Flying over Hokitika,away from the New Zealand winter,the love of the place grew to pain in the place of parting.
Yes,it had been a place of breaking out of seeming limitations of the needless humdrum of fat cat,oversecure existence,in the place where the eleventh commandment :-'Thou shalt not be insecure',had become the first.Okay,I had not wasted time in the netherlands;otherwise how would have got modicum cash to go to NZ?
But it gets a little boring,planning one's pension from the age of 29.So I had promply left ,after nearly ten years of 'the rat race'.
What could lay ahead,I wondered silently above my solitary mossy campings, a last NZ rain forest goodbye.Not quitesure what I was doing in Australia.I had simply not been that keen.My preconceptions could not have been more mistaken.Australia was just as full of climatic fascination as was NZ.
First and foremost,meeting Marcus,Pauline and several of my cousins,from my father's side was a blast.
Secondly,Sydney is situated in the middle of an enormous park,the prettiest of cities.
Thirdly there is much greenery,forest,and hills extending for a thousand kms,from Melbourne to well north of Sydney.
The place just burst with life.The people,the lack of hypocrisy,the sheer straightforwardness of the culture,yes I was feeling totally at home in a culture I'd never experiened before.
Genetic memory?Probably.Was amazed at how much the physical mannerisms of me and my Oz family matched.
Okay so what about the cycling?
Redefinitional,fun,risky.
Our first foray was to hop on the train to Hornsby,get out into the heat,and hit Galston Gorge.Yes a gorge within minutes of the station at Hornsby.Steep?Try tandeming without an external disc brake,and ,at least with full baggage,your health insurance policy could come in handy.
Its not just the funnel web spiders that abound in the Blue Mountains,a bit further inland.Okay,so they just love the deepest corner of your sleeping bag.They can bite through a sheeps' skull ,and kill within 30seconds.Or the redback colony in Marcus' garage,black widow bites can make you a bit sick for a few days.
Its just that so much of australia seems to celebrate life,be it flora or fauna,young folks or old,sunsets or sunrise.The skin colored gum forests' bark glowed in the clear sunsets.The dew dropped sweetly on the morning grass.Same sort of colors as iridescent NZ(inland) but the cars do screw up the air around the big cities.
How come everything is just as green as some seriously heavy rainfall parts of NZ?
The water table ,even up the mountains 50 kms inland from Sydney is very stable.Capiliary action sandstone ,forest rivers ,interlocking lakes,steep forested gums towering over 250meters above the Berrilee Road waterways,crossed by free ferries.
The railways are still very cheap,compared to europe,a conscious and serious attempt ,on the behalf of the authorities to beat the car pollution.Bikes are still for nothing,even double bikes,on the trains.People say hallo,and strike up interesting conversations(try that in the London underground).
One fly in the ointment was how consistently I took the tandem off at the wrong stations,leaving the train,too hastily pulling away,the guards not always too awake!
Had spent quite some time in the Blue Mountains,sandstone climbs up steep hills.The parrots were as common as sparrows,and being were accompanied by several crimson rosellas on the way up From Katomba to Mt Hayes,a rough,sandy fire break between the gum forests.
The cycling over the month there was linked with family visits to some of my 40 relatives.I kept no diary,the reality being something that matures, also at a distance.