The North of the North Island

Arriving in Auckland at 12:30 AM local time last Friday, Jordache and I spent a few hours right away looking for a vehicle. Samsung had a free internet station at the terminal, so we made good use of that, looking up vehicles online and jotting down numbers to call later in the day. After catching some shut-eye in the airport, falling asleep around two in a nearly empty airport and then waking up around eight surrounded by arriving travelers, we caught a cab into Auckland into our hostel. Ideally we would have liked to have found a vehicle on Friday and then hit the road on Saturday, yet everyone we phoned had either already sold their vehicle or was unavailable. We even took the bus out to the suburbs to look at a potential vehicle, but after we arrived in a shady part of town and looked at the vehicle, we decided it wouldn't be a good fit. The seller seemed a little bit shady actually, as he was under house arrest and had about half-a-dozen vehicles for sale. The vehicle we had come to see was across the street from his apartment, and he yelled at us from his front yard, his ankle bracelet blinking, wondering if it was what we were looking for. We told him it wasn't - and didn't stick around to chat.

After looking at a number of other vehicles we finally bought a 1988 Nissan Bongo van. It has less than 100,000 kms on it and its five-transmission has been a big help in navigating the circuitous highways. We got it for $1800 CDN, and after spending Monday morning putting a raised bed into the back, we think we might be able to sell it to some backpackers when we leave for a bit of a profit.

We left Auckland on Sunday, heading north up the east coast with the plan being to get to Cape Reinga, the northern tip of the North Island, that night. A good rule of thumb in Canada is 100 kms = 1 hr, but in New Zealand we quickly learned that it is more like 75 kms = 1 hr, especially when you are driving a van like ours, so we parked outside a gas station along the way, planning on getting up early, getting some fuel and hitting the road early. We were visited by a cop only fifteen minutes after pulling in, and he told us he had had some reports of "some guys who looked kind of sus." After chatting with us for bit, he realized we weren't that suspicious after all and headed off, telling us to enjoy our trip.

The next day the plan was to make a bed for the back of the van, and we pulled up to a hardware store where we got the lumber we needed cut to our specifications and then began tacking it together the best we could with a hammer and nails. A guy leaving the store offered us the use of his surfboard workshop across the road, so we made our way over there. Power tools made life much easier and the bed much more likely to last the trip, and after a few hours there we were on our way.

Sunset found us taking in the view at Cape Reinga, looking north as the Tasman and the Pacific met in front of us. Because of the difference in the tides you can see where the two seas meet as waves crash into one another in a northerly line, and the place has a spiritual significance for the Maori people. According to legend, it is in this place that souls step down into the ocean and begin their journey to the afterlife. The parking lot on the Cape served as our campsite, and in the morning we turned south and backtracked to the Te Paki Sand Dunes.

There was a sandboard rental at the dunes, but we had rented sandboards from a gas station and so headed straight out onto the sand. After we each had a ride down one of the smaller dunes at a painfully slow speed, we realized that we had been duped. The "sandboards" from the gas station were actually boogie boards, obviously designed for water, not sand. We ended up getting some legitimate sandboards from the woman renting the sandboards at the dunes, and this time we flew down the slope. There was a bit of a rise at the bottom of the dune we were sliding down, and after a few rides Jordache headed down, trying to steer himself around the rise and so get a longer ride. Steering sandboards is pretty much impossible, and Jordache found himself heading straight for the rise. He rocketed off, landing twelve paces down the sand, sticking the landing. The the next two times he attempted it as I filmed it, but the landing just wasn't as smooth as the first time. When you see the video you will know what I mean. And he had just about recovered from his cliff dive too. The difficulty of the hike up the dunes was the deciding factor in how many rides we had, as tramping up the steep incline was exhausting, and after about six rides apiece we hit the road.

Heading south, we decided not to take the same highway and instead took a dirt road down to 90 Mile Beach. The dirt road cut through a farmer's field and we made the requested one dollar donation in the coffee can, opening and then closing the gate after ourselves. The beach is actually a registered highway, and we cruised south, only meeting a handful of vehicles on the sand. If we had to navigate the same quality of track off the beach as we did on our rear-wheel drive van would not have made it, but at the southern end of the beach we were relieved to find an actual ramp off the sand.

That night we got into Pahi, a surfing beach that had been recommended to us, and in the morning we headed out into the waves. The few people we saw in the water were wearing wetsuits, and we quickly discovered why. The water is cold. Coming from the warm water of Australia, we had been spoiled, and we shivered through an hour of waves. We have yet to get into the water again, and it is looking like we will either buy wetsuits or sell the surfboards. Pahi is on the west coast, known for its surf and its black sand beaches, and after exiting the water we headed east coast, typified by white sand and more swimmer-friendly waters. We hiked down to Cathedral Cove and parked our vehicle on the beach at Hot Water Beach. This town is so named because of the hot springs that bubble up along the coast, and around nine we headed down the beach in the dark to go dig ourselves a natural hot tub.

The hot springs can be accessed two hours on either side of high tide, and the tide was coming back in as we found the spot. I had visions of digging a deep hole and then relaxing in water of uniform temperature. In reality, a hole eight inches deep is as much of a depression as can easily be made in the sand, and the hot water comes out of the ground in waves, alternating between boiling hot and luke-warm. We hung out with a German couple we had met, and after we were swamped by a wave for the fifth time which obliterated the wall of our pool, we decided that we would call it a night. Still, for a few brief minutes outside of the labour to dig away the sand and jumping up to avoid scalding, it was quite the experience to lay back in the shallow water and look up at the crystal-clear sky.

Today we made the drive from Hot Water Beach to Raglan, where the plan is stay tonight and brave the water and do some surfing tomorrow. The trip took a bit longer than it would have if we hadn't had vehicle problems, but that was taken care much more quickly than we expected. Our muffler had come apart yesterday, and while the noise generated made us sound rather impressive on the road, it induced headaches inside the cab. We drove the van into a shop along the highway today, and the mechanic welded it up and had us on our way in thirty minutes. Talk about service!

To New Zealand

Having spent the last few days in Byron Bay, Jordache and I leave today for Auckland, New Zealand while Kyle is staying in Byron for a few more days. We were plagued by constant rain nearly the entire time we were here, and after selling our car along with one of our tents, it was back to the three of us sleeping head-to-toe in our remaining three-man tent with not even a car roof to keep dry under. That being said, we really had no complaints about getting rid of the car so easily. After we sold it, one of the ladies working at our camp site said she was glad for us, as the week before a guy had left with no interested parties and had to settle for $17 from a friend. Some friend.

Jordache had listed the car online about a week before we got into Byron, and while we had a fair number of views, only one person contacted us. We had listed our 1994 Toyota Camry Wagon with over 270,000 kms for $2200, having paid $1800 for it, so we had room to drop our price. Mirthe, a German exchange student, contacted us and sounded very interested, so we set up a time for her to drive down from Brisbane to check out the car. She got a ride with her employer, an Olympic team physiotherapist, and they pulled up in a Mercedes SUV. Her employer was going to let her know what he thought of the car, as she had told us she knew nothing about vehicles. The physiotherapist naturally wasn't that impressed, given that his ride was approximately thirty times what the Camry was worth, but we eventually settled on $1750. We had decided earlier that we could have let the car go for as low as $1000, and seeing as no one else was interested, we thought it would be best not to be too greedy.

That night, while we had a few extra dollars in our pockets, the walk into town was no less long or wet, and we realized that we had dropped a few rungs on the traveler ladder back down to backpackers. The walk into Byron Bay from our camp site would take between 20-30 minutes depending on our level of committment to haste, but we also hitched rides in and out of the town depending on the time of day. On foot, Jordache would repeatedly pronounce that his body was not made for walking, and would usually trail glumly behind me and Kyle.

Byron Bay, the most easterly point of mainland Australia, is a small town of about 9,000 permanent residents but with the backpackers/tourists/transients (depending on your point of view) the population is around 15,000. We met quite a few fellow Canadians during our stay, and we were most vocal after the men's team took gold on Monday. Showing at noon on Sunday in Canada, it meant that the puck dropped at 7 AM Monday morning for us, and we groggily but faithfully pulled ourselves out of our tent and walked into the camp kitchen to watch the game. With only four channels, the game wasn't being shown, so we made our way into town thinking that we had probably missed it. Walking past an electronics store, I saw the game playing on a bank of TVs in the back so we quickly claimed a couch and watched the end of the third and overtime. After Crosby scored we burst off the couch, loudly interrupting the salesman explaining something about picture quality to a customer. Canadians were running down the street with bodies painted red and white and leaning out of cars on main street with flags from the windows, all yelling along with a nation on the other side of the world.

Surfing, a trip to the Byron Bay lighhouse, and a day trip to Nimbin filled our days in Byron and now Jordache and I are gone. The one thing we had wanted to do here in Byron that we didn't do was go cliff jumping at a quarry just outside of town. Jordache is still feeling the effects of his jump a couple of weeks ago, so he wasn't interested, and after Kyle and I heard that someone had just broken their back in a jump we decided that maybe we wouldn't do it either. Theo, if you're reading this, you're one crazy man. Making smart choices, this is it from Justin from Australia. On to New Zealand.

Driving. A lot.

Driving south out of Airlie Beach, we had about 1200 kms to cover to get to Byron Bay, and we decided that driving through the night might not be the best thing, especially as we ended up leaving Airlie sometime in afternoon. We pulled off the road sometime around 10 PM at a non-descript gas station somewhere south of Mackay and pitched our tents. We seem to make a habit of finding spots near train tracks since there are usually fewer homes the closer you get to the tracks, and some guys bumbling around at night with headlamps is less likely to attract attention. This was the closest spot I think we have found yet, and we were woken a couple of times during the night by the train blowing by just a few steps from our tents. Once I awoke and in a haze thought that we may made the mistake of putting our tents on the tracks, but then fell back asleep after I wasn't pulverized.

The next day we got up early, as we usually do when dirt camping, and hit the road. Before lunch we stopped at The Capricorn Caves and went on a one-hour tour of the cave system. The cave system is privately owned as an Australian pulled a fast one on the government back in the day when land grants were being given out for next to nothing. Situating the caves in the back section of his claim and gambling that the government inspector would not take the time to walk all 83 acres, it turned out to be wise risk and a great investment. Public tours have in fact been going on for over 130 years, which means John Olsen made a good return on his $10 investment in 1884. Bats slipped soundlessly past our faces as our guide told us that as long we made no sudden movements there was little chance of them bouncing into us, so we slowly and methodically followed our guide.

With our car giving us a problem-free ride so far, this record was finally tarnished by a flat tire on the highway. An Aussie pulled up literally seconds after we stopped to ask if we needed help, but we thanked him and told him we could manage. Jordache and Kyle did the bulk of the work as I documented it with the camera, and we were back on the road is less than ten minutes, with the majority of the work being unloading all our gear out of the back to get at the spare.

Around nine in the evening we pulled into a gas station that actually had a shower in the bathroom, which was a pleasant surprise. While Kyle and I waited for Jordache we spent the time eliminating some cane toads. Cane toads were originally introduced to Australia to combat a sugar cane pest, but with no natural predators they have proliferated to the point of upsetting the natural ecosystem. The conscientious ecologist that I am, I spent about twenty minutes with a paving stone doing my bit for the environment.

We camped in a residential subdivision, bringing our free camp site total to twelve, and today we drove the rest of the day, getting into Byron Bay around lunch time. Jordache and I plan to spend the rest of our time in Australia here before flying out of Brisbane on March 6th and on to New Zealand.

Whitsunday Sailing to The Great Barrier Reef

After booking three last-minute spots on Thursday, we left Friday afternoon for a three day, three night cruise of the Whitsundays, a group of seventy-four islands just off the coast. The boat at full capacity can carry twenty-four passengers and a four-man crew, which would fill all the bunks below deck and necessitate the crew sleeping on deck in the open air. There were only fourteen passengers for our trip though, so there was a good amount of room - as much as can be expected on an eighty-four footer which isn't nearly as big as it sounds.

We were told to be ready to leave at 2:30 PM on Friday, and we sat with the rest of the passengers for an extra hour, finally leaving the harbor around 3:30 PM. It turned out our skipper had spent the night in jail for a drunken/disorderly and barely made it to the ship in time. It was a pretty young crew - the skipper was 23, the first mate was in his late thirties, the divemaster and cook were both 24. I think they were used to having rather wild groups aboard, but ours was pretty tame with most of the passenger electing to catch up on their sleep and read.

The first night we docked after about two and a half hours of motoring - the sea was so calm in fact that we only got under sail twice during the course of the trip. After spending the night in a bunk below deck and losing approximately half a dozen liters of sweat due to the stifling conditions, I decided I would have to find a better spot. One of the crew said that it was possible to climb into the rigging and sleep on the boom about eight feet above the deck, so this is what I did the second night. Rain woke me up though, and I climbed down during the night to find an empty bunk below deck. The second night I again tried sleeping above board, but this time I set up the sail so that when it rained, as it did a number of times again, I could throw the sail over myself and stay relatively dry. Laying parallel with the boom, there was nothing but open sky unaffected by city glow. The stars could be easily seen through the web of rigging above, and it was incredible to fall asleep as the mast was swung gently from side to side by the sea breezes.

The second day most of us did a dive, entering off the beach of one of the islands and going to depth for around fifteen minutes. Those who were not diving snorkeled, and after that we headed out to The Great Barrier Reef where we tied up the second night. It took about three hours to make it out to the reef, and it was incredibly relaxing to sit near the stern, catching the occasional cooling spray of water across my back. Flying fish would now and again burst out of the wake and flit a few seconds ahead of the boat before diving back into the water. Aside from that there was little to see, only the horizon and the islands getting progressively smaller.

I was not impressed by the first dive, and was hoping that the reef dive would make the trip worthwhile. I was in the first group of divers at the reef, and we all dropped in off the dinghy and began to descend. Keeping my eye on my depth gauge, I was surprised to see that I was already at 18 meters, and the ocean bed was still approximately 10 meters away. It turns out we had dropped in at the wrong spot, and after one of the beginner divers began hyperventilating and decided to opt out, the divemaster had us hold on to the dinghy as were towed over to another spot.

Unfortunately, the reef dive was not much of an improvement over the the island dive, and after I surfaced after forty minutes swimming over The Great Barrier Reef, I realized how spoiled I had been learning to dive in Madagascar. The diversity of ocean life, fish as well as coral was significantly better in Madagascar - even the visibility was quite a bit better. If we had gotten onto The Great Barrier Reef somewhere that wasn't daily visited by tourists, it might have been a richer experience, but I will have to come back someday to see if that's the case.

Fraser Island

The largest sand island in the world, Fraser Island, sits just a few kilometers off the east coast of Australia, and we caught the forty-five minute ferry over on Sunday. We rented a Land Cruiser in Hervey Bay and took off for three days and two nights to see as much of the island as possible. The driving through the interior of the island is fairly grueling, with the deep ruts and tree roots throwing vehicles from side to side as they plod along under the 30 km/hr speed limit. The one-way tracks necessitate one vehicle backing up if two meet going in opposite directions, but this only happened twice to us as we were there outside peak season.

We made our way to two lakes in the interior on consecutive days, the first being Lake Mackenzie. This lake has the clearest water I have ever seen, and we spent the first afternoon lazing around in the shallows before making our way down to the beach to camp. There are a number of dingo packs on the island, with over two hundred of them having been caught and tagged by the rangers. Getting off the ferry, we thought that if we could catch a glimpse of one we would consider ourselves lucky. Setting up our tents in the tree line just above the beach, a dingo wandered through our site and we were quick to pull out our cameras to take some shots. Disinterested in us, it lay down in the sand on the beach just out of sight and then trotted off. Cooking hotdogs that night down on the beach because the flies were so heavy at our camp site, three dingos showed up and began to move around the vehicle and the camp stove, obviously drawn by the smell of the meat. They got progressively braver as the night went on, and eventually we had to drive them away, yelling and kicking sand. They never disappeared, just retreated, and when we left to go back to the site they quickly moved in to lick up the water we had boiled the hotdogs in.

The next day we headed back into the interior to Lake Wabby, the deepest lake on the island. It sits at the base of a steep sand dune, so steep in fact that it is possible to run and dive off of the sand into the water. Signs warned against it, but it didn't stop us after checking out the depth of the water. There were countless catfish in the lake, and we spent a good amount of time killing flies and then tossing them into the water for the fish. From the slope of the dune, I counted over thirty catfish around Jordache as he flicked bits of sand and laughed at the stupid fish that thought it was edible. Vaulting off the dune, I attempted to catch a fish with my hands, and while I felt them bounce off my body as I broke the water, I could never get both hands on one.

After Lake Wabby, we drove along the beach, careful to keep track of the tide times to make sure we wouldn't get caught by waves moving up the beach. Exploring tidal pools and hiking trails, we got to the North end of the beach and then headed south back to our previous night's camp site.

Cliff Jumping

Heading North from Coffs Harbour, we got into Yamba in the mid-afternoon, which was recommended to us as a good place to surf. We didn't hit the surf and instead backtracked a bit to Angourie, a little town just south along the coast. We had heard at a hostel that there was place for cliff jumping at two freshwater pools at Angourie, and freshwater sounded more inviting than some more saltwater. There were two pools, the Blue Pool and the Green Pool, named for the level of algae in the water presumably. The Blue pool was the first one we got to, and the cliffs at that one topped out at around 20 feet. This wasn't much of a thrill, especially as a four-year old was jumping off around the 15 foot mark. His dad told us the Green Pool was the one to check out, so we headed over there. No one was there, and after trying to see how we could walk around onto the cliffs, we decided that the only way to get up the cliff face was to swim across and then scale the wall from the water.

Kyle decided he would go for it, and jumped into the water and swam across and climbed up to the lowest jump. The lowest was around 50 ft, and Kyle stood at that height for a while, wondering why it looked so much higher looking down than looking up. While we were waiting for Kyle, a group of four guys showed up, and the two who were the least drunk jumped into the water and began the climb. One of them got the to highest point, about 75 ft, and jumped off. Kyle decided that 50 ft wasn't that bad after all and quickly followed the first jumper from his own perch.

The next day, after camping in the parking lot, we headed back down to the Green Pool and each of us made the swim across the pool to make the climb. I stopped at the first opportunity and made the jump at the lowest point while Jordache climbed to the top. Getting there, he quickly realized that he would need a running start to clear the jump area approximately ten feet below him. Not allowing himself time to rethink his position, he took a few quick steps and launched himself into the air. The effort to clear the cliff face caused him begin a slow turn, and he hit the water at a bit of an awkward angle. He later told us he saw stars, and his rubber wrist band was forced up over his elbow onto his bicep from the force of hitting the water. Kyle and I made jumps from the middle area, and decided that we couldn't follow Jordache's jump from what the locals called "The Chalk Line."

Jordache's shoulders moved in concert with his neck for the next couple of days as he was pretty sore, and he was glad he had decided to strap on his knee brace before making the jump. Sleeping on the ground doesn't help that much either I guess.

Coffs Harbour and Stealth Camping

We have spent the last two nights in Coffs Harbour and today we hit the road and head north, probably stopping in either Yamba or Arrawarra for the night. On Tuesday we went to a waterpark here in Coffs and bedded down in the evening in a parking lot behind BBQs Galore beside a dumpster. We got up early to avoid detection, and Kyle went for the first day of his scuba diving course. Jordache and I spent the day surfing, and the waves were ideal for beginners, meaning they were rather small and no locals were on the water. Perfect. Jordache and I chatted with a local contractor at the beach as we geared up to get in the water. He had spent two years traveling around Australia as a youth, just chasing waves (and skirts from the sounds of it). Now in his forties, he doesn't surf that much anymore - "Not everday at least," he said.

One thing that Jordache is less than fond of is water, and in particular, sharks. So far he has been able to suppress any fear that would keep him out of the water, but talking to the local didn't help. The man said "Sure, sharks are out there. I mean, someone just got bit the other day down in Sydney. But to think of that just ruins the experience you know?" I watched Jordache as the guy said this with an air of bravado, and Jordache just slowly nodded. If thinking about sharks ruins the experience, being told all about sharks by a local probably falls into the same category of dissuasion.

Last night we camped in the same spot behind the BBQ warehouse, but we got there a little bit earlier than the night before. Too early it turned out. After we had set the last tent pin in the ground in the grass behind the dumpster, a security guard pulled up. He told us that he really couldn't let us stay there, but after chatting with him for a bit, he said he hadn't talked to us and that he hadn't seen us and that we could ignore the next security guard when the shift changed at midnight. Applauding our good fortune, we went to bed, and less than thirty minutes later we were woken by lights playing across the outside the tent and the words "Police. Who's in there?" We popped our heads out of our respective sleeping areas, Kyle and me in the tent and Jordache in the car, to see two police officers standing there. We were told the the officers had been given a report by a concerned citizen about some suspicious looking blokes in a station wagon. "That was would be us," we told him. With a bit of a twinkle in his eye, the one officer said "But we don't think you look suspicious. Make sure you are out of here early." And we went back to bed.