South Australia & New Zealand's North & South Islands

Dec 1990- Jan 1991

We went Down Under again (having visited Australia in April of 1989), beginning on Christmas day, and returning home disgustingly early on January 16th.

The flight over was a disappointment since it was clear that United’s Royal Pacific service had become, in the case of the food, considerably less royal.  However, last time the flight was so good that we considered not getting off the plane, so perhaps the downward trend was really beneficial.

The Australians are still wonderfully warm and friendly, but the New Zealanders are even more so, though with a quieter, more British air than the Aussies.

The first stop was Melbourne, where we spent two days, which was just the right amount.  For big Australian cities we much prefer Sydney, which is very cosmopolitan.  Melbourne was a little quiet for our tastes.  Now to the highpoints.  We were booked into a lovely hotel that had all the charm and character of a good London hotel but was clearly Australian the lack of reserve of its staff.  On our second day we enjoyed their high tea which fortified us for that evening’s trip to Phillip Island.  The Melbourne Zoo is actually better than the Sydney Zoo, especially the platypus and echidna habitats.  Melbourne is also the craft capital of Australia, so we really enjoyed a converted Victorian wholesale meat market that now houses craft studios.  The last highlight of the Melbourne area was Phillip Island where we got to observe the nightly parade of fairy penguins waddle from the surf to their burrows for the night.  Their chicks were waiting in the burrows (one or two per nesting pair), none of which were visible to us there, but we did get to see a chick at the entrance of its burrow on Kangaroo Island, several days later.

From Melbourne we flew to Adelaide (counting our flights, there were a total of 20 on this vacation – definitely not a vacation for Erica Jong), rented a car, and began terrifying locals who don’t appreciate bloody Yanks driving on the right.  Fortunately, we only forgot ourselves once, making a right turn out of a driveway in a rural area.  In Australia it’s very easy to find rural areas since there’s little else – 95% of the population is on the coast, leaving very few humans in the vast center.  We stayed at a 19th century manor house (impeccably restored and expanded by its current owner) about 40 km outside of Adelaide, with a commanding hilltop view of the wine country, botanical garden, and a wildlife reserve.  It was in that reserve that Barbara found out firsthand that a koala just naturally hugs you back, wrapping its arms around you and resting its cheek against yours.  Barbara also noticed that koalas have a sweet, medicinal breath, due no doubt to its exclusively eucalyptus leaf diet.  On the second day we drove throughout the two major wine valleys in the area, visiting wineries as one does in the Napa Valley of California, only without the California traffic and crowds.  One of the wineries we visited (Mountadam) produces a wonderful Chardonnay that we have been buying for three years.  Another, Charles Melton, was very small, makes only reds, and doesn’t export.  Barbara was astounded by the quality and value of their excellent cabernet sauvignon and a chateauneuf-du-pape called “Nine Popes.”  We will tell our favorite wine store of it to see if they would like to bring in some.  If not, we will have some shipped directly to us.

The next day we turned in our rental car (900 km more worn that before) and flew to the second largest island in Australia, Kangaroo Island, all of which is farmland, four small towns, and a wildlife reserve.  Our Guide, a Land Cruiser owner who had studied forestry and had been a ranger for two years, met us at the plane.  He was the perfect guide for our first day of sightseeing.  Among the highpoints were having wild kangaroos eating from our hands, constantly spotting koalas with cubs (one cub every two years), and walking on a beach in the midst of a couple of hundred sea lions.  In the herd were snoozing rows of over-stuffed sausage-like females, often with pups nursing with loud slurping noises, or with their fins lying across their neighbor’s sides.  We also say pups playing, and one followed us around nearly the entire time we were there.  Our guide also brought us to lovely wetlands, beaches (all but deserted in their high season), dunes and unusual geologic formations.

The next day we toured the four towns and most of the rest of the island that we had missed the previous day.  That evening we flew back to Adelaide and then flew the next day to Auckland.  Australia had been a great deal of fun, and as with the last trip Down Under, food was excellent to extraordinary.

Continuing with Barbara’s impeccable planning (she gleefully spends countless hours pouring over books and articles many months before each trip), we stayed at another incredible hotel and had dinner at its equally incredible Japanese restaurant.  The Auckland Zoo is not a world-class zoo, but it is the prettiest zoo we have ever seen.  As we came to observe, New Zealanders have a wonderful sense of natural esthetic, no doubt largely due to the light population (3.3 million people and 70 million sheep – yes, lamb is on many menus) and a genuine concern for the environment.  Auckland also has, in its War Memorial Museum, a fabulous collection of Maori art.  The Maori produced extremely refined and imaginative art in carved woods and in textiles, all with stone and Iron Age tools.

In Auckland we rented a Mitsubishi Smegma (actually Magna, but we didn’t like its size, handling or performance) and began exploring the North Island.  We first drove north to their Bay of Islands, a clear, blue (Caribbean-like) large bay with over 800 islands.  There we visited a nature reserve (doing a 12 km walk), cruised the bay including island stops and sailing through a hole in one of the small, tall islands, and visiting the Maori Treaty House, where the Maoris signed away the North, South and Stewart Islands in exchange for the protection of Victoria’s crown.  This struck us as Mafia style “protection,” since all the Maoris needed protection from were the Royal Marines.  Our hotel looked out on the bay.  The restaurant at the hotel looked as though it would be a disappointment, but it was excellent and served one of the two best crayfish (local rock lobster) we had in New Zealand, which was better lobster than we’ve had on six continents.

The next day we drove south to the center of the North Island, to a town called Rotorua.  Rotorua is in the midst of their geothermal region and is an excellent base of operations for day trips.  Out our hotel window was a spectacular geyser next to a clear blue thermal pool and a bubbling mud pond.  The sounds were rather amusing to awaken to.  In Rotorua Barbara tried bungee jumping, but Stu didn’t, having left his bungee at the airport along with his courage.  We also toured a Maori museum, an art and history museum, a couple of lakes, three thermal reserves, a mountain and the Agridome.  Yes, the last was very touristy, but it was fun and entertaining to learn about the different types of sheep, shearing and herding.

One day trip was to Waitomo and Aranui caves.  Waitomo had glow worms – the pupa stage of a moth that lives in caves with relatively still water.  The water in the cave is the breeding place for the glow worms’ cuisine, flying insects.  The glow worm “glow” looks like its prey’s escape to the outside world, rather than a final resting place.  The other caves were of more normal variety, featuring beautiful geological formations and colors.  Another day trip was to Lake Taupo and nearby Tongariro National Park with volcanoes and waterfalls, easily distinguishable from one another.   In the US we generally avoid restaurants that advertise their view since the view is generally much better than the food.  Not so in New Zealand.  Two of our best meals were in “view” locations: one overlooking Rotorua, thermal reserves and a lake.  The other (mentioned below) with a panorama of snow-covered peaks.

Next we flew to Christchurch on the South Island.  Christchurch is beautiful and charming.  We had a great time touring the botanical gardens, punting on the Avon, shopping in their crafts center, and climbing the cathedral tower.  Looking at the pictures, and English friend thought she was looking at photos of Cambridge.

From Christchurch we flew to Mt. Cook, a town at the base of the Southern Alps, consisting of a couple of hotels, three stores, a ranger station and a small airport.  The hotel, its fancy restaurant, (the best food we had in New Zealand, and with exceptional service) and our room all had a panoramic view of a two- and one-half mile high, snow covered peak (Mt. Cook), and its surrounding glaciers and sister peaks.  After checking into the hotel, we returned to the airport and boarded a small, high wing ski plane to fly around the alps, and land on a thousands of year-old high-altitude glacier.  This was one of the most intensely beautiful scenic experiences of our lives.  Unfortunately, just before taking off Stu’s camera malfunctioned.  We got it working later that day, though, when we went hiking in the foothills, along rivers, and to the base of a glacier.  Feeling despondent about the missed photo opportunity of the previous day, Stu considered committing suicide by throwing himself in front of the approaching glacier, where he would be crushed within the next few hundred years.  Incidentally, we apparently were lucky to be able to do the glacier flightseeing/landing.  A young woman from Auckland on our flight had tried twice before but encountered bad weather.

From Mt. Cook, which is near the west coast of the South Island we flew inland some and south to Queenstown, a charming but slightly too touristy village with much to do in and around it, and where we rented another car – this time a very capable, new Ford Falcon.  Queenstown is on a large lake, Lk. Wakatipu that is as clear and blue as the Caribbean.  We cruised the lake on a ca. 1911 coal fired steamer, visited Bob’s Peak which commands a breathtaking view of Queenstown, the lake, and the Remarkable Mountains, and visited the auto museum.  For us the prize of the car collection was a 1935 SS100, which even though not named Jaguar was the first Jag.  Outside of town we visited a nearby gold rush town (Arrowtown, ca. 1850), and took a cruise through Doubtful Sound, a true fjord named by Capt. Cook who was doubtful of his ability to sail into the fjord and back out again.  This is one of 13 fjords in New Zealand, and only the second best.  Later we would go to the best.  After two days we drove south to Lake Te Anau.  After spending a night in the town (another cute town, fine hotel, excellent food) we drove west to Milford Sound, the best of the fjords.  Even if there had been no fjords the drive would have been worth while, with peaks rising dramatically from green fields, moss-covered temperate rain forests, calm mirror-like lakes, furious, clear rivers, and bold, comical Keas, an alpine parrot that has an amusing waddle-hop, and sees humans as creatures put on the Earth to provide them with food and entertainment.

Milford Sound is a huge fjord, with peaks averaging just less than two km before they plunge shear into the coastal waters.  We cruised the fjords, completely awestruck by their beauty, and wishing that it had been a cloudless day.  However, the clouds lent an air of mystery.  Also, our room looked out on the fjord and its highest peak, Mitre Peak.

Driving back to Queenstown from Milford Sound was like a completely different trip, seeing the landscape unfold from the other side.  We spent one more night in Queenstown, Barbara tried jet boating on the rivers (Stu’s life vest was at the airport along with the previously mentioned bungee and courage), we returned our rental car (a total of 3,000 vacation km on the left side of the road, and 1 km on the right), and began the long trek home.

New Zealand Details

Auckland                    Pan Pacific Hotel

Waitangi                      Waitangi Resort Hotel (Bay of Islands)

Rotorua                       Geyserland Hotel

Christchurch               Christchurch Park Royal Hotel

Mt. Cook                     Hermitage

Queenstown                Queenstown Resort

Lk. Te Anau               Te Anau Resort Hotel

Milford Sound          Milford Sound Hotel