A Maverick Traveller: The Podcasts of Mary Jane Walker – Details, episodes & analysis

This post follows up my two earlier posts about the wild Catlins region of New Zealand. I went through in a campervan at the start of June 2021. I visit the waterfalls, and list freedom camping sites. Information about freedom camping sites can be a bit hard to come by, so I have made the effort to identify all five such sites in the Catlins. I also describe other camping spots, including beautiful Pūrākaunui Bay, my favourite.

THE Lake Marian Track has lately become very popular, although tourist numbers are down at present because of Covid (so, if in NZ already, you should go there!). The track begins from Marian Carpark, one kilometre down the unsealed Hollyford Road from its intersection with the Milford Road, some ninety kilometres out from Te Anau. It now has a wooden gantry only 20 minutes in, from which you can admire the Marian Falls, which are really more like rapids. Even if you don’t do the rest of the track, you can still walk to the gantry . . . All in all, this is one of the best little short trips that you can do from the road in New Zealand! Indeed, the travel writer GirlEatWorld has described Lake Marian as “my favorite experience in New Zealand so far.”

This post takes a closer look at the New Zealand state’s longstanding historical unwillingness to make plans for Auckland’s growth.

A COUPLE of weeks ago we blogged about “the paradox of retrenchment in the face of growth.” We wrote about how it was practically an orthodoxy some forty years ago that the populations of Auckland, and of a New Zealand of little more than three million, were not going to get much larger. And how, for that reason, the government could give up on planning for the next million the way it had previously done.

And how, strangely enough, even now that we have twice as many Aucklanders and 5.1 million New Zealanders within our shores, and a huge catch-up required, investment to deal with past and future growth is actually being cut back by the Auckland Council.

In this post we’re going to dive a little deeper into the specifics of why New Zealand seems to have such a problem with planning for the growth of Auckland, its largest city, in particular.

(Note: some quotes appear as direct images of old book pages, and thus don't come out in the podcast.)

Featured image credit: The Auckland Multi-Linear Scheme as presented to the Auckland Rapid Rail Symposium, 1969, by the then chief planner of the Auckland Regional Authority, Frederick W. O. Jones. Cropped square for this episode as per the requirements of Anchor.fm.

Original blog post: a-maverick.com/blog/thinking-small-how-new-zealand-failed-auckland

A report from the front lines of the invisible war in New Zealand, a comparison with Mediaeval social distancing practices, and a visit to a secret oasis in the hills above Queenstown where you can still take your exercise and admire the views!

This is the Introduction to my ninth book of travel memoirs, 'The Scottish Isles: Shetlands, Orkneys and Hebrides (Part 1)', which you can buy as an audiobook with PDF images on Gumroad, or also as a Kindle or paperback on Amazon.

Will Queenstown revert to the animals? That's the question my editor sets out to investigate as the mountain resort town enters the second night of a four-week lockdown, with bewildered ducks wondering who will feed them, timid wild cormorants getting bolder and a little sparrow staking a claim to a streetlight!

In this post, I travel north from Oamaru to the similarly-named town of Timaru, stopping off at Waimate. If Oamaru is the 'whitestone city', Oamaru is bluestone (meaning basalt) and granite, courtesy of a nearby volcano named Mt Horrible. Perhaps the most remarkable attraction is the Te Ana Rock Art Centre, which showcases Māori cave drawings of the utmost amazingness!

Brisbane is Australia's third largest city. It's the hub of Queensland culture, offering glimpses of the past and of the future.

My fourth blog post on the Chathams. From Waitangi I headed north again, toward freaky lonesome volcanoes and wandering cattle. And then down south and around, through Kōpinga Marae and listening to a lecture at Kaingaroa, marvelling at the landscape all the way.

In this post, I visit the museum in the council chamber at Waitangi on the Chathams, and talk some more about the islands' fascinating history, with pictures. Who is that man in the photo? Listen on!