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When thinking back into my past or digging through old photos of the Waitakeres, one event always comes into mind. Friends of ours, visiting from Australia, were enjoying their last few days in New Zealand. We'd just recently moved, and brought a house right in the Waitakere ranges and were keen to explore the area. According to maps we were living only five minutes by car from a walking track, so being the sunny Sunday it was decided to exercise our minds and legs with this walk. All seven of us piled into their rental camper van, and set off up scenic drive. After parking the van we jumped out.. Once we were inside the bush it quickly closed around us, blocking us off from the outside world and obstructing our view of the clear blue sky above. We began walking at a leisurely pace. After about 30 minutes of casual walking the time was about 4:15pm. It's quite weird how it suddenly becomes dark in the Waitakeres especially around autumn. So we knew that we'd better take the next loop track back to the car-park. We carried on, slightly increasing the pace. It's funny how the thoughts of darkness can get to people in different ways, and the mind can begin to play tricks on your eyes. As early evening came we were still looking for this illusive loop track, to our dismay we never found it, but our thoughts of a night in the bush were soon overcome with the arrival of a new track which incidentally wasn't listed on our map. The decision was to try this unmarked track as it would be long and tiresome tramp back up to our point of entry into the bush. We soon realised that this track wasn't the intended one and eventuated into nothing but a dead end. We were lost. We had no torch but were well equipped with food and clothes. Four of our party of six sat. The two absentees were the elder males. They had agreed to search for a possible way out. They were away for what seemed like an eternity, and with the night creeping on us, our aches and pains from the hard uphill walking were setting in. We didn't fancy sitting around for much longer. Eventually my Dad returned wearing a broad cheek to cheek smile. Dad had found yet another track off the main one that had lead us here, but this new discovery was further down the main route and again was unmarked on our map which wasn't proving to be much help in this sticky situation. We started walking again and soon we'd escaped from the freezing Waitakeres. We'd come out on the main road, Scenic Drive, and we were greeted by our friends' Mount Cook branded camper van. A walk of potential disaster eventually finished, and its ending was welcomed by all. |
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Published on: 23 Nov 2010
