Camp last night is just a bit too close to A1. This is a main north south corridor so heavy truck traffic is nearly 24/7. Sometime in the night things calm down and we grab a nice night’s sleep. Our alarm is birdsong this morning. It is a sweet, clear-tone melody that floats through the air from high in the treetops. It starts as just a few sweet notes then with some experimenting and arranging grows into a lovely melody. It is mostly a solitary songster with only occasional replies from afar. If I have to get up anyway this is a wonderful alarm! I later discover that that bird is called the pied butcherbird. Not a very pretty name for the maker of such a beautiful song.
We hit the road pretty early and stop just short of Brisbane in Beerwah. Kent is pretty happy with the quality of M1, a newly built, divided, limited access motorway vs A1, a two lane, bumpy route that passes through lots of little towns.
Beerwah is our stop because I want to visit the Australian Zoo, founded by Steve Irwin to make sure we see more of the quintessential Australian animals that we are even less likely to see in the wild since we are here a week shorter. Besides, it sounds like fun.
When we stop for fuel enroute we come upon an ice cream shop specializing in lyche based flavors. Kent goes for unadulterated lyche flavor. I try lyche/ginger. Both are quite good  .We have time this afternoon to check out the Glass Mountains NP Lookout. I am to find that the visitor centers are closed, Novel Coronavirus stuff, so no maps or trail information. It is pretty hot anyway, 34C, making hiking not sound very attractive in the heat of the day any way. We find a nice camper park for the night. Pasta with pesto make for a tasty dinner and we are in for a quiet evening.

Sand flies are a reality in New Zealand. For the first few days we would encounter them occasionally; but, as we moved into the western coast/temperate rainforest they have become obnoxious. I can best describe them as the size of a gnat with the bite of a fire ant and it has wings. At first you may or may not feel the bite and it is less than a mosquito bite. The true issue comes for the next few days when a blister develops and the itch is nearly unbearable. It seems the more you scratch the larger the blister and the greater the itching. DEET slows them down but does not stop them. Fortunately, we found that Aloe Sunburn gel takes a bit of the itch away. Whew! Lucky for me (Lynn) the flies like Kent better!

Traveling in New Zeeland requires some understanding and accommodation for drivers of campervans(from the US).
Other drivers must recognize;

• a single wiper swipe indicates a right turn
• multiple swipes designates a left turn.

If you have not had the pleasure of driving a vehicle where the driver sits on the right hand side, the turn signals and the wiper controls are also reversed on the steering column. This has been the most often confused/abused activity regarding driving to date.

It still takes some concentration to recognize that you need to slow down for a turn that is marked 75 since the speed limit is usually 100 kph(60 MPH).

Full of enthusiasm, and still suffering from jet lag, we arrive early to pick up our Campervan. It will not be ready early and as a matter of fact we are patching a hole in the roof so it may be about 45 minutes late. But, you can take one of our cars and go do your grocery shopping if you would like. We arrived back after the shopping to find the van ready to go. But after a short drive through town we found the power supply on the dash for the navigation device was not working. This we found near downtown Christchurch. We remedied the situation by plugging the navigation device into the plug in the back of the van which meant Lynn was sitting in the back calling out driving instructions while I tried to manage the wrong side of the road thing. Not going to work long term so we traveled back to Jucy and they jumped right on it pushing us to the head of the line for repairs. With a new fuse installed we were back on the road behind schedule. The first leg of the journey was through suburbs and farmland so we made up the time, though we were forced to find camp late and set up in the dark.