A Different New Zealand

Southern Scenic Route

The Southern Scenic Route goes from Queenstown down to the Foveaux Strait, across to Invercargill, through the Catlins, up to Balclutha, and winds up in Dunedin.  It shows you a less hurried, more unexplored side of the South Island.  While we drove from Queenstown to Te Anau and Manapouri, we did that to get to Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound.  When it came time to take the Southern Scenic Route, we really started in Manapouri, where we had left our things while we took an overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound.  (More on that later.)

Our first stop was the Clifden Suspension Bridge.  The bridge was built in 1899 and is one of the longest bridges on the South Island.  It was definitely worth a stop.

April 25: Anzac Day

It might seem that a travel blog focusing on “a different New Zealand” is a strange place for a post on Anzac Day.  But with the 100th anniversary of Anzac Day coming up on April 25, I would be remiss to not mention it.

When England declared war on Germany on August 4, 1914, its empire was at war, too.  Men throughout New Zealand and Australia volunteered to fight for God and Empire.¹  Troops from New Zealand and Australia were first sent to the Middle East, where it was expected they would fight the Ottoman Empire.  Instead, they were combined into the Australia New Zealand Army Corps, i.e., Anzac, and on April 25, 1915, they landed at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles. 

The idea was Winston Churchill’s², among others.  Movement on the Western front was stalled.  If the Allies could invade the Ottoman Empire and take Constantinople, thereby securing the Bosporus, they could open a supply route to Russia.  Supplies to Russia could relieve pressure on the Western front.  Except it didn’t work.

Central Otago

If Dunedin is my favorite city in New Zealand, my favorite region is probably Central Otago.  Much of Central Otago can be reached on a day trip out of Queenstown or Arrowtown, but it deserves more than just a day.

The Otago Central Rail Trail follows the route of the old Otago Central Railway.  Part of the railway, from Dunedin to Pukerangi and the on to Middlemarch, still operates as the Taieri Gorge Railway.  It is definitely worth the ride, and I will talk about it later.  Much of the rest of the railway is now the Otago Central Rail Trail.

The Rail Trail runs from Clyde to Middlemarch.  While the trail is probably more for biking than walking, you can do either.  You can start at either end, Clyde or Middlemarch, or pick out a section in the middle.  We didn’t have as much time as we would have liked, so we walked a little bit of it out of Clyde.  Still the scenery was beautiful.  (If you don’t want to bike the whole 152 kilometers, there are companies that will rent you a bike, take you out a ways and let you cycle back.)

Northland

When people think of Northland, they usually think of the Bay of Islands, Waitangi, and the Ninety-Mile Beach.  Or maybe the kauri trees on the west side of Northland.  Let me mention some of the perhaps lesser well-known things to do.

The first is to find a place to stay on the water (generally on the east side of Northland) and enjoy the beach.  We found a great place in Coopers Beach and went kayaking, as well as just walking and sitting on a very peaceful beach.

Right next to motel where we were staying was the Rangikaiti Pa.  It was a pre-gun powder pa; i.e., the style used by the Maoris before they started buying guns from Europeans, which they started doing in the early 1800s.  According to the DOC, it “is an example of the ‘wedding cake’ style of pa formation.”  Here is a picture from the top of the pa.

The New Zealand Wars

There are a number of reasons why the situation of the Maoris in New Zealand is different than the Aborigines in Australia or Native Americans in the United States.  I am not an expert on the subject, but at least one of the reasons may be in the history of English/European settlement in New Zealand.

In 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed between the British crown and many Maori chiefs.  After the Treaty was signed, things did not go as planned.  (Do they ever?)  The English and Maori versions of the Treaty could be interpreted differently.  Also, the Maori leaders thought they would be able to control the Pakeha.  (“Pakeha” is the Maori word for people of European descent.  Until recently, the Pakeha were mostly British.)  But lots of British immigrants came, and they wanted land.  While some Maoris were willing to sell, many were not.  Disputes arose and fighting broke out. 

Maoris (or at least some of them) fought the Pakeha settlers and British troops, and their Maori allies, for almost 30 years, starting in 1843, in what are now called the New Zealand Wars.  (See James Belich’s 1986 classic history, The New Zealand Wars and the Victorian Interpretation of Racial Conflict.)  The Pakeha and the British ultimately “won,” but mostly because they overwhelmed the Maoris with numbers, as opposed to decisively defeating them on the battlefield. 

Auckland

One might not think a blog on “A Different New Zealand” needs an entry on Auckland, but I want to mention several things we did that you might not otherwise think of.

First, we did the City Centre Ramble suggested by the Lonely Planet North Island guide (2012 edition).  (You might be surprised that a country of only 4.4 million people would need two Lonely Planet guides, one for the North Island and one for the South Island, but there is so much to see and do, that it makes sense.  Also, having two guides makes each of them smaller, which makes for traveling.)  The Ramble took us all the way from St. Kevin’s Arcade on “K Road” (i.e., Karangahape Road), through Myers Park and down to the harbour.  It was a very nice way to get acquainted with central Auckland.  And when we got to the harbour, there was a Fritz’s Wieners stand.  The bratwurst wasn’t the best I ever had, but it was good, even if the mustard selections were a little limited.

Dunedin

Dunedin was probably my favorite city in New Zealand.  In the 1800s, the Central Otago gold rush made Dunedin the largest city in New Zealand, and you can still see evidence of that today in the old, substantial buildings in the central part of town.   

 Our first morning in Dunedin we went on a walking tour of Dunedin with CityWalks.  Before going on the walk, though, we had to get dressed for the Dunedin weather.  (Dunedin is not known for its great weather.  The day we arrived, we were greeted by a hailstorm.)  Even though it was still early March, I wore my coat, the fleece I had brought for when we went to the glaciers, and my gloves.  My wife wore her long underwear, plus most everything else she brought on the trip.

Napier: The Art Deco City

Napier calls itself the Art Deco City, and it is fair to do so.  An earthquake and fire devastated the city in 1931.  When it was rebuilt, it was done so mostly in the style of the day: Art Deco.  To the delight of architecture buffs, and Art Deco fans, around the world, it has mostly kept those buildings.  It has not only kept them, it has maintained them.  Which makes for a great visit.

The Art Deco Trust offers a number of guided tour options.  We took the two-hour afternoon tour, which was by far the best value.  It was also a great way to see the city.

Hokitika

Small towns in New Zealand have their own kind of special charm.  While we were driving from Nelson to Franz Josef Glacier, we first stopped in Reefton (for a bathroom break at the visitor’s center).  In doing so, we discovered that, in August of 1888, Reefton was the first city in the southern hemisphere to be lit by electricity.

We also stopped in Hokitika. 

Hokitika has become more famous because it features in Elizabeth Catton’s novel, Luminaries, which won the Man Booker prize in 2013.  We, however, stopped for some shopping (Susan looked at the greenstone, etc., studios) and museum visiting.  The Hokitika Musemm is in an old Carnegie library.  I didn’t have time to look at it all, so I focused on the exhibits on gold mining and whitebait, which is a small freshwater fish that are tender and edible.  In New Zealand, the whitebait season is primarily in the spring.  While whitebait is caught all over New Zealand, the biggest area is now Westland.

Why “A Different New Zealand”

I have been interested in New Zealand for over 20 years.  In the fall of 1993, I read a review of Roger Douglas’s book Unfinished Business in The Economist.  I ordered the book, which was not all that easy in the pre-Internet days.  I was fascinated by the book and by how a Labour government, in the 1980s, transformed the New Zealand economy from one of the most state-controlled economies outside of the Soviet bloc to one of the freest.  I began to read more about New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s.  That led me to read even more about New Zealand: histories, biographies, current events, etc.  In the late 1990s, the Internet made it possible to follow New Zealand on a real-time basis.

Once I started to think about retiring, my wife suggested that we should go to New Zealand once I retired.  I retired in the summer of 2013, and we went to New Zealand in late January, February. and March of 2014.

Once we decided to go, we needed to decide what to see.  Most of the tours and the travel websites about New Zealand talk about the natural beauty, all of the things to do outdoors, and the native people, the Maoris.  Those sounded interesting, but by then I was more interested in the New Zealand that went from just beginning to be settled by the British in 1840 to one of the richest countries in the world by the end of the nineteenth century.  I was interested in not just the history of the Maoris, but also the history of these British (and other) people, the Pakehas.