Sailing to the other side
Brother Orange (that's my car) and I are hopping on the Interislander and returning to the North Island. For now.
Kia ora and greetings adventurers and wanderers. What’s the most intrepid thing you’ve attempted lately?
Viewers over on the mediums of social mightiness might have noticed the strange phenomenon of me driving from Queenstown to Picton this week. Yes, that Picton: the home of the car ferry to Wellington. If you thought it looked like an attempt to escape the South Island for a warmer outlook, you’d be right: I’m returning to the North Island. For now.
It was before the crack of dawn on the 1st January 2023 when I left my friends Polly and Blair's house in Greytown, drove to the Interislander ferry and sailed to the South Island. The adventure began. Zoe was working the cherry season in Cromwell and my only plan was to go and see her.
We ended up travelling up the West Coast together, settling in Nelson for longer than anticipated (fine), before I spent December in Blenheim and January in Tapawera (not so fine). I’ve worked a season on the hops, helped run a hostel, picked cherries, picked apples and most recently dipped my feet back into television, helping crew a big reality show (can’t wait for that to be shown!).
I thought I knew Te Waipounamu. Three-and-a-half months cycling the island's outer perimeter had left me feeling well acquainted with NZ’s lesser-populated ‘Mainland’. Countless trips and holidays to the West Coast since had bolstered that belief. Turns out, I was wrong. You only truly get to know a place when you live there.
Of the two main motu, the South is my natural habitat. Its rugged, mountainous terrain combined with its distinct lack of people to annoy me blend to create one awesome living space. In the past year or so, Kahurangi National Park and I have become good buddies, I've hung out with human besties, Tasman feels like the place I will die in, I've been lucky enough to revisit many of the top people and places I met on my big bike adventure and discovered an atlas of new places as well. It's been a fortunate way to live.
This nomadic adventure lifestyle was born from a combination of my disjointed packraft traverse of the North Island and the inspiration of the many like-minded souls I met over winter 2022, while working at a Northland avocado farm. The final Covid restrictions were cut and a slew of overseas workers arrived at the holiday park I called home, almost overnight. Zoe was one of them, along with a bunch of other travellers who became very good friends and influencers. Paying rent sucks, so why not move around and work and move around and work, just like them? One government-gifted six-month VISA extension, plus a three-month horticulture extension later, and everybody’s 21 months in NZ are now coming to a close. The times are a-changin' and people are moving on.
And so it's time for me to move. Shifting myself, my tent and my car from south to the north is the natural next step. With a trip to China in June, I need to go to Auckland to give the Chinese government my fingerprints. July will then be spent in England (where the people should be taking the governments’ fingerprints!). Leaving my car with friends or family in the big smoke seems wise, particularly when I don't know what the post-travel adventure looks like. (I might, though: 2.5 months work, then South Island packraft traverse!?)
It's memory-invoking being back in Picton. In part, because it stirs up the feelings of rolling off the ferry last year: no job, no plan, just eager for adventure and to write about it. Then, there's that time I crashed spectacularly on the Queen Charlotte Track and managed to pedal my smashed torso to Wellington Hospital, via Picton and the Interislander ferry. It was bittersweet: completing the circumnavigation of the South Island, with a well-tenderised clavicle.
After a Wellington stop with family, a road trip through the North Island's most stunning country awaits. Who doesn't love a revisit of some fabulous places? After that, the script is yet to be written. What shall we make it say?