Category: Uncategorized

From the Coromandel Peninsula, we arrive in Rotorua.

Rotorua is an infernal kind of place. Lots of sulphur-smelling hot springs.

We rent bicycles and tour along the lake.

We come across bubbling witches-brews of hot springs and mud.

Many years ago, I went out with a girl from Rotorua for quite some time. I believe she eventually settled down in this area. A casual Google search turns up nothing of her whereabouts.

From Rotorua, we drive to Lake Taupo, NZ’s largest lake. Of course, Maria has to test out the waters.

Our caravan park contains soothing mineral hot pools.

Apparently this DC3 makes the local McDonald’s one of the coolest in the world.

Next stop is Napier, a pleasant seaside town.

A severe earthquake strikes here in the 1930s.

Napier is known for its many Art Deco buildings. (Art Deco was popular around the time of the earthquake – hence the binge.)

For us, however, it’s all about the wine. The Hawke’s Bay region is one of New Zealand’s best. A Google search whittles down the number of wineries we can reasonably visit.

• Mission Estate
• Black Barn
• Craggy Range
• Sileni
• Trinity Hill
• Te Mata
• Alpha Domus

Mission Estate is the oldest winery in NZ. As we arrive for lunch at their wonderful restaurant, preparations are underway for an outdoor concert with Phil Collins. (Currently on his ‘Not Dead Yet‘ tour – I kid you not.)

This is an annual thing: last year, it was Neil Diamond. Next year, Elton John.

On our way to Sileni Estate. The Hawke’s Bay region is famous for its syrahs and sauvignon blancs.

See the duct tape on the rear windows? That’s because our discount campervan rental has no screens. So we make our own.

Maria frolics in the fields of Alpha Domus.

The entrance to Craggy Range.

This is the actual craggy range, across the road.

Sight or Insight of the Day

In Rotorua, we visit the nearby National Kiwi Hatchery.

This is a stuffed kiwi – real kiwis suffer extreme stress when a flash goes off by accident, so photography is not allowed around the live birds.

Note the size of the egg compared to the size of the kiwi. Ouch!

It so happens as we arrive, a pair of rangers are transporting a three-month-old kiwi to a new home in a national park.

This particular kiwi hatched during the visit of Harry Windsor and Meghan Markle (AKA the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.) They select the name ‘Tihei’, from the Māori Tihei mauriora, which means ‘sneeze of life’. (Every kiwi hatched here has a name. Over a thousand so far.)

So Sneeze is belted in and whisked away in comfort, as befits a bird of royal patronage.

Let’s face it – New Zealand avian fauna is not very exciting after the technicolour riot that is Australian birdlife. But we love kiwis.

After arriving in Auckland, we spend a few days seeing the sights, including the architecturally impressive Auckland Art Gallery.

We pick up our campervan, home for the next few months. We name her ‘Kiwi’. I suggest ‘Kate’, after Kate Sheppard, the woman responsible for New Zealand being the first country to give women the vote in 1893. (For comparison, women in Switzerland got the vote in 1971.) I am overruled.

Note the homemade awning constructed from a cheap tarp, a couple of tent poles, and numerous bungee cords.

We head out of somewhat over-Sinified Auckland for the Coromandel Peninsula.

New Zealand is very scenic.

The east coast experiences a gold rush in the 19th century. This leaves towns with many Wild West-style buildings.

We take a shortcut known as ‘The 309‘ across the peninsula. Among the sights we see are herd of free-range pigs. Good old NZ pork on the hoof.

The twisty gravel road passes through some nifty rainforest.

 

 We drive down the coast, then inland to Matamata and camp by some hot springs.

Campgrounds are expensive in New Zealand. Almost double the price of Australian campgrounds. No wonder so many people stick to ‘freedom camping’. (Not our thing at all. If you can afford a motor vehicle, surely you can afford to pay for amenities like hot water and electricity.)

Sight or Insight of the Day

Because we are in the area, we visit the set of the Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit films. It is extremely touristic, that is, wildly popular.

It’s actually quite a sight. The story of the site’s discovery by Peter Jackson on this lucky family’s farmland is a tale in itself.

Maria, with little cultural reference to JRR Tolkien and his work, is dubious at first. But eventually succumbs to Hobbiton’s charms.

 

Welcome to New Zealand.

After over a month, we are back on our random rambles.

We flew back to Canada for a family emergency. Back again, now in the land of the long white cloud, New Zealand.

We’ll be brief for this entry, as we get back into the swing of things.

But first, let’s recap our last few days in Melbourne. We visit the top of the Eureka Tower.

We also visit the Botanical Gardens.

In Fitzroy Gardens is Cook’s Cottage, transported brick by brick from Yorkshire.

We have lunch again with my old friend Philip.

In keeping with our Ned Kelly interests, we visit the Old Melbourne Gaol. This the site of Ned’s hanging.

It looks virtually the same as in this contemporary etching.

We fly from Melbourne to Auckland. In Auckland, we don’t even leave the airport – we fly directly back to Ottawa.

Fast forward to late January. Resuming our journey in NZ, we come across this in the streets of Auckland.

So at least we’re caught up to our arrival here. More to come.

Sight or Insight of the Day –

We run into people we know from Ottawa on the streets of Auckland.

As we walk down Queen Street, we hear our names called. It’s Yves. Yves and Darlene are good friends of my brother and sister-in-law, Joanne.  (Darlene and Joanne are cousins.) We knew they were on a cruise in this part of the world, but it seems unlikely our paths would cross. Kudos to Yves for recognizing us among the throngs of the city.

How improbable is that? We celebrate by going out for dinner.

From Hobart, we drive north.

We stop for lunch in Tarraleah. In the nearby fountain, a momma duck herds her ducklings.

On our way towards the west coast, we visit the Wall in the Wilderness. This is a project of sculptor Greg Duncan to carve a mural in wood describing life in this part of Tasmania. They have a strict ‘no photos’ policy, but fortunately, Google once again comes to the rescue, as you can see here.

On our way to Strahan, we pass through Queenstown, a former mining area.

Below is Tas, our two-week campervan rental. He – yes, he’s a ‘he’ – is actually an upgrade. Much newer, but lacking in character. And an un-ergonomic configuration that has us banging our heads daily and tut-tutting about the user-unfriendly design.

The approach to Queenstown is a windy steep road – lots of fun.

After a few days in Strahan, we drive to Cradle Mountain.

We never get to see it like this. For the entire time we are in the area, we endure gale-force winds, torrential rain, and temperatures hovering around zero. Fortunately, there’s a comfy lodge to hang around in during the day.

We drive through the mountainous region around Mount Cradle on our way to Launceston.

Unbelievably, we run short of wine. We visit the Josef Chromy winery to stock up. Tasmania produces excellent pinot noirs.

Our caravan park has two horses, Lauren and Greta.

Greta enjoys an apple she mooches off Maria.

In the middle of the country is the historic small town of Ross.

We make our way to the Freycinet Peninsula.

We take a little sea cruise around to Wineglass Bay.

Along the way, a pod of dolphins head for our boat and surround it with their sleek, torpedo-like forms.

They seem to enjoy racing alongside – and in front of – our boat.

We make another wine stop at Devil’s Corner.

This happens to be the first Tasmanian wine we try on arrival. By a happy accident, we come across it unplanned on our drive south.

More mountainous scenery.

We spend some time around Richmond, another historic town. It contains Australia’s oldest bridge, completed in 1825.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tasmania part two

In the small coastal town of Swansea, we find this seasonal decoration of  Santa’s sleigh being pulled by kangaroos.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

A brief report on our first few days in Tasmania.

First thing, we plan to visit the MONA. We discover it’s closed on Mondays. We change tack and head for Port Arthur instead.

On the way, we come across the Unzoo. This turns out to be a fabulous place to see Tasmanian devils close up.

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” ― Shakespeare, The Tempest

Poor devils – they’re plagued with DFTD, which threatens to wipe them out. Devil facial tumour disease only appeared in the 90s, but is taking a severe toll on the Tasmanian devil population. It’s rare that a species becomes endangered through nature itself rather than through the shitty behaviour of humans, but this is the case.

They’re cute, but not exactly cuddly. Anyway, they don’t look anything like their Warner Brothers namesake.

Although they do share unspeakably powerful jaw strength. According to Wikipedia:

‘The Tasmanian devil has the most powerful bite relative to body size of any living mammalian carnivore, exerting a force of 553 N (56.4 kgf).’

We carry on to Port Arthur. Originally a dreaded penal colony, it is now a pleasant place to walk around.

Hobart is a pleasant small port city. Very civilized.

Eventually we arrive at the MONA. This place is astounding.

Most of it exists underground, carved out of the living Tasmanian sandstone.

It’s private. It is founded by a local Hobart man, David Walsh. He made a lot of money as a gambler. He has no background in the art world. And he has built an institution – no, that’s too stuffy a word – the man has built a space-where-stuff-happens-that-is-endlessly-fascinating-to-experience. We need a new word for this.

New York, London, Paris, Berlin (and Sydney, and Melbourne) – eat your hearts out. You have nothing like this.

Below is UK artist Richard Wilson’s ’20:50′.

‘… a room flooded with engine oil. A waist-high barrier extends into the room allowing viewers to walk into it without touching the still, black mass. Museum staff repeatedly tells viewers not to touch it. ‘ – Marcus Teague, BROADSHEET Melbourne

I saw this at the Saatchi Gallery in London decades ago. </End of art brag>

This is an interesting experiment.

The MONA combines bleeding-edge modernism and the shatteringly unconventional with a total and utter lack of pretension. (This last is a very Australian aspect.)

It’s kind of like Louisiana north of Copenhagen or the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands – if you’re never in the area, you may never know they exist. Then you stumble across it and think ‘Holy shit! Why have I never heard of this place?’ Assuming you’re the artsy-fartsy type, of course.

The irreverence carries on in the signs asking people not to trespass in the vineyards surrounding the MONA.

and another…

Also in Hobart, we visit a replica of Mawson’s huts. Douglas Mawson was an Antarctic explorer and geologist from South Australia.

A fascinating man. He goes to the Antarctic with Shackleton, leads several other expeditions filled with derring-do, traipses around the outback doing  pioneer geological surveys, then continues on in a career as a respected academic. Like Indiana Jones with an Australian accent.

A landmark of Hobart is the Tasman Bridge.

This was the site of a catastrophic accident in 1975.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Tasmania

This work at the MONA blows us away:

It’s by a German artist, Julius Popp.

A science gallery website describes it like this:

‘In BIT.FALL, information is represented by words generated by a computer program, based on a statistical algorithm. The program filters relevant terms from the current stream of news on the internet, and transmits the values to the control unit of BIT.FALL. In a split second, BIT. FALL releases hundreds of drops at specific intervals, creating a ‘waterfall’ of words. Each drop of water thus becomes a liquid and transient ‘pixel’ or ‘bit’, the smallest unit of information. ‘

So the words that appear are based on whatever’s trending on the web.

The words are crystal clear, but immediately dissolve into a mist, leaving you waiting for the next one. We stand watching this for ten minutes.

From the Australian Alps, we travel from Gippsland to Melbourne to Tasmania.

We spend a few days at Cape Conran, in East Gippsland. The beach is deserted.

We create a shelter against the sun from whatever we can scavenge in Matilda, in addition to driftwood, because we leave most of her awning materials – pegs, guy-lines, etc – back at the campground.

On the way back, a wallaby crosses our path.

It would be interesting to see an Eadweard Muybridge-style study of macropeds in motion. They’re so graceful.

We drive across Gippsland – basically the south of the state of Victoria – on our way to Wilsons Promontory.

It’s very scenic.

The wildlife around Tidal River, where we camp, is famously tame.

The next morning, this bird follows Maria around, waiting for a handout.

Back in Melbourne, I reconnect with Philip, an old Melbournian friend. He’s also a worker in words.

It’s rainy and cold, as it often seems to be here.

At Flinders Station is a mural by Mirka Mora, another Heide habitué.

Melbourne has a lot of wedding-cake-style Victorian office buildings, besides a skyline full of 21st-century architecture.

While in town, we visit the Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Among its old Skippy the Bush Kangaroo clips and Mad Max memorabilia is the piano from Jane Campion’ s The Piano. Still one of our favourite films. (Has it really been 25 years?) It is in fact an early-19th-century, made-in-London antique.

It’s with great sadness we drop off Matilda at the rental depot. She kept us safe and mobile for over 24,000 kilometres around Australia, in all conditions. Goodbye, old friend.

Our flight arrives late in Hobart. We like this sculpture in the arrivals hall.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Melbourne to Tasmania

We pick up our new camper-van the next day. This is the license plate:

We like the stylized Tasmanian tiger drinking from a stream. We download and re-watch a good Willem Dafoe movie from 2011, The Hunter. Check it out.

Also, notice the dearth of letters and numbers in the plates of sparsely-populated Tassie. Like Prince Edward Island. Or Luxembourg.

From Canberra we make our way to Jindabyne, a gateway to the Australian Alps.

Jindabyne is one of the towns that benefit from the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a giant hydro power-and-water-conservation project.

It’s strange to see snow in Australia. Above is the Perisher Valley ski resort. It’s on the way to Charlotte Pass, from which you can walk to the peak of Mt. Kosciusko, Australia’s highest mountain. We see many masochistic cyclists working their way up to Charlotte Pass, no doubt looking forward to the gravity-powered return trip.

In the background is the Snowy River, a household word in Australia thanks to the poem The Man from Snowy River. The river has its origins around Mt. Kosciusko.

(By coincidence, a few days later we pass through Marlo, Victoria, where the Snowy enters the sea.)

‘He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko’s side,
Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,
Where a horse’s hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,
The man that holds his own is good enough.
And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,
Where the river runs those giant hills between…’

A rare photo with both of us, thanks to passing couple.

Maria rests on a snow gum.

We backtrack to Jindabyne and head to Thredbo on the other side of Mt. Kosciusko. Thredbo is the Whistler of Australia – such as it is – including sky-high prices for everything.

It’s a breathtaking journey from Jindabyne to Omeo on the Great Alpine Way, via Khancoban.

The scenery driving through the mountains is spectacular. We don’t have many pictures because that means stopping every few minutes. You can get an idea of what it looks like here. (Thanks, Google.)

After crossing the Murray River back into the state of Victoria, we spot another echidna and help him cross the road.

We spend the night in Omeo, Victoria. Our caravan park sits on Livingstone Creek. There are platypus in the river, but we don’t see any.

We make a point of visiting the Buchan Caves, after seeing this antique  tourist poster in the Australian National Museum.

Turns out to be worth it. The formations in these caves are on the mind-blowing side.

Once again, we can’t stop every few metres to take photos, so we enlist the help of Google images here.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Australian Alps

We drive across Gippsland to Wilsons Promontory. At the Tidal River campground where we stay, the wildlife is very tame.

From northeast Victoria, we travel through New South Wales to the Australian Capital Territory.

We call ahead to several caravan parks in Canberra. They have no vacancies. Probably because many people are in town for the 100th anniversary of the end of WWI. We find a place near Yass, NSW on Lake Burrinjuck for the night.

It’s pretty idyllic. We have the place to ourselves. Except for a very friendly dog that adopts us. (We assume she belongs to the proprietors.) She behaves perfectly and doesn’t make a sound. She sleeps outside the van and is still there in the morning. We name her Molly.

As the sun sets, the surrounding hills turn red.

The only sound is sheep bleating in the hills.

Our first stop in Canberra is the Australian War Memorial. Essentially a war museum. It is extremely well done.

The scene of lots of activity the day before we arrive, November 11, but now quiet and uncrowded.

It contains lots of nifty hardware, including a Japanese midget submarine that attacked Sydney Harbour, a WWI tank, and a Lancaster bomber.

We spend four nights in Canberra. Like most planned-from-scratch cities, it features sweeping boulevards that look great. As long as you’re not a pedestrian.

Being the national capital, Canberra has some great museums. We see a special exhibit about Rome at the National Museum of Australia.

We visit the superb National Portrait Gallery. Ottawa has been dithering over creating a national portrait gallery for decades. Jeeze, just friggin’ build it, already.

I like this portrait of Nick Cave.

We visit the Museum of Australian Democracy, housed in the former Parliament House.

Australia and Canada are similar in being burdened with less-than-impressive, mediocre, self-serving politicians, yet both countries manage to be great places to live.

We visit the new Parliament House.

By design, it is a delightfully open place. After a security check, people are welcome to poke around its interesting features. A pleasant change from the Iron Fortress isolation from the public found in most other western countries’ government buildings.

Still, there are enough men and women around toting machine guns to discourage any would-be jihadis yearning for martyrdom.

Sight or Insight of the Day

You can see the fields of red in the photos of Parliament House above.

This is an ocean of poppies.

Our interest in the Ned Kelly story continues. From Melbourne we drive north east to Kelly Country.

First stop is the village of Beveridge. This is the house Kelly’s father built in the 1850s. His brother and fellow gang member, Dan, was born here.

Next to the town of Avenel. As a boy, Ned saves a seven-year-old Richard Shelton from drowning near this spot on Hughes Creek. Shelton’s grateful parents present Ned with a green silk sash.

‘I do not pretend that I have led a blameless life, or that one fault justified another, but the public, judging a case like mine, should remember that the darkest life may have
a bright side …’ – Ned Kelly

The Kelly name still means something in these parts.

After an excellent pizza in town, we go to Euroa. The Kelly gang robs a bank here, takes hostages, and treats the locals to daring feats of horsemanship.

Our next stop is Benalla. They have a lot of Kelly memorabilia here, including Ned’s famous sash, which he wears at the siege of Glenrowan.

The Benalla Gallery also has a tapestry based on one of Sydney Nolan’s Ned Kelly series.

Benalla cemetery contains several Kelly-related graves, including that of gang member Joe Byrne.

We like the stylized Ned Kellys that indicate Kelly-related graves.

It’s based on a contemporary etching that appears in the press.

Further down the road is Glenrowan, site of Kelly’s last stand.

This is Glenrowan train station. A train full of policemen arrives from Melbourne to take down the Kelly gang.

This pony paddock is the site of the Glenrowan Inn. Police besiege the inn and eventually burn it to the ground.

This is the spot where the police capture Ned after his collapse.

We move on to Beechworth, a pretty town now, once a centre of lawlessness in the gold rush days.

Many of the Kelly family spend a lot of time here, um, doing time.

Or otherwise appearing before a magistrate.

In the basement of the Beechworth courthouse is a cell regularly occupied by Harry Power. Ned Kelly is ‘apprenticed’ to this bushranger at the age of fourteen.

Murdering thug or avenging friend of the oppressed? Probably just a flawed individual like the rest of us. But so iconic is the Kelly story that the opening ceremonies of the Sydney Olympics in 2000 featured a troop of Nolanesque Kelly figures.

Sight or Insight of the Day  – Kelly Country

On our way north of Yass, NSW, we see another echidna.

Tradition says if you see an echidna, you’ll have good luck for the next three days. (I just made that up. We simply like them.)

 

From the relative calm of Geelong, we arrive in the urban maelstrom that is  Melbourne.

(This entry is brief and at least a week out of date. As usual, finding reliable WiFi in Australia is always difficult. At the moment, we’re reduced to sitting in a McDonald’s in Canberra to leech off of their one hour of free WiFi.)

To navigate these streets is enervating. We are more accustomed to driving in conditions like this:

By accident, we arrive on the day of the Melbourne Cup. This is a big deal here. We toy with the idea of attending, but a deluge of rain on the day puts us off.

Instead, we head for Heide.

This is the former home of John and Sunday Reed, patrons of the arts in the 30s, 40s, and beyond. Probably most well-known for bringing the talents of Sydney Nolan to the world.

Most of Nolan’s famed Ned Kelly series (which we were fortunate enough to see in Perth) were painted at the kitchen table as the Heide circle thrashed out artistic solutions to the world’s problems.

The Reeds and Nolan were engaged in a ménage à trois that was unconventional and, um, interesting, to say the least.

There’s also a wonderful library.

habitué.

The surrounding grounds are now a sculpture park. Signs warn to beware of snakes, especially at this time of year.

We visit the impressive State Library of Victoria.

In keeping with our interest in the Ned Kelly story, we seek out Ned’s famous armour.

The SLV also has the original Jerilderie letter on display.

The weather in Melbourne continues to be cool and wet. Good weather for visiting the State Gallery of Victoria.

Our luck continues, as the Gallery has an exhibit co-featuring Brett Whiteley, whom we first learned about in Sydney.

The other artist is George Baldessin.

But we prefer Brett.

Sight or Insight of the Day – Melbourne

We never free-camp. Often, when people speak of traveling around Australia by camper-van, visions spring up of overnighting on a deserted beach or under the stars alone in the bush. We thought like this as well.

As it turns out, we prefer the luxury of having electricity and proximity to a hot shower. Worth the AUD30 or so, in our opinion.