New Zealand isn't big, but it's long. If you went straight down State Highway 1, drove it end-to-end like a madman fleeing the law, it's a 24-hour, 1600km, non-stop ride from Auckland to Bluff, including the three-hour ferry crossing of Cook Strait.
But flogging the horses in a mad, flying dash down State Highway 1 is no way to see the country. Over the five days, I decided to weave a little, and waft a bit, to determine each morning where I wanted the road to take me, to book a bed for the night using my phone and then hit the road again. Over five days, I would travel through belting rain to Rotorua, then south under clear skies through Hawkes Bay, down the Wairarapa to Wellington then across the strait and on to Christchurch and Geraldine via Kaikoura. I saw six lakes - Tekapo, Pukaki, Wanaka, Hayes, Wakatipu and Te Anau - in a day and briefly kissed the Catlins coast before finishing at Bluff's Stirling Point, not the last place on Earth, but certainly the last place on State Highway 1. My last-minute booking saw me stay in couple of godawful hotels, one in Wellington, the other in Invercargill. But I got lucky with a charming art deco place in Napier, a modest but comfortable motel in Geraldine and a lakefront place in Te Anau. I had a look at the first home I remember and thought, like me, it was starting to look old.
Born in Wellington, raised in Invercargill and Palmerston North and an Aucklander for 30 years, I'd seen most of all this, most of our green and pleasant land, before. But not for years, and in some cases, not for decades. So in five days and by driving more than 2400km - between 450 and 500km a day - this was a chance to say hello again. Here's what I saw.
Even under the heavy canopy of the bush the rain seemed to consist of cats, dogs and a large host of small woodland creatures.
More or less the moment that I'd got stuck in a long, sluggish queue of traffic occasioned by roadworks near Tirau - the town's slogan should be "Tirau, where there always seem to be roadworks" - the rain had begun pouring down with great enthusiasm and the wind lashing with added keenness. But by the time I reached that wonderful bushy bit of State Highway 5, the "Thermal Explorer Highway", where it winds up over the Mamaku Ranges, I was beginning to fear I needed an ark rather than the Skoda Octavia RS TDi I'd been lent for the week.
Bugger this. I pulled off into a small stopping area under what looked like a youngish kauri; the Kaimai-Mamaku forest marks their southern limit. The forecast was for winds gusting to 90-100 km/h en route and heavy rain. But until now heavy cloud had the world reduced to green and grey, with just a brief glimpse of the Kaimais, but nothing worse than frigid temperatures and strong winds. On a loo stop at Matamata, my umbrella, designed to never blow inside out, nearly blew inside out. It was freezing too; colder than a well digger's ass.
A sea of poppies by the sea, Napier waterfront; Waimihia Fire Station, Napier-Taupo road; Castlepoint lighthouse, Wairarapa; Smiley hedge, Taradale, Napier. Photos / Greg Dixon
But here in the Mamakus the elements had combined to make a hellish drive - I'm a nervous nelly in bad weather anyway - and pulling over to let rain pass a little seemed like a good idea, though the myriad trucks and tourist buses didn't seem to be bothered. They hissed past me, kicking up so much steamy spray they looked like they were on fire.
Rotorua wasn't the day's destination, Napier was. Still, I was damned relieved that, when I drove into the centre of a muggy, windy Roto-Vegas, whatever awful southern front had been passing up the country had already rumbled through. The skies south were clear.
I'd chosen Hawkes Bay as my first stop because the last time I was there it was 1981 and I was in uniform. Well, when I say in uniform, it consisted of short pants, a green jumper and, if memory serves, the green and gold scarf of the All Saints Scout troop. As I understand it, All Saints Scouts no longer exist; they have long since been incorporated in the 3rd Palmerston North West End Scout Group. But in the glorious summer of 1981, a fair number of us All Saints, along with many scouting fellows from around the world, descended on Hawkes Bay for the 9th New Zealand Scout Jamboree.
It was my first and (shamefully) last visit to the region.
Memory ebbs and flows. Then, there were long days of sunshine, my first experience abseiling, and going headfirst into the big mudpool at the end of the Jamboree's "confidence" course. I remember happiness. Now, Napier is all art deco and wine lists, which is equally agreeable, not least when the latter are combined in the County Hotel on Browning St.
The journey on to Napier - particularly the Taupo to Napier section - was the first place the driving became what it should be: fun.
There was a time when people spoke of the Napier-Taupo road in the sort of wide-eyed way that one shares a near-death experience. It was winding, it was narrow, it was long and in winter it was like going north of the wall in Game of Thrones.
Now, particularly in a car that responds to hills and corners, and on a quiet Monday afternoon, its mix of forest and views, near empty road and a long climb to over 700m above sea level had me enjoying this journey of mine for the first time.
And the sun was out at last.
What a night. You expect it to blow in Wellington, but you don't expect it to howl around your awful Cuba St hotel and for the wind to take it in turns with the tosser in the room above to repeatedly wake you in the early hours.
By the time I was sitting in the queue for the Interislander ferry Kaitaki at 7.15am and waiting for the 8.30am sailing, there was heavy cloud and an aggressive nor'wester apparently set to gust to 110km in the churning water of Cook Strait. I was feeling queasy even before I parked the car in the bowels of the boat and settled myself in the Premium Plus lounge. A separate room with its own staff, a couple of dozen couches and tables, the Premium Plus lounge is kid-free, warm, has complimentary wi-fi, serves breakfast, has fresh, fluffy scones with whipped cream and jam for morning tea, and is an absolute bargain for the extra $45. There are, of course, windows to view your passage too. But as the boat slipped its mooring and headed for Wellington's heads, the cloud was so thick the city of Wellington might not have existed at all.
It had certainly been there the afternoon before when I arrived under a pretty blue spring sky.
The season was in full blush in the bright green fields that seems to fill up every corner of the eastcoast from Hawkes Bay all the way to Wellington; there were perky little lambs gambolling, trees fringed with blossom like tiny pink tissues and those little civic gardens that dot every tiny town were blooming marvellously.
If one can measure a town's pride by anything, surely it is these little patches of glorious colour that frame clock towers, welcome signs and jolly up every main street.
I found Cath, a no-nonsense woman in her early 60s, wearing a high-viz vest, clearing rubbish from one of these roadside glories near the end of the brief row of shops, some open, some closed, that mark Eketahuna's short main street. There stands a giant white kiwi. Cath eyed it proprietorially as I photographed the enormous beast.
Cath and her white kiwi, Eketahuna; Teapotland, Owaka, Catlins; The War memorial clock tower, Waipawa; Mixed messages on the outskirts of Dannevirke. Photos / Greg Dixon
It turned out it wasn't always there and it wasn't always white. It was gifted to the town by the nearby Pukaha Mt Bruce National Wildlife Centre, and had gone white to celebrate Mt Bruce's most celebrated resident, Manukura, the little white kiwi born at the centre three years ago.
Cath, who isn't much over 5ft, had recently painted her kiwi - it might have been given to the town but she cares for it - using a ladder and broom. She does fine work. We both stood there admiring it.
It isn't the only kiwi in town, she tells me. She has clipped buxus into kiwis at the town's other roadside gardens and she has made 27 "hidden" clipped buxus kiwis in a nearby civic garden, though some grumpy bugger recently harrumphed to her he could only spot 26. We both laughed at his ineptitude.
Cath's kiwi might have been the most quintessentially, ahem, kiwi experience of the day if not for my return journey out to Castlepoint, the wind-buffed jewel of the Wairarapa coast. Before I tackled the challenging, exciting hairpins of the Rimutaka Range, the road that finally drops you down into the Hutt Valley and Wello, I felt the 130km return trip out to Castlepoint was a must.
After a top drawer cheese and onion toastie from the Castlepoint Store and after admiring the distinctive point and its lighthouse, I got stuck in peak hour traffic on the way back. Rounding a corner, a farmer was driving a large flock up the road. They needed dagging. Did I want lend a hand, he asked? I told the cheeky bugger I'd love to, but I really did have to push on.
As I looked in my rear vision mirror, I saw the cop do a u-turn. I wasn't doing much over 100, maybe 103-104km/h. But I'd passed another cop about 20 minutes earlier when I was doing 110 and he'd flashed his lights to tell me to slow the hell down. Fair enough. But this one was now following me - but way, way back - no doubt hoping I'd help him earn his keep.
I blame the road. The 200km that lies between lakes Tekapo and Wanaka must be among the finest driving in the world: wide, straight, well-maintained roads, so very little traffic this Thursday morning and the sort of high country landscape that makes you proud to call New Zealand home. If we change the flag, we should make it a photo of the Southern Alps from the Omarama-Lindis Pass Rd. This landscape is the Big Country; it's the tourism cliche of wide horizons, tawny tussock-covered hills and the South Alps dwarfing all they survey. It might well be trite to say it: but it's this 200km stretch of road that means more to me than any other.
Of course a South Island driving tour is such a brilliant mix. The day before, after leaving the ferry at Picton, I'd motored down the Kaikoura coast which is like all New Zealand's views squeezed into one: snow-capped peaks, green fields and spring lambs, a rocky coastline, the beach and the sea. There are even, if you stop at Ohau Point, seals.
Once you've escaped the coastal road, you pass through lush north Canterbury and, once you've fought your way through the endless and boring roundabouts and lights of Christchurch (the most frustrating part of the whole trip), and out on to the Canterbury Plains, with that road's regular passing lanes, you see the country for what it is: rich and productive farmland that is slowly but surely going from sheep land to cow country.
Even the high Mackenzie Country, the place with the straight roads and all those cops, the brown sheep country is going green and converting to dairy. I drove past mobile irrigation machines as long 1.3km on my way to Wanaka. I'm not sure I approve.
This day - Thursday - was my longest, taking me from lovely Geraldine via the lakes, the Lindis Pass and the Crown Range Rd to Queenstown and then on to my favourite lakeside town, Te Anau. It's 500km of such immeasurably beautiful country, you want to take pictures of it all, every last inch.
At the lookout on the Crown Range Rd, 1121m above sea level and with views of the Remarkables, Wakatipu and a tiny touch of Queenstown, I found a father taking a photo of his wife and their two kids and, as obliged by the laws of tourism, I offered to take one with the four of them together.
Peak hour traffic on the road from Castlepoint; Southland character, Gore Sheep Dog Trial Club, Southland; Bronze sheep dog, Lake Tekapo. Photos / Greg Dixon
"Everyone say 'enchilada'!", I bellowed like a tomfool. "Enchilada!" they bellowed like jackasses, and a picture and a memory was made.
"You will reach your destination in 250m," the Skoda's navigation system predicted. As I drifted along Bluff's quiet main drag, listening to British Sea Power's wonderfully melancholic Cleaning Out The Rooms, I struggled a bit to find the meaning of my 2400km scoot from north to south.
The week seemed a blur, a happy rush of scenery and of unconnected images of the country: a truck rolled by high winds near Waitakaruru; a huge cheesy omelette in Rotorua; sheep grazing on the showgrounds in Dannevirke; a sign outside Te Aute College reading "Goals are dreams with deadlines"; the glimpse of a fat man's belly as the wind blew up his shirt while he was taking a picture of the Marlborough Sounds; a verdant spring garden on a unloved corner in Mossburn, Southland; my parents' childhood homes in Waterloo, a row of poplars along a central Otago fenceline, a tui singing for all he was worth in a kowhai in the middle of Te Anau; the Purakaunui Falls in the Catlins; the digital clock I remember from childhood on the H&J Smith's department store in Invercargill.
How to squeeze a country into five days? You can't of course. But as I rounded the corner towards that famous signpost at Bluff's Stirling Point, the very end of State Highway 1, I figured I'd done my best.
"You have reached your destination," said the car's navigator. And that was that.
Get into my car
A recent Consumer NZ survey found that local Skoda drivers are now among the most satisfied car owners in the country. Driving an Octavia RS TDi wagon - an automatic with a 2 litre turbo-charged diesel engine and a top speed of 230 km/h - from Auckland to Bluff was certainly a pleasure for me, a driver as keen on comfort as performance. When I reached Bluff I just wanted to turn the thing around and drive the whole way back.
Giltrap Skoda is having an Octavia RS day for owners of past and present models at its dealership at 58 Great South Rd on November 16 from 10am-noon.
Greg Dixon drove from Auckland to Bluff courtesy of Skoda New Zealand.
