In the Art Gallery of New South Wales, there hangs an oil of Milford Sound by Eugene von Guerard. I must have first come across it when I was 13 or 14, at a school excursion. Around it are Monets and Bacons, works by others whose stature overshadow that of an Austrian emigre. I’d never heard of the fjord at that time (or even knew what one was), but was so smitten by the work that I thought the place must have been conjured only in someone's imagination, like an Atlantis or an El Dorado. The vast mountain peaks that dropped to its own steep reflections in the water. The way the tender colours of dusk were rendered between the slopes. The small rowboat in the foreground with the people brought to life with the deftest of strokes.

Milford Sound, Eugene von Guerard

You would think that my love affair with the country would have started then, but there was no doubting the influence of Peter Jackson’s films much earlier, which was as much a generously funded tourism campaign as one of the greatest epics brought to screen. How could this country of glaciers and springs and mountains and bays exist just across the sea from where I grew up, yet would take me decades before I set foot on it? (Probably the cost of getting there!)

So it happened that I had a month off from work. As much as I enjoy just lounging back in Sydney welcoming the first weeks of fresh autumn, it would have been an unforgivable squander of time not to do some travel. Shortlisted destinations were Nepal, India, Fiji: destinations relatively close to Australia and inexpensive for a solo traveller to get around.

But the pull of the mountains was inescapable.

So I boarded a plane and tour, and visited the majestic landscapes offered by the country. Every curve of highway was filled with scenery stacked on scenery, with a beautiful climate to complement the views. One of my few grievances though had to do with sand flies, which I thought were only confined to northern Queensland. Even with long sleeves and trousers, the little pests were able to get under hems, and when I was showering I would find angry red bites in places I thought would be well protected.

That the South Island is a mecca for adventure, I can guarantee. Some more memorable instances were quad biking through a rainforest and emerging into a glacial river, sitting in hot pools while the rain fell around me, and the coup de grace: hiking on an actual glacier in Mt Cook. That was like being in a playground (or a palace) made of ice, hopping across crevasses and tiptoeing along sparkling ridge lines. There was also a spectacular ice tunnel that defies imagination on how it was created, and the helicopter rides in and out provided a jaw-dropping vantage of the whole formation. I think if more people got to experience the joy and wonder that afternoon, they would wake up to see the damage we were inflicting on our natural world. I could see why the Maori chose to make this their home after travelling the rough seas, rich in unique birdlife and with geography only seen in few places on Earth.

Quad biking in Franz Josef

The dark sky preserve over Mt Cook

We also had the chance to relax and explore Queenstown, which while spoilt for beauty, was not necessarily somewhere I would stay long-term. It seemed like tourism had become its raison d’être, and most of its inhabitants were either young transients or rich holiday-homers. Perhaps nearby Wanaka had more of the community and liveability that I keep an eye out for. But while in Queenstown, one must work the adrenal glands. In addition to a night out on the town, I clenched my sphincter and did he Nevis bungee (134 m drop, third highest in the world!), and a skydive from 15,000 ft. While the views were more spectacular from the skydive, I’d have to say that it was for scarier jumping off the ledge and down the canyon at the bungee. My throat was hoarse for the few hours after that when I screamed the whole eight seconds of the jump.


 I was glad to I took the time off to visit New Zealand, even though the last few days of the trip would be tinged with the escalating arrival of the coronavirus on Australasian shores. It was everything I had envisioned in my childhood dreams, and more. I didn’t think that the real things could surpass the romanticism of painters or the sweeping tracking shots of Hollywood, but at least I got to taste from the same fountain of inspiration as greater artists before me.