From The Land Of The Long Cloud - Part I
Auckland, The Central Volcanic Plateau and a quick hop to remember Uncle Gaz in Sydney
Hey guys,
Sharing a collation of jottings from my wonderful New Zealand trip, that’s still reverberating in my bones, just home back in San Francisco…
…New Zealand, where sometime around 1000 - 1300 in an ancient Polynesian canoe-catamaran vessel, the ‘Great Navigator’ Kupe was scouting deep in the unknowns of the South Pacific…when all of a sudden his wife, while keeping watch, saw a long spit of land appear on the horizon with slim and slender white clouds hanging over the land…
“A cloud, a cloud, a long white cloud”, she cried out, as the story goes…
Nearly a thousand years later, I finally made a month-long exploration (absolutely not enough!) down into the the land of the those defining long, ‘lenticular’ clouds that so often define the horizon in parts of New Zealand (lenticular refering to lens-shaped, I read…).
And I thought I’d open with this story of the first settling of New Zealand, because it was a trip that more deeply opened my eyes to an understanding of the Maori and the centuries long shared stewardship of New Zealand after colonization.
It was a trip that combined fun family times (Daisy 6 and Finn 4) with solo satellite missions to see more of the North Island, my previous trips down for Christmas having always centered around family days in Dunedin and Otago.
The contrasts of the trip came to mind on the last morning as I hauled my hands through my red North Face oil-barrel-like gearbag…
Brown dress shoes for some business days in Auckland, running shoes, bike shoes, flip flops, diving flippers, hiking poles, reef booties for surfing, a pair of green-camouflage-coloured everyday flats for everything in between, and a pair of summer hiking boots…
…from the first Auckland business days - helping brother-in-law Tom raise seed funding for his business Ingenum - to being mesmerized with volcanic skylines in Central North Island, to a short-planned hop to Sydney to mark the life of a favorite Uncle Garry ‘Gaz’ who passed away, to Central Otago family days celebrating sis Keara’s 40th, to one last surf trip up to the famed long ‘left-hander’ of Ahipara, and to finally ocean-testing my novice free-diving skills in New Zealand’s Poor Knights Islands…
Auckland days
Auckland is one of those rare cities with harbours opening onto two different oceans, the Pacific to the East and the Tasman (Sea) to the West.
Perched in the middle of North Island, on an isthmus linking Northlands and Waikato provinces, our flight from SFO lurched down the layers of cloud along the charismatic Waikato coastline, that has hints of Ireland and Scotland in its tones and texture.
Reading about Auckland’s history and geology as it all unfolded outside the window, I had no idea I was arriving to a city built on volcanoes…
The Auckland Volcanic Field is a system of 53 volcanoes within the 600 square kilometers on which Auckland is built, ‘comprised of maars, tuff rings, small lava shields, and scoria cones’ as the Smithsonian writes (reference links at bottom), assuring also that ‘the first eruptions in the field began about 193,000 years ago, but over half of the volcanoes formed in the past 60,000 years, and there are 19 known eruptions within the last 20,000 years’.
And it’s not just Auckland as a major city built on volcanoes, others being Naples, Tokyo, Seattle, Hilo, Mexico City, Auckland, Quito in Ecuador and Managua, the capital of Nicaragua.
I was hooked, and had volcanoes on my mind all trip…another new hobby, ‘vulcanist tourism’, perhaps, as it’s called?
Anyway, Auckland was first settled around 1350, long before the English colonists taking over the isthmus in a ‘deal’ in 1840 with the Maori. A leader of one tribe - or iwi - sought strategic protection from another through the partnership, I read.
The English then named the settlement after Earl Auckland, the Viceroy of India, and built the city in the Edwardian and Imperial architecture styles prevalent in the Pacific colonies.
You could see the blends of modern and colonial architecture woven into so many blocks of the downtown area, with the distinctive Sky Tower defining the skyline and a central harbour that is a car park of super-yachts, to remind you that you’re strolling near the equivalent of a formula one pit lane for race yachts.
Brother-in-law Tom and I enjoyed hours together talking business and life and in meetings on the search to raise money for his animal health and food security start-up Ingenum, before I rented a car and headed south in search of volcanoes and one of New Zealand’s Great Walks.
The Central North Island Volcanic Plateau
From Auckland ‘business’ days in those polished brown shoes, doing meetings with bro-in-law Tom seeking seed capital for his business Ingenum, I changed my footwear to those comfy everyday flats and drove south four hours down the spine of the North Island, flanking Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake, and into New Zealand’s oldest National Park, the Tongariro National Park.
In the last hour of the drive, the road reveals beautiful expanses of plains opening up the horizon, and first sightings of volcano ridges and the conical majesty of Mount Ngauruhoe…
The imposing Mount Ngauruhoe was New Zealand's most active volcano in the 20th century, with its last period of grumbling - but not erupting - as recently as 2006-8.
The vast undulating plains between the road and Ngauruhoe’s skirt are still marked with the evidence of wide lava flow tracks. And, along roadsides you see signs reminding of the ways uphill and out of valleys in the event of a lava flow - just like our Tsunami signs ‘this way to high ground’ along the California coastline.
Seeing Ngauruhoe and reading all about the recency of earthquakes was a healthy reminder that we are but specks on a giant ball of molten rock!
Though my plan was to get up to the ridges of the volcanic landscape, on the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, to see the gently steaming vents on the sides of Mount Pukekaikore and Mount Tongariro, the plan was scuppered by two days of gale force ridge winds and I instead set out instead to solo-hike a more sheltered ridge along the volcanic Tama Lakes.
With the morning sun warming up the land, and already gently gusting winds, I was escorted by fields of red and cream tussock grasses quivering and whispering in the light gusts of wind, reaching for the morning light like in a trance.
On the nose, you’d get different wafts of the landscape, peppery alpine herb fields one minute, the fresh scent of the tussock grasses the next, that unmistakeable dankness of peat the next!
It was a wandering day alone that I absolutely savoured, despite the freezing winds of the ridgeline from where this picture was taken! A reminder to next time bring the thick gloves too…
The hike I took on was a small part of one of New Zealand’s Great Walks project.
You’ll hear about New Zealand’s Great Walks in any homework or research into spending time traveling in New Zealand. And, chatting with sis over breakfast one morning, Keara shared that the Department of Conservation developed the concept in the early 90s, to corral hikers in the most tramped landscapes through layering in tasteful infrastructure: well-maintained tracks, boards across the most delicate ecosystems, communal huts for over-nighting, and - I suspect - the world’s most tastefully camouflaged and well-maintained wilderness drop toilets…
But my Tongariro days were cut short with the sad death of our wonderful Uncle Gaz, and joining the family team effort to all get to Sydney for a few days with Aunt Phil.
Uncle Gaz, Penrith near Sydney
Uncle Garry Lane passed away in Penrith, near Sydney, the day before my Auckland flight, after a rich and very interesting life evolving from Catholic priest to lawyer working defending the under-represented in society.
Uncle Gaz was Mum’s sister Phil(omena)’s second marriage, and had been her Catholic parish priest when they met. The way they grew together is a beautiful story of devotion and new love in mid-life.
Each of Pete, Keara and I Pete had lived with Aunt Phyl and Uncle ‘Gaz’ for a few seasons in 1996, there discovering his love of travel by bike, Keara too in shorter stays visiting from New Zealand, and me also during my Masters in Sydney in 2002-3.
And so with each of us shifting our itineraries - and Keara wading into some masterly bereavement policy negotiation with airlines! - we managed to all get to Sydney to spend Easter Weekend with Aunt Phyl, and our Australian cousins Rachael, Siobhan and Jenn, and Dubliner-now-Sydneysider cousins Tony and Vince.
Uncle Gaz was a serious man without the air of taking himself too seriously. One of those embracing people that would so often speak with a hint of a smile, and who seemed to love and be curious about all around him, regardless of temperament and background. Controversially (for me), he was a devoted fan of rugby league, who never cared too much to try and understand the nuances of rugby union….
I'll always remember Uncle Garry's quiet, wise, laconic observations, murmured with a prelude of 'Awww Kievvvvvv, you know…’, before he’d launch in, his tone bent with those soft Eastern Australian vowels…
Uncle Gaz’ funeral was a week later, at a time when it would be harder for us to all be there together, and so Dad, Pete, Keara and I spent an afternoon in Sydney - seeing Maroubra where I’d lived during my Masters in 2002-3- and re-tracing the steps of many long Saturday morning runs around the beautiful Eastern Suburbs headlands to visit Waverley Cemetry and see Gaz’s resting place.
…this missive is continued in Part II…
Resource I Learnt From…