We departed from Auckland just hours before a lockdown. We returned to Auckland just hours before another lockdown. It was all kinda odd — and yet we were so conscious of how blessed we were to be free to travel, even in that little window of time.

After teaching a weeklong intensive course, Preaching and Communication in a Contemporary Context, at the University of Otago in Dunedin with Geoff New, Barby and I had our eyes set on taking a few days of annual leave before the summer passed. 

The plan was to return to Southland and Central Otago where we pastored a church, in Invercargill, more than thirty years ago. We had seven days, with just one day of rain — and here is the itinerary of our trip, starting and finishing in Dunedin.

Pounawea  It was here, at a Christian camp as a teenager, that my father made his commitment to be a missionary.

Curio Bay

Slope Point The most southern point on the South Island, just south of the 46th parallel, which means that all of Canada and Russia would fit in the Great Southern Ocean, if they were in this hemisphere. It is Great and it is Southern…

Riverton Oh, how we enjoyed the crumbling sign on the bowling club all those years ago: “Riverton: the Riviera of the South”

Cozy Nook Our campervan in the foreground — and Stewart Island in the background.

Gore The first room in the Eastern Southland Gallery is filled with this piece, like a curtain — Sue Cooke’s Long Hee Lee, A Songless Land — capturing the loss of bush and birdsong with the arrival of the early settlers, with the setting for this piece being an early Chinese settlement in Western Southland. I love it.

Roxburgh The summerfruit capital of New Zealand, to which we took many a pilgrimage.

St Bathans (1) While it is a deep scar on the landscape, from gold-mining days, it is becoming a place of such beauty. It is always a reminder to me of how God can go to work in our lives, if we allow him to do so.

St Bathans (2) A favourite place of mine — and that is why we have two photos, not one. [NB: And if you gave me a $10 million dollar budget, I have big plans on how to build its beauty even further!]

Hyde While this is now a cycling track, it used to be a train line. In 1943, a drunken train driver took this corner at 70mph, rather than 30mph, causing a derailment which killed 21 people. It was NZ’s worst rail disaster, until Tangiwai, ten years later. A little plaque can be seen in the middle at the bottom of the photo.

Maniototo The New Zealand that is unfamiliar to most — rocky, dusty, expansive … but still beautiful.

As selfies mess with the text, here is a collage.

If the second week in the Deep South was given to these geographical panoramas, the first week had its own theological panorama. Never have I encountered such a wide theological spectrum in a class. To make it even more demanding, I only knew three (out of thirty) people beforehand and so when the questions flowed, it was so difficult to discern ‘from whence they came’ and then to interact in a way that could be helpful…