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II (5th June to 8th June)">Christchurch II (5th June to 8th June)

By Nick Hodge | November 30, 1999

Wed­nes­day, 08th June, 2005

A 45% full Air New Zea­l­and from Christ­ch­urch to Sydney, land­ing on 34L. Quickly through Cus­toms and Immig­ra­tion, and home. Being a farmer’s son, I know the impact of footrot (and other nasty dis­eases), so I’d cleaned the sheep poo from my shoes. Cus­toms were happy and no xray or hand inspec­tion neces­sary. I was expect­ing the full drug-sniffing dog treatment.

On Sydney soil for only 18 hours, and Avril and I are off. To Mex­ico via LAX.

Monday, 06th June, 2005

Out of the hotel at 8.30pm, Stama­tia and I head towards Mount Hutt. A little secret in my life is that I’ve only been to “the snow” once — when I was less than 2 years old — and have never returned. Today is the day for me to be re-introduced.

Mount Hutt is the closest skiing/snowboarding moun­tain to Christ­ch­urch — about 2 hours drive from centre Christ­ch­urch to the car park at the peak: includ­ing time for the applic­a­tion of chains and to stop and take in the scenery of the Cante­bury plan jux­ta­posed with the snow-capped mountains.

At the base of the moun­tain, I hire chains for the hire car — includ­ing install­a­tion this is NZ$20. Not a bad deal at all, since it takes two people crawl­ing around the dirty wheel arches; mud, grease and tire black: installing chains to the tyres.

Pick­ing up two Christ­ch­urch stu­dent snow­boarders for com­pany, Jack (from Shang­hai) and Steelian (from Bel­gium) we drive up the wind­ing, muddy and then snow capped roads with a sheer rise on one side, and fall to the other. Our lives are in my hands. Okey­doakey, lets go.

The dis­con­cert­ing exper­i­ence of hav­ing the wheel hard over in the exact dir­ec­tion of the sheer drop to cer­tain page 1 head­lines in Sydney, to point the car in a for­wards dir­ec­tion is rather strange. Being my first exper­i­ence with snow and chain driv­ing is all the adren­aline rush I need. For today at least.

Snow. It starts of cold, and then it gets wet. Then its really cold. Now, I’ve cleaned refridger­ator freez­ers in my time: from the big box ones to baby ones. Snow is this, just spread all around. As a com­mit­ted winter per­son, I am in love. OK, so I’ve now exper­i­enced snow. Cool. Its bloody cold; time for coffee.

After watch­ing the skii­ers and snow­boarders clash for the powdery runs, we decide the leave for win­dier climes.

One the trip down Mount Hutt there are two pieces of crit­ical advice that poun­ded in my head. One over 20 years ago from my dad about “turn­ing out of the curve of a slide” and more recently from Shang­hai Jack (the snow­boarder hitch­hiker): don’t break and use a low gear. Both of these pieces of advice were instru­mental in a safe trip down. Once side­ways slide (saved) and many times ulti­mate con­trol helped.

Chains off, and two hour drive back via Lyt­telton to Sum­ner for a late lunch at the Rock Cafe. This is on the esplanade near what Sum­ner calls a beach. Two surfers brave the tem­per­at­ure, wind and rain.

We fol­low more sheer cliff-bound roads to God­ley head. Scoped out yes­ter­day, and after the rain and into the wind — Stama­tia and I explore the site of a WWII bat­tery that has clear views over Lyttleton har­bour and Christ­ch­urch. All that is left now are sheep of mixed her­it­age (meri­nos, suf­folks and a lan­cashire cross I think) pro­tect­ing the har­bour from terrorists.

Drive home (hotel) and rest.

Monday, 06th June, 2005

I have returned to Christ­ch­urch (refer Wel­ling­ton and Christ­ch­urch (21st April and 22nd April)), New Zea­l­and, for 4 days. Away from Sydney at Sunday at 6am, for a 40% full Qantas flight at 8:55am. The flight was so quick, I didn’t have time to listen to 2 hours of the 17 hours I can fit onto my new iPod Shuffle. Yes, I caved in at Duty Free and lumped down AU9 for 1Gb of backup device. This is about AU more than a Sandisk 1Gb SD card — so its not too bad for Apple-badged equip­ment. On the flight, only 5 seats out of 30 busi­ness class seats are taken.

Fly­ing over the snow-capped peaks causes all the pas­sen­gers to peek out at a unique piece of geography.

Through Christ­ch­urch Immmig­ra­tion and Cus­toms, I look sheep­ishly for the drug-sniffing dogs. Look­ing like a sheep when attempt­ing to avoid pro­fes­sional coked-up canines is not a good move. Last time I came into NZ via Christ­ch­urch, I was assaul­ted in a “spe­cial way” in the crotch by a drug sniff­ing dog. This caused 30 minutes of extreme bag­ga­ging search­ing and ulti­mate frus­tra­tion for the eager cus­toms officer. This time, I exit cleanly.

Christ­ch­urch is con­veni­ently situ­ated around the local rugby fields, so its easy to find your way around. This trip, I’ve taken the plunge in a hirecar.

I think of Alan, the taxi driver I had in my last trip to Christ­ch­urch. I hope he has today off. Many of the loc­a­tions of visit today and tomor­row are a res­ult of my ques­tions. Sum­ner, Mount Hutt.

Mak­ing my way out to the south­ern part of the Pacific, I take some quick pho­tos and make my way to Taylor’s Mis­take via Sum­ner. Spot­ting the God­ley Point WWII bat­tery, I make a note to visit tomor­row. Its back to Christ­ch­urch via the Lyt­telton tun­nel. Now that’s a tunnel!

I’ve noticed more in the south island that rubgy plays a close first as the offi­cial reli­gion of state — just like AFL is the reli­gion of Mel­bourne. One can just ima­gine what would hap­pen if Rugby was out­lawed in this coun­try — it would fall apart.

Topics: mungenet | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Christchurch II (5th June to 8th June)”

  1. In Like Mike | nickhodge.com Says:
    September 10th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    […] Like all pic­tures, there is a back story, too. […]

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