Wednesday night 27 Feb I fly to Tasmania, Australia via Melbourne. I meet my mainland support driver Michael Gillan in Melbourne airport during my layover there.
Only a few hours before my arrival for the great Australian adventure… I can hardly wait 
To view my Tasmanian and Australian mainland routes please press HERE
Many thanks to Valmai here in Christchurch for her wonderful hospitality and permanent use of her computer these last three days. One night she had to get up at 2am to use it!
After reading this posting please click back a few postings by the backtrack arrows to see my eventual picture updating. Sorry to all the people involved for this very long delay.
Also check these three old postings which are even further back for photo updates, just click on the following numbers.
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I still got lots of picture updating for New Zealand in my previous posts. Here is my last report from The North Island. I have finished my blog text for the South Island also.
One of those glorious days on the North Island I ran 46km. The last 20km with Kiwi ultra running tough man Perry Newburn who recently circumnavigated New Zealand, all 5,000km of it in an astonishing 10 weeks of running along the perimeter of both islands! Averaging about 70km a day with no rest day. 70km seems to be a number Perry.
He put some much needed zip into my legs! see his website www.perrysruns.co.nz
Running with Perry
He told me he had to quit his job to do this run which he did as a fund-raiser for a children’s charity. All of his hotel nights were covered by hotels along his route.
I had a wonderful day. So too had Perry as for this run today he warmed up with a 70km yesterday and an ‘ easy ‘ 30 this morning. He tells me he recently ran a 30km race in 2 hours 50 minutes after running a full marathon to warm up on the way to the race. Stuff I used to do myself in my ‘ mad days. ‘
Once I remember being asked to work a Saturday morning, and really being obliged to work. I had a lot on that weekend so solved the problem of running my scheduled 32km run by getting up at 4am and doing a couple of laps in the Phoenix Park to arrive at the construction site in St. Vincent’s Hospital all warmed up and ready for work. I always ran to and from work in those days, as usual runners often get stick from co-workers or a foreman for this with the dumb attitude that you mustn’t be working hard enough if you still have the energy to run! So I always worked hard, worked my butt off, that way they could say nothing.
Many times even after finishing work at 6 or 7 pm or even later I would run anything from 32km to 50km midweek often finishing around midnight. A quick, snack, shower and into bed then up again early to run in for another days work!
Many races I ran to doing my own warm up or cool down later! A particular favourite was the Guinness half-marathon. I don’t know if they still got it now but in those days after the race they dished out small glasses of Guinness. The ‘ experts ‘ used to bring their own litre tankards and the smiling bartenders just filled them up to everyone’s amusement!
I remember one Saturday morning going out for a fifty mile training run! I returned home many hours later. The next day a friend told me she saw me running twice in the same day, I laughed , naw.. It was just the one training session as she had seen me coming and going from my house!
In all I stayed in Perry’s house with him and his wife Kathy and 19 year old son Sean for three days.
Kathy told me how her family just upped and left from Lockerbie, Scotland when she was young girl. It seemed the community there put pressure on her mam and dad to leave as she had fallen in love with a young man of ill repute. This was not true, but a young gullible and heart-broken Kathy believed it and she left for New Zealand with her parents.Then we followed by running a very tough, hot, hilly 60km however the views were wonderful as we ran over Vinegar Hill. A friend of his kindly dropped us back to my route early that morning. My new great friend Perry pushed me all the way to his doorstep in Feilding. I now have about 165km of the north island left to run.
The North Island set a high standard for the South Island. That afternoon Kathy drove out with sweets and cokes. We had dropped off our water supplies on the way that morning. Then a road maintenance crew mowed one of our large bottles down when they were trimming the hedges!
Kathy had prepared us some tasty cheese and tomatoe sandwiches, yes it was nice to be running with runners again after runner lonely South America.
Perry even had time to go to the bank and guess what I was still running when he returned!I got an invitation from Carl who hails from Inchicore in Dublin. He lives in Wellington these days, so perhaps a Thursday night commute of an estimated 20/25km will be the way to go. I am hoping he will be able to run back to Wellington and the ferry with me on Friday
924km to be run on the south island as my flight has been booked from Christchurch to Hobart, Tasmania, Australia on Feb 27th. New Zealand’s immigration required me to have an onward ticket when before I could get on the plane from Fiji to Auckland.
After that a very early start to run a decent 38km, a shortish distance as I wanted to return to Perry’s house early am for an office day of sorts. It was another wonderful run! I felt great as I ran out from the house very early as yesterday we finished on his doorstep.
Perry drove on ahead a few km at a time and then after parking his car. He then kept running back to me to run on towards the car and so on till I finished at 10am as I need to do a lot of work today. I was delighted by my mornings run, thanks PerryMany thanks to Perry and Kathy for putting me up these last three also I a Radio New Zealand interview over the telephone from their house.
I mentioned during the radio interview I was looking for a place to stay in Otaki the following night, nothing happened.
Perry leading the way to the ferry.
So I ran into that town I stopped in a Chinese take away and got fed up waiting for them to put more food out on the help yourself buffet. They had only rice and noodles, no meat. As luck would have it was a good decision for me to leave that cafe because I went down the road to a fish n chipper. A man called Rhys came in gave his order. I asked him did he know was there a backpackers hostel around. He asked me if I was called Tony as his work mate Carl’s work who is my host tomorrow was talking about me in work that day.
I got invited back to his house.
He and his wife Kathy and son Jamie gave me a bed for the night in their lovely home.
In the morning Rhys took my picture , printed it out and left it on Carl’s work desk for a laugh.Laughing he told me he and Carl like to play jokes on each other and he had just got one up on him.
Rhys, Kathy and Jamie
He also gave my pack to Carl so I didn’t have to run with it.
I ran a very tired 40km that day finishing about 33km from Wellington, New Zealand’s capital. Many years ago the capital was shifted from Auckland as may of the politicians were complaining in the south island how travelling to the far north island was too far and the state capital should be more centrally located.
New Zealand as mentioned before has a population similar to Ireland’s 4.5 million and much larger in size than the UK. One third of the population live in Auckland. So the rest of the country , so large has the balance, many of which live in Christchurch, Wellington and other smaller cities. It is difficult for New Zealand to pay for its large infrastructure with such a small base of perhaps 1 million tax payers when you consider the retired, young and sick. This is perhaps one of the reasons why the roads are in such a bad state and potholes aside New Zealand’s roads are probably worse than those I have run on in Latin America. The roads are also incredibly busy and poorly signposted.
At the end of that day Carl ran out to me and we ran a few kilometres together. He works as a photocopier technician as I once did, so we had a grand old chat about paper jams, hot rollers, and corona wires no not food and drink :)
Sharp dressed man!
I stayed two nights with him and Rebeca his Kiwi partner of twelve years. They met in Dublin when she lived there. Now they want to go back to Ireland after living here for nine years. Delicious pasta for dinner, thanks Rebeca, a wonderful cook!
Carl is also a runner and has tried his hand at running a 24 hour race and acquitted himself really well for his first day long run. Many more to come he tells me.
Carl and Rebeca
He wants to join Perry for a few hours when he makes a bid to be the first runner to run around Lake Taupo twice back to back, in about three weeks time. Each lap of the lake is 161km or exactly 100 miles. A few weeks later I heard Perry ran his double loop of the lake over 320km in 46 hours, a decent distance for a man three years older than me!
I reckon Carl looks up to Perry as a sort of father figure. Carl will be in good company when he returns to Ireland to live in a few weeks as he is already entered for the Belfast 24 hour race this summer. Good luck to him a nice man.
Running with Carl
On my second day staying with him I was dropped back to my previous finish and ran to the ferry port in Wellington to finish off the North Island. I held back and ran slowly that day so as Karl could join me for the last five km after he finished work.
That afternoon I ran by many strange signs in Maori.
Glad I dont have to give this address too often, and its only the town name!
Then I ran by a farm selling horse poo.. I kid you not. And it was an honesty system. The bags of horse poo are just left outside the farm gate. The poo purchaser then just drops their money in a box!
Lets just hope everyone is honest and the cops are not called in to gather evidence!
Yes and with all the horse meat controversy going on in Europe at the moment perhaps the dealers in Dublin’s Moore Street could make a bit on the side!
” Get yer last of the horse poo! “
” Young fella (and they say young fella or son to even fifty year old men with beards), did you get any horse poo?
” Your Ma or girlfriend will love ya for it! “
” Going cheap, Last of the horse poo now! “
Anyway its supposed to be good for your garden!
Young fella... Get the last of yer horse poo!
After he finished work Carl tracked me down and ran with me through the city streets all the way to the ferry. Interislander Ferries had given me a complimentary crossing to the South Island after Perry phoned a contact there that had helped him on his run through the islands. The contact was an Irish woman Liz Sweeney from Co. Roscommon, thanks Liz!
Tomorrow I will take the ferry to the South Island, I will leave with a touch of sadness, it was wonderful here but for me the road rolls out on the other side of the Cook Strait. My route on the south island will 924km along the east coast from Picton to Bluff via Christchurch…
With lady in Interislander terminal and Carls mascot Norman!
Well the Rolling Stones did unfairly call this area ‘ the arse-hole of the world ‘ when they rocked through here 50 years ago.
