Autumn tour contd.

About 130 people were at the book launch at Aratoi Museum, plenty of books and paintings sold on the first day and we have heard of people who read it cover to cover immediately. So all good.

We continued our trip down State Highway 2 from Masterton, with a detour via Martinborough to sample the local vintage, to end up in Wellington where we stayed with a cousin in Owhiro Bay, on a very southern tip of the North Island. The road really ends here and the house looked out over a dramatic piece of ocean with sharp rocks and inlets breaking the surf. Just around the corner the ferry Wahine sank 40 years ago, and in 1982 a Taiwanese fishing boat, the Yung Pen, went down just offshore. Good wreck diving there, apparently.

We spent a little time in Wellington the next morning to visit Radio New Zealand to drop off the book for review and, hopefully soon, an interview, and to pop into the national museum Te Papa, which happened to have a small exhibition on about the Scots in New Zealand. It mentioned a Scottish engineer, Peter Seton Hay, who worked for the NZ Government and was involved in the design of some of the bridges of the North Island main trunk railway line, including the Makatote Bridge near National Park and the Makohine Viaduct near Marton. As chance would have it we traveled back north on State Highways 1 and 4 and were able to see those very structures as the road follows the railway line for part of the way. They are very elegant and slender bridges and quite worth seeing.

We spent the night in National Park after taking a detour on the road up the mountain to the base of the Turoa ski field. It was a misty day and out of season so it was all desolate, windy, wet and a cold 7 degrees at the end of the road at a height of around 1600 metres.
The welcome at the Ski Haus in National Park was warm - especially the huge log fire - the food delicious, the breakfast copious and the room spacious and comfortable, including a television set. Recommended, in the off season at least, as we were the only guests staying!

Then on the last day on the way home via Hamilton, avoidable at the best of times but this weekend especially with the petrol heads gathering for the V8 races. Not our cuppa as the tribalism involved between adherents of one American car company and another American car company is frankly ridiculous. And of course, it involves far too many clothes for our sporting liking.
Oh, and if you are a Holden fan, don't look at this.

Autumn tour

Like migratory birds we often like to take a short holiday after the Summer. After all, why leave our island during the Summer when it's such a perfect place to be, despite the extra holidaymakers.
This year, we are travelling down to Ewen's mother's birthday/exhibition vernissage/book launch in Masterton. The book is the story of the long courtship of her parents before they got married. It's set before, during and after the First World War years and the highlight of the book is the collection of her diaries and his letters from the Western front, which she had kept.
We visited some of the places where Len was in Flanders last year, as you may remember.

We are travelling down the North Island all the way on State Highway 2, which runs from Auckland - Paeroa - Tauranga - Whakatane - Opotiki - Gisborne - Wairoa - Napier - Hastings - Woodville - Masterton, and on to Wellington.
We stopped off at Kawerau, a paper mill town a few kilometres south of Whakatane, where we stayed at Westmead, a gay homestay run by Kevin and Lionel.
The town sits right next to Mt Edgcumbe, a fierce looking volcano. A 25km drive up a private metal road owned by the logging company and a 10 minute bush walk took us to the Tarawera Falls, where the Tarawera river re-emerges from the underground. The earth is so broken and porous here, the river disappears into a sinkhole a few kilometres further upstream. All very picturesque.

Then down the gorge to Gisborne on the East Coast, arriving in driving rain making the visit unmemorable apart from the stay at the local backpackers, called The Flying Nun, which had an earful of eye candy, if you allow me to mix metaphors, consisting of American and English surfies. We watched a movie together, and it was as much fun gauging their reactions as it was watching the movie, which was Jackass Two, normally not my kind of fare. The grossness of the skits, involving mostly pain and humiliation, is in contrast to some areas that remain taboo. The Jackass idiots do a lot of anal stuff but would never involve any male erections on screen - there are hardly any penises (limp or otherwise) on view in the film, compared to the acreage of male arse. John Waters's cameo making the wee man disappear was an inspired moment (if you haven't seen the film, it's not what you may think).

Further south the next morning via the Mahia Peninsula, mercifully devoid of holiday makers this time of year, to Napier for an R&R session with our mates Roger and Ross and their international assortment of hangers-on. Unmissable if you are ever in the Hawke's Bay. And then on to Masterton, where preparations for the book launch are in full swing.

Queens' Tour of the North Island

What I did on my holidays: drove through wintry showers from Waiheke Island to Napier. Lake Taupo looked windswept and the volcanoes were obscured by low grey cloud. The welcome was, as always, warm by Roger and Ross in their Napier Hill homestay.
They are now officially the only gay venue in the Hawke's Bay, now that the Embassy in Hastings has closed. Highly recommended if you are passing through and have enough of art deco architecture and wineries.
On to Masterton and Martinborough for family Christmas lunches and dinners. By then the weather had improved for a grand Boxing Day out at the beach in Riversdale on the eastern coast of the Wairarapa, an area unfrequented by tourists.
Back to Auckland via another set of in-laws near Palmerston North, where the highlight of the trip was the new massive windfarm on the Manawatu hills.
Some nimbies oppose the windfarm, but all I can say is: I'd rather have the slender, elegant, white windmills wooshing than a power station a la Huntly thundering, hissing and belching on my doorstep. 100,000 people get their power cleanly and efficiently from a few dozen beautiful additions to the landscape. We need another 40 of them around the country.
The trip back north went past Vinegar Hill, a notorious gay camping ground over the summer holidays, but since it was 8.30am, all what was missing was a road sign warning: "Shhh! Queens sleeping". So we pressed on.
Ewen had never seen Mt Ngaruhoe with snow on in Summer, and Mt Ruapehu also looked fantastic with huge amounts of snow on its flanks. The Desert Road is one of the most scenic roads in New Zealand, but there was some strange graffiti on the road signs, outing two men as "homosexuals" by describing their sexual actions in a few spray painted words. What an odd place to do so.
Back home now and back to work over the next holidays.