The following details may be of interest to those considering a trip around the South Island of New Zealand. Firstly, some background on why we chose this beautiful part of the world for our holiday.

A few years ago, we donated a few nights’ accommodation at Aoredise to a very worthy cause – an auction to rais money and awareness for Men’s mental Health in South Australia. The organizers get folks like us to donate accommodation and tours from all over Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. They then put together rough packages to be auctioned off to rais money for the cause. So, each year we put in one or two bids for packages that could work for us for a holiday.

Well last year our bid for a New Zealand South Island package was successful, so time to build a trip! If we had used all that was available in the package it would have been worth over $4000, however not all of it suited us – wrong places, kid’s activities etc. So, we picked out the good bits, planned around them and booked the rest online, with flights and a rental car to suit. End plan was to fly into Wellington to pick up the car, ferry across to Picton, head around the South Island in an anticlockwise direction and end up flying out of Christchurch.

End result – 16 nights in 11 different locations, a touch over 3,000km of driving, a big ferry ride, 6 boat rides, a kayak tour, a chopper ride to a glacier, a couple of small tiffs and tons of photographs and fun!

Anyone still with me? If so, here is a day-by-day breakdown;

 

Day 1 – 02/02/26

Up at 4:00am (bloody hell, over it already!), drive to Brisbane Airport for the flight to Wellington. There goes a quick day – 2-hour time difference plus another hour for daylight savings, nearly going to bed before we got up!

Weather – raining! Hope this doesn’t keep up!

Scored well with the car – brand new Mitsubishi ASX, just 6,000km on the clock. Roomy, comfy, easy to drive, easy to navigate (once we worked out how to get google maps from the phone to the screen), only complaint was a bit of road noise.

We spent the first night at Mercure Wellington Central. Plus – clean, handy. Minus – no on-site parking or restaurant, but parking was close by for $20 and we found a nice Irish Pub for dinner.

 

Day 2 – 03/02/26

Early start to catch the ferry – It is bloody huge! We drove inside it along with heaps of other cars, motorbikes, campers and half a dozen semi-trailers!

Weather – Light rain, cloudy, cold, but clearing.

We had been pre-warned that crossing Cook Strait can be rough but no trouble, smooth sailing and heaps of room on the ferry, we found a nice window seat on the top deck and enjoyed the view of the Marlborough Sounds once across the strait.