Chapter 2 DIDAKOI DREAMING : Part 1

The next two days were lost in a blur of jet lag and sleep.  Somewhere amongst it all was a vague recognition that things were not as they should have been in the weather department.  The sun was high in the sky on the first morning when I rose in our city centre hotel and threw open the doors to the balcony to be met by a chill breeze and the sight of an empty swimming pool.

“I thought it was supposed to be hot here.”  I moaned to a groggy James.

“Ergly og gog,” he replied, so I shut myself in the bathroom for a long, hot, shower.

Things continued in this vein for several days, both with the bad weather and the incoherent comments.  It transpired that Auckland was experiencing a ‘bad summer’, that the sun was in hiding and that our jet lag wasn’t going to be over any time soon.  While James slept late, I suffered from nausea and a persistent sense of dizziness – as though everything was spinning in the wrong direction, which I supposed it was.  Like the water in the hotel’s luxurious bath that James and I watched being sucked down the plug hole the wrong way, I deduced that the tides in our seventy-percent water bodies must be on the turn – not the most scientific of theories but one that appealed even to the more scientifically-oriented James.

When we’d caught up on enough sleep that we felt it was safe to drive, we piled our weighty belongings into tinny hire car.  We were headed for the West Coast and the little settlement of Karekare, there to lodge with James’s sister in the house she had been building from the shell of a barn for the past four years.  It took a little while to leave the city and I was sure there hadn’t been so much traffic the last time I’d been in Auckland, although the congestion was nothing compared to London streets, or the streets of other major cities and towns I had visited around the world for that matter.  Nonetheless, traffic was the mark of the city and the general feeling I’d had that I didn’t want to live in Auckland grew stronger.  Eventually we left the single-storey sprawl of suburbia behind us and threaded our way west through the bush.  Karekare lies forty kilometres west of Auckland city over the often-misty, bush-clad Waitakere Ranges, which steal your breath at every turn.   Wildly winding roads steer a magical tour up and down between trees, ferns and falls oozing with green.  The forest is much like that which amazed me when I walked through Abel Tasman National Park – dinosaurs would not be out of place.  Although the Waitakere Ranges are a Forest Park this does not preclude habitation, and modern homes flash steel and glass through gaps in the canopy, while up dank and enticing tree-tunnels, homely wooden shacks and hand-built follies hide.  Five hundred metres at their peak, the Ranges cut the west coast off from the city of Auckland in a most satisfactory manner and afford frequent broad views of the central business district and Waitemata Harbour to the east.    With every bend we turned, the lump in my throat, that hadn’t really left since the arrivals lounge, grew.   Each revealed more wonders, the glorious green never ending.  By the time we descended toward the ocean and Karekare after forty minutes or so of driving, I was choked with emotion.  A few tears wound their way down my overwhelmed face as the sea hove into view. The ‘village’ has no shops, not even a post box, and most homes are invisible, nestled cosily among the trees.  From the road steep driveways and endless steps wind their secret way up the hillside to heavenly abodes.  All around black volcanic cliffs thrust from red earth, towering over beach and bush, dwarfing humankind and putting us firmly in our place.  Bush clings wherever it can, and valleys and ravines thrive with flora and fauna.  In December, Pohutakawa trees flame with crimson blossoms and Toetoe, a native grass similar to Pampas, ripples in the wind.  Behind is the ever-present music of the fierce West Wind Drift crashing and scouring black rock and pounding dark sand.  Part of me was desperate to explore this unusual fairytale, but with the car rammed with our things and fatigue overwhelming us again, we headed straight to Jacqui’s place to unload, eat and sleep.

Next morning I woke early and immediately felt the need for a walk. James was sound asleep in our cushion-bed on Jacqui’s bare chipboard floor.  I dressed quietly, took my fountain pen and writing pad and slipped out.  My intention was to walk to the beach, but en route I was waylaid by a sign to a waterfall; a high cascade that I had seen from the road the day before.  I turned right off the steep tarmac-ed lane and trod my way carefully down the earth path.  Within seconds I was transformed into Eve discovering Paradise.  Could everything that I was seeing and hearing be real?  The variety of plant life, the overhead canopy and thriving under-layers, the song of exotic birds and dance of light on leaves was too, too perfect.  Surely this was a botanical garden meticulously planted by someone with a passion for detail?  When the path opened beneath the shelter of huge, twisted and spreading trees that backed a rocky beach where a green pool lapped at the bottom of the plunging falls, I laughed.  A bench and table beckoned at the water’s edge - the place, the moment, seemed made just for me.   The landscape of Karekare is dramatic and extreme, as is the sea, but as I sat absorbing the atmosphere I felt Mother Nature protecting me, nestling me between her ample bosoms, delivering her gift in the simplest and purest of forms.  I was supremely content just to sit.  To think.  To breathe.  A mother and her ducklings scratched fearlessly around my feet and all was right with the world.   I don’t believe you’ve seen New Zealand until you’ve experienced Karekare.  But then, you can say that about so many places in New Zealand, and that was exactly why I was here.

Chapter 1 DISCOVERY: Part 8

The weeks that followed were filled with nervous energy.  As soon as I heard the mail drop into the lobby three floors below, I’d run down the stairs, hoping against hope for an envelope with “New Zealand Immigration Service” stamped on the front.  The days were spent chasing up bits of missing paperwork required for sale of the flat; though we had a buyer the process was proving to be protracted and painful.  I made lists of what we would and wouldn’t take with us and took my little silver Vespa on trips to bits of London I thought I ought to see before I left.

A month later James and I were worried. We’d been promised a letter from New Zealand House within two weeks letting us know what was happening and who our case officer was:  Nothing had arrived.  Ever since we’d moved into my Lambeth flat our post had been being stolen at various points in the delivery system, something that we’d been unable to resolve with the post office in spite of James’s tireless efforts.  Now we were convinced that our promised letter had been pilfered.  Telephoning was an option, but a friend had cautioned us that the immigration service did not appreciate phone calls, and that to call would be to risk having our application put to the bottom of the pile.  So we bit our nails and waited.

Then one Saturday morning in October as we lazed in bed after our customary Friday night out clubbing we heard the post drop in the lobby.  Neither James nor I are morning people, especially after a party, but hope had our adrenaline pumping and he leapt out of bed, threw on a dressing gown and galloped down the stairs.  Something had to arrive sooner or later, why not today?  The way he was singing as he raced back up told me there was news.  He threw an envelope down baring the NZIS logo and I took a sharp intake of breath before tearing it open, heart in mouth.

“We are writing with regard to your application for residence which was accepted for consideration on 21 August, 2002.” I read, “We are pleased to inform you that your application for a residence visa for New Zealand has been approved in principle.”  

There was a tangible silence while we took it in.  I read it again, skimming quickly through the rest of the letter that outlined the fees we needed to pay and the money we should deposit into a New Zealand bank account – things we were already prepared for.


“Oh my god.”  I hardly dared smile.

“What does it mean though?  Is that it?  Are we in?” asked James, not wanting to be let down when he discovered he’d been fooled.  We read it through again, slowly and carefully, just to be sure.  There were no loopholes, nothing unexpected.  We stared at each other for a moment, smiles daring to creep up our cheeks,


“We’ve got it!” we exclaimed breathlessly; hugging hard and bouncing up and down on the bed.

“As long as we can get this bloody flat sale through.”  I added as a gloom-filled caveat.

But we couldn’t believe it.  It had only been two months since I’d taken the paperwork in; they were efficient, these Kiwis.  I immediately liked them even more.


From that point on I became solely focussed on our move and the new life I was going to have in New Zealand.  I made more lists, got quotes from shipping agents and hounded my solicitor and the council about the desperately slow flat sale.  New Zealand House provided us with all the information we needed and I set up an account with a New Zealand bank, ready to receive the money from the flat when it was finally sold.  Nothing was going to stop me getting to New Zealand now and I wanted to be there for Christmas.


When my solicitor called two weeks later to say that finally everything was in place to exchange and complete the sale, I couldn’t feel relieved.  Not yet.  The British system is such that until you ‘exchange’, usually just a few weeks from your moving date at most, nothing has been signed by either party, no money has changed hands and either side can pull out at any time.  We didn’t dare book flights to New Zealand, just in case.  Then, on a blustery November day, the shipping agents arrived to help us pack and wrap the furniture in heavy brown paper.  We were moving out - exactly six months to the day since we’d agreed on the sale.  Countless trips up and down the wide stairs of our old Victorian building later and the removal van pulled away into the night.  I slung my leg over the seat of James’s scooter and pressed myself into his back.

“Okay.”  I said simply, and as we moved off down damp, dark London streets.  I didn’t give the house so much as a backwards glance.

Chapter 1 DISCOVERY: Part 5

The weather meant that I had to retrace my steps. I’d been advised that the higher path I’d wanted to take was treacherous in the rain, but as I walked I recalled a couple of dry sandstone slips I’d crossed the previous day. The channels running down the hillsides made it obvious that in wet weather, these sections of the supposedly safer path would be moving. Singing against the deluge, I kept up an urgent pace, keen to reach the slips before the path was washed away. Sure enough, the slips were acting as a run-off from the hills. The path, really just a trodden strip of mud, was breaking away in chunks before my eyes. Sooner rather than later, I told myself and picked my way carefully across. Fully immersed in my adventure my over-active imagination dramatised all sorts of potential disasters and I envisaged slipping and falling, my nails scraping futilely at the ochre mud as I slid toward my doom. It was all so exciting. How sensible I was to have purchased a bright orange pack-a-mac; they should have no trouble locating my body when they finally came looking.

In spite of the rain, or perhaps because of it, the day’s walk was wonderful. Heading towards the tidal crossing where I would have to wait for the water to become shallow enough to make walking or wading possible, I relished my solitude and the continuing luxuriance of the forest. Inevitably, other trampers were already sitting on the bank of the estuary and I got talking to a couple of chaps from the States who were taking time out from a business trip to see a little of the country. As we sat in the shelter of a tree, I realised how wet I was and began to shiver a little with the cold. Quickly revising my plans, I agreed to walk to the next hut along the track and keep the company of the two amicable Americans. My new friends proved to be perfect walking companions, keeping silence when there was nothing to be said, exchanging words when something was to be remarked upon or pointed out. We arrived soggily at the hut to find a soaked couple attempting, without much luck, to light the fire; a large wood stove rammed with rather damp-looking wood. It took some hard graft, but an hour later we had a blaze going and our wet gear dangled from lines slung across the room. My sleeping bag, it turned out, was soaked through and I was glad indeed that I hadn’t walked further that day. By bedtime it was not only dry, but warm and smelling comfortingly of wood smoke.

Our next day’s walk, for now we were three, was a six-hour stretch commencing with another tidal crossing that we had to make before seven-thirty am. We set off after a hasty breakfast, arriving at the designated place little more than ten minutes later. Already the water was quite high and we made a swift decision to get into our swimming things before it was even deeper. Bikini on I followed my leader as he picked a safe route across the little estuary. The scenery was never anything but stunning and now that it wasn’t raining, walking was easy and less time was spent looking at our feet. Unfamiliar as we were with everything we saw there were constant remarks to look at this, or listen to that, and stops to photograph weather-sculpted rocks against taffeta sea and cotton sky. We were as happy and excited as five-year-olds on their first ever nature trail. At our final inlet crossing for the day we took off shoes and socks, squelching across the shellfish-strewn mud flat to the sandy bay, delighting in the cool, black goo that oozed satisfyingly between our toes. With long stretches of yellow-white sand against twisting tea-tree, black beech and the ferns that were green beyond green, I was almost dismayed that the hut at the tree line was the last of my walk. A quick chilly dip in the sea followed by an even colder shower was like sugar after fresh, bitter lemon. Refreshed and hungry I cooked in the company of a full hut and ate on the beach with my new friends as kayakers paddled in and joined the party. Travel tips and fanciful stories from all corners of the globe mingled with the wind and waves whispering on the sand.

My initiation into the New Zealand outdoors had sown a seed that was to grow into an endlessly branching tree of fascination. By the end of my two month stay I’d heli-hiked on a glacier; jumped out of an aeroplane trusting my life to my tandem instructor – twice; completed numerous walks through landscapes that included dramatic granite cliffs, wide turquoise lakes and high, barren volcanoes; I’d seen sea-lions, penguins and albatross; abseiled a hundred feet down into the bowels of the earth; kayaked on eerily still fjords and left little bits of my heart and soul in every place I’d visited. I boarded my plane to my next destination with a lump in my throat and only one thought on my mind – I had to live in New Zealand.

About this blog

I've set up this blog as a place to share my writing.

In the first instance this will be a 'chunk by chunk' posting of my book 'Jumping Off The Edge Of The World'.

In 1999 I threw in the towel on a relationship and my job and blew the deposit I'd saved for a flat in London on a trip around the world. During that journey I travelled through New Zealand, and when I left I knew that I had to live there.

In 2002, dragging my boyfriend with me (he didn't actually mind too much), I left life as I knew it in the UK behind, quit the rat race and moved to New Zealand to see what life would bring.

'Jumping Off The Edge Of The World' is a thirty-something city girl's experience of starting all over again at the other side of the globe. It's honest, entertaining, educational and a a jolly good read.

If you've ever considered running away and joining the circus, emigrating to a new country or you just like travel books, then this is a good place to come.

Enjoy.