Turtlebus Traverse
The flight from Invercargill to Nelson was clear and the Southern Alps gleamed with a week-old mantle of snow. Considering the severe temperature change, however, the flight could have originated in Scott Base. As I stood in the terminal awaiting my host, happy tourists bustled about, marvelling at the sun and scenery. The passenger page came over the loudspeaker, then at the counter:
“James Barnes?”
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Kelvin left a message that he’s been held up and you’re to make your own way to the Motueka Information Centre, and he’ll pick you up there.”
I was the proud owner of a 1952 Bedford bus converted into a Douglas fir-and rimu-panelled house-bus that looked like a mobile mountain lodge. My wife and I decided this could give us the gypsy life we had been living, in essence, since we’d shifted back to New Zealand two years earlier. I bought the nine-tonne bus on Trade Me sight unseen,
