Over Easter Corporal Asbery was given the opportunity to accompany No. 1 Squadron on their trip to the Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow as a last minute replacement due to an illness with another cadet – he reports on his trip:-
“We began the trip on Wednesday 4th April with a ride on the Interislander, I was the only person on the trip from No. 41 Squadron, with the rest being from No. 1 (City of Welington) Squadron, but I was introduced to everyone and they were all friendly, plus I already knew a few other attendees from various other ATC activities or courses. When we arrived in Picton we had a short walk to Picton Backpackers Lodge where we spent our first night.
On Thursday we split into groups for our van for the trip. Once in our vans we drove down the west coast to Hokitika, on the way we drove on some of the most beautiful scenic roads in the worlds, it was a breath-taking drive. When we arrived in Hokitika it was 8:30pm and very dark, so we put all our bags in our cabins, luckily I got the double bed to myself. After we dropped off our stuff we got back in the vans and headed to the local glow worm dell, it was shiny. After we all saw the pretty lights, we headed back to the holiday park and relaxed in our cabins till we got tired enough for bed. My cabin mates and I played cards till we got bored several hours later and went to bed.
On Friday I woke up after a good night’s sleep and with an early start we set off in the vans to Wanaka. Our first stop was Lake Matheson, it’s a large lake near a small town, but you may recognise it as it is famous for the pictures taken of it with the Mt. Cook Reflections; it has a lovely walk around it. Then we headed further south and stopped to walk to the Fox Glacier face. Then we continued our drive the Wanaka and upon arrival we set up our accommodations for the next three days, as we were to stay in tents. After constructing our accommodation, we just relaxed in preparation for a long day at the air show the next day.
I woke up on Saturday, and as is my usual sleeping in tent tradition I found that I had been sleeping on a rock all night! We headed off early to get to the show and once in we were allowed to go wherever we liked so my friends and I immediately looked for a bench to sit on to make the day easier on us, luckily we found the last free bench/table there was! The show was amazing, there were modern aircraft and some very old, the most impressive of which, for me, was the pair of Spitfires and the pair of P-40 Kittyhawks. There was some formation flying and the always pleasing red checkers display. After a long day at the air show we drove back to the campsite for a bit then we went to a park to play a short game of cricket.
On Sunday we headed to Queenstown for the day, where our first stop was the gondola. After a ride up to the top we took a few rides down the luge, which was awesome, riding down those hills in a low-sitting cart was a lot of fun. Once we had finished we rode down the gondola and went to the home of bungee jumping and watched some people scream as they jumped off a bridge for a while. Then we stopped at a park and wound down for a while and played some games till we headed back to that camp site and got ready for the next days travel.
On Monday, we packed up our camp site and began our trip to Christchurch. We stopped by a lake next to the road for a short while for a bathroom break, but in total our van trip was 7 hours that day, the longest so far. When we finally arrived in Christchurch we played a game of mini-golf. Here I not only got the best score of all the people on the trip, but I set the course record! From here we went to the holiday park and dropped off our bags before we went to the Air Force museum where they were staying open late for us so we could get a special tour. The workshops were full of restoration projects, some nearly finished, some underway and some not even started yet.
On our final day, Tuesday, we went to the Antartic Center in Christchurch, where we got a ride in a the Hagglund arctic all-terrain vehicle, before we went inside where we had a go in the blizzard simulator which went down to negative 18 degrees Celsius! Then we saw the little blue penguins, which were cute, and we even saw them get fed too. We then saw a ‘4D’ movie, which is basically a 3D movie that is turned into 4D by squirts of water being shot at you. From here we got back into the vans and drove back up to Picton for the Bluebridge ferry, finally arriving back in wellington around 11pm.
The whole trip was brilliant and I’d like to thank No. 1 Squadron for offering me the opportunity to tag along on their trip.”
Photos:- Fox Glacier, Formation flying, Red Checkers, Helicopters, Kiwi Blue parachute team, Penguins
