Finally, after months of anticipation and planning, the time came for our trip to Australasia. I took suggestions from the Twelve Mile Circle audience and tried to incorporate them wherever I could. We ended up spending a week in New Zealand and a week in Australia. Those who follow the 12MC Twitter account already know much of the story. I tweeted fairly often as I went along. No, I didn’t worry about letting the world know I wasn’t home. Hardly anyone pays attention to my rambling tweets and those who do have more important things going on in their lives.
Several regular readers live in New Zealand and Australia. I hope they’ll enjoy seeing familiar places filtered through the skewed perspective of a quirky, foreign geo-oddity fan. Go ahead and settle in for a whole bunch of articles.
Long Distance
Of course, we had to get there first. It took most of a day each way. The trip began at National Airport near Washington, DC, followed by a long layover in Houston, TX, and finally the fourteen and a half hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand. I held up pretty well on this one. The Air New Zealand flight left Houston around 10:00 pm so my body wanted to sleep even before we finished passing Mexico. I never sleep much on airplanes although I managed to take a few brief catnaps and felt marginally better than completely exhausted. One of the flight attendants and I also had a nice chat about New Zealand breweries that I should visit. I actually managed to follow up on one of his suggestions so my inability to sleep came in handy for once.
A fern design covered the back part of the jet’s fuselage. I’d see many more ferns on different objects during the first week. I didn’t realized that New Zealand used the silver fern as one of its unofficial symbols so I learned something new. Sure, everyone knew about the Kiwis. The fern thing seemed a bit more unusual. I imagined New Zealanders might want to be associated with Kiwis more than Ferns though.
The return flight felt a lot less enjoyable. We flew from Sydney, Australia to Houston on United Airlines, a longer flight of nearly sixteen hours on a less accommodating airline, departing around 10:00 am. I didn’t get any sleep at all. However, I discovered it offered enough time to watch SIX movies. Then we suffered through an agonizing layover in Houston where we couldn’t take a nap because we thought we might miss our connecting flight, before we finally returned to DC.
Appreciating the Season
I knew we would arrive during winter in the Southern Hemisphere. Loyal reader and native New Zealander Ross Finlayson even warned me that “weatherwise, June & July are about the worst months” and that I should expect a bunch of rain. I also knew I didn’t have a choice. The boys’ school schedule precluded any other slot. We wanted to spend a couple of weeks on our trip so we selected the only dates that worked with our schedules and crossed our fingers.
Layering seemed to be the best answer to the weather. It let us adjust to temperature changes throughout the day. We didn’t have to pack our bulky winter jackets either. Light jackets, fleeces, long sleeve shirts, and jeans seemed to do the trick. Optimistically, I even packed a pair of shorts although I never used them.
Our umbrellas appeared from time-to-time although we got pretty lucky with the rain overall. We changed our plans completely only for one day. Generally we persevered, and most days offered solid stretches of mild, pleasant weather at least some of the time. Also the rain brought a nice benefit, a never-ending supply of rainbows.
Back home, our friends suffered through the worst heatwave of the summer. That brought a smug smile to my face as I took my early morning walk in Rotorua, New Zealand where a thin film of ice formed atop the puddles overnight.
Accommodations
Even in the best locations, overnight accommodations can dramatically impact the quality of the experience. I’ve never been a fan of hotel rooms for any group larger than two. Sure, if it’s just me and the wife it’s fine. Throw two teenage boys into the mix and hotels become a much less attractive option.
We almost always rent houses or apartments when we travel as a family. That gives everyone enough space to spread out, socialize or hide as moods dictate, use a private bedroom, and have access to a kitchen when tired of restaurants. Renting an entire house often doesn’t cost any more than a hotel, and sometimes costs considerably less when taking size into consideration. Plus, nobody feels like strangling the rest of the group after a few days of forced togetherness.
We’ve used a number of services over the years and went with Airbnb this time. It worked out great although it always comes with its quirks. Figuring out the optimal property for our specific needs did take a little more effort than simply selecting a hotel room. We needed to sift through a dizzying array of owners, locations, availability, features, rates, rules, etc.
Check-in didn’t come as seamlessly as the familiar pattern of a hotel reception desk either. For one place we had to get a key from a lock box at a different location first. At another we had to download software for a keyless smart lock onto a mobile phone ahead of time. Once inside, we then had to figure out unfamiliar electronics and appliances. Nearly always, I felt like I needed a degree in Electrical Engineering to get the WiFi working. Each place brought its own stressful initial few minutes and then everything went great after that.
Keep Left
Driving on the left didn’t bother me. I’ve done it enough times in enough places now that my mind made the mental flip pretty quickly. Still, the swapping of the turn signal with the windshield wiper continued to bedevil me, as it always did. A small shower would come by and I’d signal left. I’d want to change lanes and wipers crossed before me. It didn’t happen every time, just enough to be annoying. Just as bad, once I returned home to the United States I started doing it there too! Even so, I’d rather make minor mistakes like that than something fundamental like confusing the proper side of the road.
I didn’t request automatic transmission vehicles although I got those in both countries. It did simplify things. I learned to drive with a standard transmission many years ago and I used a stick in Ireland so I knew I could do it. Still, I appreciated having one less complication. I wondered if New Zealand and Australia followed the US model where nearly everyone drove an automatic, or whether rental car companies simply catered to a foreign clientele.
I could have done without the initial adjustment after we landed in New Zealand and I drove the first few kilometres before dawn in a driving rain on very little sleep. That kind of sucked. We landed during Auckland rush hour so everything crawled slowly, which actually I didn’t mind because I knew it would help me acclimate. That’s probably the first time I’ve ever preferred crawling along in heavy traffic. The rain passed, the pace picked up, and my brain made the flip. I didn’t give it a second thought by the time we got to Australia a week later. It seemed natural by then.
Signs near tourist areas warned drivers to stay to the left. We saw similar warnings on the pavement at pedestrian crosswalks in Sydney. I guessed there’d been enough tragedies to warrant them. We never saw anything like that away from places where visitors commonly roamed.
No, I take that back. I did see notices on a walking/running/bicycling path in Nelson Bay. I wouldn’t want a bike hitting me so I made sure I stayed to the left on my morning jog. Generally people walked to the left except when they didn’t. In cities like Auckland and Sydney it seemed like pedestrians took whatever path of least resistance they found on crowded sidewalks, so that actually felt like home.
Don’t worry, I’ll actually start talking about my adventures in the next article.
Articles in the Australasian Adventures Series:
- Preparations and Arrival
- On the Waterfront
- Vistas
- Geothermal
- Heading Inland
- The Hunter Region
- Wild Animal Encounters
- Captive Animal Encounters
- Epic Runs
- Breweries
- Lists
- Changes
See Also: The Complete Photo Album on Flickr
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