It was November 2022 and time for another adventure. Up to this point, Brad and I had only done parkruns in Australia and since we hadn’t been overseas since the pandemic shut the whole world down, we thought it was high time we got on a plane.
The first stop was Sydney. Since I moved in with Brad here in Brisbane I’ve seen my Mum, my sister and my niece a whole lot less. It’s tricky when you love people who don’t all live in the same state.
So since the easiest way to get into New Zealand seemed to be via Sydney, I jumped at the opportunity to spend a few days with my family. While we were there, we did a new parkrun, of course!
Mum lent us her car and while she stayed in bed we drove up to the Central Coast, just north of Sydney. Just off the highway is a little suburb with a very big park called Mt Penang. While I went to high school near there, Mt Penang Parklands had had a makeover since I was there last and it was lovely!
Imagine a giant landscaped garden complete with water features, a wide variety of plants and lots of enthusiastic runners! If you’re planning a visit please know that the course is twisty, turny and confusing. I definitely needed the marshalls to tell me which way to go. But on the plus side, it had toilets and a cafe right near the start/finish area and plenty of parking.
Once we’d had a handful of days in Sydney, it was time to head to the land of the kiwis. I was delighted to leave the airport at Auckland since the only other time I’d been to New Zealand, I’d been stuck inside the terminal for 9 hours unable to leave!
If you’ve never been or you’re unsure where Auckland is, it’s towards the northern end of the North Island of New Zealand. It’s warmer than other parts of the country, but given that New Zealand is a looooong way from the equator, “warm” is relative!
We stayed in the city so we could do our favourite trick of exploring on foot. The parkrun we were aiming for was Western Springs parkrun (so we could get our “West” for the Compass Challenge) but getting there was going to be a bit of a challenge.
As it turned out, a friend of ours who we met here on Hive had been meaning to go to his first parkrun and was happy to drive us there! Win!
So around 7 am, we met Vince in person for the first time (hi mate!!) and then promptly jumped in his car to get out to Western Springs Park next to the Auckland Zoo. It was lovely! Another twisty, turny course but with lots of arrows and since it was three laps, once we’d worked it out the first time we just repeated the same thing two more times.
Being a very fit triathlete, Vince had a great old time and beat us by a looong way but was stoked to finally get along to his very first parkrun. If you’re heading to Western Springs remember the start times are different in different countries. There’s more info on the parkrun web page, of course. And know that there are heeeeeeaps of birds at the park, so if you’re a nature lover you might like to allow extra time to walk and take some photos!
After a few days exploring Auckland, we jumped back on a plane and headed to Wellington, a city at the southern end of the North Island. Originally we hadn’t planned to go to this windy city but another of our crypto friends lives there and we didn’t want to miss out on meeting him when we were so close!
It was a short, mid-week stopover and Brad and I were both so glad we did it. José was even cooler in real life than he is online! (Hi You!) We had a wonderful long lunch together and if he hadn’t needed to go back to meetings I think the three of us could have talked all day.
While we were in Wellington, we did a lot of walking. We explored the waterfront one day and did a loooooong loop to walk up to the high points overlooking the city another day. We didn’t do a parkrun while we were there, even though this city has one, because we were headed for Queenstown!
While New Zealand is not a large country, the easiest way to get to this small, bustling town that’s towards the south of the South Island is to fly. So back on a plane we got and after taking a very full bus from the airport to this famous tourist town, we checked in at our hotel that was probably one of the best rooms we’ve ever stayed in. It was amazing! I can’t believe I’m raving about a hotel suite but it was fabulous!
It was only 2 blocks from the main shopping area, it had views of the mountain we were going to climb and it was right across the road from the parkrun. And the suite itself was gorgeous, it could have set up camp there for an entire ski season!
We were fortunate to get great weather while we were there and being there at the very beginning of summer helped, I’m sure. Over several days we explored town, we did Queenstown parkrun and we hiked up Ben Lomond, the mountain nearby.
The parkrun was awesome. It’s held inside the Queenstown Gardens and it’s easily amongst the most beautiful parkruns I’ve ever done. You’ve got views of the gardens themselves with lots and lots of gorgeous flowers. You’ve got views of the ginormous lake that would be stunning any time of year. And you also get to run through pine forest that feels completely different to both the gardens and the waterfront.
Maybe you get a sense of why Queenstown parkrun is in my Top Five parkruns!
Still, the highlight of our time there was climbing Ben Lomond. It was a huge day of hiking up more than 1400 metres to get to the very windy top. While it was almost t-shirt and shorts weather at the bottom we needed every single one of the layers we’d carried with us at the top. It tested our fitness, our patience and our knees! But gosh, it was worth it.
If you’ve got experience bushwalking and are fit enough to run a marathon and you ever get the chance to go to Queenstown I highly recommend checking out Ben Lomond. You’ll need a good weather window and if you’ve never done anything this adventurous, definitely stop in at the Department of Conversation Office in town for some local reminders and suggestions on how to stay safe as it’s not for the faint-hearted.
From Queenstown, we flew to Melbourne. In case you don’t know Australia’s geography as well as we do, this is the capital city of the state of Victoria, that’s in the bottom right-hand corner of the country.
It was interesting for me to notice that as I got off the plane there I felt like I’d had enough. We still had 8 days and two more plane rides to go but we’d already done so much I was ready to go home. But we were in Melbourne and I do love that city, so we settled in for the time being and made the most of being there.
While we’d never been there together, Brad had spent most of his childhood in the suburbs of Melbourne and I used to have a family member live there for several years so I’d had a reason to visit many times in my early 30’s.
We did several things while we were there. We explored the city on foot, walking up and down as many of the parallel streets as possible. We went searching for cheap, vegetarian food as a game to see how healthily and cheaply we could eat in this expensive city. We hired a car and drove down to the Mornington Peninsula to see a good friend I rarely get to see in person. And, of course, we did a parkrun!
I’d been to “Albert Melbourne” a few years earlier, and while Brad had run a marathon at Albert Park as a youngster, he hadn’t done the parkrun. Since he wanted to get his I Index as high as possible we just had to “collect” this one for him.
BTW, if you don’t know what the I Index is and you want me to do a post about it, let me know in the comments.
That morning was a bit of a stretch though. We had to pack up at the hotel. Leave our luggage there. Catch a tram to parkrun. Do the parkrun. Then immediately catch the very next tram back to the hotel. Have the fastest shower in history and then race to the SkyBus terminal to get to the airport in time for our flight.
We decided we wouldn’t do that again. No more parkrunning and flights on the same day, thank you very much!
Apart from the stress of the busy morning, the thing I remember the most about being at Albert Melbourne was the sheer number of people. At our home parkrun, we usually get around 50 people, maybe 100 if there’s some kind of special event. That day, Joanne the ED and RD of the day, had to wrangle 591 people! Thankfully, she had the help of 29 other volunteers. What a mission!
After a crazy morning, we made it safely onto our flight and headed to our very last destination before home - Canberra!
We had just a couple of nights, making the most of being this far south to visit my brother and his family. Given that Canberra, the capital of Australia, is even further south than Sydney, I get to see my brother even less than my other family members. Somehow we managed to fit in two visits to see my brother, his wife and our tiny nephew, but I also managed to see my dear friend Stacey as well.
By the time we flew back to Brisbane on a Monday afternoon in mid-December we were cooked. It was wonderful and huge.
I think every time we do a loop trip like this we learn lessons about our preferences and what we most want to do.
We love travelling but we’ve also learned that we need to make as many aspects of a busy trip like this as easy as possible. We have a tendency to try and squeeze too much into a single trip. I know we’re extremely lucky that the world has so many wonderful opportunities to offer us.
And as we plan more and more parkrun adventures around Australia and the world, we keep considering the things that are most important to us.