Harry Wakatipu Comes the Mong: Part 5

By JACK LASENBY

By day I slept under bridges. By night I looked at my atlas and followed the yellow AA signs over the Mamakus, through Rotorua, and along the dray-road towards Taupo. Near Rainbow Mountain, a bridle-track turned off east between boiling pools.

From there on I was in the country where distance is measured in time, not miles. For about six months the bridle-track led me across the dusty pumice plain called the Kaingaroa. The only things that grew were tea-tree, turpentine scrub, and cabbage trees.

East was a wall of bushed mountains. As I tramped nearer, they looked higher but got further away. For a few days, I tried walking backwards to see if that would bring them closer but, when I turned round, they just looked higher and further off. At last they hid themselves in dark clouds.

Publisher: Puffin

Price: $15.95

Age group: 10-13 years


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