Describe your most memorable vacation.

SOUTH-EAST OF “DOWN-UNDER”

During my lifetime and with my family we have enjoyed holidays and quite several places around the world. We’ve also had a jolly good look at our own country, Australia.

All our holidays have been significant and all have been both challenging and enjoyable for various reasons.

In many respects a holiday of six weeks that we shared in New Zealand, the country southeast of our home in Australia, “the land down under” was the most remarkable.

It was in 1978 when they were children – now all in their 50s – of tender years. We flew from Sydney to Auckland in New Zealand and hired a “Freedom“ campervan for our holiday of just over six weeks. We spent just over three weeks touring around the North Island of New Zealand. We then shipped on a car-carrying from from Wellington across the Cook Strait to Blenheim on the South Island. The rest of our time was spent traversing the north, west, south and part of the east coast of the South Island. In so many ways it was a terrific holiday.

On Christmas Day, we were at Rotorua staying in a motor car park and my wife cooked the most delicious Christmas dinner in steam-heated pipes that attached to the pools in which people could relax. I think that was the best Christmas dinner I have ever eaten for it was juicy, 100% tender and cooked.

The places that we visited are too numerous to mention but I do have a good recall of where we went and what we did.

Geraldine on the South Island of New Zealand was especially unique, for the town had a taxidermist industry supported by some of the locals. I found that to be very intriguing. Another memory, somewhat more frightening but memorable was a drive across a plateau to the east of Christchurch with winds whipping across from the Canterbury Plains blowing our campervan every which way, as we went down to the Port of Littleton. From memory, it was in Littleton that we ran into a really interesting home industry, with vehicles, animals, and other objects carved out of wood.

I was fascinated by Twizel a mining town inland and accessed by a road that runs parallel to the water course generated by glacial melt coming from Mount Cook. The water was clear, icy, and somewhat transparent blue with cold.

One of the highlights of our trip was going to a place called The Bluff, some kilometres to the south of Invercargill. It was and is the most southerly point on the South Island of New Zealand from memory, about 46 degrees south. I was sad because the signposts at the Bluff had been pulled down, possibly by miscreants.

Just over six weeks after arrival in Auckland, we flew out of New Zealand, homeward bound to Australia from Christchurch.

Spending just over six weeks, primarily in the campervan, was an experience that I believe helped to make all five of us very close as a family. To this day I remember the trip as one of the most enjoyable on which we ever embarked.