Day 1 By the way the check-in staff are looking at us, I'd say we have just set a new record for excess baggage and they seem keen to make an example of us. They kindly relieve us of all of our spending money thereby severely depleting our optimism stocks. What is the big deal with extra luggage? Its not like you don't have room and you're going there anyway!

Before we know it (2 1/2 hours), it's return your seats and tres tables to the vertical as we commence our descent into Christchurch. We are picked up from the airport by our tour guide/ promoter/publicist/driver/p.a. rigger/ lighting operator/accommodation manager/mixer/sherpa Rob Mayes. He takes us for a late night drive around Chch. If you haven't been it's basically Melbourne crossed with Adelaide crossed with the campus of Sydney University.

Day 2 First day proper of the tour and we are stars. We are whisked (it won't be the last time we will be whisked) to the local TV station for an early morning interview and performance of our song "We Can Identify". It's a bit more Wayne and Garth's cable access show than Top of the Pops but as we are to find out later, it is a show that puts bums on seats (or sneakers on beer soaked carpet) at our gigs.
Then over to the local paper for an interview. Pick up the latest edition of the paper which reports on page 3 that "Boy has Skateboard Stolen". It also reports that Knievel's album is worth four stars!
It's a 4-hour drive south to Oamaru and we get our first glimpse of the NZ countryside. The words "barren", "tundra-like" and "like Scotland" are ones that immediately spring to mind.
Pass through Timaru, which is apparently the birthplace of Phar Lap! Where do these New Zealanders get off claiming that Australia's greatest racing icon was sired here? Next they'll be telling us that Crowded House are from New Zealand.

Arrive for our first gig in the small port town of Oamaru. We are playing the Penguin Club, a venue/club/bar started by local musicians in a remote part of town down near the waterfront.
We wind our way down some cobblestone streets through buildings which are equal parts Ned Kelly's Glenrowan and Jack the Ripper's ye olde, don't tarry on the streets after dark, London.
We pull up to a building next to a railway siding that looks like somewhere you would come to buy feed for your livestock except on the door is a poster announcing that we are in fact playing here tonight. A club member arrives with a key and it is with some relief that we venture in to find the walls adorned with posters announcing past gigs by the Verlaines and the Chills.

A fulsome and appreciative gathering of the towns folk turn out to see us that night and we are feeling like true modern day troubadours even if there is something about the sandstone walls and high rafters that brings to mind the meeting of the townsfolk in The Crucible.

After the gig the locals rally around warmly and ask us to autograph CD's while Tanith appears with a biblical amount of fresh fish and chips. The fish tastes like it has been crossbred with a particularly tasty lobster. Supping on Speights Old Dark Ale we are beckoned outside for some late night penguin spotting by torchlight and we find small blue fairy penguins lurking under buildings and trains. Although the guidebooks say you should stay on the viewing platforms at least 20 metres away, it is apparently also alright to go out in a drunken group at night and shine torches on them. If we could get this sort of thing going outside our venues in Sydney then people would be flocking to see bands.

We take pause to wonder if it gets any better than this. The answer will be… no, probably not. It's back to our lodgings with Roger our host and his guest house is an old wood paneled manor with lashings of atmosphere on the brow of a hill overlooking the town. Perfect for a quick game of How to Host a Murder before bedtime.

Day 3 Dunedin is a big music town, like our own Tamworth, but without the golden guitar. In the past it has produced an astonishing number of great bands such as the Clean, the Verlaines, The Chills, The Sneaky Feelings, the 3d's etc and the Rough Guide to New Zealand even devotes a half page to the Dunedin sound. It's amazing that just about every one of these acts received worldwide acclaim and signed major record deals in the U.S.

The reason for this would appear to be the influence of the University campus, which is teeming with activity and dominates the towns centre. It is here that we will be playing tonight.

We head for breakfast at the Arc café, which is a non-profit café/bar/venue that serves amazing food/coffee and actually actively encourages live music. How they manage to do this without a licence for pokies is anyone's guess.

We meet up with Dunedin luminary Stephen who has played in the bands Chug and Stephen and who also runs the cities most auspicious studio having recorded the bulk of the 3ds albums there.

It's off to an interview at the varsity radio station and we are treated to a radio interview NZ style - they play your record while they talk to you. The venue is a large hall on the campus with a capacity of 1500. We are supporting Jordan Luck who is by all accounts the third biggest artist in New Zealand after Neil Finn and Dave Dobbyn.

It's huge concert production, light shows and big riders but as the evening gets going it is becoming apparent that most of Dunedin is at the day night cricket international down the road. When we take the stage we are faced with a few hundred people scattered around a large hall and Graham Downes from the Verlaines, standing right near the front. We had been told earlier that he is running a Bachelor of Rock Music course at the university and it feels a bit like we are presenting our final thesis.

Despite our paranoia about our performance, Graham comes to the bandroom after the show and showers us with compliments - we are of course convinced that he must know what he is talking about, being an authentic Doctor of Rock.

Hamilton band the Datsuns are rocking the house with a fresh set that navigates an exciting course through stooges/ cheap trick territory.

Day 4 And all too soon (as they say on the travel shows) it's tally ho to Dunedin and off to Invercargill. On the way we pass through the town Balclutha which is infamous for its real estate. A house here made the national papers recently by selling for $50.

At Invercargill we are driven straight to the local polytechnic to give a performance in the classroom to 30 or so vaguely curious students. Tracy remarks that this is a vision of how rock music will be in the future - giving demonstrations of how music was once made with guitar, bass and drums.

We ask the kids if there are any questions and there aren't so we tell them to watch Spinal Tap for a more detailed treatment of the subject.
Then its load all the gear back in the van time, then load it up a flight of stairs to the venue time, then pick up a P.A. time and then load the P.A. up the stairs time. We are laughing all the way.

Our gig that night is remarkable for the fact that people actually dance and a guy standing up the front (who later turns out to be Paul the guitarist from the Verlaines) gives up to the minute reviews of our performance as we go; "nice melody in that one, good bass work on that one, good lyrics there….."

Afterwards the reporter from the local paper gives us fulsome praise and tells us that although he was on the guest list he insisted on going back and paying - from here on in we grow ever more shameless about guilt tripping the crowds into buying our CDs.

Day 5 I am woken at dawn (O.K., 10 a.m.) to go and give a lecture to the audio engineering students at the polytechnic. Now I know what it was like for Mr. Kotter dealing with those Sweathogs and I find myself cast back to my student years spent slumped in a classroom looking as bored and hostile as possible, only now in the manner of a Twilight Zone episode, I am the teacher. I give a stirring lecture that is equal parts condascending, boringly esoteric, irrelevant and arcane and then make a dash for the van.

We make our way to Queenstown the extreme sports capital and home of some gnarly bungy rides. The countryside has a totally alpine vibe with steep mountains, pine trees and deep turquoise coloured lakes. Fat golden trout are literally leaping out of the lake.

On arrival in town, Geoff and Tanith take the Gondola up to the top of a seriously steep mountain while Tracy and I ponder the many questions thrown up by indoor mini-golf courses.

The members of the local live music community of Queenstown have thrown themselves behind our gig in a way that people normally reserve for floods, bushfires and other acts of god. They loan us a P.A. for free, give us the keys to their houses, provide support acts for free and give us free food and wine. In return all we have to do is play a bit of live music and rescue them from an interminable run of successful disc jockey nights.

We thank them by playing what we believe to be the worst gig of our careers to a crowd who seem to be kept there by sheer dint of the fact that they have nowhere else to go. And yet to our surprise, people after the show tell us that it is the best live music they have heard in ten years. As they said, Queenstown really is starved for live music.

Day 6 It's a six hour drive back to Christchurch and on arrival we head straight to the Dux Deluxe for a sound check. Here we meet the fine folk from excellent local band Degrees K who will be generously loaning us their audience for the night since they are well capable of filling the place by themselves. It is also our first encounter with the locally brewed alcoholic ginger beer, which brings new meaning to the words "pleasant " and "tipple".

The place is full of discerning punters and we feel a strange stirring of a desire to prove ourselves. It's the biggest crowd of the tour and as they say in the rock diaries, things are really clicking into place.

Day 7 The highlight of the tour is tonight's gig at the Wunderbar in the sea port town of Lyttleton. Lyttleton has several things that distinguish it from other towns we have played in.
- It is built on the rocky sides of a drowned volcanic crater.
- It was the launch point for the Scott and Shackleton expeditions to the Antarctic
- It overlooks an island in the harbour that was used as a leper colony in the 20's

The Wunderbar itself is a retro-kitsch fantasy land that is an inspired mix of Tiki Hut, 50's rumpus room, department store and the MASH 4077th watering hole, finished off with a large helping of David Lynch ambience. By all accounts Bono and the Edge love it here.

The main support for the evening is three ex- members of the Bats who go under the name Minisnap. They are blasting out an amazing Yo la tengian drone with wafting simple melodies when we arrive and they demonstrate with ease the kind of raw energy, freshness and simplicity that was the hallmark of the flying nun sound.

I join them onstage for a rendition of an old Bats song, "Tragedy Begins At Home" and I have to ask myself if it can possibly get any better than this. The answer is……well, it will have to because we are on next.

We put in a set of allegedly ambient material (our normal set played a bit quieter plus our first and last live attempt at the song High Tide Lounge) then take a long drive home around the dark, windy cliff roads that feature in the film Heavenly Creatures.

Day 8 Rest and recreation.

Day 9 We head to Christchurch Uni for an interview at the campus radio station RDU with Paul Kean (who interviews us standing up). Then play a lunchtime show on the lawn by the banks of the mighty Avon (a sort of a narrow drainage canal that runs through Christchurch) and before we know it, its time to bid adieu to our friends across the Tasman.