Join Joel MacManus on New Zealand’s longest commute as he attempts to travel from the bottom to the top of the country without a car or plane.
My mission is to get from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga as fast as possible using only public transport. Wherever I can, I’ll travel by train. In areas that are too rural or too watery for trains, I’ll take buses and ferries.
Why am I doing this? That’s a great question. Because I like public transport? Because journalism is a wildly profitable industry with money to burn? Some deep-seated desire to inflict punishment upon myself? I’m honestly not sure. I hope to learn something about New Zealand and gain new insight into the country I call home.
When New Zealanders go on their international OE, they almost always choose to get around by train or bus tours. And yet, when we travel around our own country, public transport is usually an afterthought. Decades of underfunding have left our inter-city rail slow, expensive, and infrequent. Flying and driving have become our default.
However, it is still possible to travel the entire length of the country by public transport. This is my planned itinerary:
- Ferry from Oban to Bluff
- Bus from Bluff to Invercargill
- Bus from Invercargill to Dunedin
- Bus from Dunedin to Christchurch
- Train from Christchurch to Picton
- Ferry from Picton to Wellington
- Train from Wellington to Auckland
- Bus from Auckland to Paihia
- Bus to Cape Reinga (part of an 11-hour sightseeing tour of the Far North)
The tickets cost $1,052 in total. If everything goes to plan (which it probably won’t), it will take me 150 hours. By comparison, riding the entire length of the Tranz-Siberian railway from Moscow to Vladivostok, which is five times longer than New Zealand, takes 147 hours.
I’m starting at 8am today with a ferry from Oban to Bluff, crossing Foveaux Strait. I’ll be liveblogging my journey all day, every day, until it’s over.
