Across the Tasman to Begin

The alarm cut through the quiet of early morning, a sound still foreign to lives shaped by the unhurried rhythms of nomadic existence. For two years now, we had woken to birdsong, to light filtering through bus windows, to the slow stirring of days that began without urgency. But this morning carried a different weight. This was another morning of departure.

Anth hugged Grammy goodbye in the softness of her home, the kind of farewell between mother and son that carries more beneath its surface than either one says aloud. Then he and Sal climbed into the bus and pulled out onto the road for the two-hour drive south to Brisbane airport. Fourteen years together, and this would be the longest stretch apart in all that time. The enormity of that sat somewhere between his ribs, not quite grief but close enough to borrow its shape. Neither of them said much about it directly, but it lived in the spaces between their words, in the way the familiar highway felt somehow different this morning, as though the road itself understood what was coming.

The Bruce Highway delivered its usual congestion heading into the city, that familiar crawl of brake lights and merging lanes that seems designed to test the patience of anyone carrying a timeline. Yet even through the traffic, there was time to spare. The bus pulled into the departures zone, that strange ritual of parking a home on wheels in a place built for brief goodbyes. They embraced, Anth and Sal, holding on in the way people do when they know the next weeks will be measured not in shared mornings but in distance. Then the sliding doors swallowed him into the noise and fluorescence of the terminal.

Through security, settled into the departure lounge, Anth busied himself with the small logistics that travel demands, organising a few things remotely, tying off loose ends from a life that was about to change shape entirely. Then the boarding call, the hum of the aircraft, and Australia falling away beneath cloud.

The flight to Auckland was a quick affair, barely two and a half hours across the Tasman. A shorter hop, remarkably, than some of the domestic flights between Hobart and Brisbane, or even Brisbane and Melbourne, that had once felt routine. New Zealand arrived with surprising speed, as though the land itself was eager to welcome what was coming. Anth collected his bags and walked the path connecting the international terminal to the domestic, the transition between countries compressed into a few hundred metres of concrete floor and directional signage.

The next leg was something different altogether, and it came late. A smaller, prop-driven plane, its engines thrumming with a more intimate frequency than the jet that had carried him across the Tasman, climbed out over water and farmland as the day surrendered its last light. By the time they reached cruising altitude, the sun had slipped below the horizon, bleeding amber and violet across the cloud line before darkness folded in completely. Somewhere below, the South Island was unfolding in all its rugged beauty, mountain ranges and river valleys and coastline, but the night kept it hidden, holding it back like a gift not yet ready to be opened. Anth pressed his face to the window and saw only his own reflection staring back, and the occasional lonely scatter of lights from towns he could not name. The land would have to wait until morning to reveal itself.

And then Nelson, its small terminal warm against the evening air, where Torrin was waiting and where everything was about to begin.

The moment Anth stepped through the arrivals gate, there he was. Torrin, unmistakable now with a massive red beard that had claimed most of his face and hair grown wild in the way that weeks on trail tend to encourage. We embraced, and the distance of weeks and oceans collapsed into something simple and whole. It was so good to see him again. That particular joy of reunion, the kind that sits in the chest and radiates outward, carried us through the rest of the evening.

Jumping back in the car, we drove to Annie's house, where Torrin had been staying with a trail angel family whose generosity defied anything Anth had encountered before. Trail angels, those quiet saints of long-distance hiking, offer their help freely to Te Araroa walkers, asking nothing in return. But Annie and her household had gone above and beyond: a bed, a hot shower, breakfast, coffee, conversation, and a warmth that made strangers feel like family. They had looked after Torrin for the past week while he waited, and now they folded Anth into the same unhesitating care as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

The next morning, we awoke and checked the weather service with the cautious optimism of hikers who know the mountains always have the final word. The news was not what we had hoped. A severe weather warning had been issued for the trail ahead, the kind of forecast that turns alpine passes from challenging to dangerous and leaves no room for stubbornness. We had to pivot.

The decision came quickly, born of the pragmatism that trail life demands. Rather than wait out the weather in Nelson, we would head north and walk the Abel Tasman Track, that celebrated coastal trail winding through golden sand beaches and turquoise bays along the top of the South Island. Once finished, we would rejoin the Te Araroa where it had been waiting for us.

Anth felt a quiet thread of relief weave through the disappointment. The Abel Tasman would not be alpine. It would offer five or so days of gentler terrain, a chance for legs and lungs and the sheer physical reality of carrying everything on your back to settle in before the real TA revealed its teeth. A kinder beginning, perhaps, than the mountains would have allowed. A grace period the weather had, in its own rough way, gifted them.

Simon, Annie's partner, drove us to the local Pak'n Save to stock up on groceries, the supermarket aisles becoming a careful calculation of calories against weight and what would sustain two bodies over the days ahead. Then he drove us onward, this last act of trail angel kindness.Read more