We had to leave because there was no water at Carmila Beach and I had failed to keep the tank full.
On the way south we inspected several places on the free camp list.
We were heading for Marlborough when we came upon a little rented motorhome in trouble. They were visitors from Berlin who had travelled from Melbourne and were going to Cairns.
They had had one rear tyre blow out and driving on the remaining one (it had dual rear wheels) trying to reach a service station they had destroyed it too.
They refused our offer of a lift to the servo they had passed "two or three kilometres" back saying that they would rather go by bike.
When we discovered that the servo was 16 km (10 miles) down the road, we returned to give the lady who had already ridden 4 km a lift.
On to Marlborough to find that the rest area was just a dust bowl with no water point so we booked into the caravan park.