This was the route I took on recent 10 day road trip

I try to have a few rules for my road trips:

1. Limit driving in one day to 5 hours
By the time I add a few hours for exploring & stops for recording and/or shooting photos, 5 hours of driving easily becomes an 8+ hour day… And driving requires full attention.

2. Aim to stop at a location for 2+ nights
This is partly to avoid having to pack up & clear out of an air-bnb every day, and 2 days provides enough time for weather to change etc..

So this is where I went:

18th OCT Sunday
up at 5.30am, car is already packed & studio & house is locked down.
leave home at 6am, check in to Bluebridge ferry by 7am.
Ferry leaves Welli 8am, arrives to Picton 12.30pm
A fairly easy & very familiar 5 hour drive from Picton to Kaikoura to Ashburton
checkin ASHBURTON 1/2

19th OCT Monday
My main reason for staying in Ashburton is to visit my Aunty Sue who is 94 years old. Caught up with her for a couple of hours, and showed her my current photo projects…
Then grabbed some lunch & headed to Chertsey Book Barn, which is 10 minutes out of Ashburton. Raided their photo book section, and also bought a first edition of Bullers Birds

colour plates of the extinct Huia

I then headed into Mt Somers and through to Lake Heron

Lake Heron via drone

After Lake Heron, I headed across to Mt Hutt which in winter is a very active for skiing, but in summer the access road is open so you can drive up Mt Hutt to the snow line, and the view across the Canterbury plains is always spectactular

Rakia River gouging its way across the plains…

I eventually headed back to my accomodation in Ashburton & rested up before big drive next day…
FWIW I stay in Ashburton Holiday Park, which is a huge park with all sorts of accomodation available, from powered campsites to bunk houses to apartments… I stayed in one of the apartments attached to The Lodge – very peaceful with no traffic noise or rowdy neighbours….

20th OCT Tuesday
checked out of Ashburton
Did a quick driveby two junk stores in Ashburton – East End Dealers and Allenton Secondhand Store. Managed to get some great sound & visual props from both…
My plan for the day was to go to Tekapo and down to Twizel, but in the past I have driven there from Ashburton via Geraldine, but the road from Geraldine to Fairlie is a winding narrow road where its common to get stuck behind slow traffic etc… So I decided to drive down SH1 and turn inland at Temuka, which is an easy drive by comparison.
But before that I had a side mission – revisit the farm where I grew up as a kid! So I drove to Hinds and headed out to the Coast, pausing by my old primary school to take a photo as it was sold years ago & now looks more like a hippy commune!

Lowcliffe School

Next stop was this corner:

The family home on the farm was down this no exit road, by the giant bluegum trees. As kids, when we turned 5 years old we would ride out bikes down to this corner and catch the bus to school.

The farm & house & garden were in such great shape when my parents sold it. But in more recent times it was bought for industrial dairy farming & they basically erased almost everything. Took out all fences, all sheds, the garden & all the trees around the house etc… Fckng hideous & utterly moronic eg the vege garden was epic & fed a family of six all of my young life. So they ripped it all out… and did nothing with it.

Anyway as a little tribute, when buyign seeds for my garden I bought a few packs of wild flowers with each pack claiming to have 10,000 seeds! So I sprinkled them all around the corner…

I had thought I’d spinkle them along the fence line so they couldn’t be mowed… but as you can see, they had sprayed the fencelines so I scattered them everywhere… It would be so funny to drive by in a few months & see flowers everywhere! Locals would wonder why the fck it happened.. Nostalgia, thats why!

I then headed back up to SH1, and parked just beside the Rangitata River bridge on SH1 & took the drone for a fly

Our farm backed on to this river, but only a few miles from the coast… So my weekend adventures as a kid would often involve taking my dirt bike for a ride up to the river & then see how far I could get, either riding down stream to the Coast or soemtiems if the river was low I could ride right up to this bridge…

I headed on to Temuka, visited a junk store there & bought a few things & had a fun argument with the owner as he tried to skew the conversation to religion… Then headed inland, through Fairlie and on to Tekapo with a stop to jump a fence to shoot some XPAN of this old shack:

Tekapo is always busy as its a tourist destination, but just before you get to Tekapo there is a gravel side road that leads to a few favourite photo locations for me. So to take a break from driving I headed down there & got some exercise while shooting XPAN and flying drone…

Further up this gravel road there is a 4WD track down to the lakes edge, so that was my next spot for a break…

It was ridiculously sunny!!

I headed onwards & stopped at Lake Pukaki to buy some salmon.. The carpark was full of tourists, but it felt apocalyptic as the air was full of smoke and at first I wondered if a fire had broken out… But soon found out further along the road they were doing ‘controlled burns’ and while I appreciate how important such work is, it made Lake Pukaki horrendous and I really felt for the tourists who might well never visit this spot ever again, but were presented with a hideous smoggy version making the view of Mt Cook/Aoraki super stinky!

All of the tourists park & take their photos at the Salmon carpark but literally 5 minutes further along the road is a much better view imho… But you need a big lens to shoot it!

I ate some Salmon sashimi and headed on to Twizel, where I’d booked to stay at these A Frame cabins

21st OCT Wednesday

Tried to have a sleep in but for some reason the owners had someone mowing the fckng lawns at 8am! Un-fckng-believable – why would anyone allow the schedule for mowing lawns to be dictated by some contractor. Tell them AFTER 10am FFS!

I booked to have a soak in Omarama hot pools, so after breakfast took a cruisey drive half an hour South to Omarama and totally blissed out:

When you book a hot pool, they allocate 90 minutes and have it fired up & hot when you arrive. At the base of the chimney there is a vent with a handle and if you open it, it routes air into the fire & the temperature of the water soon rises! I did that last time and it got too hot, so this time I let it stay at a consistent temperature & had a soak for over an hour. Utter bliss and almost like a form of forced meditation!

Afterwards I had some lunch and then went for a drive around Benmore hydro lakes..

22nd OCT Thursday

I checked out of Twizel and had two plans for my route to Dunedin. If the weather was bad I thought I’d take the easy drive from Omarama out to Oamaru… but if the weather was good, I would revisit The Obelisk. This route would add 3 hours of driving, but I figured it was worth it as I had only ever been to The Obelisk in summer, and while there wasn’t much snow around I wanted to revisit the location… So I headed off, got to the turn off to Fruitlands by lunchtime and then drove the slow 4WD track up to The Obelisk…

The road is slow & bumpy with lots of rocks but it doesn’t need 4WD in Summer… However, if a sudden downpour, or worse snow & ice formed then this easy road could become treacherous!!

Up top a warm sunny day was utterly freezing with very strong wind!

I hadn’t planned to do any recording up here but the wind sounded amazing in the massive transmission aerial, so I parked the car so as to shelter the mics from the wind and set the recorder rolling while I went for a walk shooting photos…

The mountain range behind had snow on it, so that indicates how cold the wind was!

I shot 2 rolls of film with my XPAN, finished recording, packed up & headed back down to a sunny day! Utterly magic to be up in these spaces…

The drive to Dunedin from here was fairly uneventful, with a quick stop at epic Shingle Creek junk store

I got to Dunedin in time to visit the Hard to Find Bookstore and pciked up a curry for dinner & headed out to Mihiwaka, about 15min drive out of Dunedin towards Aramoana to my Air BnB for the next three nights. I’ve stayed there 2 times before & lvoe how its close enough to Dunedin but feels rural…

23rd OCT Friday + 24th OCT Saturday

I had a great time in Dunedin, such a beautiful city!

My first mission was to visit Reitveld Metals.

I was made aware of Reitveld by the guy who I bought my Linhof Technorama camera from. He showed me how he had built print developing tanks with rollers, so he could develop eg a panoramic print that was 1 metre long by scrolling it through a small tank with rollers.. When I asked how he built it, he said he sketched it out & then went hunting at Reitveld for parts. So I made a mental note to visit Reitveld.. But they are not open at weekends so I made a point of having a week day free in Dunedin, and it did not disappoint!

Sometimes it can be very disappointing to turn up at an industrial site, only to be told admission was controlled… So I went to the office first & asked if I could have a look around & shoot some photos, and they were so welcoming it was great. I did a quick walk around all buildings, taking photos with my iPhone… then I went back to the the car & got my XPAN and 5D3 and re-walked everywhere shooting proper photos. Once I had done that I put the cameras away & then got a trolley & started making a pile of metal parts that had sonic potential.

I ended up with quite a pile, and asked for a price, guessing it might be $200 or more… After weighing each type of metals the total was $180, perfect! I’ll save documenting what I got until I record them all for a HISSandaROAR library, but I left totally thrilled and with the knowledge I will be revisiting Reitveld, every visit to Dunedin, forever more.

Next stop I googled secondhand book stores & went for a visit to Dead Souls Books which had such excellent stock I ended up buying some beautiful art books…

Later I went for a drive down to Taeri Rievr mouth…

Then a visit to Dunedin Art Gallery…

Ralph Hotere and Bill Culbert

Colin McCahon, in a style I hadn’t seen with him…

Philip Clairmont

Gorgeous kinetic light work by Rebecca Baumann

And then back out to Aromoana…

One funny thing: the air bnb I stayed at in rural Mihiwaka is on a small farm lifestyle block and I had forgotten that a train line runs through the back of the property… The first night I was reminded by the sound at 10pm – WTF is that!? Oh a train!!
So the second night I set up my mics before dusk and recorded some lovely ambiences, until sure enough at 10pm the train came rolling through & I got a beautiful recording of it!

25th OCT Sunday
Got packed up & checked out of Mihiwaka, headed North stopping in Oamaru at the great junk store there…

I didn’t buy this side-eye deer but I did get some more sonic props… Some of the stuff they sell almost looks like an art installation eg this collection of fishing rods

I also stopped in to a favorite junk store in Waimate & got a few more sonic props… and then took the inland scenic route to Christchurch, as had driven SH1 too much… And it was great as there was hardly any traffic!

I got to Christchurch & drove into the city via a route I rarely take & couldnt believe it when I saw this tree!

I didn’t stop at the time but figured when I left CHCH the next morning I would go via this same route, and shoot some photos then…

Checked into an Air Bnb right out at the end of the Brighton peninsula, across the road from the sea… It was so relaxing to have dinner & then go for a walk along the beach, with my 5D3 and tripod…

26th OCT Monday
Next morning I checked out of New Brighton… and headed North – the traffic was super busy as it was a public holiday – Labour Day… As I wasn’t in a rush I decided to take the inland route to Kaikoura, as I don’t enjoy driving over the Hundalees when stuck in traffic, and again it was the right choice as there was hardly any traffic… I drove through Kaikoura & across to Blenheim & checked in to an Air BnB – a tiny house with a spa pool out front… And OMG that hot pool was bliss!!

27th OCT Tuesday

Checked out & revisited a fave junk store – Just Browsing

Managed to find some great sonic props here too… plus some visual props for an art project.

I got some lunch & headed to the ferry, checkin for Bluebridge closed at 1pm… While setting in the queue before loading I noticed this awesome car & went & had a chat to the owner, who was off on a road trip North!

mmm twin carbs!

Turned out there was also a bunch of classic cars off on a trip

We were loaded on to the ferry but 2pm arrived & we did not leave Picton… WTF? Eventually we were informed the ferry had a fault which they were working on… Luckily I had booked a cabin, so I had a snooze & waited… They kept giving us updates but we still hadn’t left Picton and then about 4pm we were told they were on track to fix the problem by 5pm-ish… And at 5.30pm we heqaded off, 3.5 hours late.

We arrived into Wellington at 8.30pm instead of the expected 5.30pm… Thankful it hadn’t been worse!
I got home at 9pm and had the car unloaded by 10pm!

An excellent trip and the weather was so good it really felt like a Summer holiday.
But I do also have to add, one of absolute joys of working for yourself, to your own schedule is being able to go on trips like this when all the normies are at work! I deliberately stay home & local over Xmas and New Year holidays for the same reason – avoiding normies, but especially at that time of year avoiding normies driving & having accidents!

I’ll share more of the Reitveld visit at a later date, as shot lots of video & XPAN… but will save them for when a library of the sounds is ready in a month or so…