingness to make plans for Auckland’s growth.

A COUPLE of weeks ago we blogged about “the paradox of retrenchment in the face of growth.” We wrote about how it was practically an orthodoxy some forty years ago that the populations of Auckland, and of a New Zealand of little more than three million, were not going to get much larger. And how, for that reason, the government could give up on planning for the next million the way it had previously done.

And how, strangely enough, even now that we have twice as many Aucklanders and 5.1 million New Zealanders within our shores, and a huge catch-up required, investment to deal with past and future growth is actually being cut back by the Auckland Council.

In this post we’re going to dive a little deeper into the specifics of why New Zealand seems to have such a problem with planning for the growth of Auckland, its largest city, in particular.

(Note: some quotes appear as direct images of old book pages, and thus don't come out in the podcast.)

Featured image credit: The Auckland Multi-Linear Scheme as presented to the Auckland Rapid Rail Symposium, 1969, by the then chief planner of the Auckland Regional Authority, Frederick W. O. Jones. Cropped square for this episode as per the requirements of Anchor.fm.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/thinking-small-how-new-zealand-failed-auckland

Jun 07, 202111:46
Is Auckland Council making itself Redundant? The paradox of retrenchment in the face of growth

Is Auckland Council making itself Redundant? The paradox of retrenchment in the face of growth

Auckland Council, New Zealand’s so-called Super City administration, has become known for at least four areas of failure in a decade. Why?

It’s time to question the approach of chief executives such as Jim Stabback and his predecessor Stephen Town, and their sub-chiefs in Auckland Transport, Ports of Auckland and Watercare, which all too often focuses on short-term savings and cuts.

This isn’t necessarily the fault of individuals. It’s also due to the wider incentive-culture of the public service today, which focuses on savings.

It’s also due to an older and more chronic weakness of New Zealand local government, in that those who want to put a stop to expenditure are always vocal in ratepayer circles.

Featured image credit: Auckland Light Rail, official image via Greater Auckland (2018). Crown copyright reserved.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/auckland-council-making-itself-redundant-paradox-retrenchment-in-face-of-growth

Jun 07, 202108:38
A Walk on the Wildside: New Zealand’s Banks Track — near Christchurch, yet remote

A Walk on the Wildside: New Zealand’s Banks Track — near Christchurch, yet remote

It was my amazing luck to hike the Banks Track at the end of January, 2021. It’s on the ‘wild side’ of the rocky, volcanic Banks Peninsula.

Billed on its website as New Zealand’s “original private walking track,” the Banks Track invites you to spend three nights on the remote south-eastern tip of Te Horomaka or Banks Peninsula, also known in Māori as Te Pātaka o Rakaihautū.‍

In spite of its proximity to a big city and the smaller, touristy town of Akaroa, the area through which the Banks Track runs is an incredibly wild one, especially once you get over the top of a ridge overlooking Akaroa Harbour and onto the slope that faces out to the Pacific Ocean: the Wildside, where penguins and seals abound.‍

The track, which won a Travelers Choice award from Tripadvisor in 2020, loops between Akaroa and the still smaller village of Ōnuku by way of a section of oceanic cliff-coast in the middle.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/walk-wildside-new-zealands-banks-track-near-christchurch-yet-remote

Jun 07, 202125:43
Whenua Hou: Codfish Island and the few Kākāpō Left
Jun 07, 202104:19
The Isle of Blushing Skies: Rakiura/Stewart Island and the North-West Circuit Track

The Isle of Blushing Skies: Rakiura/Stewart Island and the North-West Circuit Track

THE small size of Oban belies its importance as Stewart Island’s only town and the entranceway to the North West Circuit Track where I was to be spending a few weeks volunteering as a hut warden, and also to the much shorter Rakiura Track, the southernmost of New Zealand’s official Great Walks.

The Māori name for Stewart Island is Rakiura, which means ‘blushing [or glowing] skies’ and is far more poetic in my view. It seems to be a reference to long twilights in these subantarctic latitudes, the aurora australis which can sometimes be seen from here, or both.

After catching a ferry over from Invercargill, I met Phil Brooks, the DOC manager in charge of volunteers. He took me through the safety checks, taught me how to operate the radio and detailed what was expected of me while at the Port William Hut, which I was to take charge of.

Oban is in a bay called Halfmoon Bay, just north of a much larger inlet called Paterson Inlet or Whaka a te Wera. The star of the inlet is Ulva Island or Te Wharawhara, an island that has never been milled and is free of predators, including rats. Ulva/Te Wharawhara is therefore a little piece of New Zealand as it used to be, or as near as is possible today, and is served by regular ferries as it is an open sanctuary, with walking trails. The island is quite sizable, more than three and a half kilometres long, so there is plenty to see.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/isle-blushing-skies-rakiura-stewart-island-north-west-circuit-track

Jun 07, 202102:56
Canterbury Surprise: The Foothills of the Alps

Canterbury Surprise: The Foothills of the Alps

Christchurch, New Zealand, has some amazing Lord of the Rings country to its north & west. You don’t have to go far from town to get there!

Looking at just one of these areas, the Hakatere Conservation Park, it's close to Erewhon, the setting of the English writer Samuel Butler’s fictional utopia Erewhon,but also an actual place.

This district includes an isolated hill with sweeping views called Mount Sunday, so-called because riders from several areas would meet up there each Sunday to swap news. Mount Sunday is otherwise best known as the site of Edoras in the Lord of the Rings movies. They say that this is one of the most remote Lord of the Rings sites that you can easily get to, and the whole area is Lord of the Rings country, really.

The Te Araroa Trail runs through here, and from Lake Clearwater you can venture along a section of the trail. And also do the Mystery Lake track, which runs along the edge of the stunning ravine of the Potts River for part of the way, and then via the Mystery Lake Link Track to the Potts Hut Track, which leads in one direction to the Boundary Creek Hut, and in another to the Potts Hut on Mount Potts.

In earlier times, a part of this area was also a major Māori food-gathering area, called Ō Tū Wharekai, (or alternately, in English, the Ashburton Lakes). The Māori name builds on the word for banquet hall or dining room (wharekai). The area is also one through which people used to travel on the way to gather pounamu or New Zealand jade on the West Coast, stocking up on food as they did so.‍

Original blog post: maverick.com/blog/the-foothills-of-the-alps

Jun 07, 202114:38
Banks Peninsula and the Port Hills

Banks Peninsula and the Port Hills

Banks Peninsula (near Christchurch NZ) is an eroded volcano with several harbours, historic ports, wildlife, and lots of hiking trails.

In its topography it resembles one of the Hawai‘ian islands, though naturally somewhat colder and bleaker. The biggest harbours on the peninsula are Lyttelton Harbour just south of Christchurch and Akaroa Harbour further east, on the south side.

The peninsula has two Māori names, Horomaka (‘foiling of Maka’), a name that refers to events during an ancient punitive raid, and Te Pātaka o Rakaihautū, meaning the storehouse of a famous Māori explorer of the newly occupied land of New Zealand, Rakaihautū.

Legends also have it, variously, that the peninsula was scraped up from a reef, or that the demigod Māui heaped stones over an evil giant or octopus that now sleeps beneath and occasionally cracks the land open when it stirs, a story that’s a little too close for comfort in view of the recent Christchurch earthquakes.

Over a long period of time the plains of Canterbury have grown outward toward the peninsula so that it is now no longer an island, just as debris from the mountains has also done at Kaikōura, another former island.

The Port Hills are full of parks and reserves, scenic drives in the form of the Summit Road and Mount Pleasant Road, and rock-climbing cliffs. They yield stunning views of the city and its port of Lyttelton, and there is even a scenic gondola. There are also various windswept hikes that you can do on the tussocky tops. Altogether, like many New Zealand cities, Christchurch is really blessed with nearby nature.‍

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/banks-peninsula-port-hills-christchurch

Jun 07, 202107:18
Between Blenheim and Nelson

Between Blenheim and Nelson

BETWEEN Blenheim and Nelson, there is a ruggedly beautiful area that extends from the Marlborough Sounds in the north-east to Nelson Lakes National Park, in the southwest, via the Richmond Range. To the west, and south, of this great triangular block of mountains there are the river flats and plains of Nelson and, on the Blenheim side, the Wairau valley.

Ironically, though Nelson and Blenheim are not far apart, the Richmond Range is a formidable barrier, as is its seaward continuation in the form of the Marlborough Sounds, a collection of drowned river valleys to the north of Picton. The Marlborough Sounds were once above sea level in their entirety but were invaded by the sea at the end of the last ice-age, with.the result that a series of sharp ridges and sharp-edged islands now poke up above the water.

One of the most special places you might wish to visit, on the coast near Blenheim, is the Wairau Bar, also known as the boulder bank or Pokohiwi, an 11 kilometre-long spit with a long history of human habitation.

Original blog post: maverick.com/blog/between-blenheim-nelson


Jun 07, 202109:47
Nelson: Town of History and Trees
Jun 07, 202102:50
Christchurch: Gateway to Antarctica, rich in heritage, recovering from crises
Jun 07, 202117:21
Kaikōura: Eating crayfish and watching whales

Kaikōura: Eating crayfish and watching whales

Kaikōura is a major whale-watching destination, between Blenheim and Christchurch on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

The town sits just to the landward side of a deep submarine trench, whose chilly uplifting waters nourish large populations of crayfish, the namesakes of Kaikōura, which means ‘eat crayfish’ in Māori.

The town is also just to the seaward side of two ranges of lofty coastal mountains shooting all the way up to the 2885 m or 9,465-foot Tapuae-o-Uenuku (‘footsteps of the rainbow god’): a very prominent and Himalayan-looking peak that’s easily visible from Wellington.

But there’s a lot more than just crayfish living in the waters off Kaikōura. Their cousins, the shrimp-like krill that feed the greatest whales, also thrive in these waters, which plunge rapidly to great depths just offshore, as quickly as the mountains rise onshore. These great, cold depths create upwellings that fertilise the sea and nourish the krill. This brings whales that feed on krill, sucking in entire shoals and then filtering out the water through a comb-like structure in their mouths made of a substance called baleen.‍

Another quite different kind of large whale that is often seen at Kaikōura is the sperm whale. Sperm whales can dive up to two thousand metres down or more than a mile, in fact: going down for about 45 minutes at a time and then catching their breath for about fifteen minutes on the surface.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/kaikoura-eating-crayfish-watching-whales

Jun 07, 202109:54
The South Island and its Peoples
Jun 07, 202116:52
Kahurangi National Park: Cobb Valley, Mt Arthur and the Nelson Tablelands‍

Kahurangi National Park: Cobb Valley, Mt Arthur and the Nelson Tablelands‍

KAHURANGI National Park, which occupies a vast area west of Motueka, is the second largest national park in New Zealand after Fiordland. With over five hundred and seventy kilometres of tracks, including the famous seventy-eight-kilometre Heaphy Track which I write about in another post, Kahurangi is tramping heaven. With its coastal palm forests, marble mountains, rare birds like the rock wren and the spotted kiwi, and tussock high country, it’s an incredible place to be.

In Māori, Kahurangi means treasured possession, which is exactly what this park is. For hundreds of years the Māori used tracks through this region to find pounamu, greenstone in local English, which was used to make taonga or heirlooms passed down from one generation to the next.

The diverse terrain I covered included a series of unique geological features. Mt Arthur is made of hard, crystalline marble: below the ground are some of the deepest shafts and most intricate cave systems in the world. Cavers have currently joined two cave systems in the area and made a massive thirty-six kilometres long, twelve hundred-metre deep underground labyrinth. Nettlebed is now the deepest cave in the Southern Hemisphere of which the depth is known.

In contrast, the Tablelands, a high plateau, are made of limestone and quartz that were lifted and twisted over millennia to form mountains. There are lots of interesting places to visit there, including the historic Asbestos Cottage, the home of two recluses who used to make a living mining that mineral in the days when it was still widely used in industry, among other things.

The Cobb Valley is different again: its rivers were once glaciers smoothing and polishing the rock as they advanced to form a U-shaped valley, always the sign of anow-vanished glacier as opposed to the steep V that is carved by a river. The valley today still bears many signs of its former glaciers and is filled with volcanic rock, schist and sandstone.‍

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/kahurangi-national-park-cobb-valley-mt-arthur-nelson-tablelands

Jun 07, 202101:27
The Tūātapere Hump Ridge Track
Jun 07, 202101:32
The Kepler Track: Just divine views

The Kepler Track: Just divine views

THE Kepler Track begins on the shores of Lake Te Anau — the largest body of fresh water in the South Island of New Zealand — and winds its way through the spectacular Fiordland National Park.‍

Looping for some sixty kilometres up alpine heights and alongside two beautiful lakes, the track starts and ends only five kilometres from the town of Te Anau, at the Kepler Track carpark.

According to the official Discover New Zealand website newzealand.com, what’s unique about the Kepler Track is that it was designed from scratch:

"Unlike many other multi-day walks, which evolved from Māori greenstone trails or pioneer exploration routes, the Kepler Track was custom-made, built for pleasure, rather than necessity.
"Opened in 1988, the track was carefully planned to show walkers all the best features of Fiordland — moss-draped beech forest, prolific bird life, tussock high country, huge mountain ranges, cascading waterfalls,vast glacier-carved valleys, luxuriant river flats and limestone formations.The track’s construction makes for easier walking. Most streams are bridged,boardwalks cover boggy areas and the very steep sections have steps. Walk the Kepler and you’ll see everything that’s marvelous about this exquisite corner of the world."
(Quoted as of the time of writing.)

The Kepler Track certain does make for magnificent views of the mountains and of the two large lakes that it loops between!‍

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/kepler-track-just-divine-views

Jun 07, 202102:49
Caples-Greenstone Track: More birds galore

Caples-Greenstone Track: More birds galore

A MODERATELY demanding tramp winds its way through the beautiful Caples and Greenstone Valleys, which come together by the shore of Lake Wakatipu and are also joined, in the hills, by the subalpine pass of McKellar Saddle, which offers incredible views of the surrounding landscape.

There is plenty of native wildlife on the track, and when I first did it a few years ago, we were lucky enough to see falcons, kea, mōhua, and plenty of other birds.

The tracks, which form a loop in the same way that the Rees and the Dart do, can be hiked from either the Lake Wakatipu end near Kinloch and Glenorchy, or from The Divide on the road to Milford Sound/Piopiotahi. The Divide also is one of the end points for the nearby Routeburn Track and many exhausted Routeburn trampers are picked up there, although some choose to extend their hike and carry on through the Caples/Greenstone for a longer tramp.

Even without an extension onto the Routeburn, the Caples/Greenstone is still a significant four-day journey.

On the other hand, tramping.net.nz ranks the Caples/Greenstone as an easier option than the otherwise similar Rees-Dart Track.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/caples-greenstone-track-more-birds-galore

Jun 07, 202102:48
Otago's Dry Centre
Jun 07, 202111:22
From Haast to Wānaka
Jun 07, 202110:22
French Ridge
Jun 07, 202105:35
Matukituki Valley and Mt Aspiring/Tititea
Jun 07, 202107:24
Queenstown: 10 Things to do in Town and Around
Jun 07, 202107:11
Queenstown: Tourism Capital
Jun 07, 202111:42
Aoraki/Mount Cook
Jun 07, 202105:39
Arthur's Pass

Arthur's Pass

Jun 07, 202110:10
The Lovely Lewis Pass and Maruia Valley

The Lovely Lewis Pass and Maruia Valley

ONE of my favourite parts of New Zealand is the Lewis Pass / Maruia Valley area in the middle of the northern half of the Southern Alps.

You get there by way means of State Highway (SH) 7, which runs through the area. One of the best multi-day hikes that you can do in the vicinity of the Lewis Pass is the St James Walkway, named after the former St James Station upon which most of the walkway’s sixty-six kilometres is located.‍

There are numerous other tramps off to the side of SH 7 in the Lewis Pass / Maruia Valley area, such as the Lake Daniell tramp, Lake Christabel, the Lewis Tops Track which begins on the western side of SH 7 from a spot near the northern road-end of the St James Walkway, and others.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/st-james-walkway-and-the-lewis-pass-tops

Jun 06, 202102:50
Welcome Flat: The Best Hot Pools
Jun 06, 202102:54
Green Jungles and Waters of Jade: The natural riches of the South Island's wild West Coast

Green Jungles and Waters of Jade: The natural riches of the South Island's wild West Coast

The West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island stretches for hundreds of kilometres, from the sunny northwest to cold and stormy Fiordland.

It's an area with far fewer inhabitants than the eastern side of the South Island. Far fewer inhabitants, but a lot more rain! For in New Zealand the weather comes mainly from the west and metres of rain are dumped each year in the hills whose streams run to the west.

From the north, the South Island’s West Coast begins, just off the map above, with the Whanganui Inlet west of Cape Farewell and a stretch of trackless coast north of the Heaphy River.

. . . .

South of Ross, we are now starting to get into a part of the country where the hand of European colonisation and even the presence of the Māori, save for gathering pounamu, has only been lightly felt. In fact, all the National Parks from Aoraki/Mount Cook southward are part of Te Wāhipounamu/South-West New Zealand World Heritage Area. Te Wāhipounamu means ‘the place of pounamu’. The national parks are Westland Tai Poutini, Aoraki/Mount Cook, Mount Aspiring and Fiordland; and land in this part of the country is more likely to be in a national park than not

The coast road heads inland, as the true coast is now wild and swampy, with lowland forest and lagoons. There will be no more seaports to compare with Westport, Greymouth or even Hokitika; only the small fishing settlement of Jackson Bay just north of the roadless wilderness of Fiordland. . . .

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/waters-jade-pounamu

Jun 06, 202117:52
The Heaphy Track and the Old Ghost Road

The Heaphy Track and the Old Ghost Road

I have tramped the Heaphy Track, one of New Zealand’s Great Walks, three times now.

The walk stretches through the Kahurangi National Park at the top of the South Island, west of the famous Abel Tasman Track, and winds its way through native bush and tussock downs to the wild Tasman Sea on the West Coast, where some of the world's southernmost palm trees grow. The track can be walked in either direction, beginning at the eastern end at Brown Hut, or starting in Karamea on the West Coast by driving fifteen kilometres north to the Kohaihai River campsite.

Carrying on south, you get to the towns of Karamea, Granity and Westport. From Westport, you can go inland by road toward the Buller Gorge until you get to Lyell, and then hike or bike the Old Ghost Road, at 85 km in length New Zealand’s longest single track, up to the town of Seddonville.

The Old Ghost Road is quite a bit gnarlier than the Heaphy Track and is in fact the most difficult cycle trail in the official New Zealand Cycle Trail (NZCT) system. It’s recommended that every rider cycle it from Lyell north and not the other way, as there is a section that’s nearly impossible from north to south, and the trail also contains New Zealand’s longest section of ‘single track’, a very narrow section on an exposed hillside.

There are also some other famous tracks in this region, such as the Wangapeka Track and the Leslie-Karamea Track.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/heaphy-track-old-ghost-road

Jun 06, 202106:51
The Nelson Lakes and the Travers/Sabine Circuit

The Nelson Lakes and the Travers/Sabine Circuit

THE Nelson Lakes, Rotoroa and Rotoiti, and the associated Travers-Sabine Circuit are really one of the gems of the New Zealand outdoors, with their own Nelson Lakes National Park. The scenery is magnificent, there are plenty of huts to stay in, and good tracks.

The lakes are very historic as Lake Rotoiti has a large population of eels, which Māori travelling overland to the sources of pounamu on the West Coast used to dry and smoke for sustenance on the way.

Reaching in behind the lakes, the Travers-Sabine Circuit is about eighty kilometres (fifty miles) long. It reaches deep into the mountainous country behind Lakes Rotoiti and Rotoroa and involves one significant alpine saddle, the Poukiriri orTravers Saddle, which has its summit at 1787 metres or nearly 6,000 feet above sea level and can be icy even in summer.‍

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/nelson-lakes-travers-sabine-circuit

Jun 05, 202104:24
The Romantic Routeburn

The Romantic Routeburn

The Routeburn Track is one of New Zealand’s ten official Great Walks (soon to be eleven).

In UNESCO World Heritage surroundings, the Routeburn Track was also reputedly named one of the eleven top trails in the world by National Geographic Adventure magazine in 2005. It leads from the headwaters of Lake Wakatipu to the Divide, on the road to Milford Sound.

The whole 32-kilometre track can be done as amulti-day hike, but sections of the track are also very accessible to day-walkers.

Also dubbed ‘the ultimate alpine adventure’ by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) and others, the Routeburn Track boasts unrivalled views of the Southern Alps to the east and the Darran Mountains to the west.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/romantic-routeburn

Jun 05, 202104:11
Gertrude Saddle: A Rock Climber's Paradise
Jun 05, 202104:13
Tramping the Milford Track and Feeling very Scottish
Jun 05, 202102:48
The Hollyford Track
Jun 04, 202105:34
The Dusky Track — An Epic

The Dusky Track — An Epic

Jun 03, 202106:60
Milford Sound/Piopiotahi, and its Scenic Road
Jun 03, 202105:45
The Coast North-West of Nelson
Jun 03, 202110:24
Some of My South Island Faves

Some of My South Island Faves

What are some of my favourite walks, hikes and places to visit in the South Island? Here’s a short list.

(Some are covered in more detail in other blog posts of mine, and linked to them accordingly.)

To start with, I’ve just lately done the romantically named Moonlight Track, which runs from the beautiful Moke, pronounced Mokeh, Lake to Arthurs Point in the hills behind new Zealand’s informal tourist capital of Queenstown. The track’s named after a prospector called George Fairweather Moonlight: but I like to think it would be fun to do it under a full moon as well!

Featured image credit: The landing of the North Island by Māui and his brothers. Ceramic tile mural by E. Mervyn Taylor (1962), currently on permanent display in the Takapuna Public Library in suburban Auckland.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/some-of-my-south-island-faves

Jun 03, 202108:28
Forgotten World: An almost abandoned highway, into the rugged interior of New Zealand's North Island

Forgotten World: An almost abandoned highway, into the rugged interior of New Zealand's North Island

The North Island of New Zealand’s rugged interior, explored by way of an almost abandoned highway, now popular with cycle tourists.

JUST LATELY, I came across a diary of travels in old-time New Zealand called In the Land of the Tui. Published in London in the 1890s, the diary was kept by a woman named Eliza Wilson.

At one point, the redoubtable Mrs. Wilson mentions a curious fact that is still an aspect of New Zealand life today. After running into some Auckland polo players at Christchurch’s Riccarton Racecourse, she wrote that:

"We very rarely meet any residents of Auckland so far south, and it has been pleasant to hear something of that portion of these islands which seems as remote as though it were in another sphere. It is odd that a town, so recently the seat of Government [Auckland was the capital of New Zealand from 1842 until 1865], should now have become strange to the rest of the Colony; but so it is; Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin are always en rapport, but Auckland appears distant and separate."

There is a very good reason why this was so, and why it remains so. The reason lies in the extraordinary ruggedness of a belt of terrain that stretches all the way from Taranaki, at the westward extension of the North Island, to East Cape at its eastern-most end. This belt of rugged terrain is caused by the collision of tectonic plates, the Australian and the Pacific, and it isolates Auckland from the rest of the country almost as effectively as a larger or more obvious mountain range would.

Both of the North Island’s two largest rivers originate in this belt, which includes Lake Waikaremoana, Lake Taupō and the large volcanoes of the central North Island. The Waikato River flows northward from Lake Taupō to reach the sea south of Auckland. The other of these two big rivers, the Whanganui, originates near Lake Rotoaira and flows northward, then westward, and finally southward to the sea at Whanganui, a distance of 290 kilometres.

Though mainly used by cycle tourists (mountain bikes are best) the Forgotten World Highway can be driven by car; but it pays to fill up first and I wouldn’t take a really flash car down that road.‍

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/forgotten-world-the-north-islands-rugged-interior

Jun 03, 202104:12
Waikaremoana: Also Steeped in Māoritanga
Jun 03, 202102:52
Lakes Rotoaira and Rotopounamu: Between the Volcanoes and Taupō
Jun 03, 202101:28