Lawson proposed going out looking for possums. I humoured him and we wandered around in the dark for a while, with Lawson shining his torch into the trees every time there was a rustle of leaves. We saw no possums but the night sky was ablaze with stars. We found the Southern Cross and the Pointers and used them to locate south for the last time before we had to return to the northern hemisphere.
During the night it rained. I expected Lawson to propose calling the walk off; he may be ex Royal Marine and Submariner but he's a wimp when it comes to a bit of rain. However he continued to make preparations, so off we went.
This walk was called the Wainora/Boom Flats circuit. It climbed through forest, past some enormous surviving Kauri trees ( I still find it hard to understand how the first European settlors, when finding New Zealand covered in forests of these and other majestic native trees, could think only of cutting most of them down ), and emerged upon a ridge with views across the bush covered hills around before climbing through more bush and then taking a switchback route down.
Except for the very beginning, where there was a well formed path to the first Kauri, there was no obvious track, just orange plastic triangles pinned to trees here and there to indicate the direction of travel. We climbed over boulders, crossed streams, clambered over tree roots and fallen trees, walked over years of accumulated debris including beds of dead branches from tree ferns and palms, avoided trailing vines. The tangle of the bush was close around us and echoed with the repertoire of clicks, cackles and trills of Bellbirds and the cooing of the giant pigeons, the Kereru.
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