The year (at work) that was

You may have noticed that I haven't updated this blog for several months now. It's mainly because this year has been really tough at work - not because I've had a difficult project to work on, or anything like that. No, this year has been a year of massive changes, and until recently my professional future was looking very uncertain indeed. But let me start at the beginning.

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was an organisation called the DSIR (Department of Scientific and Industrial Research). And in 1992 it was split into a number of different kingdoms, called Crown Research Institutes, or CRIs. And one CRI was called Industrial Research Limited (IRL). It comprised the physics and chemistry bits of the DSIR that didn't fit in any of the other CRIs.

I started working at IRL as a summer student in November 1999. At the end of the summer I was finally starting to make some progress on the project, and my timetable for the semester meant that I had a free day every week. So I approached my supervisor and asked if it would be ok for me to continue working. He thought about it for about 0.3 seconds and said 'Sure!' (or words to that effect). One contract led to another, and about a year later he asked me what I was planning on doing in 2002 (the year after my honours degree) and had I thought about doing a PhD because he had a project that would be good for me. I hadn't thought about it, but the opportunity seemed pretty good so I took it up.
After my PhD I was offered a fixed term post-doctoral contract for 2 years, based at Imperial College in London. This was where I first got stuck into synchrotron experiments, which is my core activity today. After a year there, various circumstances led to me being able to relocate to Stanford University, where I spent another year and a bit. In September 2007 I returned to New Zealand and to a permanent position at IRL.

A research scientist's job is not like other professions. We don't do it for the money. We do it for the fun, because we enjoy it, for the things you might discover along the way, for the work that isn't the same year-in year-out but is always changing and developing. As a result, we don't fit the mould of the average person who stays in a job for 2 or 3 years and then moves somewhere else. We don't (usually) change careers 6 times in our working lives. We're in it for the long haul. I've now been associated with IRL for 14 years, and that's not particularly unusual.

Back to the story about IRL.

In mid-2012 there is talk about the New Zealand government establishing an 'Advanced Technology Institute', of which IRL would be a major part. This pleased our CEO at the time as it was something he had been pushing, to expand IRL and position it to have a greater impact in NZ. In December it was formally announced that IRL would merge with parts of other organisations and government departments on 1 February.

On 1 February IRL ceased to exist and with much fanfare the new organisation was announced: "Callaghan Innovation". Yeah, that's what we thought - 'Huh?' Callaghan, after the late Sir Paul Callaghan, a proponent of science transforming NZ to a high-tech economy instead of relying on primary industries (farming, forestry) and tourism. An explanation was offered to us that they didn't want a three-letter acronym (TLA), they had to name it after Sir Paul, and they wanted it to reflect our mandate which is to 'accelerate the commercialisation of innovation of NZ firms'. Whatever that means. So not something sensible like the Callaghan Research Institute, but no; a name that has most people scratching their heads. We were expressly told it was not to be abbreviated to 'CI' (although it has been). But that didn't stop us from shortening it to 'Callavation', which I think rolls off the tongue quite nicely. We also got given new email addresses along the lines of joseph.bloggs@callaghaninnovation.govt.nz. A bit of a mouthful if your name is, say, Alexander Prendergast. Or Samantha Williams-Johnston. Or any of the employees who are from India.

Anyway that was just the beginning of CI - I mean, Callaghan Innovation. Soon afterwards all of the teams in the 'Research, Science, Engineering, Technology and Design Delivery Group' (you'd think I was making that up - I'm not. It was subsequently shortened from 'RSETD' to 'SET' after too many people laughed too cynically) were asked to prepare a document for the 'SET alignment process'. Basically this amounted to all the teams having to justify their existence in the new organisation. We had to present a document detailing our current linkages with industry, how we could accelerate commercialisation of innovation in the firms we work with, and discuss different options for us in the event that it was decided our team would not stay in Callaghan Innovation.

As I said before, it's not unusual for scientists to stay in one institution for long periods of time, or even their entire working lives. So to be asked 'where do you think you could go if we don't want you anymore' is quite a distressing thing to think about. Personally I am very resistant to change anyway, and so by mid-April I was in a real mess about this. On 24 April I decided to fast until my heart was settled. I called my pastor during the day and asked if I could visit and if we could pray together about this. It helped immensely; all my anxiety was replaced by peace, and a deep-rooted knowledge that God has everything in control.

In July the corporate Statement of Intent was released. I was actually in Melbourne at the time, doing some synchrotron experiments. In hindsight this was a good thing, as it gave me a week to process what it all meant while being outside the environment of everyone else at CI. Two major changes in the function of the organisation direct affect me and my work: (1) CI will not be bidding for contestable funding, and (2) the organisation will stop doing fundamental science and concentrate on near-to-market research. Very quickly I realised that since 99% of what I do classes as 'fundamental science', I no longer had a future at Callaghan Innovation. Inexplicably, I had peace about this. I wasn't worried - I knew that God is in control. He got me the job there in the first place, and if He was moving me on to somewhere or something else, so be it.

Following the announcement, team discussions began again in earnest. It turned out the SET alignment process was a complete waste of time, as we were basically asked once again to think about alternative futures for ourselves. At morning tea one day, I was saying how for me, remaining in the Wellington region was more important to me than remaining in science. With my skills I could get a job at any synchrotron facility around the world. But I've done my time overseas, and nowhere else will ever be 'home' like my hometown. Someone suggested that I could look to transfer to GNS (Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences) - another CRI which is also in the experimental physics space. I instantly had peace about this and started making enquiries through various people in management there whom I already knew. They seemed very enthusiastic about bringing me on board.

At the end of July we had a meeting with the Acting GM of the SET group. Our team (Applied Maths) was effectively splintered: two people had already transferred to the geothermal modelling group at GNS, another two wanted to move their research to a university, I didn't see myself staying and was seeking to be transferred to the Materials group at GNS. This left 5 people remaining, who would most likely merge with another team.

Through August and September I had various meetings with GNS. In early October I had a trip to the US for a conference, which was kind of unproductive, but it did give me a welcome break from the negative atmosphere that was developing through a lack of communication from senior management about any of the changes or the process.
However, the Friday before I left, I received news from GNS that they could not find enough funding to support my position and that CI would need to sweeten the deal somehow. I got in touch straightaway with the GM (of Research and Technical Services, RaTS; formerly SET Delivery Group) who said he will sort it out. It then took him another two weeks to use a phone and call his equivalent at GNS to discuss this. They agreed to transfer me with 3 years' 0.7 FTE (full-time equivalent) funding.

On 21 October I was asked to send my CV and a few other documents to my prospective team leader at GNS - one of which was basically material for a career stage review. These were to go to their senior executive to make a decision about where I would fit in the organisation. Their next meeting was to be held on 4 November, with a look to finalising the transfer around 18 November.

In the weeks following I found myself increasingly demotivated and unable to work. I would turn up in the morning and stare at my computer screen. At the end of each day I could only account for 3 or 4 hours' worth of actual work. One day I found myself staring at the screen, and asked myself, 'What are you thinking about?' The answer - 'Nothing. Nothing at all.' I took a few days' stress leave, talked to my manager about it, and determined that I was entitled to take sick leave, so I decided I would do this until either the leave all ran out (I had about 50 days' worth accumulated) or things were sorted.

At the end of November I went to another conference in Melbourne. Again, it was good to have a break from the environment at work. But when I arrived back in Wellington, even at the airport waiting for the shuttle to the carpark, I started to feel overwhelmed again. The sense of having been in limbo for so long, the uncertainty... in the car, I couldn't hold back the tears any more. I turned off the radio and just started praying, declaring God's goodness and His promises to protect and provide, acknowledging His sovereignty in all things and how He is in control, how He has good plans for us and His ways are higher than ours. I confessed my inability and inadequacy to do anything, and how I didn't want to do this in my own strength any more. Yet at the same time, also realising that although this is so hard to deal with, it is not just something random happening to me, but it is part of His plan and is happening at this time for a reason.
When I turned the radio back on, I caught the Bible verse that is read out at the end of the news. 'Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God is with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you.' I knew this was for me.
Then when I got home, I flipped through the mail, including a catalogue from Manna (a local Christian bookstore). The page that fell open had a picture of a cup and plaque with that exact same verse on it.

The next day, reminding myself constantly of this verse, I went in to work and applied for sick leave for the week. I sent an email to the GM to ask where things were at. On the Tuesday he replied and said, 'When you're back on deck, let's get together and discuss the options for transfer or retention.' This disturbed me, and I replied to say that I could come in to meet any time; the reason I was away was because I was waiting for this to get sorted out, so I would prefer to meet sooner rather than later. We agreed to meet on Thursday morning, and on Wednesday night I again sought prayer from my pastor.

On Thursday I met with the GM and my group leader (who also leads the Materials team at CI). The GM began by explaining where things had got to in his discussions with GNS. They had been haggling over a price, and had reached a figure that CI might consider - $210k p.a. for 3 years. This included a contract I was named on which runs until Oct 2014. But, he said, that still came to over $500k that CI would have to find to transfer me, and the more he thought about it, it made no sense.
"Why would I send you to GNS, when for that amount of money we could keep you in CI, doing the synchrotron work, all expenses paid, for more than 3 years?"
He then said that he had been talking with my group manager and they would welcome me into the Materials team (which would always have been a better fit for me than Applied Maths anyway - in fact, this had been proposed to me by the Materials team leader way back in February during the initial SET alignment discussions).
I asked, "So what about the Statement of Intent and CI not doing fundamental science any more?"
He kind of rolled his eyes and said, "Don't read too much into that, it's written for politicians. The term 'fundamental science' is a spectrum anyway. And what is 'fundamental' now will be 'near-to-market' in ten years' time. If we're not doing that work now, we'll become obsolete very quickly. There's a range of research that we do. All that's happened in going from IRL to Callaghan Innovation is that the bulk of our focus has moved from the middle towards the commercialisation end. But there will always be the extremes, and we need to do that kind of work." He added, "I don't expect you to make a decision straightaway, but we would very much like you to stay. The synchrotron work that you do is really valuable to the organisation and would be an excellent tool for us to be able to offer industry."
"When do I need to let you know?" I said - thinking about how I'd prefer not to think about it until after the Taupo Cycle Challenge, which was on that weekend.
"It's basically up to you."

I left the meeting and headed home. After all, I was still on sick leave that day and the next. I had peace about it, but I kept praying for confirmation. I laid both options on the table - to take up his offer, or to insist that I still wanted to transfer to GNS. I made a list of pros and cons of both courses of action. I no longer had peace about transferring. To do so now could be cutting off my nose to spite my face. I didn't really know any of the people at GNS or what it would be like to work with them. On the other hand, I had worked with many of the people in the Materials team at IRL before, during my time as a student, and had a good rapport with them. It was a case of better the devil you know than the devil you don't. I had just been given an offer of 3 years' job security. That's about as good as you can expect these days anywhere in the science system. And if it all turns to custard in the future, I can leave then just as easily as now.
What probably clinched it for me was the passage I had read in the Bible that morning: Genesis 22, Abraham being told by God to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Then at the last minute, God says, 'Ok, that's enough' and shows Abraham a ram for him to offer instead. I had, like Abraham, let go of my emotional attachment to this thing that defined my life, this thing God had provided. I was ready for it to be taken away, and trusting that God would provide something else in its place, or whatever. It was as if God was saying to me, 'That's far enough; no need to go down this path any further.'

So on the Monday I emailed the GM and cced everyone else at CI who had been involved in all the discussions along the way, and told him that I had decided to accept his offer to stay in CI and transfer into the Materials team. I paid a visit to the team's science support co-ordinator (who handles a lot of the administration and, unbeknownst to me, had actually been bugging people behind the scenes that they needed to hurry up and make a decision about this because it was really starting to affect me). She showed me an office they had picked out for me, and I moved in that week. I got a new computer, since IT had been threatening to replace mine for over a year, but with being away and then with the uncertainty about whether I would be staying or not (not to mention the hassle of copying files and installing dozens of programs) I had previously declined. It felt like a new job.

Now we are all on a 2-week break over Christmas and new year. Things are still in a state of flux; the Business Plan has only just been released (it was supposed to be 2-3 weeks after the Statement of Intent) and the science teams are having yet another review and planning their activities for the next 1-2, 2-3, 3-5 years. Two teams are leaving CI and becoming research institutes of Victoria University, although they will remain on site, at least in the short term.



It's still too early for me to be able to see the full picture of why God allowed (and is allowing) all this to happen. Why did I have peace about moving to GNS initially, and then it waned? I know God doesn't change His mind, so what happened there? All I can think of at the moment is that it was necessary to get CI's senior management to really see the value of having me there. If I had sought to transfer into the Materials team straight away, I might not have the 3 year guarantee that I now have.

The experience has also taught me hugely about what it means to trust God in all things. We so easily sing, 'You give and take away, You give and take away, My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be Your name' - but until we're in the position where the only thing you can do is cling to Him, it's just words.

I've also realised how much I depend on my own strength to do things. Our pride holds us back and stops us asking others for help. We're afraid people will think we are weak if we ask for prayer. We can think, 'My problem's not as big as that other person's problem; I'll just keep it to myself.' I really struggled with what it means to do things in God's strength. Not too long ago I read the story of Abram and Sarai in Genesis 16-17. God had promised Abram a son. Sarai convinces him to have a child through his maidservant, Hagar. Ishmael is born. God appears to Abram again, renames him Abraham and his wife Sarah, and promises that He will make His covenant through Isaac (the son born to Sarah), not Ishmael. Sarai's actions of having Hagar bear the child is an example of doing things in our own strength. It is acting the way the world would act. On several occasions during this process, the two members of our team who moved to Auckland University, in the end, urged me to set up meetings with GNS and generally make things happen for myself. One of them is the only person who has expressed any negativity about me staying in CI, when I told him. He changed his tune a bit when I pointed out I wouldn't have had 3 years' certainty at GNS to carry on doing what I'm doing with the synchrotron work.
Yet doing things in God's strength - looking now at the birth of Isaac - wasn't about Sarah and Abraham sitting around waiting for God to do everything. No, they still had to do their part for Isaac to be conceived. Even though in the natural it shouldn't have been possible, they acted as if it could happen.

The important thing for me now is not to forget all of this - what has happened, and what God has taught me through it all. It disturbs me how quickly my prayer life has fallen away since the situation was resolved. I know that we seek the Lord more earnestly in times of difficulty than in times of ease. Maybe that can be my new year's resolution: to give thanks to Him every day when I arrive at work for the things He has provided and the way He has engineered it.


I apologise for the length of this post. But I didn't feel it was right to write about any of this while I was in the middle of it.

Marathon day 2013

The day dawned bright and clear with a forecast high of 23C - a couple of degrees warmer than last year.

The trail followed the same route as last year.

Leg one seemed to fly past. We spoke to a number of people who’d come from New Zealand at some point or other.

Leg two, through the Boondall Wetlands, was once again cyclist avoidance tactic territory. Thankfully we survived and made it to pit stop two with much less discomfort than last year.

Our strategy this year was to try and limit our stoppage time as that cost us our 9-hr completion goal last year. Lunch was a couple of muffins and muesli bars on the go.

The third leg felt the longest. Last year crossing the Hornibrook bridge seemed like a breeze; this year it felt like an eternity. But with my mp3 player keeping us going, we made it across and to the finish line.

Our times were as follows:

Start 7:03 am
Pit stop 1
Arrive 9:10 am, depart 9:26 am
Pit stop 2
Arrive 11:44 am, depart 12:13 pm
Finish 3:33 pm

Total time: 8 hrs 30 min
Total walking time: 7 hrs 44 min

It’s not too late to sponsor us! Visit our team page and click the blue ‘Sponsor me’ button.
http://www.thebridge.net.au/mybridge/keepcalmandkiwion/

Watch this space!

In two days' time Raewyn and I will be walking a marathon in Brisbane. Last year we completed it in 9 hrs 10 minutes; the aim this year is to do it in under 9 hrs - and have fewer blisters.
So far we have already raised about $5000 which is fantastic, especially given how difficult we have found it to fundraise this year. Both of us encountered frustration at work, as there were many days we didn't sell all of our home baking. Then when we came to organising our two major events, a family Wii games tournament and a quiz, we had all sorts of hurdles to overcome with venues, costs, and lack of interest. Despite all this the events were lots of fun and, as I said, we've already raised more than last year.

Our team page is here:
www.thebridge.net.au/mybridge/keepcalmandkiwion/

You can track our progress on Saturday here:

www.thebridge.net.au/eventw/tb_event.html

Modelling our team T-shirts

Earthquake...

Well I suppose it was only a matter of time. Magnitude 6.5 just after 5 pm, centred only about 80 km away from here. This was after a couple of decent shakes earlier in the day, and a decent one on Friday which were bad enough. This was easily the biggest earthquake I have been in and while it freaked me out (as earthquakes tend to do; ever since I went on the Universal Studios tour aged 9), physically I am ok. A couple of things fell off the shelf but nothing more than that as far as I know.

Certainly other people have it worse than me. Here's hoping things settle down...

June update

It's a busy time at the moment, what with the restructuring at work (about which we are still getting told nothing), badminton club, interclub, rep training and trips, and church activities. This would all be plenty but for some reason I'm also piling up my plate with fundraising and marathon walk training for the Bridge of Hope walk on the first weekend in August.

Last Saturday we held our first of two major fundraising events: a family Wii tournament at church. It went really smoothly (especially compared to last time), although we were a bit disappointed that there weren't more people. Anyway most people had fun and with the money raised from the day and people donating at church on Sunday we raised nearly $400. You can follow our fundraising progress (and sponsor us!) here.

Our second event will be a quiz on 27 July. In the meantime we are both baking twice a week and selling goodies at work. I think we're both finding it harder going than last year; not sure why. Maybe the novelty has worn off for people, or they're just feeling less generous. Or maybe last year was easy for some reason and this is what it's supposed to be like? Anyway the fundraising is a bit of a roller-coaster, varying from the depressing to the exhilirating often in the space of a week. I think we'll be glad when it's over and normal service can resume!

When a milk experiment turns to custard

I'm in Melbourne at the moment with two back-to-back synchrotron experiments. I'm currently sitting at the soft X-ray spectroscopy beamline, measuring spectra of the aluminium dopant atoms in zinc oxide thin films. Thrilling stuff I tell you. (Perhaps if I explain that these materials could be used as electrically conductive, transparent coatings, does that sound more impressive? Imagine having windows in your house that double as solar cells. Obviously we're a long way from that, but it's one possible future application... at least that's what we tell the funding agencies.)

We had a little drama this morning changing samples. I was about to say to my colleague, 'At least we haven't had any sample changeover problems this time' when the sample got a little bit stuck and was in danger of falling off. After a bit of panicked yelling to move things around, we managed to rescue the situation and continue as normal. Phew!

The reason I'm writing this - and yes, it has no relation so far to the title of this post, but just hold your horses - is because to fix this you would usually call the beamline scientist. The problem with that is it was 5:30 in the morning. And although I've managed to pick things up fairly quickly on how to use the vacuum system and operate the various detectors, I'm a long way from being an expert on this particular beamline.

= = = = =

Flash back to last week, when I was working with some other colleagues on the small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) beamline, looking at milk. On our last day of beamtime, at about 2:00 in the morning, I managed to break a very thin silicon nitride window that was keeping the detector chamber under vacuum.

The frame on this window is 10 x 10 mm, the window is about 1000 nm thick (0.001 mm) and 5 x 5 mm square. The one I broke was about half the size of this (and therefore costs about twice as much).

As we had been told to do if this sort of thing happened at 2:00 am, we called the control room to help change to a new window for us. Fortunately (?) a window had broken earlier in the experiment, and the beamline scientist fixed it, briefly telling me what he was doing along the way. So when it came to turning the vacuum pump back on, I was able to show the control room people which pump it was. But after that it was all up to me to get things back to how they were.

One thing that is important is to make sure that all of the beam is going through the window. I took a few scans and realised that the window was not centred. The day before, the beamline scientist had pointed out what to look for in the video camera image when centering the window, but when I had to do it by myself I had no idea what I was looking at. After moving it by brute force and getting nowhere (apart from quite frustrated), I resorted to a more systematic approach of turning each dial separately, half a turn at a time, and taking another scan (meaning having to activate the 'hutch close procedure' each time). In one direction moving the window, I think I had about ten scans before things started to improve. By this stage it was 3:00 and I was getting really irritable. In fact at one point when I went into the hutch to do another half-turn of the dial, I must admit that I had a bit of a cry. At this point I had had a total of about 9 hrs sleep in the preceding 69 hours. My colleagues were playing music that was annoying me, and sitting around chatting. I was annoyed at them for not helping, which was completely irrational because they weren't able to do anything at this point. I couldn't delegate this frustrating job to anyone - if we wanted to collect data, I had to fix it. And at that moment, I almost wished that I didn't know what I know about beamlines and synchrotron stuff, because without that knowledge we could all go to bed, lose a few hours of beamtime, and that would be it until the beamline scientist came in and fixed it - and that was probably what any other user group would have done.

Thankfully a few half-turns later, then a few in the perpendicular direction, the window was in the right place and we were able to carry on with the experiments (and I was able to go to bed). But I don't think I've ever been that frustrated, while being that tired, with something before. (Although maybe after the Oxfam trailwalker, when they wanted us to walk up steps onto a platform to receive our medals after we crossed the finish line. I refused.)

In the end the milk experiments worked really well. We got through everything we wanted to and should get a few papers out of it, and a few ticks in various administrative boxes for our funding arrangements. The ZnO experiments have thrown us a bit of a curve ball, but we should still be able to get something useful out of them.


[Translations for any of my American readers:
"turns to custard" = goes wrong, goes bad.
"hold your horses" = wait a minute.


The SAXS beamline

Race day

It might surprise you (then again, it might not) to learn that I signed up for the Screaming-O mountain bike race which was on today. The course covers 28 km of single track, four-wheel-drive track and road (5 km, 14 km and 9 km respectively) over terrain which is only accessible to mountain bikes on one day each year. The 5 km single-track is a very popular walk in the Catchpool stream region of the Rimutaka Forest Park - and as you might expect, is completely different when it comes to biking it.

Anyhow I convinced Stuart to sign up as well (just for the ride really, as the times for placings in the open men's division are in the sub 1:20). I don't know about him, but I quite enjoyed it, apart from getting a puncture which cost me about 20 mins. Not that it took me that long to change the tyre, but after changing it I discovered it needed changing again as there was a very small leak in a previous patch-up that only manifested itself once the tyre was fully pumped up. Anyway it gave us a bit of a break and after that the objective was more about finishing than beating other people. However it gives me great pleasure to say that neither of us came last!



That's my bib, and a bronze medal for coming 3rd in the open women's category (in a time of 2:28). (I also received a box of scorched almonds but dropped those round at Mum and Dad's)

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

In other news:

Work has been crazy lately. I've been involved with bidding for research funding and have put together a first round Marsden proposal and a MBIE Smart Ideas proposal. On top of this I have taken up the offer of becoming chair of the SAXS PAC (have to be careful how I pronounce that) for the Australian Synchrotron (SAXS PAC = small-angle X-ray scattering (beamline) proposal advisory committee), and we had a 4 hour teleconference yesterday to rank proposals for the upcoming 4-month cycle. Add to this all the changes going on with IRL having been absorbed into Callaghan Innovation on 1 February, and another trip to Melbourne next week for experiments; I think it's fair to say that a lot has been going on.

Church has been going well. Music practices are now every fortnight and we spend the time going through the songs for the coming two Sundays, and any new songs to be introduced. I still haven't quite managed to get across to people what I mean when I say I play by ear and therefore don't need music... Also Raewyn and I have been playing a few songs at the Tuesday night women's Bible study, which has been really good. We are studying 1 Samuel at the moment (although lately I have been having trouble finding/making the time to work through it). The Sunday morning youth group I am running is also going well and we are having some really good discussions.

Badminton season has started so I have that 3 nights a week: club on Wednesday, interclub Thursday, rep training Sunday. Tomorrow and next Sunday we have singles grading for the teams. I have been struggling a bit with my shoulder in the last few seasons, so here's hoping that it will sort itself out for this year. I'm not able to make the first or last ties (which are both local) but am able to make the two that are out of town - Hamilton and Auckland.

Queen Charlotte 2013

A couple of years ago I did two-thirds of the Queen Charlotte track with a group of 16 people from work. Ever since, I've wanted to go back and do the whole thing - do it again properly, as it were.

Now I have a walking partner, such things are becoming possible. Add to that the water taxi operators who will take your bags from one accommodation to the next, and it makes for a three-day walk that is accessible to anyone who can walk 20 km in a day.

Meet Raewyn...

... and Jen.


Day One

The morning dawned cloudy but no rain. We took the 10 am water taxi out to Ship Cove and started walking about 11:20.

A couple of hills to start with, then pretty flat around Endeavour Inlet to our first pit stop: Punga Cove resort (backpacker units, of course - but we did get to use the spa!). Distance for day 1: 27 km, 7 hrs


Day Two

A sunny day, not much wind. This was the view from our rooms!

Fantastic views from the ridgeline.

Have a break, have a photo opportunity!

Jen feeding a weka

Admiring the view.

Pit stop for night 2: Portage (backpacker rooms again). Distance for day 2: 24 km, 7 hrs (51 km total)


Day Three

For something a little bit different, we had planned to break up the three days of walking with a day trip kayaking on the Kenepuru Sound.

Later in the afternoon the wind picked up so my camera had to be put away.


Day Four

Another fantastic day for the weather, but it was just as well we started early as the open sections of track got very hot later on. Still, we had great views!

Along the way there were markers telling us how far still to go - starting with '71 km'. They came approximately every 10-15 km, but towards the end we saw '11 km', then '6' km, then a most welcome '1 km'. Distance for day 4: 20 km, 6.5 hrs (71 km total)

I'll finish off there with one of my favourite shots from the walk: coming down the switchbacks towards Te Mahia saddle (Mistletoe Bay).

Next year... Abel Tasman perhaps?