Go south with High Country Journeys

Ever wanted to get into the back country and travel through many of the iconic South Island sheep stations and experience the isolation and majestic scenery of the high country in your own time? Then why not join a (fully guided) self-drive or taga-long tour organised by High Country Journeys? High Country Journeys is now run by Maniototo-based John Mulholland who took over in May 2015. John and his wife Susan have long family and farming ties to the area and live near Ranfurly. John has been involved in the 4WD scene in the South for many years and has been well known through the province as one of the organisers of the local Maniototo Lions Club’s famous 4WD trips that have spanned nearly twenty years.

Station to Station

High Country Journeys was originally known as ‘Station to Station’ when the idea of giving visitors a taste of New Zealand’s rugged back country scenery and rural life was conceived nearly twenty years ago by the Meares family. Hence the start of the unique self-drive concept. Today High Country Journeys still specialises in self-drive tag-a-long 4WD tours where you can follow a network of carefully chosen routes through many well-known properties from Blenheim and the Molesworth Station down through the Lake Coleridge and the Rakaia River areas and the vast open plains of the Mackenzie Country to the rugged tussock lands of Central Otago. The second new tour, the ‘Great Mackenzie Country and Central Otago Explorer’, is a six-day, five-night tour that starts in Omarama and takes in the rugged tussock lands and majestic high country of the lower Mackenzie Country/ Lindis Pass and Central Otago area also ending in Cardrona. John has been very happy with the response to these tours and as he says, “A lot of our clients come down from the North Island anyway, so it was a logical progression to offer them an option to do Molesworth on the way while the other new option starting in Omarama has some stunning new tracks and is popular with clients who have done some of our other tours before and who might be looking for something a little more challenging. “We keep our tours smaller (around five or six vehicles) and more personal, and travel at a more relaxed pace with radio contact in each vehicle. We can also take clients as passengers in our lead vehicle if they don’t have a 4WD vehicle.”

Safety first

John, who to date has been responsible for guiding over three thousand vehicles through the high country of Central Otago and Canterbury without incidents, remarks, “safety is a huge issue for us and one we really concentrate on.”