South Waikato Run

Sunday May 21st

As a relatively new member of the Jaguar Club, I am not sure just what format has been used in the past to describe these Drives, so I will use my own format which will be about the run, the people, and the connection we all have, the Cars.

Of course, the run began in the Bay of Plenty, however the first gathering point for all of the eighteen cars and their owners was alongside Lake Karapiro Lake, at Piarere.

We were blessed with an outstanding day weatherwise, and nothing could have been more suitable for our beautiful cars then to be parked alongside Lake Karapiro, which was looking so calm and placid.

Coffee was enjoyed, along with the, conversation, and in typically Kiwi fashion one of the Ladies had baked a bacon and egg pie, which she shared, and someone else handed out cookies.

Captain Phil handed out our directions for the day and soon had us following him on the Drive through the country side.

We talk a lot in NZ about our clean and green image, and this could not have been better displayed then the county that we drove through on Sunday. Many of us have had the privilege to travel all over New Zealand, and the world, and we have seen, I am sure, many wonderful places.  But you know, we have in the Waikato, countryside that would match anywhere else. It is said that the best custodians of the land are our farmers and this is certainly true.

One of the farmers had planted a long row of Flowering Cherry trees right along his road boundary, and I said to June we must visit this is Oct/Nov when they would be in flower as it would be a great show. There would have been hundreds of these trees.

We followed the Waikato river for some way down past the Arapuni dam, or close to it, before turning inland toward Wharepapa south, and then turning East again to Pukeatua where we would stop for lunch.  The Café there is called “Out in the Styx”, set right under the Maungatautari Mountain.

A well named Café, as I heard more than one person say that they had no idea where they were, and how were they going to find their way back to the Bay?

Thanks to Mary and Lance we enjoyed a fine Lunch, in a very warm Sunny atmosphere, before some of us went for a walk in the Bush on the mountain.

Maungatautari Mountain was the first bush area in New Zealand to be fenced, to keep out all predators, right down to mice, in order to allow the bird life to return, and the Kiwi to establish themselves once again. All predators were eliminated from inside the closure, and the exercise cost somewhere around $50 million.

These runs are of course about the country, but equally important are the people we meet, we all have a love of the ‘Jaguar Marque’ but within that we all have our favourite choice of models.

Chris and Judy joined us at the Café, after their own country run as there Faithfull Cat proved a bit temperamental, so they had to return home for the backup car, in order to join us. Peter, who has a keen interest in Photography, as I discovered, has owned over ten Jaguar models; the photographs we enjoy in the Magazine come from Peters (and Ron’s) hands. I wonder if Peter and Maralyn have owned the most Jaguars in the club?

As for the cars, it is interesting to note that on this run anyway we had a wide choice of cars.

There were six XJ8s; four S-Types; three XF -3XK’s and four Convertibles including a set of twins (Black F-Types).

The cars ranged from 1996 to 2015 and without exception they were all immaculately presented. Stephen and Denise were horrified to find that parking under the tree at the Café meant that their car got covered in red berries.

It was a privilege to talk to Max, about the different collection of cars he has had the pleasure of seeing, from the Rolls Royce collection in Auckland to the man in Christchurch who had over 220 cars in his Garage.

We certainly are a car people in this country.

So finally, thankyou Phil for organising this run, we certainly enjoyed it.

By Dennis Catchpole