New Zealand -1500 miles on foot through- The Land Of The Long White Cloud

Manu and Coffey

The morning was fresh and bright as I set off from Waipapakauri Bridge and my legs were working well.  A few kilometres later I reached the Ancient Kauri Kingdom factory.  Large trunks of ancient kauri wood, which had been dug up from the ground, lay in a yard of the factory.  The wood was allegedly up to 45,000 years old, but had been preserved by successive layers of peat bog forming on top of fallen trees.  The theory is that the shallow-rooted, and top-heavy, kauri trees toppled over, when the forest flooded, due to rising water levels around 45,000 years ago.  The oldest workable wood in the world, it was used to make amazing furniture, bowls and ornaments, which had a strange, magical, golden brown hue and wavy grain from the kauri growth rings.  Around Aranui now, though, there were no living kauri trees, just fields of rich green grass, where the land had been drained by digging ditches to carry away the water of the swamps.

 Not far from the kauri factory I came to Awanui School.  The principal was telling a boy off, in front of the rest of the school, for having set the fire alarm off.  The boy was getting a good dusting down.  I snuck quitely up to a lady teacher and explained who I was.  She showed me into the staffroom and everything was fine.

The principal came in and we talked.  He said he would get the kids ready and that i had about twenty minutes to talk.  I got a coffee and sat down.  At about 9.00 am I was called into one of the classrooms and gave my story.  One of the boys tried the pack on and was amazed at the weight of it.  I took pictures with the camera and all was well.

From Awanui I called Kaitaia Intermediate and Kaitaia Primary, and Broadwood School.  The Intermediate School wanted me for 10 minutes at 11.40.  The primary school were still thinking about it, but could do it at 1.00 pm.  Someone from Broadwood would take my pack from me on the road, so I could walk quicker and would pick me up at 6.00 pm to give me a place to stay in Broadwood.  My day's walk was looking interesting!

I set off for Kaitaia.  It was looking like a lovely day.  I stopped to take pictures of the walls of the Awanui Store, which were painted with depictions of the kauri gum-diggers, knee deep in the swamps of the area.  The paintings were incredibly realistic and brought home what the life of the diggers was like.  The land was cut by a broad stream, with dark yellowy-brown sandy banks and well drained fields lay all around.

For me it was time to hot-foot it to Kaitaia.  By the road there was a 4 kilometre distance marker, with other markers after each kilometre, to be used to check the speed of cars.  I decided to use the markers to keep to a pace of 5 kilometres per hour, and hoped to reach the end of the 4 kilometres in 48 minutes.  After just under twelve minutes I reached the first marker.  At just over 25 minutes the second marker past me by.  I speeded up.  The third marker came at 37 minutes.  For the last kilometre I began to jog, with the heavy pack swaying from side to side.  The 48 minutes came and went, with the final marker just ahead of me.  After 50 minutes of fast walking and jogging I had covered the 4 kilometres.

The fast walking would get me to Kaitaia in time for the talk at the school, but it was a mistake.  My right foot was aching badly, as I reached the outskirts of town.  The sharp pain in my back, which had gone away with my stay with Wendy and Richard had also come back, and nagged away insistently.  It was all I could do to keep on moving.

I reached Kaitaia Intermediate School, just in time for their assembly.  The principal, Mr. Graham, introduced me to the three hundred children, who were gathered in the school hall, but it appeared he wasn't too sure what I was doing.  The children sang a couple of songs, notices were read out and school business taken care of, then came my ten minutes.  From the looks on the faces of the children, they didn't know what to expect.  In the ten minutes I told a couple of stories about holding the tuatara back in Auckland and seeing the kiwi back in the Glow-worm Grotto.  I answered questions from the children and they warmed to the talk.  It went well.  I said goodbye to the children, the principal wished me luck and the children were marshalled out of the hall.