Secrets of the long white cloud

When we sailed out of Sydney, I felt we were riding a high-rise hotel up the harbour. From the top deck of the Dawn Princess, everything on shore looked small.

As we passed under the Harbour Bridge, the underside seemed close enough to touch. The Opera House was like a weird doll's house way below us.

Three days later we sailed into Milford Sound, a genuine glacier-forged fjord on the west coast of New Zealand's South Island. The cliff sides rose vertically from the water and turned into cloud-shrouded mountains, streaked with waterfalls snaking down from heaven.

Suddenly the massive ocean liner I had ridden past Sydney Opera House had shrunk to the size of a toy boat, dwarfed and insignificant against the towering peaks of Fjordland.

From that moment, I viewed New Zealand in a new light. Over the next 10 days, as we cruised south to north along the coast, this small country grew huge before my eyes, the domineering grandeur of its coastline and harbours making it beautiful and big to the point of overwhelming.

After leaving Sydney, we enjoyed two days and three nights crossing a calm and sunny Tasman Sea. From what I could see, everyone was content to live the cruise cliché, spending hours with books and drinks on deckchairs by the pools, interspersed with meal and afternoon tea breaks. It was classic lazy summer cruising.

When I boarded, I was determined to make a personal health and fitness statement, learning from past shipboard mistakes. With self-discipline, I had decided, it would be possible to commit to daily workouts in the gym, pools and around the 'walking' deck. My plan was to choose only low-fat low-GI dishes.

I failed on first look. The buffet 'bad zone' was too tempting to resist and my long walks and workouts were motivated more by a need to minimise the damage than to slim down and tone up.

An old bloke smoking a cigarette on Deck 7 summed up my failure as I passed him, along with other morning walkers, on one of my circuits: They're walking round and round the ship," he told his smoking companion, "just so they can have an extra cream bun!"

Then I discovered the joys of golf at sea. While checking out the golf simulator, I booked three lessons with Dawn Princess golf pro, Canadian Trevor Hessel. The simulator is an amazing electronic invention that allows you to play a full round of golf in a single room. A computer projects a golf course hole, from tee to green, onto a screen. You hit a normal golf shot into the screen, using a regular ball. An image of your ball continues on screen on the trajectory of your actual shot.

Trevor corrected my swing at my first lesson, promising to tune it up even more in the final two lessons during the return Tasman crossing. Inspired by his good work, I booked to play 18 holes at Cape Kidnappers, New Zealand's number one golf course, during our scheduled stopover in Napier.

Cape Kidnappers - NZ's number one golf course?

I soon discovered there was a group of dedicated golfers on board, some with their own clubs. Using the simulator, Trevor held regular 'nearest the pin' and 'longest drive' competitions. At each port stop, his 'shore excursion' golfers were among the first groups off the ship.

The night before we were due at Milford Sound, I overheard people in the Wheelhouse Bar lamenting the end of uninterrupted sea days. I ympathised, but was looking forward to seeing land. For me, cruising was becoming as much about the land as the sea. This realisation dawned on me on my first cruise, from Darwin to Fremantle, when I had been mesmerised by the beauty of the Kimberley and Broome coasts.

I was expecting no less from this second cruise, but when Milford Sound loomed up out of darkness in the dim light of dawn, its magnificence took me completely by surprise. I looked down from the balcony of my cabin as a tiny pilot's boat bobbed around in the rough seas near the ship's bow until two men stepped up a ladder and through a doorway into the Dawn Princess. One was the pilot who would guide us through the fjords and on to Dunedin. The other was a local expert who took up a position on the bridge and entertained us over the PA and ship's TV channel with stories and information about the history, geography and wildlife of Fjordland.

We braved the gale force winds and cold rain on the upper front decks as the ship pushed deeper into Milford Sound. The fierce weather made it forbidding and threatening, accentuating its isolation on the world's southern edge.

The Sun Princess cruises through Milford Sound.

We weaved in and out of fjords for the rest of the morning. Doubtful and Dusky Sounds, like Milford, were majestic and moody, the scenery constantly changing.

In the afternoon, we sailed into open sea, with a warm sun breaking through. Later, we rounded the southern-most tip of New Zealand, passing between the mainland and Stewart Island. Most people were in the bars or dining areas, but I found solitude on the deck above the bridge.

As night closed in, I watched the passing lights of settlements on shore. It was amazing that I could find myself alone at such a time on a ship packed with 3000 passengers and crew, but it proved how personal cruising can be.  You can enjoy the fun of the crowd when you feel like it, then, at other times, find experiences that resonate more deeply.

We woke next morning to the ship's horn sounding long blasts every five minutes and looked out to find we were at a standstill in thick fog, stranded by New Zealand' s legendary long white cloud. It had followed us from Fjordland.

Eventually the fog lifted and we steamed into Dunedin's Port Chalmers three hours late. The long white cloud floated around us for the rest of our journey. I came to think of it as a curtain that opened at random to reveal the secret and surprising beauty of New Zealand.

In Dunedin, often snowbound in winter, locals were complaining about the 26-degree heatwave, beads of summer sweat on their foreheads. We only had a few hours to look around this Kiwi version of a Scottish city before the ship sailed. A lone piper played haunting Scottish airs on the wharf as we departed.

From then on, we were in a different port every day, with the ship travelling only at night. We (my wife, MB, and I) quickly learned that having dinner in the traditional dining room kept us enclosed in the middle of the ship at a wonderful time of day - when we were sailing up harbour and out to sea against a flaring sunset sky in the last golden light.

We usually opted for dinner in the Horizon Court buffet, positioned at the top front of the ship, choosing a table beside windows that looked out at the passing landscape. We also tried the steak house and pizzeria, both with views to the world outside. Then, when night fell, we wandered off to one of the many entertainment venues - casino, cabaret, comedy, karaoke, night club, and live musicians from classical to country.

Most passengers went ashore on port days, some on organised excursions pre-booked on board, others to wander at will or make their own touring arrangements. MB was already familiar with some of the cities and usually stayed on board until early afternoon to enjoy the people-free pools and gym. 

I took organised tours in Christchurch, and Wellington and climbed Auckland  Harbour Bridge. In Tauranga, busloads left for a day with the geysers, spas and boiling mud of nearby Rotorua. We were tempted to drive there in one of the rental Porsches parked dockside, but decided to come back for a longer stay another time. Instead, we spent the day exploring Tauranga city centre and walking around Mount Maunganui, jutting out across the port entrance.

In Napier, a pretty seaside town, MB checked out the art deco district while I fell for the illusive lure of undulating fairways on the cliff tops of Cape Kidnappers, overlooking Hawkes Bay.  My golf shots preferred to land in the impossible rough. I lost at least $50 worth of balls, but it was worth it.

At our final stop in the Bay of Islands, we enjoyed fresh local seafood on the waterfront at Paihia, wandered around the Waitangi Treaty grounds, then headed back to the ship for the return crossing of the Tasman.

As the Dawn Princess gathered speed, passengers lined the deck for their last look at New Zealand, the land that had grown huge in our hearts. Hovering in the distance was the ever-present cloud - long, white and waiting to come down like a curtain.

Passengers settled in for another bout of classic cruising. Days passed. Suddenly we were passing through Sydney Harbour heads on a clear summer morning. I longed to see mountains soaring through white cloud, but all I got was a bridge and opera house, small and insignificant, close enough to touch.