Day 28 Wanaka, Cadrona, Queenstown

Day 28 Wanaka, Cadrona, Queenstown.

I'm up at 5 and take my little pack from the office to the shiny, new communal kitchen. Sam had alerted the office that I was traveling light and they've given me coffee and tea sachets and milk and a cup but in the kitchen there is no microwave or pots and pans or utensils. I have the option of beans out of a can or muesli with milk eaten out of the plastic packet so it's muesli for breakfast.

I have to climb to 1000 metres which sounds intimidating but yesterday climbed 800 metres and did an easy day of 78 kms. I rode from Hawea with Kate and Margo who camped at Wonderland and although they started 2 hrs later, had caught me by lunch at the general store.

Kate, Margo and the other J Arnold

We got on another beautiful trail beside the rushing outlet from the dam wall and they were pushing hard, zooming along the dusty path, in and out of pine forest and stopping for lots of photos. Margot met a friend halfway, another J Arnold, and we rode a bit further then they burned me off. It's not much fun eating dust anyway so I just tootled along. The photos say it all. The weather is sublime.

Wanaka is getting like Queenstown. Flash apartments with lots of glass and wide balconies and lake and mountain views. I can't find any locals to ask directions and the information was closed so I'm looking at all these bars full of lively, snappily dressed young uns, quaffing refreshments and I must admit I look pretty disreputable having not shaven since Blenheim, dusty, sweaty. Suddenly I was greeted like a long lost friend by Mike and Stephanie who I had briefly spoken to on the Hawea lookout although I couldn't quite remember where I had seen them, I've talked to dozens of people and was so hot. They bought me a beer and were so enthusiastic about what I was doing and were considering doing something similar. It was happy hour and so pleasant. Some people you meet you feel like you have known your whole life. We swapped life stories and I told them some of the funny things that had happened. I told them I was thinking of writing a book about my journey and father's arthritis and linking it to this journey and revisiting all the old places and calling it, "Stitching the Highways of the Heart" because of all the zig zagging across the roads, driving the Official tracker crazy, and making my route a mess. We talked our family tragedies and I had a senior moment, it was so pleasant and they were so kind.

Wanaka refreshments with Mike and Stephanie.

My father was born in 1912, only 4 when his three brothers went to WW1. Dad was 33 when he returned from the war and 42 when I was born. He was on the first ship home after the war ended, leaving from Tripoli. They had fought all the way up Italy and liberated Florence. His mother had watched Rory leave on his horse, Kowhai, and waved back at her from the end of the valley before he and Kowhai disappeared. She knew she would never see him again but was resolved to see her younger son when he returned. Apparently she was a tall woman and walked with crutches in later life. Her daughter, Kath, looked after her and never married. She saw Dad and passed away soon after. Of Dad's three brothers in WWI. Rory died, Dick came back stone deaf, his son went on to become a professor of history at Victoria university and wrote several books, and Brian, I learned recently cleared out, abandoning his new ride and was never heard from much again. We have no idea where he died or if he ever had children. He had said to his sister if he stayed he would murder his father. He kept in loose touch with another sister, Norah, who lived most of her life in London, England, including all through the Blitz. She had returned to NZ a couple of times but found it too provincial. Mum and Dad settled on the farm. Dad's payout from his war service gave him just enough money to buy a car and they went to work.

They were lucky in many respects because the Korean War came along and wool prices skyrocketed as the UN forces needed warm clothes for fighting in the bitterly cold conditions. Wool fetched one pound for a pound of wool. They picked all the fleece snagged on the barbed wire fences and made some money. One of mum's younger brothers fought in Korea. Ironically one of Sam's uncles. Saam Suk, third younger brother, had been deposed during the Cultural Revolution and exiled to primitive labour camps in Qing Hai, near Tibet, but during the Korean War he was forced to drive lorries supplying the Chinese troops who had joined the fighting on the side of the North.

I had always wondered why the family left the farm, they had four children, by then, I remember when Fay was born because I sat out at the gate and looked out down the valley where she had just gone. The woman employed to look after us came out and got me, carrying a teatowel. Apparently I cried so much Dad took me around the farm all day with him. In those days women spent 7 or ten days, in the maternity home. I'm not quite sure. It was probably the only break a lot of the poor women ever had. Mum still had no electricity although they did have a kerosene fridge. I had always assumed mum wanted to shift, she was teaching my older sisters through the correspondence school.

She had apparently said to my cousin on Dad's side about her own mother that although her mother had a fine education at Nelson College, passing the 7th form, she had never learned how to not have babies. She had 12, mum the oldest. Mum always regretted not having the opportunity for more schooling, having to leave at 13 and bring up her younger siblings.

Mum had said that dad was terribly depressed after the war and would sometimes not speak for days. There were few visitors, shearing gangs twice a year. She had said he spent a lot of time talking to a refugee who worked for the County killing rabbits which were of plague proportions. The man had been an inmate of Auschwitz and had the tattooed number to prove it. He and dad shared a common bond, they knew a bit about suffering.

It wasn't until after he died I learned he had been in action, probably at Monte Casino, where the NZ Armoured Division lost several tanks attempting to support the Maori battalion who had taken the Railway Station, a vital link to securing access beyond Casino towards Rome. He was a tank driver and the tank had been knocked out and one of the crew killed. Mum alluded to a breakdown in her personal story for a book on our family history. Dad had a furlough to Palestine but only told us how he had enjoyed floating in the Dead Sea. The Maori Battalion were decimated and had to retreat.

The NZ Division lost 343 deaths and over 600 wounded. Sam and I visited the Abbey and the War Cemetery. The Abbey which dad had been into soon after the Germans left has been rebuilt and the cemetery is beautifully kept. I have a painted plate Dad souvenired from that Casino on my wall.

Roadkill. Possums are a pest.