Covid affected Aussie 'winter break' substituted by summer holiday at home

Michelle and I have just returned from a 10 day road-trip, touring around the South Island and lower North Island of NZ, as a substitute for our usual winter sojourn to Australia.

We joined the many thousands of other "baby boomers" who are currently doing the same thing, because of lost annual holidays overseas, mainly in Australia and to a lesser extent, the Pacific and Europe.

What is happening is very noticeable indeed, and the Government and local businesses are very grateful, that around $3 billion that normally disappears overseas, is now being spent at home helping to keep a damaged tourist economy afloat.

On the second day, after visiting family in Arrowtown, Central Otago, we headed for the old gold-mining town of Naseby, also in Central Otago, to begin a "bucket list" endeavour of crossing the old Danseys Pass road, through the Kakanui Ranges to Duntroon on the Waitaki Valley side, in North Otago.

This road was constructed in the late 1800s to give access to two large sheep stations in the interior of the Kakanui Ranges. At the time, these were the two largest sheep farms in New Zealand, started by two Scottish brothers who came to NZ from Australia.

The road is a well-maintained, two-hour, 'gravel grind' of 64 kilometres, rising to a summit of just over 3000ft above sea-level, about halfway through. In the summer it is easily navigable by cars and smaller vans, but care and attention is needed because of width, switch-back corners and steep inclines, especially with the possibility of meeting someone coming in the other direction!

I had been part-way over this road when I was a teenager and had always wanted to one day complete the journey. Michelle is not so keen on these 'mountain tracks' and mainly kept her head in her book during the journey, so she didn't have to look out the window into the abyss. She made a poignant comment during the journey, when she asked: "How come when we do these roads, I'm always on the drop-off side of the car?"

The Pass road is often crossed by vintage car clubs in summer, but that is not something that I would do, as the amount of dust gathered on the journey is horrendous. It took me three hours just to make Michelle's Honda Civic presentable again, and modern cars are a lot better sealed-up than classics, but the fine schist dust still gets in everywhere.

While having lunch in Naseby, before tackling Danseys Pass, we received a nice treat, when two beautifully restored Austins turned up. The pale green A50 I had seen before and is the same car I had earlier sent a photo of, trundling through the McKenzie Country, in the South Island interior. But the olive A40 Devon, we hadn't seen before. This car looked stunning and the colour, I thought, really suited it. The owners of these vehicles would have been sitting under the cafe verandah, enjoying their lunch, while much attention was being given to their fine Austins parked over the road. On the way out of Naseby, we also saw a mint, yellowy-orange 70s Mini parked up. So a good day for British cars in Naseby, especially considering the town's size and remoteness.

Naseby is one of the best preserved, historic towns from the gold-mining era, left in NZ. It retains a lot of its original buildings from the 1800s, especially wooden ones, which were often destroyed by fire over the decades. Michelle particularly liked the original jewellers shop, which is a far cry from the jewellers shops she often enters today.