Don McGlashan is touring New Zealand from October 20 to November 5. Photo / Diane Smithers
Don McGlashan is touring New Zealand from October 20 to November 5. Photo / Diane Smithers
Kiwi music legend Don McGlashan shares his favourite New Zealand holidays
What are your favourite memories from childhood family holidays?
Both my parents were teachers, so we all could take a break in the August holidays, and we got into the habit of going to Rotorua.
I remember getting more and moreexcited as the sulphur smell would creep into the car, and drains at the side of the road would start steaming. We stayed in the Travelodge on the lake, which had carpet on the floors, and "Topliss" shower fittings, which my big brother told me were the most luxurious in the world. (Our shower at home was over the bathtub, with two taps that, at 5 years old, I could never get right, so it either gushed freezing or boiling, so I was terrified of it.) My brother's endorsement, and the slightly risque-sounding name, mean my heart still leaps to this day when I stumble upon that brand of shower fitting when on tour.
Going to Whakarewarewa and the Blue Baths. My father telling us about igneous substrata and plate tectonics. My mother's deep Presbyterian outrage at the cost of taking us all to Cobb & Co. I can still see her sitting up stiffly when the waiter asked what wine she wanted and replying, "Oh, whatever you have open," in what she felt was a tone of withering disapproval. She showed him.
Where is your favourite off the beaten track/secret spot in NZ to get away from it all?
When our kids were little, we'd follow family tradition, and take them on the train from Auckland to Rotorua. When we got there, we'd splash out and hire a car the size of a ride-on mower from a company called Ugly Duckling or Rent-A-Turkey or something, telling the kids it was a special joke car. They saw through that, just as they saw through us explaining why we couldn't have a motel with a natural hot pool. It was okay, though. We found more affordable motels with plastic spa baths, which we certainly didn't have at home. There were Topliss shower fittings there too, but they didn't impress my children as much as they did me at the same age.
We would blast down the luge, check out the weirdly spacey hot-water ducks in the river at Wai-O-Tapu, and walk in the beautiful forest at Okere Falls. We watched the "Water Organ", a bunch of hoses set up to squirt in time with music. "And now, as a special treat, we'll finish with the cancan." Coloured lights behind the synchronised jets; showers of gold, emerald, crimson; steam rising, dew beading the Astroturf apron. Nothing that Offenbach would have envisaged in his wildest dreams.
If you were heading on a family getaway now, where would you go?
My family's very grown-up now, so they're even harder to corral than when they were little, but if we had time, and could all agree on it, I'd like to take them to the Abel Tasman National Park. I think it's an astonishing place. Clear water, golden sand beaches, wekas eating your sandwiches. If you just drive past things all the time, they never get right inside you. I remember staring for what seemed like hours at a huge southern rātā on the track, an opportunist, winding its way around a long-suffering beech, but what a sensational opportunist. The wheels of my mind just spun, soaking up that colour, thinking how you would describe the difference between that rich, dusty, orangey red, and the rich, dusty, blood red of the pōhutukawa that I grew up with. It's only when you walk in nature that you slow down and really get it.
Awaroa Bay in the Abel Tasman National Park is where Don McGlashan would spend a dream holiday. Photo / Nelson Tasman NZ
What's your dream NZ road trip?
I love the trip from Kawakawa Bay at the top of the Thames Estuary, down past Tāpapakanga where the Splore Festival is, on to where the coast suddenly flattens out and the Firth looks like a steel engraving. Stopping for fish and chips at Kaiaua, with its long gravel beach and the odd motor home perched precariously between land and sea, then down past Miranda Hot Springs, across the top of the Hauraki Plains and up through Thames along the winding coast road to Coromandel. It's not all postcard pretty, but it's got a kind of windswept beauty that hits me in the chest over and over.
And if you could choose one ultimate, luxury, dream holiday in NZ, where would you go?
I think I'd go back to Awaroa Lodge, in the Abel Tasman National Park, and this time stay for a couple of weeks (you said it was a dream, right?). A huge range of amazing beaches, bush and wetlands to explore, beautiful food sourced mainly from their own organic gardens, and a strong thread of sustainability and respect for nature flowing through the whole place. I can't remember the shower fittings, which, I suppose, is a sign of my own personal development. I knew it would happen eventually.
Don McGlashan tours New Zealand from October 20, starting in Queenstown and ending in Auckland on November 5. Dates, more info and tickets from donmcglashan.com
