Blog

Urewera Tramp - Sandy Bay hut to Lake Waikaremoana

On this second day of the tramp there were two options for the walk back out to Lake Waikaremoana from Sandy Bay hut.

Option one is a four hour walk same as yesterday just in the opposite direction and option two is a longer seven hour walk which stretches further out towards a much smaller Lake Ruapani and then curves back to the road.

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Adam Weller
Urewera Tamp - Around Lake Wakareiti to Sandy Bay Hut

Today is the first day of our five day tramp. Lake Waikareiti is a smaller lake just north of the much larger Lake Waikaremoana and its well known Great Walk. It was only a short one minute drive from the holiday park camp ground to the start of the Lake Waikareiti tramp. The first section of the walk was like a highway with a large clear track heading north with a gentle up-hill climb over 3.3 kilometers towards the shores of Lake Waikareiti.

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Adam Weller
Urewera Tramp - Drive to Lake Waikaremoana

Julianne, Robin and I are heading away for a five day tramp for which will be Robin’s only second tramp.

We are heading to the Urewera’s where the Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk is located. but there are a number of other walks in the same forest but without the without all the busy bustle of the a Great Walk and also a lot cheaper which we are heading to.

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Adam Weller
Endeavour - dolphins and 100 Maori in a waka at Waitangi

Today has become one of the most spiritual and amazing days of my entire life, I got to experience something that probably no-one else in the world has experienced for over a hundred of years; you will simply not believe what has happened today - I could see this huge waka canoe heading out to us, it was the Ngāpuhi waka tane (war canoe) at Waitangi with over 80 people on board.

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Adam Weller
Endeavour - cruising the Bay of Island 2

Today is a day all about Tuia 250 celebrating the dual heritage of European and Polynesian ships who traveled over the oceans to New Zealand; 3 tall ships (Endevour, Spirt of NZ and the Tucker Thompon) and 3 waka including the Fa’afaite who navigated from Tahiti to New Zealand using only the stars.

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Adam Weller
Endeavour - Setting Sail

I didn’t need to arrive at the Endeavour until 8-30am so the morning was spent relaxing, having a last long hot shower, breakfast and then a taxi ride to the ships that make up Tuia 250 celebrating the dual heritage of European and Polynesian ships who traveled over the oceans to New Zealand; 3 tall ships (Endevour, Spirt of NZ and the Tucker Thompon) and 3 waka including the Fa’afaite who navigated from Tahiti to New Zealand using only the stars.

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Adam Weller
Endeavour - drive to Whangarei

A few weeks ago I was looking online to see when the Endeavour replica ship was going to arrive from Australia as part of Tuia 250, celebrating not only Captain Cooks mapping of NZ but the pacific islanders who travelled around the Pacific Ocean using only the stars. While doing this investigation I noticed that the Endeavour actually takes fare paying crew, So I then thought – WOW and yes

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Adam Weller
Melbourne day 9 - Shrine of Remembrance and heading home

After a great week in Melbourne staying in Luke’s very generous home it was time to head back to our house in Auckland, but we are not flying out until 6.45pm so we still have most of the day in Melbourne.

The only site we are going to visit today is the Shine of Remembrance, which was built after WW1.

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Adam Weller
Melbourne day 7 - Aboriginal walking tour and more

Today we all heading into Melbourne City along with Luke via the trains Once we were at Federation Square Luke took across the river to the National Gallery of Victoria; an art gallery which I didn’t even know about and was a great surprise – one of the advantageous of being a local.

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Adam Weller
Melbourne Day 3 - City Centre

Our second full day in Australia was spent in the centre of Melbourne city. I discovered that big Luke has a handy train station just down the road from his house – so instead of having to drive in we caught a train from Melton Station through to Southern Cross station in the City.

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Adam Weller
Melbourne Day 1

Today I’m off to Melbourne for nine days and the main reason is to see the Harry Potter plays!!

We ended up with an Air New Zealand Skycouch, so me sleeping, and Luke watching Paw Patrol

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is the official sequels to the books / movies. JK Rowling said she would never write any more Harry Potter books and instead she decided that the next chapter would be a set of two plays instead of novels. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is only available in Melbourne near us, so to Australia it is.

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Adam Weller
Free Public transport day

On Sunday the 23rd of June Auckland City had a free public transport day in celebration of reaching 100 million public transport trips in the preceding 12 months. This is a great achievement and shows all the hard work to create a completely new bus route system combined with the new electric trains is working as more and more people are using public transport to get around our city, including me to and from work.

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Adam Weller