The Williams family, from left, Oliver, 13, Elliot, 6, mum Courtney, Summer, 11, dad Andrew and Skye, 9, at Lake Taupo. Photo / Mike Scott
Over mountains and beaches and through streams, forests and towns, a family of six - including a six-year-old - have walked the length of New Zealand. They tell of their epic adventure and incredible encounters, including one with police after being mistaken for the missing Marokopa family.
As an 80km/h wind whipped up a ferocious beach storm - sand pelting their exposed legs like needles - the Williams family fell to their knees and started crawling.
As they reached the top of a mammoth sand dune, with visibility near zero, they scrambled for protective wet-weather pants.
“You couldn’t stand up, it was so incredibly painful,” says mum Courtney Williams.
“Anywhere it was touching your skin, it just felt like you were getting stabbed by needles, and the kids are all crying. We’re all separated from each other a little bit, just trying to huddle away from the sand.”
This was day one.
Day one, and a couple of hours into what would become an epic 218-day, almost 3000km north-to-south trek of New Zealand.
As he sat protected from the sandstorm by his father Andrew’s body, 6-year-old Elliot started blowing an emergency whistle. “I’m calling for help!”
“It’s the first couple of hours, and we’re like ‘What have we done?’” laughs Courtney.
“The first day was, what have we got ourselves into? You can’t describe the feeling of getting dropped off and you’re seeing your car drive away - and you know you’ve got to walk.”
We’re walking to Bluff,” 6-year-old Elliot would proudly tell anyone the family encountered on the Te Araroa trail. He is one of the youngest to have completed the hike.
The tight-knit Williams family - Andrew and Courtney are contract dairy farmers based just out of Taupō, along with their four kids Oliver, 13, Summer, 11, Skye, 9, and Elliot - set out on September 16 last year, and reached Bluff on April 22.
From wind-blasted Northland beaches to knee-deep forest mud, and from panoramic mountain-top views in the South Island to urban footpaths, the family walked about 2700km, through all weather conditions - pelting rain, scorching sun and ferocious winds.
Setting aside rest days and a week off at Christmas, they averaged about 20km a day - the longest walk day was 32km. On other occasions, it was extremely tough going - on one of the days in the South Island’s Richmond Ranges, one of the toughest legs of Te Araroa, they say it took something like 12 hours to walk 18km.
“We were just exhausted from seven days of climbing and long days,” says Courtney. “You can’t even imagine the elevation in there - we didn’t do the Tararuas because the weather was so bad, so this was our proper time in the mountains.
“It was like peak summer - [the temperature] was well up into the high 20s. We were just cooking, there’s no shade and it’s like this red rock, like you’re in Australia. It feels like you’re in the desert ... yeah, that was a tough day.”
She recalls another day of 28km, including trudging through two estuaries in Northland - she was carrying Elliot, and Andrew was carrying Skye as the tide reached their hips at one stage. “You’re walking through water, so there’s this insane resistance and you can barely feel your legs.”
Courtney’s Instagram page, Gumboots and Sneakers, is part travel show, featuring mountains, rivers, national parks, and villages, towns and cities as diverse as Puhoi, Palmerston North, Porirua and Picton.
And it’s part nature show, with encounters with the best of Mother Nature, including a hungry ostrich on the side of the road in the central North Island, cheeky kea in the South Island, a seal, horses, sheep, and all manner of bird life.
The idea of walking Te Araroa came after Courtney joined a tramping group and discovered in 2022 the adventures of Victoria Bruce and her 7-year-old daughter Emilie, who walked the trail.
“I googled the TA and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness - this is like the adventure of a lifetime’.”
She wrote on social media: “Something clicked. I felt an instant pull, a deep sense that this was something we were meant to do as a family.”
Andrew and Courtney have competed in an Ironman before, and they and their kids are physically fit. But their hiking experience was otherwise limited - no overnight trips before they started preparing for Te Araroa; the odd trail run, day walks and climbs.
There are, Courtney told her social media followers, many layers to the “why”.
The couple have been together since they were teenagers. “We have worked really hard from when we first got together, always challenging ourselves in our career and our personal life to do better. We love to be busy. We love to do things that seem impossible.”
She also adds, “We like showing our kids [that] anything is possible with hard work and commitment. We throw ourselves into things that everyone tells us will be too hard, to prove it to ourselves [that] nothing’s impossible.”
Walking Te Araroa was “about coming back to what matters most”.
“It’s a chance to step away from the noise and rediscover a simpler way of living.
“It’s about giving our kids the opportunity to realise how fortunate they are, because telling them they were wasn’t sinking in. They needed to learn through lived experience - carrying everything we need on our backs, sleeping in nature, earning each step.
“And doing it all while walking through the incredible beauty of our own backyard, in places that feel like you’re in a dream, making the best memories along the way.”
One particular memory will be the day they walked through Hamilton, and Courtney saw a woman do a double-take. “She looked shocked, like she had seen something.”
As the family reached a bus shelter, police cars were suddenly “coming from everywhere”.
An officer stopped and spoke to the family - they had been mistaken by a member of the public as the missing Marokopa family. It was soon very apparent to the officer that the Williams family of six was not Tom Phillips and his three children.
The family noticed other police cars - including mufti vehicles - drive by. “They must have had a whole heap coming, and then they got called off.
“[The officer] had a big smile on his face and thought it was great. But they took all our details because I was like, ‘Well, we’re going to be walking through this area for the next week and a half. You probably should take our details in case anyone else reports us.’”
Suspicious Kiwis aside, the family encountered nothing but support and kindness from passers-by, fellow hikers and “trail angels”.
The Te Araroa trail is a challenge at the best of times. With four kids in tow - the youngest at 6 - the pace is slower. Where a solo hiker might complete the walk in as little as three months, the Williams family adventure lasted more than seven.
Courtney and Andrew estimate they spent about $80,000 - that includes equipping themselves with all of their clothing and camping gear. On top of that were costs for food, accommodation, ferries and equipment hire such as bikes and canoes for parts of the trail.
They were meticulous in their planning, down to a spreadsheet of kilometres per day, overnight stops, elevation of the daily walks and food and snacks.
The children are all homeschooled, so there was no adjustment needed out of a classroom. They enjoyed a different backdrop to daily lessons and the adventures themselves also provided an invaluable education, says Courtney.
The family mostly used their two three-person tents, staying in DoC camps, campgrounds or other designated areas. Sometimes they were in DoC huts.
“Trail angels” were the special group of people who provided shelter, food, and even the use of transport when needed on overnight stops.
“There was so much more planning than you can imagine,” says Courtney.
“You had to because we couldn’t do the same distances as a solo hiker or a couple because of the kids. And we didn’t want to, to start with, because they needed to get fit, and our bodies needed to adjust, so we had to plan out our bounce boxes really carefully.”
“Bounce boxes” are essentially food drops. Dehydrated meals were the norm - typically, porridge or muesli for breakfast, and two to three packets for dinner, along with rice or couscous. For lunches, there would be wraps or crackers, with either tuna and cheese or salami and cheese and mayo.
There were occasional treats along the way, such as fish and chips.
Andrew’s pack would weigh between 20 and 27kg; Courtney’s 18-23kg. The kids each had lighter backpacks.
They were always safety conscious - they completed a river-crossing safety course before embarking on the trail, and whenever they were on or near busy roads, they wore high-visibility clothes and made sure there was no music or headphones.
While solo walkers can more easily hitch-hike the road sections of Te Araroa, that’s not possible with four kids in tow.
As for injuries, Elliot suffered a sprained ankle soon after they started - not that it slowed him down. There were lots of sore feet but, otherwise, there was not a single blister, says Courtney.
“It’s our gumboot feet,” says Andrew.
The couple return to a new dairy-farming contract on June 1.
As the four kids sit at a picnic table in a Taupō park, they recall their favourite memories of the trail.
Elliot, despite being the youngest, is something of a ringleader. He loved to lead the family each day, and was always active. Even as they arrived at a camp or overnight spot after a long day of walking, he’d still be playing.
He tells the Herald that he loved holding the biggest piece of gold in New Zealand, in Arrowtown. He also encountered a dolphin.
Skye: “I loved meeting all the people. It’s really fun - every day it’s something new and it’s something that you just get to look forward to.”
Summer enjoyed Goat Pass in Canterbury: “That’s where we met all the kea that tried to destroy our tent.”
And Oliver - a budding photographer - spoke of other birdlife, including fantails. On one memorable occasion, the family fed an ostrich on the roadside.
“There’s some pretty cool plants, too,” says Oliver. “There are some edible plants, there’s this cool berry we found up in the sub-Alpine area, called snowberries. They’re delicious.”
Returning to normal life has been hard, says Courtney. “I really grieved the trail for the first two weeks. I would actually cry frequently - I was just missing it, missing the seclusion and just having the kids to myself.”
Both she and Andrew talk about a deeper appreciation for life, and for New Zealand as a whole.
“The Northland beaches were amazing, and then down to the South Island with the Richmond Ranges and the Waiau Pass ... those were definitely up there with just beautiful scenery,” says Andrew.
He reflects on his time on the trail.
“I think everyone takes everything for granted in one way or another. We have an amazing country, with amazing people.
“We have it all, and yet there’ll be something negative to bring you down, but when you’re actually out in the country and you’re out with all the people, it’s amazing.
“Up in Northland ... we had numerous times where people would pull over and [ask] ‘Are you guys all right? Do you need anything?’”
The end of their Te Araroa adventure was not quite as Courtney envisaged. As they reached Bluff, and pushed on to their final destination - the famous signpost on the southern coast - several tourists swarmed at the site.
The Williams family paused, waited their turn, and then crossed the car park, hand-in-hand to their beacon.
They had walked for 218 days.
At that moment, there was a frenzy of photographs - but no real time to reflect. It was a mad rush, and soon they were all bundled into their camper van and heading to Invercargill.
This was not how it was supposed to end.
“The ending was super overwhelming for me,” Courtney wrote.
“Especially not being alone, I kind of wished I had just everyone to stand back, because I really struggled afterwards not having this moment to ourselves.
“You go from being alone to being surrounded. It was lovely having everyone there but, yeah, when we touched the pole, it was straight into photos and I didn’t get a chance to cuddle my kids because I wasn’t thinking about it and there was a lot going on.”
So they returned to Bluff a little later.
“We came back. We are just sitting here talking about it,” Courtney said on Instagram. “We didn’t have a chance to reflect and talk about it. I got really emotional about it.”
Fighting back tears, she then spoke of the seven-month adventure: “There’s a storm of emotions: pride, relief - I feel like I’m at a funeral! - disbelief and grief that it’s over.
“Two hundred and eighteen days ago, we stood at Cape Reinga, completely different people. Inexperienced, naive, unsure of what lay ahead. Unaware of just how much this journey would shape us, in ways that are almost impossible to describe.
“How many kilometres today became daily talk. Our language shifted - spoken in saddles, summits, elevation gains, river crossings, road walking, wet feet, steep huts and camps. We wandered through landscapes that changed constantly.
“And our kids ... words will never be enough for how proud we are of them; they walked every step beside us. Through rain, wind, sore feet and long days, they showed resilience, courage, humour and heart. They grew stronger with each step, not just in their legs but in their spirit.
“This walk has changed their lives. We hope the memories never fade.”
Editor-at-Large Shayne Currie is one of New Zealand’s most experienced senior journalists and media leaders. He has held executive and senior editorial roles at NZME, including Managing Editor, NZ Herald Editor and Herald on Sunday Editor.
Winter sports-related injury claims have consistently gone up over the past five years.