expatowner

So here we are, seven months into our golf trip around New Zealand. We have completed 145 rounds on 133 courses which works out at just under 5 rounds per week. Neither of us show any signs of tiring – apart from the usual sprained wrists, sore backs and stiff necks! For the last two months we have been tootling around the South Island in a largely anti-clockwise direction. From Picton we came down the West coast and central Otago and played some delightful courses, among them: Roxburgh with its stark outcrops of rock, Cromwell for its manicured looks, Port Chalmers for allowing us to stay in their car park and their friendly locals who were always inviting us in for a beer or two, and Lake Tekapo ‘Cairns” for its maturing water feature course. The population catchment of many clubs dictates that a nine hole course is all they can support, almost inevitably it also means that there is no paid greenkeeper(s) and that the courses are tended entirely by volunteers’. Good on them, every single man and woman. Some clubs have added their own art around the courses and I attach a selection of some of the best and weirdest. Some of the bigger towns on the South Island, that support 18 hole courses, were a real pleasure to play on, these included: Motueka, Nelson, Invercargill, Queens Park, Chisholm and Balmacewen. On our travels around New Zealand we have rarely seen busy camp sites or golf courses in fact in most cases both are pretty empty. It shows how much New Zealand is geared to the international tourism trade and how much businesses are hurting through the Covid crisis. Lets hope that we get going with vaccinations sooner rather than later. Having a self-contained motorhome gives us plenty options of where we stay and it seems to split pretty evenly between “expensive” camps (with washing machines), cheap Caravan Association type camps because they are well located in towns, freedom camping for the views and at Golf Clubs because they are friendly. Our plan from here is to work our way northwards up the South Island, taking a month or so, up the east coast back towards Picton and then up the North Island east coast, arriving in Auckland around May or June.

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