Another blog in my series looking at some of the best routes in my book and nearby towns and centres that make an ideal base. This time – East Otago and the town of Cromwell.

Another blog in my series looking at some of the best routes in my book and nearby towns and centres that make an ideal base. This time – South Canterbury and the towns of Fairlie and Omarama.

Another blog in my series looking at some of the best routes in my book and nearby towns and centres that make an ideal base. This time – West Otago and the town of Middlemarch.

Judging by sales of my 4WD guidebook and social media posts, there are a lot of keen off-roaders and overlanders out there planning their summer adventures. To help, here is the first in a series of blogs looking at some of the best routes in my book and nearby towns and centres that make an ideal base.

For many people, the maxim “Take only photos, leave only footprints” says it all for how they relate to the great outdoors. For responsible 4WD enthusiasts, the equivalent is “Tread lightly”, a collection of rules and off-road driving techniques that minimise track wear and environmental damage. If you are driving up a river valley or along an access track for your next backcountry adventure, here are some ways to lessen your environmental treadprint.

It wasn’t long after moving to the South Island in the 1980s that I realised what a difference a 4WD makes to exploring its vastness. A couple of trips and I had the bug, and the truck. I teamed up with Ken Sibly in the 1990s on the first of a series of off-road guidebooks that set the bar for on-the-ground research, detailing every gate, culvert and boggy patch on about 200 different routes from Collingwood to Oreti Beach. 

Te Waipounamu, the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, packs the geology of a continent. Alps and glacial valleys in the morning, ancient lakebeds and wind-sculpted hills an hour or two down the road.  Overlay that geological wonderland with a network of tracks formed by Māori explorers and formalised since as public access and you have the stuff of 4WD dreams. Drive overland, camping along the way, and explore ghost towns, gold-mining relics, and places where humans haven’t even made a dent.