Coromandel Peninsula 1

We wanted to do at least one more challenging walk before we had to leave New Zealand, and The Rough Guide indicated that there was a good one in the Coromandel Forest Park, to a high point called 'The Pinnacles'.
We had been able to buy a leaflet giving more details of this walk, and others in the Park, at the information centre in Waihi. It described mostly well structured paths but steep climbs and, at the final stage, climbing steel ladders and scrambling over rocks. I knew that I wanted to do it but also wondered whether this one would be my undoing.
The first problem was to find somewhere to spend the night as close as possible to the start of the walk which would take most of the day. We considered staying in a commercial site in Thames, just outside the Park, but then decided to investigate the DoC sites within the Park boundaries.
The tarmac road soon ran out and poor old Tim was once again rattling and jolting over gravel. And once again dust rose and found its way through every join and seal of the van. We kept going to the very end of the road to the remote site that was closest to our starting point. It was a grassy space enclosed by trees, next to a river. A group of campers in tents and a small camper van were already there. Apart from the river water the only facility was a wooden long drop toilet in a shed, which was composting well; the only smell was of the timber of the shed. We just had time to brush some of the dust out of Tim before it got dark.
Later in the evening Lawson paid a visit to the shed and came back saying he'd found a possum. We'd seen plenty of dead ones on the roads but not a live one in spite of the fact there are supposed to be millions of them munching way at tons of vegetation every night. Well, all I can say is that there was no possum when I got there. I suppose I must give Lawson the benefit of the doubt and believe that he saw this animal, 'clinging to the tree and making a lot of noise', he said. He'd only had one Tui beer that evening.