Maz NZ and Oz

Having been to the very tippy top of NZ, Gen and I headed south stopping at ninety mile beach along the way and promptly getting stuck in the sand in the car park... not even on the beach! However, a friendly local was on hand to help and towed the car out with his jeep. I felt a little bit better about it all when I realised that it must happen pretty frequently there, as the man (who was the local member of parliment for the area - don't think he was too happy when he realised I wasn't in a position to vote for him) was all prepared with tow ropes at the ready. Cars also get stuck on the beach itself too, as many attempt to drive along the coast and get caught out by a rising tide. According to the Lonely Planet, there are a few abandoned vehicles on the beach, half buried in sand where the tide has come in on top of the cars that are stuck in the sand and there was nothing to do but get out and walk....


We stayed in Dargeville (Home of the Kumura - or so the signs said) that night, a pretty uneventful place, but one interesting feature is that the masts from the Rainbow Warrior are outside the museum there. The Rainbow Warrior, for those of you who are unaware, was a Greenpeace ship that was destroyed in Auckland Harbour in July 1985. The ship was in the South Pacific as Greenpeace members protested against French Nuclear testing in the area. It later transpired that the people responsible for the bombing (which killed a photographer, Fernando Pereira, originally from Portugal) were French Government agents. Allegedly, some elements of the French media were outraged when it was made public that French Secret Service agents had been arrested for the bombing, not because of what they had done, but because they'd gotten caught!