Ollie collected me bright and early, and we drove out to Cambridge to meet up with the others. Mitch already had the Cub and the Maule out of the hangar, and I opened up the next door hangar and brought Planey out to join them. It was looking like a perfect day with light winds, and clear skies. Ollie pre-flighted the Maule on Paul’s behalf, as he hadn’t shown up yet, and once he did we were ready to go….
I exited the airport fence, and headed for the control tower. I’d had a message that the tower controllers wanted to chat with me on arrival; usually this is a bad sign, but on this occasion they just wanted to discuss my planned flight the next day, coordination with Auckland Oceanic control, and so on. We spoke for a while up in the tower, and once done one of the controllers was kind enough to give me a lift to…
Farm life starts early, and Iain’s house was no exception. That was fine by me, as once again I had a lot of places to go today, and a lot of new things to see! I was elated to see that weather conditions were looking fine for my day’s flying, which would take me through the mountains to the west coast and back with numerous stops along the way. After a breakfast of Weetbix I said my goodbyes, and departed…
After a few fun days in Auckland, it was time to leave for the final time and start the journey back to Australia. As mentioned in Part 8, Australia had recently opened their borders (with some limitations) to travel from New Zealand, and I had originally planned to fly from Kerikeri to Sydney. In recent days, though, Tasmania had announced that travelers from New Zealand were now welcome without needing to quarantine. I wanted to visit Tasmania, so I changed…
My time in New Zealand was coming to a close, but with a week of great weather coming up I was keen to make the most of the flying opportunities remaining. I had been looking through the AOPA NZ private strip guide, and had found quite a few North Island strips which I hadn’t yet had a chance to fly to. I decided to spend a couple of days touring the North Island some more, knocking off new airfields. Joining…
The Wilderness Survival Course Before I set out on the flight around the world, I had carried out a ditching and water survival course. I decided to attend this course because of the very large amount of water I’d be flying over during the trip, and the fact that the piston engine in my C182R could never approach the level of reliability of a turbine engine. The course was extremely helpful and really changed a lot of my thinking and…
The Australian government had recently announced that quarantine-free travel would soon be allowed from New Zealand to Australia (although not back again). I had covered a great deal of New Zealand in the time that I had been there, but there was still an enormous amount of Australia to see, so I decided to retrace my steps a little and fly back west, over to Australia, to tour some more of the country. The Pacific Islands still had their borders…
The next morning we enjoyed a lazy breakfast with Bruce and Rae before going our separate ways. Ann back to her home in Christchurch, and me north in Planey. Before returning to Nelson I had decided to make a weekend visit to Wellington, a city that I’d never visited but had heard good things about. I had come across a hitch hiker, Milo. Originally from South America, Milo was now resident in New Zealand and working as a baker; he…
It had been a great pleasure to see more of New Zealand from the air; but, you miss a lot when travelling by aircraft as it’s not practical to just pull over and stop! The complete lack of tourists (caused by New Zealand’s borders being slammed shut) meant that the cost of car and camper van rental was at an all time low, so I acquired a small camper van for a few weeks in order to explore some of…
There are a few small airports in the Nelson region which I had not previously visited; and some which I had, but were worth a return visit. The first new airport was Motueka, just up the coast from Nelson and home to a busy flight training center, an aero club, and plenty of private owners. Apparently the field had become busier since the latest managers of Nelson airport started to introduce policies and inflated fees that seemed designed to drive…