Invercargill
Saturday was my first real day on the TA in the south island and I managed to go off piste for a good portion of it!
Starting at Jaspers ~9km and walking through to 17km where I cut through a couple of paper roads to the new river estuary. A blustery paddle took me across to Daffodil bay. This was followed by a very pleasant walk through the sandy point domain reserve to the beach road camp at 41km.
Sunday has been a shopping day. It would be nice to think it was a fattening day but 2hrs each way to town and back put paid to that. There is a well known story about grandad's axe that has had the head and the handle replaced. My trekking poles have a similar story
I call them Durston poles but the only original parts are the right top and left three sections. The wrist straps were replaced with Leki trigger straps modified with some old paragliding webbing. The plastic pin got replaced with a copper nail (thanks Uncle Ben). I broke the lower left section on Stewart Island so replaced two sections with two sections of a cheap pole I found at Kmart today.
The tungsten tip on the right pole had gone AWOL a few weeks ago so it got replaced with a tip for a Bivouac pole secured with a healthy amount of Araldite glue.
A washing day and relaxing tomorrow then TA proper Tuesday. Much as it would be lovely to paddle across to Colac Bay the forecast is ruling that out.