Join Joel MacManus on New Zealand’s longest commute as he attempts to travel from the bottom to the top of the country without a car or plane.

My mission is to get from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga as quickly as possible using only public transportation. I will travel by train wherever possible. In areas that are too rural or too wet for trains, I will take buses and ferries.

Why am I doing this? This is a great question. Because I like public transportation? Because journalism is a hugely profitable industry with money to spend? Is there a deep desire to punish myself? Frankly, I’m not sure. I hope to learn about New Zealand and gain new knowledge about the country I call home.

When New Zealanders go on international OE journeys, they almost always choose train or bus tours. But still, when traveling in our own country, public transport is often an afterthought. Decades of underfunding have made our intercity rail transportation slow, expensive and infrequent. Flying and driving have become our defaults.

However, it is still possible to travel throughout the country by public transportation. This is my planned itinerary:

1. Ferry from Oban to Bluff
2. Bus from Bluff to Invercargill
3. Bus from Invercargill to Dunedin
4. Dunedin to Christchurch Bus
5. Train from Christchurch to Picton
6. Ferry from Picton to Wellington
7. Train from Wellington to Auckland
8. Auckland to Paihia Bus
9. Bus to Cape Reinga (part of 11-hour sightseeing tour of the Far North)

The total cost of the tickets is $1,052. If everything goes as planned (which it probably won’t), this will take me 150 hours. By comparison, it takes 147 hours to travel the entire length of the Tranz-Siberia railway from Moscow to Vladivostok, which is five times longer than New Zealand.

Today I will be leaving at 8am on the ferry from Oban to Bluff, crossing the Foveaux Strait. I will live blog my journey every day, every day, until it is over.