Sunday 18th February 2007. From Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand.

Leaving Sydney this morning we took the sharpest turn I have ever taken on an aircraft and it was terrifying. But as we climbed the views of the harbour and the Opera House were stunning.

As I have stated on many an occasion my life goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and here I am in Auckland at the historic Hastings Hall Boutique Hotel. I have moved from damp and dingy backpackers to the luxury of a building built for William Motion, a pioneer and entrepreneur who arrived in New Zealand in 1838 and witnessed the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the nation's founding document.

Motion and his wife Isabella owned the land that has since become Western Springs Park, the Museum of Transport and Technology, the Auckland Zoo and Western Mt Albert; using it to farm wheat.

Motion had a water powered flour mill at Waiateao Creek (now Motion's Creek) and as Auckland grew, so did his fortunes. In 1878 he had Hastings Hall built on the pleasant wooded slopes of Mt Albert to fit his new status as "landed gentry."

This is real luxury living and if you are ever in Auckland it is well worth the money
www.hastingshall.co.nz. My suite by the way is the Waiheke Studio.

So here I am in a pioneering country at the end of the earth. New Zealand more than most has a right to consider itself a latter day pioneer. Debate surrounds the first human settlement in New Zealand but it is generally agreed to have been within the last 1000 years.

Officially New Zealand only became a British Colony in 1840, although European involvement can be traced back to 1642.

A fledgling member of the Empire, New Zealand boomed between the 1850's and the 1880's on the back of wool exports and colonial expansion...and the inevitable gold rush.

In 1893 she became the first country in the world to give women the vote and introduced the old age pension as far back as 1898. New Zealand is thus a hot bed of social experimentation...despite what you may expect.

The country's first Labour government under Michael Joseph Savage pioneered the notion of the welfare state in the 1930's. With a strongly independent streak in foreign policy New Zealand was considered by many in the Mother Country and beyond to be the most socialist government outside the Soviet Union during the 1930's.

New Zealand though has a strong twentieth century tradition of loyalty to Britain. Proportionately, she contributed more than almost any other Empire nation in World War I.

With a population of just over one million there were roughly 100,000 New Zealanders who fought for King and Country with over 60,000 becoming casualties particularly on the Western Front and in Turkey. New Zealand troops have fought alongside Britain in both world wars and in the other major conflicts of the century.

Maybe its the strong Scots and Irish roots of most of the Pakeha (New Zealanders of European descent) or maybe its the landscape that makes so much that is New Zealand so familiar to the Brit abroad?

But be warned. New Zealand is no longer the puritanical colony of yester year. This is a modern, developed and sophisticated nation I am told...and I intend to explore!

By world standards Auckland is a young city with a European history of just over 150 years and a Maori history dating back some 800 years.

Although not the capital (there was a brief period between 1840 and 1865 that saw Auckland as the nation's capital before the administrative centre of the country was established in Wellington); Auckland is the largest city in New Zealand. Its closest big neighbour is Sydney over 2,000km away.

Auckland actually sits on two harbours: the Manukau and the Waitemata and it is dotted with extinct volcanic cones (which became natural sites for Pas...the fortified Maori settlements). Auckland is the world's largest Polynesian City where the Maori culture remains strong...so its Kia Ora to Auckland.