MUM

It has taken me some time to get around to writing this post, because my mother passed away in October, just over a week after I travelled back to Australia to spend some time with her. Mum had been suffering from emphysema for many years, had been dependent on home oxygen for five years, and had had a number of very close calls over that time. Because of these close calls we were all clear on what mum's wishes were, and when I visited for her birthday in June she told me quite explicitly that "she had had a good life". When new health problems began to add to her disability it was clear she had had enough, and when she developed yet another chest infection I think she decided she no longer wished to fight it. When the inevitable happened we followed her wishes and let her slip away peacefully. But god I miss her!!

My mother was always different to all the other kids' mothers I knew. For one she was a good 8-10 years older, and secondly, she worked. And as we later found out in the best kept secret of our childhood, my parents weren't even married!

Mum was born in 1933, in Melbourne, during The Great Depression. Their family was lucky, because her father had a job, but they weren't particularly wealthy and so experienced some of the hardships of that era. She grew up during the Second World War, where there were teacher shortages, and sadistic dentists. (My uncle can confirm the sadistic dentist story, I guess most of the men went off to war so you didn't have a lot of choices). Because of her own experiences with multiple extractions and dodgy dentures, she was an early fluoridation adopter for us kids, and a keen supporter of the free school dental service provided for us in Canberra, so we all have healthy teeth as a result.

Mum was the oldest of 3 siblings, each separated by four years. That's pretty impressive spacing for the non contraceptive era! She was particularly close with her brother, and was outspoken about supporting him when he came out as a gay man. She was insistent that their family, who were Presbyterian, should accept him for who he was, and they thankfully all did, and continue to have a wonderfully loving relationship with him and his partner to this day. The pain and anguish that my uncle exhibited at my mother's funeral was so poignant, she had been such a rock to him his entire life.

After school my mother studied to become a design draughtsman. Her words, she hated the term "draughts person". In those days a design draughtsman drew all the engineer's designs by hand, and needed to have perfect lettering skills. It was a man's domain, and the lecturers hated her and the other two women who enrolled in the course. The male students, however, loved having women colleagues, and mum says they protected the girls from most of the abuse and bullying, but she was the only one of the three to graduate.

Getting a job was another thing altogether. Although she was a qualified draughtsman, her job description was "Tracer", and she got paid less too. Mum's response to that was simply to be so good at her job that her employers wouldn't dream of replacing her with a less productive male. I'm not sure she managed to negotiate better pay though, although I know she did later in her career.

In 1956 mum headed off on her OE. The way she puts it, apparently all the young people did that in the 50s, but I don't think so. She was solidly middle class and had gone to a nice private girls' school, so I think her contemporaries were all doing it, but not the average young Australian. Mum initially went to the World Scout Jamboree in 1957, as she'd been a Cub Leader, but then stayed on in London working a few different jobs and spending all her money on cheap West End shows and travelling to the Continent. My uncle mentioned something about an Italian boyfriend, but I never managed to get any further details.

After the UK, mum spent a further year in Canada, where she lived with a host family and worked as a design draughtsman. She always spoke fondly of her "Canadian mum" and kept ongoing correspondence with the family, even after her "mum" passed away.

When mum returned to Melbourne, she had overseas experience in areas that few local draughtsmen had, so she was able to secure a good job with a civil engineering company. And then she met Dad. It was a whirlwind romance, and I don't think it was long before mum was pregnant with my older sister. Then came a complex system of subterfuge, where my mum was "living in sin" with a married man (Dad had already split with his first wife but divorce wasn't easy to get back in those days) not far from her parents but was keeping this fact secret by sending letters to her parents via an intermediary friend in Sydney. It didn't help that dad was married, it was even worse that he wasn't Presbyterian. Being Catholic was disastrous, being Jewish was unthinkable!!

At some point they must have manufactured the secret wedding story because a few months after I was born, the third of three kids in less than 3 years, my parents and my two older siblings went on a trip to New Zealand to meet Dad's family and I stayed home with my grandparents. Then came a rollercoaster of moves, from a newly renovated posh house in upmarket Mt Eliza to rental houses on the Mornington peninsula, to Morwell in Gippsland (where I started school and watched man land on the moon), to Cooma in southern NSW, and finally to Canberra, where mum got a decent job and some stability returned. It turned out Dad was a gambler....

My childhood wasn't particularly traumatic. There was always food to eat, my parents didn't appear to have fights (my mother's strategy was emotional withdrawal rather than fireworks), but we never had money for any luxuries, like nice clothes, school excursions or fancy holidays. Needless to say, I never went skiing as a kid despite living not far from the ski fields. My parents, however, had high expectations for us kids, and encouraged us to excel academically. There was never any gender stereotyping when it came to our aspirations, and there was a pretty consistent message that you had to work hard to achieve things in life.

When I was around fifteen and becoming sexually aware mum told me that she supported premarital sex, as well as living with a partner before marriage. I remember being quite shocked at the time, because that was a pretty forward way of thinking for my mum's generation, but of course my parents didn't get married until my younger brother was 18 months old. Not that we knew that at the time! Another pearl from my mother was when I realised that my uncle was gay. We had been on a trip to Melbourne and had stopped a night with my uncle and his then partner, whom we had known since we were babies. I clicked that they were a homosexual couple and confronted my mother as to why she hadn't mentioned it. She quite rightly explained that she had also never mentioned that my aunt, who was married with two children, was straight! Best response ever!

Mum continued to work as a design draughtsman, with flexible hours that meant she only worked school hours and never school holidays so was always home for us. When she left that first part time job in Canberra to have my younger brother (born 7.5 years after me) they had to employ 2 full time draughtsmen to fill her position! Once Matthew was at school she returned to another job with the same large engineering company she'd worked with when she came back from overseas, in their Canberra office, and on much better wages, again with school hours flexibility.

By now, computerisation was changing the industry, so mum went off to night school and learnt computer programming, then later taught herself CAD (computer aided drawing), so she wouldn't be out of a job. It meant she was able to stay employable until she retired aged 67. However, her computer programming knowledge came with unforeseen consequences: her ability to intuitively use smart devices was impossible. She didn't understand how they worked so she was always frightened she would stuff something up pressing the wrong button. She never used the iPad I bought her, and we gave up on smart phones and just got her to use a basic mobile phone.

I left home at 17 to go to university in Sydney, but travelled home to Canberra quite regularly. It's only once you leave home that you really start to appreciate your parents, and it was during those years that I began to understand the complex relationship my parents had. Dad was a dreamer and gambler, mum was practical and had been the sole breadwinner most of our lives, and now that we were all growing up mum was pretty close to leaving the relationship. But then my father died, so the problem solved itself fairly quickly, although mum needlessly carried that resentment towards dad for the rest of her life.

I have always remained close to mum, ringing her regularly and going on yearly holidays together. Our first holiday together was at the start of my first overseas trip. We spent a month touring China and I discovered that my mother was a sinophile. Back when she went on her OE China was closed to overseas visitors, but she'd been hankering to visit ever since it had opened its doors in 1979. Even 10 years later it was a harrowing experience, being treated like a fish in a fishbowl, with restrictions on where you could go, where you could stay, and what money you could use. Nevermind, we played the black market quite competently and ate in local establishments anyway!

When I returned home from my own OE we continued to do trips, mostly up to Port Stephens where we'd stay in a caravan, go on walks, I'd do a bit of windsurfing, and we'd eat at the local pub each night. It was on one of those trips that I introduced mum to Magnum ice creams. We used to take turns buying them at the local shop so they wouldn't realise how many we were eating!!

When I moved to the Northern Territory I bought myself a big beast 4x4, and she joined me for a 3 week trip through The Kimberley in the north of Western Australia. We walked in to beautiful waterfalls, found ancient rock art, and took a few helicopter rides as well. It was a great trip, and years afterwards, including at her funeral, people often told me how much mum talked about that trip with great fondness.

She came and visited me in Geraldton a couple of times, the first time coinciding with both the bankruptcy of Ansett and the World Trade Centre terrorist attack of September 11. I'd convinced mum to fly over with Ansett as they did the domestic leg from Perth to Geraldton, but then they went belly-up! Needless to say she has flown Qantas since!

Our final trip together was in 2008, about the time I started up this blog after burning out from my job. We visited a friend of mine in Taree, and explored the Hunter Valley vineyards and the Hawkesbury. I was suffering from severe depression at the time, so it was a difficult time for me and mum, as I was completely unaware that I was spiralling downwards, and wasn't good company at all.

As mum's health deteriorated she wasn't able to travel far, so I would keep in touch with regular Sunday phone calls. We would talk about our lives, about politics, about anything really, for at least an hour, but slowly those conversations narrowed to discussing what mum had watched on television and what my brother and his family were up to. Mum lived in a granny flat in my brother's backyard, so she was intimately involved in their lives, but funnily enough I was often more informed from my brother and his partner's Facebook updates!!

We celebrated mum's 75th Birthday with the extended family, her 80th and 85th with just the immediate family. By then we knew every birthday could be her last, so I made sure to come over from NZ for a few days this year for her 86th. And then when her health issues threatened to derail my brother's plans for a family holiday in Tasmania I offered to mum sit whilst he took a much earned break.

My younger brother had done the lion's share of caring for mum as she aged and her health deteriorated. He took time off work to be with her during her numerous hospital stays and the rest of us flew in after the fact. And, apart from his 2 years travelling overseas and a short stint living south of Canberra with his partner and first baby, he and mum have lived together all his life! It's an amazing feat of love and commitment and, although Matt's partner struggled to get on with prickly mum, she greatly admires and loves him for it.

Only two days after Matthew headed off to Tasmania mum developed yet another chest infection. She was immediately hospitalised, and she initially seemed motivated to make an effort to follow the instructions of her doctors and physiotherapists. I spent all day with her, but it soon became obvious to me that she had decided not to fight this one. There were new questions regarding the possibility that she had secondary cancer in her eye (which had caused a complete retinal detachment and loss of vision in that eye) and the uncertainty and fear of that was dwelling heavily on her. I think she decided, in her typically stubborn way, that enough was enough. Although we never actually had that frank discussion in her final days, I certainly fully understood and supported it.

We had all had the end of life discussions with mum on previous occasions, so all of us kids had no illusions as to mum's wishes. She certainly did not want to go to ICU, and she did not want to be intubated and put on a mechanical ventilator. Mum had had two pretty serious hospitalisations in the last 5 years where the doctors had not expected her to survive, and she had also managed to survive a fractured hip and wrist! Instead, when her oxygen levels began to drop and she entered a confused state, she was given a little more oxygen, some sedation so she would not be distressed, and allowed to sleep. It took her a further 12 hours to take her last breath, but it was graceful, peaceful, and certainly full of dignity.

The funeral was a lovely affair. It was very informal, with a cardboard coffin to write something on, and an open mic so people could offer a eulogy if they wished. Reacquainting with old family friends, and meeting some of mum's friends from work and Bonsai Club for the first time, there were some lovely memories shared. We finished with a Wake at Matt's place, and then we all dispersed back to our lives.

I feel incredibly honoured to have had such a feisty role model of a mother. One who championed us kids making our own decisions and owning our own choices, who never used emotional blackmail to garner attention or love. Yes she could be prickly and opinionated, and sometimes cruel and resentful, but mostly she was warm and generous with people from all walks of life. In particular, she was unprejudiced. I remember once mum got a really good price on a new computer, because the man she bought it from, an Asian lad, had been a school friend of my brother's. He remembered her, he said, because she had been the only parent who had been happy for him to come to their house after school. And that was in the late 1980's!!!!

Vale Janet Brooks, you were one of a kind.

Goddess goes to work!

Last year I successfully passed my Level 2 Ski Instructor qualification. I already had my Level 1 qualification but a Level 2 gives you the sort of skills that make you internationally employable. Although it won't necessarily get you a work visa!

The biggest issue for me getting an overseas work visa is my age. Being a few decades over the magical cut off age of 30 (35 in some countries, but yeah I missed that one too) I can't go swanning off on a working holiday visa and jag myself a job on a skifield. I need to get an employer to sponsor me, which they aren't going to do on a whim. Particularly without any experience!!

So I decided to apply for a job at Cardrona in NZ (where I can work without requiring a visa) this year. This is the mountain I volunteer on with the adaptive ski program, although I prefer to free ski at Treble Cone. Why, you ask, wouldn't I apply for a job at Treble Cone instead?

Many reasons, the main one being that the mountain is mostly advanced terrain. Which means most skiers coming to Treble Cone can already ski. Ski schools make most of their money in two areas: beginner lessons, and private lessons. Private lessons will go to those instructors with most seniority through a priority system that rewards qualifications and loyalty. My standing is so low that I would just be left with beginner lessons, and there aren't many of those at Treble Cone. So I wouldn't get any work.

Contrast that with Cardrona, which is so busy with lessons that I had all day work every shift I was rostered, and during the very busy school holidays and August I often had a couple of one hour private lessons as well as four to five hours of group lessons. Admittedly towards the end of the season it dropped off, but I only once had the situation of turning up for work and being told I wasn't needed.

A huge advantage of Cardrona, as compared to TC, is it is an awesome mountain to teach beginners on. This is because the terrain is so perfect (ok it's very flat!) for progressing even the most timid and anxious new skier. Since an instructor is in the business of creating an enjoyable experience so the punter comes back for more, there's a considerable advantage in not scaring the shit out of a complete beginner. TC, with it's steep terrain, can do a damn good job of being terrifying!

Cardrona gave me a job, which is quite an achievement as jobs there are hard to come by due to low attrition rates. I can only claim my success to be due to their need for a stable of part timers who are flexible: instructors who can work more when it is busy, and don't need the hours when it's quiet. And they also don't need to sponsor me with the requirement of providing a minimum number of hours per week.

I initially said I'd just do one day a week, but come June there was still not enough snow for TC to open and I was getting hopelessly bored. So I ended up doing 3 days a week.

I enjoyed every minute of it. The crew I was working with were all really friendly and supportive. I'd ended up getting a locker in the locker room next to some of the oldest and most experienced instructors at Cardrona, and they were great to learn from as well as unburden with when things didn't quite go to plan. Which happens more often than any of us would like to admit.

Sometimes I had adult first timer lessons where the group size was well over 10. This is quite a baptism of fire because fitness levels in a group that big can vary hugely, and some people acquire the basic skills much quicker than others. Learning how to manage both group dynamics and coaching people at different stages in their progressions was a great learning experience for me. And then there are the kids…

Children are easier, in that they learn through experiential learning rather than instruction as to how to do something. Plus, though there are exceptions, they are fearless. You just show them what you want them to do and get them to mimic you. And you make as much as possible into a game. Of course you have to customise it to their developmental level, but I seem to have a natural ability to assume the age of my students, whatever it is. Yes, I can even chuck a good tantrum given the opportunity!

Jokes aside, being older with more life experience gives me a whole load of other advantages when it comes to teaching kids. Firstly, their parents trust me. I'm not some 18 year old taking charge of their precious kids for the day and they make assumptions as to my experience based on how old I look. I don't tell them it's my first year teaching of course. And secondly, I'm well attuned to picking up when the kids are starting to show signs of fatigue and I'll interrupt the teaching for some play time.

The shit side of teaching kids is the shit kids. Usually they have arsehole parents so it isn't really their fault, but from time to time you get kids that just won't even make an effort to join in with the group. Mostly I try to create a sense of group solidarity, where the kids themselves will help and support each other, but sometimes you get a kid that just doesn't fit. And worst case scenario, skis off on you!! Luckily for me, I managed to catch my one potential runaway before he got too far, and we negotiated an agreement where he got one choice of where to ski, and then he had to agree to ski with the rest of the kids' choices. The other option, of course, is to suggest the parents book their child for a private one on one lesson. Arsehole parents don't often do this however….

I still managed to do some adaptive volunteering, although not as much as last year. I skied again with Finn and Sean, and managed to take a video of Sean's expert sit ski bucketting.


Finn and Sean from Naomi Brooks on Vimeo.

I've become good friends with Finn and his family, who live in Dunedin and come up a few times each winter. They are an awesome family that just do what they need to do given they have one child with a severe disability. Whilst Finn still wants to come skiing, Sean will take him, even though their younger son has now decided skiing isn't really his cup of tea. Sean's true passion is ski touring, so I asked Sean if I could join him on some upcoming day trips.

Unfortunately I didn't get as many days as usual skiing at Treble Cone. Mostly because of the late opening at TC, but also because I was working 3 days and then also volunteering a few days at Cardrona. I'm not totally sure I got my money's worth out of my TC season pass this year....

I also only managed one day over at Ohau this year, with Janey and a few of my Cardrona colleagues. This time I hiked right up to the very top of the big bowl and got a nice long run down. The conditions weren't awesome, but the view certainly was! Unfortunately I also got a speeding ticket on the drive back to Wanaka. Thankfully the fine wasn't too onerous....

In the second week of September Sean, I and my Alaskan ski touring friend Jennifer (remember her from The Invincibles trip?), as well as a friend of Sean's, headed out the back of Cardrona for a bluebird day shredding fresh snow, and then just the three of us did it again the next day out the back of Treble Cone. This year I had bought new touring boots and bindings for my skis, which made walking up hill considerably lighter and easier. It's exhausting work, but exhilarating! And I'm now understanding the joy of the rhythm of skinning up a slope. (For the uninitiated, you apply synthetic "skins" to the bottom of your skis which prevent them sliding backwards, you release the heel of your ski binding, and you walk in a sliding motion with your skis up a slope, because there isn't a chairlift to the spot you wish to ski down from).

At the end of the season I sat my adaptive ski exam. Just the Level 1, but it required us to have competence bucketting and tethering sit skis, actually skiing in a monoski, ok a J turn but it's easier said than done, teaching skiing for 3 track, 4 track, and a bunch of physical, cognitive and visual impairments. It was a great 3 days with an awesome group of participants, with my current hero Christine being our instructor. She can bucket and tether a sit ski whilst snowboarding! And yes I passed.


Adaptive skiing: bucketing and tethering a sit-ski whilst snowboarding from Naomi Brooks on Vimeo.

By the end of September things were quietening down considerably on the work front. Because I was part time, and frankly, didn't need the work, I was happy to reduce my hours. But then mum started having more health problems so I decided to leave Wanaka and head back over the ditch to spend some time with her to give my brother the chance to go on a family holiday to Tasmania.

So I did. That's next.

Packrafting the Sounds

All that water... Wouldn't it be good to have a little boat to explore with... Not quite the sort of kit the average backpacker is likely to have. Unless you have a packraft!!!

New Zealand is a water lovers paradise. It has awesome coastlines, including beautiful sea fjords, and spectacular lakes, often mirroring snow covered peaks. Of course if you google for pictures of NZ you know this already.

The Marlborough Sounds are true Sounds, formed about 14,000 years ago as a result of land subsidence and rising sea levels, flooding the river valleys with sea water. This means there are few beaches, and the water is surrounded by steep sided heavily forested hills. (A Fjord is caused by glacial erosion leading to influx of seawater, so the Sounds in Fiordland, are really Fiords, but who really cares hey?) No massive waterfalls coming off hanging valleys higher up, nowhere near as spectacular, but beautiful in their own way.

There are 4 main Sounds in Marlborough: Queen Charlotte, Kenepuru, Pelorus and Mahau. Although there are roads that snake around the islands and peninsulae, it's much easier and enjoyable to use a boat. So, with the help of Rick and Barb, I hatched up a plan.

Rick and Barb have a property on Kenepuru Sound, where their daughter and family live, so they invited me to pop over there on my travels. Rick was heading there in his motorboat to fix the dodgy septic outflow, so I would be expected. I drove to the small bay at Te Mahia, and launched my boat.

Paddling on the Sound was glorious, with no wind impeding my progress, very little motor traffic interrupting my reverie, just the lapping of water against the rocks along the coastline, the birds singing, and the occasional mussel farmer out checking his lease.

I crossed the Sound to the northern shore and paddled in to Rick's place. They were making good headway on the pipework, so after a lovely bowl of hot vegetable soup and home made bread, I left them to it and continued further down the Sound.

I crossed again to the southern shore, paddling amongst the myriad mussel farms. Rick's daughter had told me the mussels were currently not edible due to a virus or polluted water or some such, so I didn't even think about foraging for my own kai for dinner. I made camp at Putanui Point, where Kenepuru meets the much larger Pelorus Sound. It was a glorious location looking up Pelorus Sound, although I needed to keep an eye on the cheeky Wekas so none of my stuff got pilfered.

The next morning dawned misty, but cleared to another glorious day. I set out early, heading back up the Sound along the southern shore planning to explore the picturesque Broughton Bay. I rounded Schnapper Point and encountered a brisk headwind, so decided to take serendipity into account and cross to the northern side of the Sound, using the now tailwind to aid my paddling. Imagine my dismay when about half way across the wind changed to a norwester and I was now paddling against a headwind!!

Since I knew the wind would only get stronger (norwesterlies being the predominant wind in the Sounds) I continued across to Ferndale campsite, a fern lined beach in a sheltered sandy cove, where I set up my tent, had a leisurely lunch and spent the afternoon lazing in the sun reading a book. The campsite is only accessible by boat (Putanui Point is the same) so I had this place all to myself. The joys of travelling outside the busy summer months...

After a peaceful night I rose early, broke camp and paddled back across the Sound. It was eerily misty, with no wind, so an easy paddle. I made a course for further up the Sound so I could explore the numerous bays and inlets on my way back to Te Mahia. Tiny kingfishers were diving for food in the shallows, and a few shags were hanging out on the rocks, it was so wonderful to watch them.

Back at Te Mahia I rolled up the packraft and drove over to the other side of the peninsula, reinflated the raft and went for a paddle in Torea Bay. This is part of the much larger Queen Charlotte Sound, and every few hours the various Interislander Ferries pass through between Picton and Wellington. I stayed in the bay and enjoyed the placid water and looking at the mansions of the rich.

That evening I drove to Picton, booked a boat trip for the next day, and stayed overnight at a hostel so I was all ready for my early morning start. The water taxi took me all the way up Queen Charlotte Sound to Ship Cove, the site of a camp that Captain Cook returned to on his numerous trips past New Zealand in the 18th Century. It is now the trailhead for the Queen Charlotte Track, a dual bike/foot path across the spine of the hills separating Queen Charlotte from Kenepuru Sound. I planned to both paddle and walk it.

After having a little look around Ship Cove I headed off up the track, through some lovely native forest with a viewpoint at the top. There were lots of track works going on with a few dead ends and the signage was rather confusing, but it wasn't that difficult to follow the big wide track off the saddle and down the hill. The track follows a rather slippery steep path down to Schoolhouse Bay where I stopped for lunch.

Next I inflated the packraft and began my paddle from Resolution Bay, around Scott Point and into Endeavour Inlet. There were shags drying their wings on the rocks, and at Scott Point a seal colony. Super cute, but I tried not to get too close as I wasn't keen on a seal deciding to take a bite out of my inflatable craft!

As I neared Marine Head at the head of Endeavour Inlet I was met by a strong nor westerly, much stronger than the one I had encountered in Kenepuru Sound a couple of days before. I hugged the shoreline and paddled as strongly and efficiently as possible into the headwind to get around the point. It was really hard work and it took quite some time and persistence to get around into the inlet. At one point I thought I wasn't going to make it!

Once within the inlet I stayed close to the shoreline until I entered the lee of the opposite hills, allowing me to cut across Tawa Bay. My plan was to paddle up the northern side of the inlet before heading across to the southern shore, using the tailwind to push me across. But I needed to get myself upwind some distance before attempting the crossing, or I'd just get swept out to the main channel. I knew that the walking track was close to the water once I reached the other side of Tawa Bay, so I could always walk if the wind was too strong to paddle. And my final backup plan was to hitch a ride on someone else's boat. There were lots of them around.

I was about half way across Tawa Bay when a boat coming back from a fishing trip pottered over because they thought I didn't look like I was having fun. They were right, and as I'm not in the camp of struggling in adverse conditions just to achieve a goal for the sake of having done it self propelled, I happily hitched a lift with these fishermen to Camp Bay.

I pitched my tent, put all the boat gear out to dry, then wandered down to the nearby Punga Cove Resort for a wonderfully refreshing cold beer! The resort had no guests as they were renovating, so the staff were burning excess building material in a pyre on the beach. We all sat out under the stars and enjoyed the warmth from the fire, whilst downing a bevy or two, and then I made my way back to the camp site for my dehydrated dinner and well earned sleep.

The next day I packed up all the rafting paraphernalia and left it down at the dock at Camp Bay. I had arranged for the water taxi to pick it up and take it back to Picton, where I would collect it on my return. For the next 2 days I would only be walking.

The climb up from Camp Bay isn't too steep, and soon there are views over both Sounds. The track follows along the ridges of the mountains, frequently through private land. The track is a joint project between local landowners, who have formed a trust, and DOC. Because of this, there is an access fee to be paid for walking the sections of track which are on private land. This pays for upkeep, and there are some pretty spectacular signs, benches and view points along the route. Well worth the money.

Eatwell's Lookout is by far the most spectacular. It's a detour from the main track, but totally worth the effort, and a great spot for lunch. Only it was still a bit early for my lunch, so I just ate a muesli bar and continued on to Bay of Many Coves Campsite. Here I chatted with some day walkers walking in the opposite direction, and was reunited with Christian, a young Argentinian lad who had also been quietly camped at Camp Bay. We walked the rest of the day together. Christian had been walking by himself for a couple of days along the track and was keen for some company. He didn't, however, tell me about this!

Christian continued on to Portage, taking advantage of the water taxi service which will transport your gear between campsites so you only need to walk with a day pack. I wanted to camp up on the ridge, so finished the day early at Black Rock Campsite. It was a fantastic location, perfect for watching both the sunset and sunrise, with views right up and down both Sounds in four directions. I was joined in the evening, and again in the morning, by a slightly peculiar local who chugged up the hill on his quad bike from his nearby house to observe the start and end of each day whilst enjoying a bit of weed. I think he was a little lonely and enjoyed the interaction with the trampers he met each day.

The next morning, after a really spectacular sunrise, the walk continued further south along the ridgeline, with continuing views down to the Sounds. The walking itself isn't very exciting, and the track is often quite eroded in places. It certainly would not be an easy track to ride on a mountain bike as the gradients are quite steep.

I crossed the road at Torea Saddle and continued along the ridgeline. The forest on each side obscured most of the views, so I was glad to begin the final descent to Te Mahia Saddle. But first I took the detour up to one final viewpoint for more fabulous vistas.

From Te Mahia Saddle I turned left down to Mistletoe Bay. I had a couple of hours until the water taxi would pick me up so I took off my shoes and gave my feet a wonderful soak. They were quite sore, as I had decided not to wear my walking boots on this combined paddling/walking trip and instead just wore my running shoes. Yes, I know, I have been there before.....but this time my toenails stayed intact.

The water looked so inviting, but my paddling gear was back in Picton. Sad face...

I was picked up at the designated time but we had to wait some time for another couple to turn up, before leaving without them and heading down to Anakiwa to pick up the rest of the crew, including Christian who had finished the entire walk. I had, by now, found out about his little adventure getting rescued after following a trapline and getting lost (there is good mobile coverage at Black Rock campsite), as had the boat captain, so we gave him a little bit of stick about his misadventure and he explained that he had been too embarrassed to tell me about it. I reassured him he did the right thing, safety is always more important than a bit of embarrassment after all, but I'm not sure he was totally convinced. Anyway, he'll have a good story to tell.

We then had to return to Mistletoe Bay to pick up the two walkers, a couple of hipsters by the look of them, and returned to Picton. I collected my rafting gear, grabbed a nice bottle of shiraz for my hosts, and drove back to Renwick to regale Rick and Barb with stories of my adventures.

Then it was time to return south, cruising along the west coast and over Haast Pass to Wanaka, to begin my training for my winter job. That's next...