Island of hope and glory

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This was published 15 years ago

Island of hope and glory

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As budgets begin to bite, there's an economical - and exquisite - overseas option nearby, writes Greg Baum.

The long white cloud lay low over Christchurch. One plane overshot the runway, two others were diverted to Auckland. At Tullamarine, as the delay lengthened, we were told at first that we might not fly at all, then to expect that if the fog was too thick we might still be re-routed to Auckland, too. It was not a propitious omen.

But at the bottom of the descent only wisps remain and we land uneventfully at 1.30am. Customs officials' questions about a pair of walking boots prove to be a bumpier ride.

Our direction is against the usual flow of tourists, not south to Queenstown and the ski fields, but north to the so-called Alpine Pacific Triangle, a region compact enough that one tank of fuel lasts almost five days.

This, we had been told, is still a relatively undiscovered land of all seasons and myriad indulgence. The first, if only for a few hours, is the sumptuous George Hotel in Christchurch, with a bed even wider than it is long - "like a cloud", murmurs my companion as we finally sink into it at 2.30am. Nosing around the room the next morning, we find three bins, including one for recyclables. New Zealand, we quickly learn, is an acutely eco-conscious country.

The care is less obvious the next morning as we are overtaken repeatedly by cars at recklessly high speeds, the icy sheen on the roads notwithstanding.

Flaxmere Garden is the antidote. More than 40 years ago, Penny Zino and her husband, John, who originally hailed from the Atlantic island of Madeira, bought and cleared land in a favourite spot, but were left exposed to infamous blasting winds, winter and summer, and needed a windbreak.

Penny took to heart two pieces of advice: her mother's (to "do a creative thing every day") and her mother-in-law's (to "plant colours"). She "did lots of drawings and left them lying around", so convincing her husband it was all his idea. The result is what she calls a tribute to the change of seasons: poplars, silver birches, cherries, some natives, roses, of course, and in the summer, a sea of daffodils. This day there is still ice on the ponds and a little residual damage from a recent heavy snowfall. Her pride are the stone walls she built herself.

John died 14 years ago but Penny works on, her garden now a dedication. Recently, she managed a 28-day trek in the Himalayas; on her kitchen table lies a book called The Rhododendrons Of Nepal. Not for the last time, we observe how immensely creative New Zealanders are.

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Next stop is Hanmer Springs, a spa town set among conifers and Californian redwoods at the foot of the endless Southern Alps, population 700, visitors 500,000 annually. Our lodgings are at Fontainebleau, two years old and the pride of John and Virginia Bagrie. After raising their children on a dairy farm near bleak and freezing Invercargill, they decided on a change of scenery and pace. Fontainebleau is North American in style, rich in candelabra, backing onto woodlands and a frozen pond on which ducks skate and skitter.

The clientele, we learn, are professionals and romantics; already, Fontainebleau has inspired three proposals, and Virginia keeps a bottle of champagne permanently on ice. Drinks are at six and almost always pinot noir. Virginia rejoices in eclectic company. She tells of the hilarious misadventures of a pair of sisters from Wellington, one married to a policeman. "I wonder if they ever did find the key to those handcuffs."

John waits in crisply pressed pants and shirt to ferry guests to and from town in the Jag. We walk, enjoying the crisply pressed air. At a restaurant called Malabar, over rich spices, Alpine Pacific Tourism general manager Scott Pearson describes his two sons and three cows, and how, following the previous week's snowstorm, he spent a morning snowboarding on the powder in his backyard.

A facial, massage and pedicure the next morning at Hanmer Springs - and a spa in a pool that is sometimes trimmed by newly fallen snow - followed by a dreamy drive through glorious sub-alpine countryside makes for such a relaxed mood that we almost miss the entry to The Gates, a B&B tucked out of the wind's way behind an embankment on a bend of the Waiau River.

Coffee and teacake await, and so does Mark Eastmond, an eye cocked at the clock and the clouds. As Penny Zino believes in one creative act daily to stimulate the senses, Eastmond believes in "one scare a day". Besides managing an engineering business and a nursery and growing hazelnuts on his few hectares, he and his wife, Caroline, run a jet boat on the Waiau River and 4WD tours of the high country.

Eastmond is not reckless, rather a man at home in his landscape. He talks about the river and the sea, tides, currents, history, Maori, vegetation, agriculture, viticulture, ecology, climate and its rapid and troubling change. He identifies migrating orca whales individually, Canadian geese by formation. He tells of a rich local woman who picked out the church in which she wanted to marry, but disliked its location and so had it moved to her fiance's farm. It sits there still, weatherboard picture book, but somehow lost.

With Eastmond at the wheel, we skim down the Waiau River, pebbly, wide and shallow; fortunately, he needs only 10 centimetres of draft to navigate it. The river mouth, not reachable by road, is tricked up by a constantly shifting sand bar. Usually, Eastmond would judge the moment and the angle to flit over it and through the on-rushing surf to take fishermen to the deep.

Instead, we anchor and watch seals frolic in the shore break, and gulls and terns circle and wheel gloriously in the misty late afternoon.

Dinner for us is at The Gates, once the country retreat of a prosperous city dweller, now stylishly restored by Jim and Wendy Harre, who took as their colour cue the copper brown of the beech tree at the entrance. Both are former Air New Zealand flight attendants, emigres from Auckland, and he is also a wine judge.

In front of a blazing fire, we feast on whitebait, local lamb augmented by Eastmond's hazelnuts, apple tart and more pinot noir. The night is frosty but not under our cumulus of quilt. In this deceptive wilderness, the temperature range is minus 8 to 40 degrees, sunburn is a year-round risk, a note instructs guests on the procedure for earthquakes and another warns elegantly of summer flies thus: "North Canterbury is an entomologist's delight."

In two hours of scenic driving to Kaikoura, we do not see another car. On arrival, the snowcaps appear to fall away directly into the ocean. The effect is picturesque and bountiful; an ocean trench just a few kilometres offshore is rich with fish and brings whales, dolphins and seabirds closer to land than almost anywhere else on Earth. The dolphins are away and it's too windy for the whale-spotting plane, but 20 minutes with able seaman Gary on a moderate swell takes us to another world.

Out here, we are mobbed by seabirds, some gliding, some swooping, some bobbing, some dipping their improbably widespread wings in the water as they turn, some scrambling over the waves as if walking, all squawking; it is the seagull scene from Finding Nemo - live.

Pairs of albatrosses, we learn, mostly live far apart and far from land, take three years to court and 11 months to mate, and have a divorce rate of merely 7 per cent. Go figure.

Nearby, a husband-and-wife fishing team haul in groper, a rarity; Gary says too many big boats have killed off the best fishing. He was once a fisherman, still has a fisherman's unflappable disposition, but is now first mate on Braveheart, expeditioning around the Southern Ocean. Our nausea dampened by hot chocolate and ginger biscuits, we return to shore - Gary to his dog, us to Hapuku Lodge.

Years ago, a local farmer offered some of his land to two young surfers who habitually camped on it anyway, the better of them to catch a world-famous break nearby. The uncle of one bought it and, inspired by the topography, built a series of luxury tree huts. In ours, the spa and shower overlook the ocean, the fireplace the snowcaps; beneath, deer graze and olives grow. Here we share drinks and dinner with three couples, long-time friends and business partners from Australia celebrating a 60th birthday.

Our host is Mark, an American poet and editor, who divides his time between San Francisco and Australasia, and who has orchestrated a loaves-and-fishes act tonight with two crayfish. All the while, the pinot flows and the fireplace crackles.

Kaikoura is called a peninsula, but is really a headland, achingly pretty, circumnavigable on foot in a couple of hours. At its point, there is a seal colony and Fyffe House, Kaikoura's original dwelling, built by whalers from Scotland on whalebone foundations and once sporting a whalebone fence.

Nearby, Walter Kunz and his wife, Brigit, immigrants from Switzerland, perch in their gallery, he painting, she gilding, using gold leaf beaten to 0.00013 of a centimetre. It is artful and delicate work, and again we marvel at New Zealand's creative culture.

The return road journey is a classic of tunnels, seafront and surf. In the paddocks, livestock cluster behind windbreaks, anticipating a storm that passes in a wintry hour, leaving a fetching ghosting of snow on the higher pastures.

Our last night is at Dry Paddocks, near Amberley, secreted behind a vast vineyard and looking towards the frosty mountains. It is a cottage in the French provincial style, austere to behold now with its still young garden, but full of warmth and detail inside: wine, music, movies and a selection of ready-cooked meals. We quickly abandon plans to eat out.

The next morning, a brisk one, we find Daniel Schuster's Omihi vineyard tucked away between undulations of the landscape and, outside it, winemaker Nick Brown awaiting a shipment of grapes. It is quiet now but, Brown explains, the wine will "come to life in the spring, with the lambs and daffodils", popping the plugs of the assembled barrels as sun and bacteria go to work. Then, he says, you should taste the pinot.

That was lunchtime. By late afternoon, we're back home in Melbourne, sooner than we might have been from, for instance, Port Douglas or Margaret River.

At Fontainebleau, Virginia Bagre had quoted her father thus: "No matter how big your castle, if you can't get away, it's a jail."

The tightening economy might make Australia something of an imprisoning castle but just outside the walls is New Zealand, where one tank of petrol still will get you a long way.

Greg Baum travelled courtesy of Alpine Pacific Tourism.

FAST FACTS

Getting there

Air New Zealand flies to Christchurch for $172 from Melbourne and Sydney; Virgin Blue has fares from $65 ex Sydney and $114 ex Melbourne. (Fares are one-way and do not include tax.)

Staying there

The George, 50 Park Terrace, Christchurch, has rooms from $NZ385 ($302). See http://www.thegeorge.com.

Fontainebleau, Hanmer Springs, has rooms from $NZ360. See http://www.fontainebleau.co.nz.

The Gates Country Lodge, Waiau, costs $NZ495 a double for dinner, bed and breakfast. See http://www.thegateslodge.co.nz.

Hapuku Lodge & Tree Houses, Kaikoura, has lodgings from $NZ490 a night. See http://www.hapukulodge.com.

Dry Paddocks, Amberley, has rooms from $NZ295. See http://www.drypaddocks.co.nz.

While you're there

Flaxmere Garden, Hawarden. See http://www.flaxmeregarden.co.nz.

Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools & Spa, adult entry $NZ12, child $NZ6. See http://www.hanmer springs.co.nz.

Wings Over Whales, Kaikoura Airfield, runs 30-minute flights, adults $NZ145. See http://www.whales.co.nz.

Albatross Encounter, Kaikoura, has three-hour boat rides, adult $NZ80, child $NZ40. See http://www.oceanwings.co.nz.

North Canterbury Personal Tours. See www.nz-holiday.co.nz.

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