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.…

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 .”…

The Taranaki (NZ) Around the Mountain Circuit turned into an epic for me! I only got halfway before falling into a ravine on the way north and injuring myself, so the northern side will have to be written up some other time. But meanwhile, here are some thoughts on doing the southern side. Which is what you miss out if, like a lot of people, you only tramp around the northern side of the mountain, handy to New Plymouth, where the popular Pouakai Track and (Northern) Summit Route are located. I decided to go up to Syme Hut, next to Fanthams Peak/Panitahi, which you can see on the left of the featured image. Then I hiked through all kinds of wonderful terrain, before getting lost on poorly signposted and maintained track and injuring myself, and needing to be helicoptered out. Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/around-mount-taranaki…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Visitor numbers are up in the limestone country near Karamea, New Zealand. Which is a good thing, as it’s really worth a visit! Things to see include the incredible Ōpārara arches and Mirror Tarn, accessible from a road built by loggers decades ago when logging was still allowed. Starting out from Westport, the first place you’ll want to make a turnoff to see is the historic mining community of Denniston, on top of a low mountain some 600 metres or two thousand feet above the coast. There are see-through interpretive panels that have sketches of the town as it was around 1900 drawn on them, as you would have seen it from that spot in the day.‍ And there's plenty more . . . Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/karamea-top-end-south-islands-west-coast…

The two ends of the Heaphy Track, one of New Zealand’s ten Great Walks. are far apart. But flying back over the top is just as amazing! I’ve done the Heaphy a couple of times from the eastern end. So, this time (March 2021) I decided to go from the west, for a change, and also because I was on the West Coast already. I hastily booked a flight with a firm called Golden Bay Air, which also does scenic flights, to take me back to Karamea when I’d finished. And then I started walking from the Kōhaihai Shelter and Campsite, where the track terminates in the west.‍ One thing about the Heaphy Track is that the two ends are a lot further apart by way of the rest of the road network than on foot. The 78 km length of the track becomes 463 km by road, a seven-hour drive. It can cost as much as NZ $370 to $500 to have your car relocated by a driver, unless you manage to strike a lucky deal with someone going back anyway. The alternatives are to take one of the local bus services back to where you have left your car, or to fly. A full list of all passenger transport services in the region, both by road and by air, is provided on heaphytrack.com/transport-services . I decided to fly back in order to save time and, also, to view some of the amazing terrain of Kahurangi National Park from the air. Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/latest-heaphy-hike-flight-back-over-dragons-teeth…

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…

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…

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…

AFTER my month on Rakiura/Stewart Island, I left for Whenua Hou, also known as Codfish Island, to work on track maintenance. Even in normal times, to stay on the island you have to go through quarantine, which I did in Invercargill. During the process, they checked for foreign grasses in my gear,so I had made sure to purchase new socks and wash down my pack and wet weather gear.‍ During the breeding season of the kākāpō, a rare flightless parrot that is active at night and sleeps by day, the rangers frequent the wooden walkways on the island for about two months, travelling between nests and monitoring the birds. Once they are nesting, volunteers camp outside the burrows and monitor the comings and goings of the parent. There are cameras placed in every nest to monitor the incubation period. Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/whenua-hou-codfish-island-few-kakapo-left…

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…