Happy New Year! Let’s start 2015 with a new look at Waiheke, Pamrovia’s favourite island. (Actually it’s the favourite island of all Aucklanders. About 20,000 of us take up temporary residence there each January.)
Mansions, vineyards, restaurants and beaches make Waiheke famous. But there’s another side. The Maori story of Waiheke is being told through a tour business called Hike Bike Ako. Ako is the Maori word for ‘learning’.
Chief guide Dr Robyn Manuel (she has a PhD in science) meets me at the ferry. We do some moderate hiking, some gentle biking, and a lot of learning. The overseas visitors on the tour love hearing the meanings of Maori words, the names of the trees we shelter under, and the legends of the islands. For Pakeha on the tour, it is a new take on some things.

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Looking across the gulf to Rangitoto Island, we remember hearing that Rangitoto means ‘blood-red sky’ in reference to Maori witnessing the eruption of the volcanic island. Not so, says Robyn. The name refers to the chief Tamatekapua bleeding into the waters around the island after a fight caused by a wife-stealing incident.
Tamatekapua, we are told, is the man who gave Waiheke its name. He named the island Waiheketua after his grandmother of that name who stayed behind in Hawaiki when Tamatekapua left to captain the Te Arawa waka south to Aotearoa. Others will tell you that Waiheke means ‘cascading waters’, but Robyn sticks to her version.
“There are no waterfalls on Waiheketua.”
The name of the island’s best beach, Onetangi, is sometimes translated as ‘water falling on sand’. A stream? Rain? To Robyn’s annoyance, it is sometimes said to refer to a chief urinating on the sand. It really means ‘place of sadness’, she says. One is sand, tangi is tears. The Te Arawa canoe left from here as it continued its journey south to Maketu, leaving some of the explorers behind.
As with all legends, centuries-old stories and oral histories, there is space for differing interpretations. It all adds to the colour.
We take a break at Piritahi Marae. Piritahi means ‘coming together’. It refers to the marriage of a man and woman from warring tribes, and there is quite a story attached to that. It runs as far as the present day, but I will leave it to the Hike Bike Ako team to explain that to you.

              

 

If you fancy a tread-lightly, vehicle-free, cultural but light-hearted experience on Waiheke, this is well worth considering. A half day costs $99, a full day is $159. www.hikebikeako.co.nz

Who knew? It’s true, there are trails which take enthusiasts from sundial to sundial around the country. Public parks, universities, schools, hospitals, churchyards, and the walls of buildings – they all hold examples of this ancient way of telling the time.

This one is at Lake Wanaka. 

And this one is at Tauhei, near Hamilton. 

Most sundials are simple stone structures standing about one metre high. Many show their age and lack of love through their covering of lichen, and vandalised or stolen gnomons (they are the upright metal pointers which cast a shadow to show the time of day.) Others are restored and well-cared for, like this one at St Cuthbert’s College, Auckland (photographed by Emma Boyd).

These two are in Wellington. One is above the entrance to Logan Brown Restaurant in Cuba Street.The other is in the Soundshell at the Botanic Gardens. 

 

Others are popular for their oddity value, such as this umbrella sundial in Invercargill.

 

The ‘Sundial of Human Involvement’ in Wellington’s Botanic Gardens, for example, uses the human body as a gnomon. So when a passerby stands on a stone slab in front of a semi-circle of small stone pillars topped with numbers, the person’s body casts a shadow which becomes the pointer on the clock.

There are three ways to look at sundials. Some fans enjoy them for their beauty. They admire the sculpted stone and engraved metal, and marvel at the craftsmanship of the people who made them.

The second thing to look for is the motto written on the sundial. Usually the witty or sentimental saying is in Latin, so a mobile phone with Google, or a mini Latin dictionary, are useful to take along.  ‘Use They Time Wisely’ is a popular motto. Others are ‘Always Time for Friends’, ‘It’s Later Than You Think’, and ‘Time Flies’.  This memorial sundial at Taradale, Hawkes Bay, says ‘Enter the grounds not in sorrow but in pride. Try to live worthily as they died’.

And the third aspect is the science of sundials. How do they work? Experts speak of elliptical planes, of prime meridians and of equatorial rings, of sundials in different forms such as horizontal, vertical and armillary.

A self-confessed sundial addict by the name of Rosaleen Robertson is behind the setting up of sundial trails. Here she is in the Chatham Islands.

There are fully-documented trails in Timaru and Wellington, and Rosaleen and other sundial admirers are tracking down and recording sundials throughout the country. You can join the sleuths, and get information on the trails, at www.sundials.org.nz

Intrepid trampers or a bunch of softies? Pam Neville puts the case for guided walks.

We’re a bedraggled bunch at times, we tail-end Charlies. One has boots with soles flapping loose, held together only by regular applications of sticky tape. Another is walking in jandals, having abandoned boots because of agonising foot pain. A third has a nasty head wound after scalping himself on a fallen tree. More knees than not are encased in braces, bandages, straps and supports.

The proper trampers are out in front, leaping over boulders and cantering up steep tracks like so many mountain goats. Leading the herd is a fit and competitive Australian. He is barely challenged by the hike, even at the end of the longest day when he finds someone sneaked rocks into his pack in a breakfast-time practical joke. (It turns out the joker is a demure Englishwoman. “It’s always the quiet ones,” mutters the Australian.)

My group of 24 is on a six-day adventure in the foothills of the Southern Alps, walking the Greenstone and the Hollyford tracks. Guiding company Ultimate Hikes calls this the Grand Traverse. They have combined what are usually two separate walks for the benefit of foreigners such as Australians and Aucklanders for whom getting to Queenstown is expensive. Accommodation is three nights in huts with bunkrooms, and two nights in lodges with private rooms. Breakfast, dinner and bedding are provided, but walkers carry their own personal gear and lunch.

But guided walkers are not “real” trampers, according to a friend back home who lugs her own food, clothing, and sleeping bag – even a tent if there are no DOC huts on her route – in a pack weighing two or three times the 6kg I allow myself.  Another “real” tramper pooh-poohs the guided folk relaxing in their lodge, wine in hand. “A well-earned rest after a hard day carrying a pack containing a spare handkerchief,” he scoffs.

Unfair, I reckon. We are still walking 65km, over difficult terrain, and a guide assures us we will have walked nearly 100km by the time we’ve done some extra sightseeing, side tracks, and trips to the bar. We traversed the Main Divide – twice – and we ventured intos two national parks, Fiordland and Mt Aspiring.

From a lookout called Key Summit, there are sweeping views down three valleys, the Greenstone to the east, the Eglinton to the south and the Hollyford to the west, with rivers leading to three oceans, the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and the Tasman Sea. From the Hollyford face, we look across at the Darran Mountains, down the Hollyford valley and out to the Tasman Sea reaching towards Australia. From the Harris Saddle and Conical Hill we see the surf at Martins Bay on the West Coast.

As well as the mighty panoramas, there are myriad close up views, of South Island robins and wrens, of tomtits and kea, of sparkling waterfalls, fast-moving crystal streams, little alpine lakes, and of cushion plants and snow berries.

Grand views indeed on the clear days we are blessed with – less than half of the trampers who come here enjoy such fine conditions. It’s sobering to pass a plaque commemorating two children who died in a storm on the track 50 years ago.

The weather gods were kind on this April 2014 Grand Traverse. When I walked the Milford Track in January 2013, conditions were entirely the opposite.

“Pray for rain,” the publicity people say, “as you’ve only seen Fiordland at its most incredible when the waterfalls are in full flow.”

So prior to starting the Milford, I put up a prayer. It rained so much that the Clinton river rose one-and-a-half metres in as many hours. Ahead of us, the track was neck-deep in water. Whole cliffs became waterfalls. Plunging sheets of water obliterated the mountains. Twelve kilometers past our last lodge and four kilometers before the next, my group was rescued by helicopter.

I realised too late that the pray-for-rain slogan is just a public relations excuse to cover the fact it rains pretty much all the time in Fiordland, up to eight metres a year. So walking the Greenstone and the Routeburn for six dry days is a blessing. Dainty, silken waterfalls suit me fine. I saw enough of nature’s raw anger on the Milford.

By lunchtime on Day Six we have conquered the Grand Traverse. Fast or slow, fleet-footed or flappy-booted, we knocked it off, and grand is the rejoicing.

I might not be a real tramper, I might even be a pampered pansy, but I am a convert to guided walking. Why not have a hot shower at the end of six or seven hours’ hard slog? The Greenstone track is gentler, but the Routeburn has a couple of tough climbs, with rocks to scramble over and steep descents. And then there are the sandflies to contend with, and the snorers in the shared bunkrooms! It’s not easy. Every steak, every lamb rack, every pudding and every pinot noir was well-earned.

It’s been so long!  But Pamrovia is moving again.  This time it’s a tramping adventure called The Grand Traverse.  Six days of walking in the Fiordland National Park and the Mt Aspiring National Park in the South Island of New Zealand.  Here are some photos.  The next post will be a story I’ve written which will be published in a magazine later this year.

               

          

        

 

Horizons by Neil Dawson is my favourite at this wonderful place.  Dawson – he of the large suspended steel orbs such as Ferns in Wellington’s civic square – has created his biggest work ever for Gibbs Farm. Horizons is 36 metres high and can be seen from miles away. The size and hilltop site give the sculpture majesty and power, but to me it seems delicate and lace-like. Art expert Rob Garrett writes that it suggests “a giant piece of corrugated iron blown from a collapsed water tank on some distant farm”.

The biggest sculpture on this 400ha (1000 acre) farm an hour north of Auckland is the bright red Dismemberment Site 1 by Anish Kapoor (now Sir Anish, since the British knighted him last year). Is it a trumpet? Is it a trampoline? A megaphone, or some strange medical instrument? Certainly it is a huge PVC membrane stretched between two giant steel hoops snuggled into a cleft in a ridgeline. The artist has described its texture as being “rather like a flayed skin”.

Behind Dismemberment can be seen Wind Wand by Len Lye, New Zealand’s late and great kinetic sculptor whose biggest body of work – much of it brought home from America after his death – is held in the Govett-Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth.  This sculpture shoots out bolts of lightning when it is switched on, and could not be built until after Len Lye had died as only then had technology caught up with what he had in mind.

Gibbs Farm is an outdoor art gallery of mind-boggling scale. New Zealand rich-lister Alan Gibbs bought the land in 1991 and has been commissioning works from the world’s leading contemporary minimalist sculptors ever since.  Most of the sculptures are the biggest pieces the artists have ever designed. Some of them took years to come to fruition as Gibbs and his engineers battled with the challenges of making and installing them. (If you visit The Barn at the farm, you will see some of Alan Gibb’s other challenges – his prototype amphibious vehicles. They were and are tested on the shallow waters of the Kaipara Harbour which borders the farm.)

Here is a tractor mowing A Fold in the Field by American artist and architect Maya Lin, who has created “a systematic ordering of the terrain” on flat land at the harbour’s edge.

And on a hillside is Te Tuhirangi Contour by American minimalist sculptor Richard Serra. The 56 six-metre-high steel plates had to be made in Germany as no closer steel factory could do the job, and they nearly sank a ship during transport.

This is 88.5 ARCx8 by Bernar Venet, another example of the site-specific work reflecting the landscape and climate. The artist says “I am thinking about the sunrises and sunsets, and the golden light that steeps the Corten steel in red and brown hints.”

You are probably not supposed to play on the sculptures, but who can resist Leon van den Eijkel’s Red Cloud Confrontation in Landscape which – so the brochure says – is “a dialogue between European modernism and the southern hemisphere environment”.

And Pyramid (Keystone NZ) by Sol LeWitt, an American artist who used the good old Kiwi concrete block to indulge his love of the cube shape, is just made for climbing.  Although not everyone will have the energy after walking up, down and around the rolling hills for several hours.

And anyway, Gibbs Farm is in many ways the personal playground of its owner, when he’s not living in his London or Detroit homes. There is a water polo court for an athletic grandson in one of the lakes, and a quirky collection of exotic animals.  A sculpture of a giraffe by New Zealand’s Jeff Thomson in his signature corrugated iron, overlooks an enclosure with three real giraffes.

It’s not easy to visit Gibbs Farm. The place is open to the public only one day a month, and you must book in advance. At present, the next available visiting date is in September 2014.  The good news is, it’s free. And absolutely worth the travel and the wait.  See gibbsfarm.org.nz for booking.

 

The smell of coffee as you emerge from the plane. You know you are in Wellington the moment you leave the air-bridge. The aroma comes from Fuel Espresso which takes up two walls just alongside the main gates. Also welcoming you to the capital is that happy buzz which seems to emanate from groups of people drinking good coffee. Travellers, those awaiting arrivals, and groups of air crew all keep Fuel Espresso busy. The coffee is so good Fuel has expanded from Wellington to Hong Kong, and now to Shanghai.  Other New Zealanders sometimes think Wellington is a bit precious about its coffee culture, but there are so many good places for coffee here that the chances of getting a bad brew are quite slim.  Unlike Auckland, where you’ll get great coffee, provided you know where to go.

Cuba Mall.  It might be under the red-card cloud as the whole streetscape is branded an earthquake risk, but it’s still a delight to stroll along.  Linger to watch the Morris dancers (I don’t know why, but they were there), and look in all the quirky fashion, art, design and junk shops.

A new vintage shop called Unearthed is a joyous browse. 

 

Eating. Especially brunch.  Prefab is the hot new destination, run by Brigid Dunn and Jeff Kennedy of Café L’Affare fame. (Jeff sold the coffee roasting business he set up to multi-national Cerebos 8 years ago for $25million.) The interesting thing is that Prefab serves filter coffee, bottomless style as per the American diner. Jeff promises filter is great, “it’s not weak”.  Celebrity chef Al Brown is also serving filter in Auckland, so it must be the new trend. Last Saturday, Prefab had a line of people waiting for a table, as usual on weekends. Life is too short to queue so we went to Olive in Cuba Street. An oldie but goodie, Olive serves excellent espresso, and perfect poached eggs.

 

The Windy Wellington sign.  I love it. And all the other wind-inspired sculptures around the city. The sign is called Wellington – Blown Away, and it won a competition to find an appropriate sign to replace an old All Blacks sign, and a (thankfully) brief flirtation with Wellywood.  You Can’t Beat Wellington On A Good Day, the saying goes. But sadly, you can’t avoid the fact it’s incredibly windy far too often.  I guess Wellington-without-wind would be such a perfect place that everyone would want to live there, and the sheer numbers of people would ruin it.

Art at the Museum Hotel.  Just stroll in and wander around the lobby to view a high-powered collection of New Zealand’s leading contemporary artists, like this painting by Grant Hanna.  The hotel is like an extension of Te Papa. You’ll see 100 artworks by the likes of Raymond Ching, Robin White, Gretchen Albrecht, and Dick Frizzell.  At reception, you can borrow a guide book which lists and describes it all.  A new John Pule work is just beside the lift.  Across the lobby are pieces by Bill Hammond, Nigel Brown, Brent Wong and more.  You don’t even have to stay there!  Although the Museum Art Hotel is undoubtedly a great place to stay, just across the road from Te Papa and the waterfront and an easy walk to Cuba Street and Lambton Quay.

The new apartments on the old Overseas Terminal are looking good. They’ll set you back though.  Most have been sold off the plans with the cheapest at $1.3 million. Those remaining are among the most expensive.  Remax has a three-bedroom penthouse listed for $3.5 million at the moment. What Wellingtonians know as the Overseas Terminal is now called Clyde Quay Wharf. There are 75 apartments, due to be ready to live in mid-2014.