The Final Cartwheel

The Final Cartwheel is the story of a young doctor’s return home, after a five-year hitchhiking odyssey around the world. Through East Asia, Indonesia, and around the Antipodes, the circle becomes unbroken.

Slow Boat to China

But there was one crazy son of a bitch on the waves that night, rocking and rolling in bunk #44, who not only didn’t seem to care, but was as high as a hard-winged kite, on a slow boat to China.

Songs of the South

There were Bai women

carrying loads of straw so large you couldn’t see them. A dust storm swirled around the South Gate, as I tried to draw its essence. Edges blunted, peaks eroded, stars fell, and dream mists cleared, like a pocket watch melting over a branch of the old Banyan tree. In the need for my own salvation, I found a Salvador in Dali.

The Route of Seeing

Then they sang, and taught me their songs, gifted me with film and a delicious fish caught by one of the regulars, and made toasts to me, and my odyssey. Pausing between clouds the moon rests in the eyes of its beholders.

Eating the Wind and Moon

“The stars of the snake look familiar.” Said Julia.

“It’s Orion.” I said. “The Batak seasons are regulated by the conjunctions of Scorpio with the moon, chasing Orion across the sky.”

“That Doctor Winkler was a man before his time.” She laughed.

“And this Dr. Winkler may have arrived too late.” I said, folding the bark accordion book back into its carved receptacle, and sliding its lid back on.

Coromandel Gold

We took the dogs for long walks over the sand dunes, played chess with the many Christmas visitors, and went fishing with Ron off the rocks and surf, smoking the kohawai we caught by the carload, with the tea tree we had cut by the cord. Robyn related stories of waking in the night to go floundering by lamplight. We strolled the sunsets on the dunes, and ate well.

Sulfur and Molasses

He took us to what would become our new home for the next month, a modest rancher with a central patio overlooking the lake. 9 Aquarius Drive.

“They call this Pill Hill.” He said. And he introduced us to Ringo, the cat, and how to feed the goldfish and the video player.

The Waters of Greenstone

At an altitude approaching cobalt, our horizons stretched far into the ether of the surrounding Humboldt ridges and ranges. We climbed the 5000 foot peak of Conical Hill and I was back in the Nepal, above the clouds, reaching out to touch the stone cairns and snowcapped timeless backbone of the universe, eye to eye with my soul yet one more time.

The Waters of Greenstone

We descended the western aspect sadly, as all descents are, stopped for some trail mix and an orange, and turned onto the track southwards, traversing the Hollyford face, with expansive views out to Martins Bay and the Tasman Sea. They flanked us on our right for the next two hours, until we climbed a ridge for a vertiginous panorama of jade and emerald Lake McKenzie...

The Waters of Greenstone

We made the one o’clock sailing of the SS Milford Haven, along the steep 4000 foot cliff faces, the fifteen-kilometer length of the fiord, past the peaks of Mitre and the Elephant and the Lion, Stirling and Lady Bowen Falls, and hundreds of temporary cascades, fed by rainwater-drenched moss, some never reaching the bottom, drifting away in the wind, some falling skywards in the updrafts.

Glowing Skies

...eventually arriving at the mast of the Enterprise. We got Digby Taylor at the helm, no life jackets, and two hours of hanging on for dear life - out through the rip beyond the Foveaux Strait oyster fleet, and eight-foot swells around Dog Island. My head position, in the navigation room picture, was at a serious angle. The return leg was sixteen knots, smooth as silk and blinded with sunlight off the port side.

The Wizard of Was

It was a long way from anywhere else in the world but for us, it was only nine kilometers from the turnoff. For the time we waited to hook a ride, it may have as well been Mars. It was just before noon before Leon, an agricultural student from Wanaka, stopped for just a nanosecond, and transported us all the way...

The Wizard of Was

Steve and I checked into motel flat number 34, at the Glencoe, with spectacular sunny views of Mount Wakefield and Sebastopol. We walked out to Kea Point, to find Mt. Cook and Sefton.

The sun fell behind Aorangi, and my dreams became more vivid. I had been experiencing flashbacks. A healthy apprehension about finally returning home, had become a phobia. For the first time, in almost five years of traveling, I was apprehensive.

Tiki Tour

Knowing Steve’s love for sailing, Robyn had booked us on a two-masted brig for the day. The water was aquamarine perfection, but the old salt skipper tore a gash in his mainsail, taking us out to one of the islands, where we climbed a hill, and trekked to gather mushrooms, for dinner.

Tiki Tour

After a snapper lunch at the pub in Russell, we piled back into Nikki’s oil leak and drove to the sand dunes in overcast Opononi, on the south shore of the Hokianga harbor. We checked into the ‘accommodation for hitchhikers,’ run by the Māori woman on the lawnmower.

Voyage of the Taporo

Miriam had reserved us a room, but it wasn't yet ready, so we stowed our packs, took our croissants and jus d’orange across to the Mo’orea dock, and walked to our patisserie for an early morning coffee. The day degenerated into shopping. I bought a couple of Galerie Winker posters and some coconut oil soap.