Friday, March 17 - Matamata to Auckland to Sydney

Matamata to Auckland - 157 km driving

Auckland to Sydney - 2162 km flight

Firth Tower

One-room schoolhouse at Firth Tower Museum

Our last day with Harvey the RV dawns bright and warm at the Firth Tower Museum parking lot. We haven't quite decided yet what to do with this day - we just know we need to return the RV by 3pm to Auckland, about 2 hours' drive away. We ponder setting off right away and hitting a beach along the way to Auckland, but instead we decide to visit the museum that has been kind enough to let us park our RV for the night. Dominic and I take shifts of packing up/cleaning the RV and exploring the Firth Tower grounds with Erik. It turns out to be a fascinating place - the property was originally the homestead of the Firth family, who built the unusual tower and several of the other buildings that still remain, back in the 1880s. What's really amazing is that once the homestead was established as a museum, the local historical society kept an eye out for buildings of a similar vintage in neighbouring towns, and when they needed to be preserved or restored, they moved them here and set up a kind of mini village. So there's a post office, a schoolhouse, various barns - and even a jail! We pretty much have the place to ourselves this early in the morning, and we have a lovely time exploring the various buildings and exhibits. One of the highlights for Erik is a train car that contains an exhibit about the construction of a local rail tunnel - complete with model trains running throughout. In the barns and fields there's a fascinating display of how farm equipment has advanced over the years. There's also a mock sheep-shearing station where we watch videos about sheep farming and get to check out some fleeces and shearing equipment.

Farm equipment exhibit at Firth Tower

After an entertaining and educational couple of hours learning about the rural side of New Zealand life, it's back to Harvey so we can return him to his home. The drive up to Auckland goes smoothly, with a lovely stop at the Native Tree Café for amazing meat pies in a beautiful garden. After lunch we press on to Auckland, clean up all the last things from the RV, and make it to the drop-off just in time. Erik is heartbroken to say goodbye to our faithful Harvey but is consoled somewhat by the idea that he'll soon be setting off on more adventures with another family.

Sending Harvey the RV off on new adventures....

A relaxed approach to flight departure screens at AKL

A quick cab ride takes us to Auckland airport, where we've got some time to wait for our flight back to Sydney - we have a tasty pub-style dinner at the 1958 Bar and do some souvenir shopping. Our Virgin/Air New Zealand flight naturally has its entertainment offerings well stocked with all the Hobbit/LotR films, so it's fun to watch those and revel in the surrealness of having just been in a bunch of those locations. Our three-ish hour flight back to Sydney is comfortable and uneventful, and soon we're settling into the Pullman Hotel near the airport to rest up for the flight home.