Category: Damn Long Walks

After having a few days to get over my cold and visit friends I will begin my 1,000km walk through Western Australia tomorrow 8 September 2022.

I think the extra few days rest has been good for me as has visiting Kiwi friends who have made WA their home (for now anyway). So I have done a lot of talking, eating and drinking too much wine. A damn long walk is needed.

Perth is an easy city to get around on public transport so I have been able to get my food and a few other necessities without any bother. New innersoles, tick tweezers a snake and a wide brimmed hat have been added to the gear I took on Te Araroa. I have a new Zpacks pack because my last one was no longer waterproof. The new one is slightly bigger so I have had to be careful not to add unecessay items. I need to be kind to my old body.

The nights will be cool, sometimes down to 0°C and it is the wet season so I am not expecting too many hot days for the first few weeks. The wildflowers will be beginning to bloom and the snakes will be waking up from their winter hibernation.

My 17 year old granddaughter, Rebecca, will walk the first 4 days with me using my old pack. I have added some sheepskin padding to the hip belt as she doesn’t have the natural padding that I have. I am really looking forward to spending this time with her. I have told Becca that it is her job to scare away the snakes and spiders and to deal with the Kangaroos, because she is the Australian.

My son, Cameron, will meet us and take over the Granny watch for a few days.

So sit back and enjoy my journey from the comfort of your homes.

I left New Zealand last week to fly to Perth planning to start the Bibbulmun Track on 1 September. However I arrived with a sore throat, lost voice and a cough. Covid-19 RAT and PCR tests were both negative thank goodness.

It is just a virus but I am delaying my start by a week to make sure I am well over it before I start putting my body under too much stress.

I have some friends to visit while I wait and have had some good time with my family. I have seen one Granddaughter off to her school ball and the other turn 16.

I visited the museum today and took notice of all the reptiles, furry creatures and birds that I will probably meet on my walk. Some look more friendly than others!! I may have to sing as I walk along because that would scare everything away.

Maybe not as the last time I sang in the bush ended with me getting very lost and needing a helicopter rescue.

I have been back living a “semi normal” life since the end of March 2022. I had walked 600km of Te Araroa NOBO (North Bound)and the Abel Tasman Track, then spent time hanging out in the South Island. I say semi normal because I have continued to be homeless as the nice man continues to rents my house in Palmerston North. As a result I have shared myself around the homes of my kids and friend’s trying to make myself useful doing most things except cooking.

To bring a few dollars in I have been doing contract accounting work back at a District Council I had worked at last year. Being a 40 minute drive from any of my kids homes I found a lady to board / lodge with Monday to Thursday nights and have been coming “home” for the weekends. At first I thought Margaret was just a small country town grandmother who liked to knit and dye wool. But every night I was surprised to learn more about her interesting life. A Masters in Education for Special Needs has taken her all around the world including time in the Middle East and throughout Africa. Another string in her bow was that she had been one of New Zealand’s first sex councillors. So be careful with first impressions of us grannies. I enjoyed her company and we fixed all the woes of the world over a wine or two during the evenings. She also fed me well!

Then during the weekends I shared my housework and babysitting services amongst the family. I spent a lot of time at the local playgrounds with toddler Finn, letting him run around, jumping and climbing on stuff with me watching from a distance, as I did with my kids over 40 years ago. This is different to how kids are parented nowadays. The mums and dads today hover over the kids keeping them less than arms length away all the time so according to Google I was doing it all wrong. However Finn gained a lot of physical skills, confidence and loved his time out with me. And he survived!! Five weeks ago a new baby arrived so I moved in with the family and had lots of cuddles with my 7th grandchild. My eldest is 24 years old so I have a good range and I am privileged to be able to have the time to spend lots more quality time with these latest batch than I was able to do with the older ones.

In June my son and his family came over from Perth, Australia for the first visit since the Covid pandemic. They have had three trips cancelled so we were all on tender hooks before they actually arrived. These grand daughters are 15 and 17 years old so a real pleasure to have around and very helpful with the little kids. I organised a family weekend away at a school camp venue where we did a day tramp, explored some caves, did a family quiz and spent the time eating and drinking and catching up on all the family news.

I have really enjoyed having time with my family and I am pleased and honoured that they allow me to share their lives with them and build strong relationships with my grandchildren. I knew that from the birth of my first child (47 years ago) that I was going to share myself with others for the rest of my life: that my life would never be my own. However it now time for me to do something for myself and have another adventure. They are all happy for me to go off and are well used to me disappearing for months on end. They are okay without me.

I hope that you can all absorb my experiences and that I can be influential in making people realise that dreams need to be made into plans. Only then can you do whatever you want in life. Just do it: plan the first day and the rest will just follow on.

After finishing the Rakiura Track and spending my final day with Kay, I flew up to Nelson.  I was welcomed into the home of my brother, Nigel, his wife Keary and their 2 naughty young Burmese cats. They eat socks and shoelaces and burgle the neighbours!!

The last time I was here in Nelson  was when I was helicoptered out of the Richmond Ranges. A packet of instant mashed potatoes that I had left behind then was still in  their pantry.

My daughter, Cara, from Palmerston North arrived a couple of days later. She had a brand new pack and was excited to be going on her first multi night tramp. The 60km long Abel Tasman Coastal track is to be her first Great Walk.  Cara has been busy raising her family for many years and has embraced the freedom to do her own  thing since the girls have left home.

We spent a few hours at the supermarket buying food for the tramp. We had decided to move away from my usual boring Backcountry meals for dinner. As a result, we left with 2 nights of instant mashed potatoes, sausages, instant gravey to be mixed with a vegetable soup for the first 2 nights. Our 3rd night was to be  a freeze dried vegan spaghetti bolgnaise with a packet of instant noodles. A Three Cheese Pasta was on the menu for the 4th night. They were all good and will definitely stay on the menu for my future expeditions.

Being one of New Zealand’s Great Walks I had to book ahead of time. Pre Covid times these huts and campsites can book out within hours of the annual bookings being opened up. However this year I booked only a month ago and was able to secure the first and last nights in huts and the other 2 nights at camping areas.

New Zealand is now in our first major outbreak of Covid-19, the Omicron is fast spreading around the whole country so I checked the website to see if there had been some cancelations meaning we could swap out the tent sites for huts.  I was pleased to see that we could so attempted to use the DOC booking site to change the bookings.

Soon I was becoming very frustrated as I could not found the “alter booking” button. Stupid websites!! So I rang DOC and they suggested I use a different browser. That didn’t work either so grumpy me rang the lady back. She “looked in the back end”  and saw that I had booked to start on 19th February instead of 19th of March. Dumb woman! You can’t change something that has already happened. I asked about a refund and was told that there was nothing in the terms and conditions that covered stupidity.

However we were able to book huts for all 4 nights and organisec our transport to the start. The water taxi trip to Totaranui was like a tour as we were taken to see seal colonies, lovely golden bays and some historic sights.

The five days walking was all easy being a very popular Great Walk. It meandours around the coastline through nice bush and many small beaches. Pre Covid the place would have been alive with kyajers, water taxis, people doing day walks, fishing and picnicking.

At the end of yhe second day we had an estuary to cross which needed to be done 1.5 hours before to low tide at 5.53pm, or up to 2 hours after. We took our time that day and did some side trips to fill in the day we arrived right on low tide and made the half hour crossing with water only up to our knees. The people who had arrived before us had water up to their waists so we were pleased with our timing.

The huts were only partly full the had the track to ourselves most of the time. These 5 days were probably the first time I have been alone with Cara for this long since she was a baby. It was very special.

Cara had a new pack and this was her first multi night tramp. Other than not sleeping well she enjoyed herself and managed well. We walked at the same pace which was good.

Cars had a trip and I managed to slip off a rock above Cleoptas Pool which had us both in hysterics. It wasn’t very glamorous but I did manage to get back up and not plunge down into to the water below.

The weather was overcast and we had one day of walking in light rain. The track was mostly sandstone so there was no mud and we were pleased not to be out in scorching NZ sun. Overall perfect.

I hadn’t organised transport back to Nelson as I was planning on giving Cara her first hitchhiking experience. We were planning on visiting the cafe for a proper cup of tea before trying our luck. However a nice young man pulled over and offered us a lift only a 100 metres from the end of the track.

It turned out that I had read about him as he was from India, had walked Te Araroa and was aiming to visit 900 huts in 900 days.

He dropped as at the Richmond Mall where we enjoyed some “real food”. We hoped we didn’t smell too badly after 5 days without a shower.

I throughly recommend the Abel Tasman Coastal Walk especially if you are not a hard out tramper. The days are easy and you can use water taxis transport your gear if you want. There are even flushing toilets and toilet paper at all the huts. There are options from 1 to 5 day walks too.

Kay and I decided to do one of the things that scares us by taking a 8 seater plane over to Stewart Island. Our other option was a 30 minute shuttle followed by an hour on a ferry across Fourveax Straight, one of the roughest pieces of water. The former was only a 20 minute flight and cost a mere $10 more. We waited until the last minute to book reasoning that we were probably better off on the ferry if it was rough. The day was perfect for flying, not a breathe of wind and clear blue sky.

There was 3 other women boarding with us and I volunteered to sit up front with the pilot. I obeyed the strict instructions not to touch anything and to refrain from talking to the very young looking pilot. That was a hard 20 minutes for me!  We had a lovely flight and perfect landing.

The next day we took a ferry over to Ulva Island which is predator free so we saw and heard quite a few birds that are hard to find anywhere else in the world. We sat on a beach and ate our lunch and a naughty Weka jumped up and took part of my sandwich right out of my mouth. We were not allowed to feed the birds but he just stole it right from under my nose. Very cheeky birds 🐦.

Stewart Island sits at the bottom of New Zealand and is fairly close to Antarctica. It is famous for its fishing (Blue Cod, crayfish, paua) and its rough weather (wind, rain and mud). Oban is the name of the town that has one shop, a pub, a backpackers, a couple of food carts and lots of fishing boats.

The early settlers were whalers, sealers, and loggers. All frowned apon activities nowadays.

Many of us SOBO Te Araroa walkers had planned to go over to Stewart Island and do some of the walks there to finish off the trail however Covid-19 put a stop to that.

There are 3 main tracks on the island that range from 3 days to 11  days. They are all notorious for the mud, mud that can be waist high and relentless. We decided that 3 days was enough for us as we had experience enough mud in our travels to last us a bit more of our lifetimes.

The Rakiura Track is one if our Great Walks. These are designed to be walked by the general public and tourists so they are well maintained, with easy gradients and no life threatening bits.

I had asked Garry for good weather and he obliged. There had been a long dry spell so there was very little mud; our shoes were hardly dirty at all. But some people arrived at the second hut saying it was a hard day and very muddy. Obviously they had not done much tramping as we thought it was an easy and dry day. This shows that it is all relative to one’s previous experiences. Those of you who have experienced “Karen’s flat” will attest to that.

The huts were only half full, probably Covid-19 related. Most of the other trampers had huge packs and a week’s worth of heavy food which probably made the day a lot harder to start with. This time I had varied my ususal diet and had instant mashed potatoes with chorizo sausage and gravy for my dinner. It was good food but I need to follow the directions more closely to get the ratios correct. One night the mashed potato was a bit dry and lumpy and the next night a bit runny. But I have never been good at following recipes as my family will tell you.

We were really keen to see Kiwi in the wild having been told that there are 15,000 of the short, fat flightless birds on the island. There are only about 400 permanent residents and we saw nearly all of them, but, alas, no Kiwi. We walked softly and slowly for two whole days, in silence, hoping to spot one of them. That was quite hard for two very chatty women. Kiwi are nocturnal birds but the Stewart island breed come out during the day because it is too cold at night.

Some people went out after dark to sit in the bush for hours but wasn’t that keen. No one saw a Kiwi anyway so I was pleased I didn’t waste my sleeping time.

We did see a number of birds including a loved up couple of Kereru who entertained us at North Arm Hut. There were also lots of deer who were not afraid of us at all. The track is through a big hunting block but I think the deer know they are safe near the huts. Deer are a major pest in New Zealand.

We had dinner at the pub on Saturday night with a couple of trampers and caught the 8am ferry back to Invercargill. There was no wind and the sea was flat so it was a lovely crossing. The boat was filled with the chatter of about a dozen kids about 10 years old, goi g to the mainland for the day. It was nice to see that they weren’t glued to their phones.

We had a day wandering around the shops in Invercargill before we flew our separate ways. Kay back home to Putararu and me to Nelson. Kay’s will be then heading over to her family on Perth. I am staying with my brother in Nelson then meeting up with my eldest daughter, Cara, to walk the Abel Tasman Track.