Breakfast bacon doesn't come easy

Telling the stories he has accumulated may well take 20-year-old Auckland man Brando Yelavich almost as long as it has taken him to trek around New Zealand's coastline. But he offered a small taste to a rapt audience at Paparore School last week, confessing to a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt to add pork to his diet.

Brando set off from Cape Reinga on February 1 last year, hoping the circumnavigation would be completed in six months. It's taken three times as long, but last week he looked as fresh and enthusiastic as the day he began.

He will arrive back at Cape Reinga on Saturday afternoon.

His visit to Paparore (on day 562) meant a late start to that day's walk, the length of East Beach to Houhora Heads, but Wild Boy has he is now known was in no hurry. His next appointment was at the top of Great Exhibition Bay, where Houhora man Bryce Quarrie was meeting him on Saturday to ferry him across Parengarenga Harbour. Meanwhile he had some stories to tell.

Brando had been true to his plan to live off the land, but sometimes that had challenges of its own. Like the morning he awoke, under a huge karaka tree, to find three piglets snuffling around outside his tent. He gave chase, hoping to add one to his larder, until he encountered their mother.

Nevertheless he grabbed one of the piglets, tied it to the tree and went back to the tent to fetch his knife. It was about then that he looked up to see Mum steaming in his direction.

Brando climbed into the tree, but the piglet was still tied up below, so there was something of a stalemate.

As an ADHD sufferer, he said, he didn't always think of consequences before acting, which perhaps explained why he chose to drop out of the tree and on to the back of the sow. He then tried to stick it.

The pig took off, with Brando still aboard until he finally abandoned ship. The piglet got away too.

There were two motivations behind his walk, he added. One was to raise money for Ronald McDonald House (which last week had topped $25,000). The other was to change his life. "I was heading down the wrong road," he said.

"I got into a bit of trouble with the police, and a lot of trouble with Mum and Dad. I didn't like what I had become and where I was heading."

With ADHD and dyslexia university wasn't going to be an option, so he set out to reinvent himself, and hopefully to open other doors (although he had no plans to become the next Bear Grylls).

Paparore School, meanwhile, was just one of many he had visited but was special. His grandfather Gojko (Goy) Yelavich once taught there (after attending Awanui School as a pupil), and he still has strong family connections in the Far North.