'Did you pack the chainsaw?' and other tales from New South Wales

Easter Monday. We are leaving the bush block at the edge of Mount Royal National Park and my teeth are rattling as we bounce on the rutted lane. The noise of the ute is not quite drowning the racket of crickets in the dry, leafy forest. Richard is driving. 'Have you packed the chainsaw?', enquires Sue, his wife. Not, 'You didn't forget the vinaigrette?' (France), for instance, or 'Have we got the brolly?' (England). No, this is definitely the next level of contingencies.
He hasn't. Damn...
'Ah, we are going to get it, then', remarks Carolyn, Sue's sister. 'Get what?' I am puzzled.
The soil cover is not very deep. Roots hang on for dear life.  I cast a worried glance at the gumtrees leaning perilously over us. Any one of them could fall across the track and where would we be then without the chainsaw?

I used to teach French on Skype to Richard and Sue. Upon hearing that I was in Sydney, they have kindly invited me to their mud brick house in a beautiful wilderness, a couple of hours away from the small town of Scone, NSW, where Richard is a GP and Sue is in the town council. She announces me proudly that she got the council to vote on the reality of global warming. If anything is going to change, this is where it starts. Incredible that some people still doubt it in the light of extreme weather patterns, in Australia and anywhere else. She is also an Extinction Rebellion member and a 'Knitting nana', a movement that started with sitting in, in peaceful protest against unconventionally mined gas in NSW. It really is bad press to arrest a grandmother.

I am very touched to share their family celebration. I meet their daughter Philippa and son-in-law, James, who gave me a ride from Sydney and little baby Harriett. Sue's sister, Carolyn and niece, Sarah, arrive the next day. I am immediately warned about snakes, about not going into the bush in sandals, am shown the collection of gumboots on the rack, the head torches to get to the outdoor toilets at night ('The little house on the prairie', as I call it) and not tread on anything unpalatable, the energy hut with all the solar powered batteries, the dam (complete with diamond python) where some of their water comes from, the delightful house, with its old wood furniture and a shady terrace.

My room is cosy, vibrant with colours, fragrant with the rosemary outside my window, buzzing with bees. The mint that has invaded a whole corner of the vegetable patch is dotted with tiny green frogs. A small snake slithers away from underneath the brick path between beds. I clear and weed a row of beans. Cautiously.

For the egg hunt, I design cryptic clues almost worthy of the Sydney Morning Herald crosswords. Forgetting there is a black snake lurking in the pumpkin patch, I hide eggs under a leaf. They will be retrieved with trepidation.

The weekend is a sunny dream. A grey kangaroo and her joey come have a drink from the bird bath. A wedge-tail eagle soars in the cloudless sky. Lovely food continues to appear on the table : soups, barbecued lamb, salads, vegetable, vegan cheeses, cakes and meringues.

At 11, having barely processed breakfast, we stop for morning tea, which is coffee (and cakes), then lunch, followed at 5 by afternoon tea, which is tea. We follow a sheep shearer's schedule, Richard says, who's done that as a weekend job in his youth. Before dinner, we walk through the forest to the edge of a sheer drop where, bathed in a golden light, we toast the sunset with an excellent champagne. Sue, who has a beautiful jazz voice, sings 'Waltzing Matilda' on the ukulele. I am in the Australia I read about in novels set in the New South Wales countryside. Apart from pétanque on the the dusty drive, that is.

Maggie and Allen, with their 'don't mention it' kindness, welcome me again in Earlwood, the Sydney suburb where they live, in their lovely cottage ruled by cats where one awakes to the delights of  the dawn chorus of indigenous birds from the nearby park.

I don't feel motivated to follow many touristy pursuits this time. I have already done that in January. There is still plenty to see and do but, this time, I prefer to enjoy my friends' company - I don't know when I'll see them again - weed out my belongings to a manageable weight and agonise about where to go next. South? West? No, north. But where in the north? Reality check: this is one huge country.
'In Australia, 100 years is a long time. In Europe, 100 kilometres is a long distance.'

By a lucky coincidence, Helen and David are around too. They have driven from Canberra to meet their new grandson, Finnean, a big baby, thoughtful and quiet. We share precious family moments and the iconic Bondi to Coogee walk.














Who would think, as we admire the rugged coastline, that we are only a few kilometres away from the most busy city in Australia? The weather is unseasonably hot and I enjoy again Australia's seaside delights. Swim through the roller-coaster of tumbling waves then get carried away by the rip once you lose your footing. I grab Helen's hand. Proceed with care. A general rule to follow, I'm coming to discover.

















I catch up with Meredith and her husband Andrew who likes to experiment with various alcoholic beverages. He plies me with delicious homemade stuff: I sample an aperitif based on violet liqueur and taste his lime limoncello. I leave, feeling cheerful, with a bottle of the former pressed into my hands.
Mariamma, a fiddle player and piano teacher and Yasmine, from Bali, invite me for a meal in Newton, a trendy surburb with a good buzz, quiet leafy streets and charming old houses with lace ironwork.

The Blue Mountains are accessible from Sydney by a train bursting with Chinese tourists. I start wondering about the wisdom of going to the Three sisters and walk the cliff paths. But it is a sunny day and surely it can't be that bad. It is that bad...... Still, the solemn grandeur of the scenery helps to ignore the selfie-taking crowds and after half an hour of walking on dizzying hiking trails, visitors have thinned to a couple of families and quick-footed youngsters scrambling on the trails like goats. A stunning couple of hours hiking.

I pester my friends with questions about possible destinations. They are really getting fed up with me. They must be! But all remain patient and polite. It starts to congeal into a definite plan.

Philippa says 'Yamba'. Maggie says 'Iluka'. Luckily, both towns are on the Clarence river, south of the border between Queensland and new South Wales, 700 km north of Sydney.

For my trip, I have rented a car from Coolangatta airport and will quickly hit roadworks. A rich collection of signs indicating a wide range of speed limits and increasingly threatening messages has sprouted on the side of the road: 'Speed limit enforced', 'Double demerits',  'Heavy fine', 'You may lose your license'. Whatever next? Prison?
Somebody in Australia is making a fortune producing road signs : it is impossible to forget about the speed limit. Definitely a country for me.

So, off to Yamba I drive and arrive just in time to admire the sunset over the river,  charmed by the exuberance of a multitude of bird in the Norfolk pines. Yamba is a recently 'discovered' surfing haunt. On the hostel's terrace, over breakfast, a dreadlocked, hey man, young Englishman from Exeter wistfully informs me that the wind is all wrong for surfing today. It flattens the waves. 'Ah! Fantastic!', I reply with a total lack of empathy and leg it to the shore with swimmers and a towel.
This is what welcomes me:

Apart from that, enjoy your swim. I did. Thank you very much. Flat waves indeed. Perfect.

And this:

A retired couple, huddled under an awning, strain their eyes on a small screen showing images sent from a drone flying over the beaches. They haven't spotted a dangerous shark for a whole year. Reassuring.

On the north side of the Clarence river, Iluka is a sleepy village with sprawling gardens full of flowers, a small marina, an emporium bursting with characterful antiques, an excellent coffee shop and a bakery that makes good bread. It also has some of the last remaining coastal rainforests in NSW. Deby, my Airbnb hostess, directs me towards a beautiful walk through hanging vines to a scenic beach where the local aborigine tribe still fishes. I make my way back not quite early enough to avoid mosquito time and leave behind me a waft of citronella.

Sunday is the day for a river cruise with music. As I wait at the pier, a lanky man with a speech impediment informs me that the band is short of a musician.
He's disgusted, you see'.
'Disgusted? Why?'
'Last time he played, a pelican did his business on his guitar case, on the amp and on the loudspeakers. Took forever to clean. Mind, he was lucky.'
'He was?'
'Yes, it's much worse with shags. The smell stays for weeks.'

So I embark on the river cruise, keeping an eye on pelicans. No cool, self-respecting, Yamba surfer would ever be seen doing that. 4X beer, crisps and meat pies, overweight pianist and jaded-looking drummer, retired couples and fractious teenagers... It's delightful. We chug upstream on the smooth waters, spot water fowl, chat, sing along to the songs we know and get a bit tipsy and a bit sunburnt. The perfect low key way to spend a lazy Sunday.

On May 18th, Australians are going to elect their members of Parliament and I get a fair idea of the political leanings of an area by the main posters on display. I saw mostly Labour candidates in the Sydney suburbs I visited. Yamba and Iluka favour the liberal national coalition. This is why Deby, my hostess, and her family are leaving. Her husband and son are already in Sydney. A well-travelled, open couple, they find themselves more and more at odds with increasing close-mindedness or worse.

Deby is a gem. She offers me the loft room instead of camping in the yard, also invites me to share her supper and to stay another night at her place. The house is a harmonious riot of colours, of paintings, of old disparate furniture, home-made lamps and clocks and boasts an outdoor Moroccan-style bathroom, my favourite.

We are never a loss for topics of conversation. It bubbles and sparkles. There will be more to share.
Someone I would dearly love to see again.
Why I suddenly decided to book on airbnb, the first time since I started travelling in December, I don't know. It was meant to be.

I have a day to travel up the coast to my friends in Uki, one hour or so inland from Byron Bay. Natasha and Bruce, who had organised the retreat in the Border Ranges National Park in January, have invited me to stay with them.

On the way, I stop at Cape Byron, the most easterly point on mainland Australia, see dolphins leaping in the waves and admire the stunning beach that stretches all the way to Broken Head point. Yet another surfing hotspot. There won't be so many more further north, see. The great barrier reef acts as a, well, erm, barrier, to the surf and I will see in Queensland lovely stretches of golden sand, lapped by inviting jade and turquoise wavelets. Ah, yes, but there are saltwater crocs. You can never win.

As much as would like to stop at Byron Bay, it is far too busy and far too trendy for me. Besides, I don't want to spend the rest of my travelling budget in parking fees. So, good bye, Byron Bay.
Election posters on display show smiling photos of green candidates, as they do too in the small towns of Murwillumbah and Mullumbimby. I notice lovely cafés. Shops, redolent with incense, sell Indian clothes, crystals and dream catchers. Alternative therapy surgeries have pride of place on the main street. There is definite action against the use of plastic, against big corporations taking more than their share of spring water. I can recognise an old hippy hides-hole when I see one. It feels like coming home.

In Uki, Bruce picks me up from Michele's, a big-hearted lady who makes original and beautiful glass beads and jewellery. I follow his car in the night through twists and turns to his octogonal house in the bush, full of plants and music instruments. The rainforest hugs the verandah very close.
Monday night is music night and so it has been for many years. Upon hearing that I play a bit, I am given a guitar, chords are called out to me for each rock and folk tune and off we go, Natasha steady on the drums. It is exhilarating to be playing with a real band.

After a tea and a potent smoke break, I lay on the verandah on a deckchair to contemplate the spinning stars, listen to the crickets above the muffled sounds of music until the cold of the night seeps into my bones and I retreat inside for a wonderful impromptu on drums, guitars and base. I add my voice to it and improvise with all my heart.
Now, I would live in Uki just for the Monday night music, for the kindness of this group of friends who included me immediately.

A few seconds up the slope from Bruce's and Natasha's, Stue explores music in delighted seclusion and does repairs in an open air workshop by his small cabin. His space is full to the brim with instruments he's fixed, a bouzouki inlaid with mother of pearl, more guitars and bases than you would care to count, a few pianos, including a Fender Rhodes that would have made The Doors very happy, percussions of all sorts, a 200 year old double base and that's not all of it. He bought none of them and he plays them all.
I listen to a piece he has registered in his recording studio in the cabin in the bush, mixing percussions and guitar with a Spanish flavour... It is not unlike Fernando's kitchen but, I think, better.

Bruce takes me on a walk to the lyrebird Wolumbin track. Wolumbin is the native word for Mount Warning. Of lyrebirds, I see none. Wildlife doesn't appear on appointment. It is an ever rarer gift to see animals in the wild.
At the time when trees were felled by the thousands in that beautiful Gondwana rainforest, lyrebirds learned to mimic chainsaws. They are excellent imitators. These days, when you hear the din of a chainsaw in that protected forest, it's the lyrebirds. They have passed it on to their offsprings, generation after generation. Or maybe it's a ute stuck on a dirt road?



Good bye, New South Wales, you have given me a wonderful ride. Thank you for your gifts, my friends. As beautiful as a place may be, it is you who make it unforgettable.

Before I leave, Natasha takes me to ecstatic dancing. Every Wednesday morning, in the village hall next to the post office cum café, a small group of people moves, stamps and flows to the beat. Penny, the dog, wags her tail in peaceful and baffled accompaniment, is petted by all and lies down next to those who sit on the floorboards for a breather.

In Uki, even the dogs go to ecstatic dancing.

Raincheck

I have taken a long enough raincheck.
Memories of New Zealand are fading away and are replaced by the vibrant immediacy of the "Here and Now". Skipping a chapter would be tempting.
I am south of the Queensland border, near Mount Warning, Wollumbin in the native tongue. I drove from Iluka to Uki, through Mullumbimby and Murwillumbah. I need to write those names. I love to mouth them. They are playful on the tongue.
But no, Australia will have to wait. I am one country behind.
Today, alone in a wooden octagonal house in the Australian bush, I am given an introspective incentive by a soft patter on palms, ferns and gum trees. No golden sunlight to draw me like a moth.

There is a water theme...

It's pouring down when Judy fetches me off the ferry in Wellington. She is 80, well travelled, has more energy than anybody I know and sprinkles her tales with a gentle wit.  She used to teach French, Latin and Japanese and we swap stories in "la langue de Molière". The downpour continues through the night and the next day. Cinema going weather. We watch "Green book", up there among the ten best films I have ever seen.
My stay with her is a watershed...well ensconced in her comfortable home, I can peacefully digest my time on South Island and, like a kid in a sweetie shop,  agonise about where to go next.... Roswitha, whom I visit next in Palmerston, concurs with Judy that I shouldn't miss Lake Taupo and Rotorua, in the sulphurous centre of volcanic North island.

They were right.
The fault line crosses North Island diagonally, from the Bay of Plenty in the east, down to Tongariro in the south west.

Over the next few days, I will look wide-eyed in wonderment at nature steaming in the "Craters of the Moon" and, in Wai-O-Tapu, at lakes bubbling and growling like a champagne cauldron from hell and warm waters transformed by algae into an otherworldly fluo green.

Hot springs sprout everywhere. I swim on the banks of the Waikato river that drains lake Taupo. There, water seeps hot in a series of descending rock pools into the cool mountain waters. Don't get carried away by the swift current as the Waikato surges through a narrow gorge further downstream into the frothing, roaring Huka falls.





Kerosene Creek, an innocent-looking mountain stream tumbling its way through lush forest is actually at bath temperature and I revel in the warm massage of the waterfall on my shoulders.
By the end of the day, my fingers are all pruny and it will take days to rid my bathing suit of its sulphurous rotten-egg pong.

In Rotorua, I see Maori furiously paddling under a steady drizzle. On their intricately carved canoes (waka) flickering torches burn the night. The tribe explains their culture. We, from all over the world, watch a fearsome looking Haka and are treated to a "Hangi", meat and vegetable cooked in a ground oven, deliciously smoky and falling off the bone. Yes, I know. Exception to veganism yet again.

Next on my personal map, is the Coromandel, because I like the far-flung, exotic flavour of the name. and because it is just that. A  rugged peninsula jutting north, one or two hours south of Auckland, it is accessible by the usual twisty roads that make any distance at least twice longer and discourage townies.

My first stop there is the seaside village of Hahei, where the owner of the best hostel ever presses a shovel into my hands and tells me to drive to Hot Water Beach, where hot springs filter through the sand. A small crowd is lounging in a succession of sand pools. Big kids with big smiles, covered in sand, playing with advancing waves that will wash away our small walls and invade our hard-won warm tubs. I dig myself into a hole.





I leave early the next day on the coastal path that will take me to Cathedral Cove before the tourist onslaught. And, yes, impressive, beautiful, stunning, it is all that, but I am looking for something else and follow a path to Stingray bay, a gorgeous little cove without a soul in sight, hallelujah!

I float on ripples of translucent jade water. Swallows nesting in the white cliffs swoop down around me in a perfect blue sky. I am in paradise. Suddenly, from underneath, I feel a large flat shape brushing my back, oh ever so smoothly. I leave the sea very fast indeed. Swimming with stingrays. Shudder.

Undaunted, I find another lonely beach, another little paradise, just to myself, Waitete beach, north of the town of Coromandel on the west coast and am very careful entering the water. A very big fish splashes away. I only half relax in the clear blue water.

My friend Andrea in Mangawhai tells me later that she never goes swimming if she is alone on a beach. It is a refreshing thought that there is still some wilderness in this world, something that Europeans are not used to anymore.

North from Colville, there are only gravel roads to the tip of the peninsula. There, I find a general store, a survivor from the 1950s, a quirky café cum art gallery with wonderful brownies and someone with a sense of humour, few houses, a wide bay lined with mangroves and a Tibetan Buddhist temple.

Time to go back to Mangawhai. As I approach the familiar hills, spiky with flax and recognise at last the twist and turns of the road, the clouds part, the day's persistent deluge stops. The sun filters through the trees as I rattle down the gravel drive to Carla's and Ali's. We hug with joy. Lola, the dog, jumps, wriggles and licks my face. The cottage hasn't changed but I will need a duvet at night. The season has turned.



I have a delicious evening meal with Andrea and her boys. She has planted another 20 trees, she announces proudly. And has finished writing her thesis.
I rejoice that the café Eutopia, a work of Art and a work of Heart is completed, in its beautiful wackiness. A Gaudi hippy Moroccan delirium. In Kaiwaka, off the state highway 1.





It is like coming home. A bitter sweet time before flying away.

My last day is a day of showers and rainbows. As I drive to my favourite spot, Forestry Beach at Te Arai, I fervently wish to see a rainbow over the sea. I walk on the deserted expanse of golden sand under a fierce squall of rain.  But my wish is fulfilled. I swim in the reflection of the rainbow in the waves.

Carla was a DJ in Antwerp. She is offering me, us all,  the most lovely parting gift. Mangawhai village hall has been booked, friends have been contacted... In the candle-lit space, we share a free liberating joyful evening of ecstatic dancing. What a way to say goodbye....

Maybe it seems there is nothing negative about New Zealand. But there is. My glasses are not totally rose-tinted. It is incredible that, with such a small population, so much deforestation has been inflected on the land. And why is that rich volcanic soil dedicated to cattle and sheep when there could be more market-gardening? And cheaper fruit and veg in the shops? It is an expensive 1st world country with a 3rd world economy of exporting staples, wine, meat and importing manufactured products.

It is also full of angels who have caught me when I arrived and accompanied me during my journey.

The corridors of Auckland airport are lined with huge posters of stunning coastline, pristine sands, lofty peaks and misty forests. I shed salty tears on my way to my cheap non-delayed, non-cancelled flight to Sydney.