Freeman Patterson: Namaqualand Flowers

Around New Zealand’s SOUTH ISLAND by Motorcycle

Next to South Africa, New Zealand is the country that I've visited most frequently. South Island has an ever-changing topography, one of the most equitable climates on the planet, and the pleasures of four seasons. For the most part it's without the extremes of heat and/or cold that residents of most other countries endure. There can be devastating earthquakes, but compared with the damage caused annually by the Canadian winter, I think New Zealand comes out the winner. I especially love South Island's huge range of earthscapes - rolling farmland, the Southern Alps, the arid Otago, incredibly varied coasts, and roads that seem to have been designed for year-round motorcycling.

From the thousands of photographs I made on my three 15-day motorcycle trips around New Zealand's South Island, I can only show you a few - some selected from each trip - and I have to ignore altogether the other thousands of images made when I've been travelling by car either alone or with a friend. Then there's the question of how to arrange the pictures I've chosen. My first thought was to take you on a circuit, one you can easily follow on a map, but that didn't work well because of the images I'd picked. So I finally decided just to arrange the pictures in as natural a visual flow as I could achieve. I hope you'll enjoy your ride and all you see.