Welcome
Join Castles and Concerts as we undertake our first ever “Kiwis and Kangaroos Tour.” Direct flights are available in both directions to Auckland and Sydney, so getting there is an easier undertaking than anywhere in Europe requiring a layover. We’ll begin our trip in Auckland, the north island of New Zealand, before making our way to Queenstown on the southern island, and then finish our trip in Sydney, Australia. We’ll take care of all the flights between the cities, as well as all the other important arrangements, including a private charter over Milford Sound. This is all included in the price.
With the musical stylings of Shelly Berg, private charter planes over Milford Sound - and a world of natural beauty that’s like nothing you’ve ever seen - this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip that’s NOT to be missed!
Event Highlights
Auckland
We start our journey together on the north island of New Zealand in the city of Auckland. The Māori people settled the area around the 13th and 14th centuries, drawn by its fertile volcanic soil and abundant seafood. In 1840 after the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, Governor William Hobson chose the site as New Zealand’s capital, purchasing land from the Māori people and naming the settlement after Lord Auckland, a British political patron.
The capital moved to Wellington in 1865, but Auckland kept growing, fueled by the gold rush era and later waves of immigration from Britain, the Pacific Islands, and Asia. It’s now home to the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world.
Throughout all of this, the Māori have kept their traditions and communities strong. We have arranged a special visit to Waiheke Island and the Māori community who lives there. We look forward to our visit with them and learning about their musical and artistic customs.
We’ll also visit the movie set “Hobbiton”, where much of “Lord of the Rings” was shot. When the filmmakers returned years later to shoot the prequel “The Hobbit”, the farm owner agreed to host them again on the condition that they permanently install the miniature village with lasting materials, and we’re so lucky that they did!
Queenstown
Queenstown, on the shore of Lake Wakatipu in New Zealand’s South Island, was originally used seasonally by Māori, who traveled through the region in search of pounamu (greenstone) and food. European settlement began in the early 1860s when sheep farmers took up the land, but everything changed in 1862 when gold was discovered in the Shotover River, which sparked a rush that swelled the population almost overnight. Now, the area is famous for its unparalleled natural beauty, which we will explore by both air and water.
We’ve chartered small planes to take us over the stunning mountains (where many of the aerial shots of Lord of the Rings were shot) on our way to Milford Sound, a dramatic fjord where sheer granite cliffs rise more than a kilometer straight out of dark, mirror-still water. We will then explore Milford Sound on a day cruise, passing under waterfalls, frequent dolphin sightings (several surfed our ship’s wake while we visited), and amazing picturesque mountains leading to the Tasman Sea. Back in Queenstown, we’ll board the TSS Earnslaw, a historic coal-fired steamship first launched in 1912, which has been restored to its original splendor. We’ll take this lake cruise out over Lake Wakatipu to Walter Peak.
Queenstown is small, about 25,000 inhabitants, and when we visited we met the pastor of the historic St. Peter’s Anglican church. These days the church is a center of life and culture in the community and the vicar, Father Chris Dodd is very excited to have our group give a concert to which he can invite the local community.
Sydney
On to Australia
After experiencing the natural wonders around New Zealand’s South Island we’ll set our sites toward Sydney, Australia. In this magnificent bay the first settlers arrived in 1788. They were a group of convicts sent by the British government and told to establish a permanent settlement that would, over time, receive 162,000 convicted men and their families. During the following 238 years Sydney has become a beautiful cosmopolitan city that is often called the New York City of the southern hemisphere.
Because the size of Australia is about the same size as the lower 48 states of the USA, we will not try to tour the whole country in a week and will concentrate on the area around Sydney. We have structured our trip so that we end in Australia. Sydney is the logical city to use as a base for further exploration, so if you want to take the train to Perth, on the west coast, or fly into the center of the country to visit Aires Rock, or to the north shore to visit the Great Barrier Reef, you will be perfectly positioned to create an adventure on your own.
In Sydney we’ll break into small groups and experience the great Bay of Sydney by boat, we’ll tour the opera house, and go out of town to visit the vast natural park Katoomba that is referred to as the “Grand Canyon of Australia.” During our scouting trip we met “Auntie” Margret Campbell, a wonderful Aborigine woman who will give us a walking tour while telling us stories of her ancestors.
A Note about the Flora and Fauna
By Tom Montgomery
Australia Fauna
The Flora and Fauna of the world’s only island continent and its much smaller neighbor are both quite bizarre and yet completely unlike each other. Only in the last seventy years, with the discovery of the mechanism of plate tectonics, has it been possible to solve this mystery by unraveling the geologic history of this neighborhood.
Two hundred million years ago, 2/3 of the earth’s land mass was joined together in a super continent that we call Gondwana. It included what later became South America, Africa, India, Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand. The dominant animals everywhere were the dinosaurs. At this time, the early marsupial mammals were niche animals that grow their fetuses in pouches on the outside of their bodies. These evolved in South America, then crossed over Antarctica, which at the time was lush and green, and into Australia.
About one hundred million years ago Australia broke free and drifted on its tectonic plate to the north and east. Its dinosaurs, along with the reptiles, marsupials, and the plants of the time floated with it. Because Australia was now an island and was located in the far reaches of the Pacific Ocean, this ancient ecosystem was isolated from the evolutionary pathways taken by the rest of the world. After the dinosaurs died out, (65 million year ago) the Australian marsupials evolved in all sorts of ways to fill the newly available spaces in the ecosystem. In the rest of the world the later placental mammals, which give birth to more fully developed offspring, took over these same ecological spaces and marsupials mostly died out: except in Australia. So the Flora and Fauna of Australia have been evolving in isolation for about 100 million years.
So this explains Australia’s weird plants and animals. But what about New Zealand? It’s got its own set of weirdos. New Zealand’s plants and animals are quite unique but they show no evidence of having evolved from those in Australia. What’s up with that?
We now know that about seventy million years ago a big chunk of eastern Australia broke off and drifted a thousand miles to the southeast. This was New Zealand, and its fossils show that most of the species of plants and animals that were on Australia at the time traveled along with New Zealand as it broke away and traveled to its new place on the map.
New Zealand Fauna
The mystery is solved by learning that the land now known as New Zealand, after it arrived in its new neighborhood, was covered by the ocean. It sank! And it remained underwater for the better part of 60 million years. No plants, no animals. And it was only about 5 million years ago that another wandering tectonic plate bumped into the southern part of the New Zealand plate. This collision crunched up the land and forced it back up from the ocean. So all of the land life in New Zealand has evolved in the mere blink of geologic time from seeds and bugs washed up there and birds blown off course and forced to land there. The only mammals on the island are bats (who flew there); no snakes; some small geckos and skinks that washed up: no predators: and huge (harmless) forest bugs who evolved to occupy the forest forager niche of mice. There is one wonderful reptile, the Tuatara, which is an actual unique survivor of an order of Dinosaurs. They managed to survive on small, sheltered islands in the South Pacific and finally came back to New Zealand after it reemerged from the sea. The big tectonic crunch formed the magnificent and scenic topography of all of New Zealand, and especially the Southern Alps. We will take chartered planes over these mountains to visit the Milford Sound, a stunning glacially carved fiord located on the southwest corner of the South Island.
A final note of interest concerning the differences of these two lands. Some of the rocks in western Australia are dated to 2½ billion years old; among the oldest on the planet. And the Aborigines of Australia are the oldest surviving culture on the planet, dating back to 40 or maybe even 60 thousand years ago. In contrast, humans first set foot in New Zealand only about 750 years ago, when Polynesians (the Maori people) from Hawaii found it and cultivated it as an outpost of Polynesian culture. Five hundred years later, in 1769, Captain Cook arrived, guided from Tahiti by Tupaia, a traditional navigator. Although neither Tupaia nor anyone else from Tahiti had visited New Zealand for about two hundred years, the Maori navigator knew which stars his ancestors had followed, and thus was able to guide Cook over 2,500 miles of open ocean directly into the bay settled by his Maori people in what is now New Zealand.
Our Lodgings
In Aukland we’ll be staying at SO Auckland, which boasts stunning floor-to-ceiling windows and views toward Rangitoto Island and the Coromandel Peninsula. Inspired by Auckland’s volcanic landscape, this luxury hotel blends tastefully modern aesthetics with dramatic marble, bronze, and gold details.
QT Queenstown is a stylish boutique hotel featureing newly updated rooms with gorgeous views of Lake Wakatipu. It’s also located a 5 minute stroll from the lovely downtown which features many high end shops and restaurants.
We enjoyed the staff, the accommodations, and high level of service at the QT so much that we decided to stay at their sister hotel in Sydney, the wonderfully quirky Art Deco QT Hotel Sydney. The Sydney property is built into a once-famous Gowlings department store, which also housed the historic State Theater, which is now reopened as “The Palace of Dreams.” It is located in the very heart of the city and is directly across for the Queen Victoria Pavilion from 1898. This five-story historic building features a massive central glass dome, intricate ironwork and stained glass windows throughout its more than 150 stores.
We’ll have our dinners and concerts just a few steps around the corner, at the Castlereagh, which was built as a private club with a theater.
Entertainers
We are very excited to welcome back pianist extraordinaire Shelly Berg. Nominated for five Grammys, he is one of the leading pianists and educators in the country and we’re thrilled to have him with us again. Shelly also is friends with some of the leading jazz players in Sydney who we are working on collaborating with for a big concert in Sydney. Terry Miller is a sought after session bass player who has collaborated with jazz icons such as Stan Getz and Dave Grusin, and rock legends like the Grateful Dead, Steve Miller and the Doobie Brothers. Michael Hatfield, one of the best and most versatile musicians in the Bay Area, has shared the stage with legends such as Pat Matheny, Mike Stern, Steve Vai, Huey Lewis, and Vinny Colaiuta. Jeff Sanford of the Jeff Sanford Cartoon Jazz Orchestra is one of the Bay Areas best sax and clarinet players will join us once again - down under. We’re also happy to have drummer and multi-instrumentalist Karen Kusanovich join our merry band.
Filling out the band will be a family affair with Matt Montgomery on violin, Tom Montgomery on accordion, and Vanessa Bloom on violin and vocals. We look forward to expanding this list of entertainers, as well as announcing some great local players we’ll collaborate with as we get closer to the start of our journey.
Details
Arrivals and Departures
Many people’s first reaction is that the long distance makes the flight a daunting proposition. It’s true that it is a long way (around 14 hours), but the nonstop elapsed time door to door is shorter than most destinations in Europe where you must take connecting flights. For instance on our last trip to Prague the advertised time on British airways was 15.5 hours, but for many people this stretched to over 20 or even 24 hours because of missed connections due to weather or mechanical problems. There are no missed connections on a nonstop flight and they won’t send your luggage to Austria instead of Australia during a plane change. United offers daily nonstops between SFO and both Sydney and Auckland. If you join for all three legs of our trip, you will fly into Auckland and home from Sydney. There is no price penalty for changing arrival and departing airports.
Early Arrival: If you would like to arrive a day or two or a few days early, you can certainly make your own arrangements, but we are happy to reserve your rooms at our hotel so you don’t have to move. Whenever you arrive we will arrange your airport pick up and this is included in the price of the adventure.
Crossing the Dateline: Please double-check your flight departure and arrival dates when traveling to New Zealand or Australia, and also on your return. Crossing the International Date Line can shift your travel dates by a day, sometimes two.
Castles and Concerts does not require travel insurance, but we strongly recommend it to protect your trip investment. For insurance, airfare, and other travel arrangements, we are happy to refer you to Debbie Kessler of Leisure Travel Artist. Debbie has assisted many of our travelers for several years, and we are comfortable recommending her. Of course, you are welcome to work with any insurance provider or travel advisor you prefer.
415 606 1512 or Debbie@leisuretravelartist.com
Cost
What’s included: All accommodations, tours, breakfast, lunch and dinner each day except a couple of “on your own” evenings. All the excursions and concerts. and group ground transportation. House wines are included with dinners and we’ll have great parties every night.
Interior Flights: Also included are the four flights that will move us from Auckland to Queenstown, over the Southern Alps to Milford Sound and back, and finally from Queenstown to Sydney.
Not included: Round trip air from the states, extra drinks, spa appointments, or anything you sign to your rooms.
Costs: We’ve structured the trip so that each portion can be a stand-alone adventure.
Auckland, New Zealand
Queenstown, New Zealand
Syndey, Australia
The cost for each of the three segments, including the interior flights is equal, at $5,850 per person for a double occupancy room. There is a $1,400 per segment single supplement.
Upgraded Rooms: We are staying at three different hotels with a wide variety of wonderful rooms. If you are interested in upgrading your room, let us know and we will send you available options.
Deposit: A deposit of $1,000 per person will hold your place in this grand adventure. This deposit will be fully refundable for any reason until February of next year when we will ask you to pay half the balance with the final payment due in August.
Cancellations: If there is something that might prevent you from attending, we encourage you to take out trip insurance. Your deposits are fully transferable to someone who takes your place and if you cancel for any reason we will refund all of your money if the trip is full and we can fill your spot.
