Saturday 6 April
I left the summit carpark at 7am in fog and headed carefully down through countless hair-pin bends to the valley floor below and on to Queenstown. My objectives for the day were the Skyline Gondola and a trip in the Earnslaw to Walter Peak Station. Both were great visits with the sun coming out of cloud around noon for a crisp but bright day.
Gondolas climbing up past the bungy jumping platform.
The Earnslaw returning from the 11am trip prior to my joining a large crowd for the 1pm trip. The vessel takes up to 350 passengers. We were able to access viewing platforms over the engine room to watch coal fired boilers being stoked and steam engine pistons working flat out. Great trip.
Tonight and Sunday night I am in the Arrowtown Holiday Park with 207 powered sites and 38 tent sites, and it looks almost full to me. There have been loads of motorhomes and caravans on the road with many overseas tourists, and a lot of “golden oldies” (like me??).
Sunday 7 April
After a busy morning at the carwash cleaning several weeks travel grime off the van I spent the afternoon browsing the Arrowtown shops. Only made one purchase, choc bars at the Patagonia Chocolate shop.
Not only are the village trees full of colour, the hillsides overlooking the township are spectacular at this time of year.
Monday 8 April
This was my trip to Glenorchy, on a road crowded with Chinese in tour buses where I had to navigate around groups at view point overlooks. However my objective in Glenorchy was to walk the twin lagoons, 40 minutes each loop.
Canadian geese occupied the Northern Lagoon (while black swans took over the Southern Lagoon).
I last walked these lagoons with Lexie on 30 March 2015, and because there were narrow boardwalks I took the hiking poles with me this time to help with balance, especially if I met other walkers coming from the opposite direction. On one occasion while positioning myself carefully at the edge of the boardwalk to let a couple of guys pass, the foot of one hiking pole got caught in the metal mesh used for non-slip purposes. I eventually untangled it but it was only when I got back to the van I spotted that the rubber foot piece was missing. There was no way I could go back and search for it in the swamp under the board walk, so on Wednesday I went into a sports store in Alexandra and asked the manager whether they had a spare foot. “Oh” he said, “you want a new boot” and took me to a box with a number of spares in it. It appears that losing a “boot” is common with hiking pole users.
Glenorchy Wharf shed.
For Monday night I had pre-booked a space at the DoC campsite at Kinloch, directly across the head of the lake from Glenorchy. You will recall I said that the road north from Glenorchy crossed the Dart River over a long one-lane bridge that was the star feature in a 2020 detective series on TVNZ called “One Lane Bridge”. It involved a young Maori detective who had a form of second sight – he kept seeing things around and on the bridge that did not exist.
The “One Lane Bridge” of the TV series. At the far end the road seal ends and the roadway splits into the access north to the Routeburn Track, and south to Kinloch, both being gravel roads.
Kinloch during the 19th century was only accessible by boat supporting the timber mills and the sheep stations at the head of Lake Wakatipu. The Earnshaw was a regular visitor as well as several other smaller steamers serving settlements around the lake.
The Earnshaw, here unloading cargo at the wharf, accessed Kinloch until the Dart River Bridge was opened in 1974.
Today the wharf is derelict and inaccessible to boats as a result of huge floods in the Dart River burying the head of the lake area in gravel flats.
Tuesday 9 April
On my way out of Kinloch at 6:30am on my mind switched back to the TV series when I crossed the one lane bridge in the dark before dawn.
In the TV series the young Maori detective would be crossing in the dark like this and would see three spooky figures in the centre of the bridge who gradually faded away as he neared them.
From Kinloch through Glenorchy and Queenstown it was on to the Kawarau Gorge, stopping to view Roaring Meg Power Station and then the Goldfields Mining Centre ½ way along the Gorge toward Cromwell.
Roaring Meg Power Station.
The modern entrance to the Goldfields Mining Centre is reached via a new bridge. In the 1970s Lexie, Calum and I crossed a swing bridge here and wandered all over the Chinese pickings and even went down a narrow sluice channel to the edge of the river. No longer however – this is a commercial venture with strict health and safety controls (and very good displays).
Carpark at the Goldfields Mining Centre. What is special about this photo? Well the number plates on these three identical hired motorhomes (Wilderness Motorhome Rentals) read in order from left, MKN447 MKN448 and MKN449. They were on hire from Christchurch to a family of three couples who were travelling in convoy on their South island tour, and by coincidence the vehicles allocated to them by Wilderness were brand new and just registered.
I next went through to Bannockburn and walked for an hour in the Gold Sluicings Reserve.
View from the Cromwell side of the Kawarau River across to vineyards on the Bannockburn side with the Sluicings Reserve in the background.
As the Cromwell Top 10 site had been sold since 2017 with the land now a housing subdivision I travelled to Alexandra for Tuesday night in the holiday park there,
Wednesday 10 April
This was an Otago Rail Trail day. I walked from Lauder (near Omakau) 7km over two major bridges and through two tunnels to reach the Poolburn Gorge Viaduct in 2½ hours, including stops for photos and chats with cyclists who were curious about the lone walker on the trail. The downhill return 7km was 1¾ hours back, in time for a late lunch (having had snacks on the walk earlier). So, at 14km return, this was the longest day walk of the trip so far.
The curved rail bridge over the Manuherikia River, 2km from Lauder.
The first of the two tunnels, with a cycling group parked up while exploring the old tunnelers camp up the steps on the left.
Poolburn Gorge Viaduct, 7km from Lauder.
For Wednesday night it was St Bathans Domain (only 5 campers in a huge park).
Thursday 11 April
Thursday morning I explored the St Bathans village.
The iconic Vulcan Hotel at St Bathans.
Reflections in the Blue Lake, 8:00am on Thursday.
I drove back to Omakau that morning and up to Drybread to visit the gold diggers cemetery. The 1864 miners had scant rations, and bread usually dried out well before resupply occurred, so it became known as the “dry bread” place. The name stuck. I met the lady of the farm on which the cemetery is located and she explained that they had put a mob of sheep in the paddock around the cemetery as well as in the cemetery itself, to keep the grass down, She was sorry it was a bit of a mess. Yep, it was a mess alright.
The sheep wondered what I was up to (sheep poo around the graves).
The track in was plastered with sheep poo, as was the grass either side of the track – I could not dodge it no matter how carefully I tried.
This week’s bird photo on the road to Drybread – a quail perching on a fence? Never seen that before.
From Drybread back through Omakau, over to the Ida Valley and Oturehua, and a visit to the Hayes Engineering works. Earnest Hayes was a brilliant inventor of farm tools and his fencing strainers and windmill driven water pumps were used all over NZ.
We were shown the workshop with fully functioning belt driven machinery running drills and lathes and saws.
The workshop time clock (??)
Pouring rain from the West Coast finally caught up with Ida Valley at 1pm after the workshop visit, so following lunch I drove to Naseby and took the gravel road in the rain through to the Kyeburn Diggings and up to the Dansey Pass Hotel for an overnight stay in the Danseys Pass Reserve. It rained all night. Why Danseys Pass? Well, on 6 March 2006 Lexie and I drove from Duntroon in the Waitaki Valley up via the tussock highlands on Danseys Pass Road through the actual Pass and then down to Dansey Pass Hotel, passing flocks of sheep and smiling drovers during the drive. Then, a hundred metres before we reached the Hotel we saw the back of a large sign which we stopped to look at to see what was on the front facing drivers heading up the Pass.
6 March 2006 – that’s a thumbs up from me at our having unwittingly taken a road essentially banned for motorhomes.
It looks like we celebrated our achievement that day with two bottles of wine as we camped overnight on the riverbank near the hotel 18 years ago.
What does the sign at Danseys Pass say today?
Still the same. There was no such warning sign on the Duntroon side of the road, maybe because the steepest part is the climb from the Dansey Pass Hotel up to the top of the range, and coming down that 15 km (as we did) is less of an issue.
Friday 12 April
After all night rain at the Danseys Pass Reserve I left for Hyde to fill in a gap in our Rail Trail experience, the route from Hyde to the Prices Creek Tunnel (which we had visited from Tiroiti on the other side in 2015). The recently restored Hyde Railway Station was full of excellent storyboards.
This Station was not restored when we last came through this area. The actual “Rail Trail” is the path with the puddle in this picture.
I had to wait until the drizzly rain cleared around 10:30am before embarking on the walk to Prices Creek Tunnel, accomplishing the walk in 50 minutes, with the return walk 45 minutes, and very worthwhile. It was livestock viewing day, with sheep very interested in me wherever I went.
Lots of cyclists in wet weather gear on the Trail this day.
One of Ernest Hayes inventions – a tensioning wheel on a Rail Trail fence line.
Merinos on their own trail.
They often stopped to look at me up on the railway embankment – “and what are you up to” they seemed to be thinking.
So, on to Ranfurly for Friday night, and a big clean-up at the Holiday Park to get sheep poo from Drybread out of the grooves in my footwear.
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