JANUARY 28, 2022 – I’d latched onto four facts about “Down Under,” two appearing in old National Geographic magazines: 1. “The most beautiful walk in the world” was at the south end of NZ’s South Island; and 2. The longest straight railway in the world (297 mi/478 km) stretched across Australia’s Nullarbor Plain. Well known was the third fact: English was the official language of NZ and its vast neighbor. For the first two months of my trip, I’d face strange accents, not foreign languages—and yet . . . fourth salient fact . . . I’d be on terra firma as far from home as possible.
Anyone who’s visited NZ knows its character and countenance—sky-high mountains embellished by glaciers; caves filled with glowworms; volcanoes towering over black sand beaches; tropical rain forests ruled by giant tree ferns and exotic birds; lush farmland producing bounteous harvests; all surrounded by Big Ocean sparkling into the contented faces of the most civilized people on earth.
Just before my Canon rangefinder broke—replaced by a Kodak Instamatic serving the rest of my travels—I snapped a photo of Milford Sound, terminus of “The Most Beautiful Walk in the World.” In that single picture appear seawater, palm trees, and the angular, 5,552-foot-high Mitre Peak bearing dollops of snow. Nowhere else do such features appear within plain view of each other.
Paradise found.
And paradise lost . . . when a national general strike took effect as my Pan Am “forever-flight” touched down in Auckland.
On a limited bus run, I found my way to the prosperous sheep farm of a couple I’d met in Switzerland two years before. Their son was on his own odyssey—his “O.E.” (“Overseas Experience”) as New Zealanders called it. His parents had last heard from him in Iraq, as he wound his way from India to Europe. I imagined his adventures as I drifted off to sleep in his bedroom of his parents’ comfortable home.
My hosts opposed the strike and assured me that like “most nonsense,” it’d be over soon. Their prediction proved correct, and two days later, I was on my way—to Wellington. There I was the guest of Isobel, aunt of the sheep farmer’s wife, and whom I’d also met in Switzerland. One of NZ’s leading botanists, Isobel was a soft-spoken, intrepid explorer, who educated me thoroughly about the wonders I’d encounter on the South Island—across the strait from Wellington.
Wonders like no other: gawking at Mt. Cook from the front seat of a ski-equipped Piper Cub with its airstrip on a glacier surrounded by make-believe mountains; hiking by day in the Southern Alps, then, by night, gasping at the billions of stars surrounding the Southern Cross; hiking the ridge-line of the Remarkables beyond Queenstown; flying aboard a float plane over Fjördland along the southwest coast of the South Island and puzzling as to what magical galaxy I’d been transported.
Such sights cleanse the soul beyond the powers of any belief, religion, or philosophy yet devised.
Oh, and then there was “The Most Beautiful Walk in the World.” But that’s a story unto itself.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
