Friday, August 17, 2012

In the beginning...........

Well. The time has arrived when I can procrastinate no longer. For nearly 40 years I have been promising myself to write about the trip my wife, Anne, and I made to New Zealand in 1969.
We decided, prompted by a book called "Europe on 5 dollars a day" to drive, as much as possible, from England to Christchurch, New Zealand. The vehicle of choice was a 1500cc VW saloon and sleeping arrangements were mainly a tent.

We kept to our budget, did not get divorced, and used the VW and camping equipment for the first few months of our time in New Zealand. We are quite proud of that.

Obviously the journey would not be possible today . I appreciate that a number of books have been written about similar journeys and that there were two enterprising companies [run by Australian and New Zealanders] regularly making the trip. However this was Anne and I and "we did it our way".

Here is the plan. During our trip, each evening that we intended to camp, we made the job a little easier by keeping to a routine. We would decide where to camp and together put up our tent. The accommodation comprised a sewn in ground sheet, inner two person sleeping tent and a fly-sheet. Anne would then prepare the evening meal and I would write the diary and do any minor vehicle maintenance. Within 30 minutes of arrival we would be eating our dinner and sampling the chosen wine or beer. We even managed that routine one night  in the car park, next to the airport terminal, at Esfahan Airport in Iran.

My idea is to post a blog, this year, on the same date as our journey in 1969. Here goes - starting 22nd August 1969.

Two very important over-riders to my diary. Firstly, after much thought, I decided not to edit what I wrote all those years ago. There are some very non PC comments - particularly about a couple of European races that I would, most certainly, not make now. Secondly I also decided not to update my grammar, spelling or money [pricing] comments. Again, I would like to think that I have, over the years, improved in all three areas. I sincerely hope that no one [if anyone does read these blogs] is offended by these decisions.

A word about the photos. They were taken on film, using a half frame [35mm] Yashica camera and developed along the way. The transparencies were showing signs of decay after a couple of years [not sure about the water quality in some of the "processing houses"]. Kodak, in Auckland, were very kind and offered to transfer the transparencies onto a couple of CDs at a very friendly price. It will rapidly become obvious that I am no professional photographer as I add shots.

I hope to see you soon - the 22nd would be good.

2 comments:

  1. Intrigued. I arrived at your blog by looking at small houses and coming across the cave homes in Iran. I'm also in NZ! This place grabbed my imagination in 2004 which is when I first arrived. I like the way you write so will be reading. Can't wait to hear about your trip because you were very fortunate to experience nz this early! I wonder if there were more forests, more birds and native bush!!!

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    1. Thanks for your kind comments. NZ has changed - for the better ? I am not sure about that. It is more crowed and more "argumentative" than when we arrived at the end of '69. But you could probably say the same about London now. But you cannot keep running to the less crowded countries - and NZ is home and we love it.

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