After leaving Waikai we headed back to the Five Rivers Retreat and ate a wonderful home cooked meal. I had Venison and Sue had a vegetarian thing stuffed into a capsicum! Oh and meringue berries and cream for desert!

A lazy start the next day we set off at about 9:45 am and headed up to the five rivers junction. This turns and heads back to Te Anau and although not the shortest route we had not been here. 10 am stop for coffee at the only building at five rivers! (Another long day I can see) Still a nice café for sure.

Our only planned diversion today was the Mavora lakes which is a 30-40 k diversion from the main road. This is another great spot that we have to return to in some better weather. We had raced the rain all the way out here and it caught up as soon as we stopped at the lakes.

We found out later that up to 3000 people visit this spot in the summer. It is hard to imagine where they all go. We went to the end of the track and a short way into the bush which we knew became 4WD territory. It was not as difficult as we thought but as the rain set in we could see no point going much further and headed back to Te Anau.

Sue had arranged to stay with Sarah whom she had only recently met at the Homewell Lodge Freeman/Sally workshop. Sarah and her partner Dave (plus Chalky the dog) were most hospitable and we spent the two evenings drinking whiskey.

For Saturday Sarah had arranged for Graham Dainty, a local photographer and part time electrician, to come out for a drive with us. Sarah, Sue, Graham and I headed back down the Coastal road to seek out Cosy Nook and on the way back the Borland road.

We had a great day stopping at some of the “secret” photo spots and of course a café for a late lunch. The Borland Rd become another late afternoon trip and we must try to do things in a different order next time. It is also a very pretty place and we only went part way once again. Our thanks to Graham and Sarah for their time and company.

Really this marks the end of the planned fun parts of the trip. We left Te Anau this morning heading back north. Our itinerary s not programmed just to head north with stops each night. Oh except for a couple of nights with Sally and Don. Not to be considered anything less than a privilege. But after that we will be drive drive drive until we get to Auckland.

 
Today (Thursday) we visited a friend who has just started work nearby, Cameron Dawson. The Dawsons have been friends of ours for some time and Sue has known Camerons Mother since school. So being so close it was silly not to stop in.

Cameron lives on the farm he works on with his partner Arnya. They moved in only a few days ago so it was very kind of them to spend time with us on their one day off when they were supposed to be unpacking. We went for a drive up a hill to a Telecom tower which overlooks a wind farm. It has almost a 360 degree view of the Lumsden area. Today we had the first sunshine we had seen in a week and the views were spectacular.

It was early afternoon when we left them to continue with chores and we set off around the long way to head for Waikia to visit the Beech forest bush past Piano Flat. This road does go all the way through to Roxburgh but is marked in the 4WD book as needing FIVE vehicles. So we did not go very far into it. It is such a pretty valley along side the Waikia river and looks like a perfect quad trip destination as well!.

We need to return to this location again someday when there is better light as it was getting dark by the time we arrived and hence we could not really appreciate the bush. The Waikia township is very cute and surprisingly big for such an out of the way place. Very reminiscent of Nasby.

We arrived back at the B&B as the sun was setting and saw the river looking like this:

Our last day in the Catlins is just as wet as the rest. We keep being told that this what the weather is like here. It is not entirely unpleasant because most of the time is just a mist that hides the views in the distance and a raincoat is sufficient to stay warm and dry. As we proceed around the coast on the Southern Scenic route we stop at all the places marked. Most are a short walk and provided we miss the short heavy showers it is still fun! There are a surprising number of people out and about despite the weather.
 

 
Slope point is the southern most part of the South Island. There is a marine beacon on the end of the rocks and fantastic crashing waves which, on a fine day would consume a lot of time shooting them to catch the right one. It is also famous for the wind swept trees that fight the elements here. Sue shot them, but they are on a farmers property and a long lens is required unless you jump the fence. Also the mist over such a distance creates exactly the sort of hairspray effect that Sue loves (not me).

But further round at the Waipapa lighthouse there is a smaller set which is more accessible. This location has a visitor centre curiously marked as a Historic place. Not sure if this is the building or the spot?. It has a few short tracks through the grass where four Sea Lions were scattered around. One was less than metre from the track and would roar at anyone that got close and appeared more than slightly interesting.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
We head of to Invercargill which is still on the trail, the largest population we have seen for a while, just to catch up with a friend of Sues. On the way we come across a cluster of cars in the way. And once upon them discover that a Japanese couple in a small car have spun off the road. A passing ute was towing them out of the grass. Luckily they hit the wires and not a post and the car seemed fine. A bit of a traffic jam in the country.

Our stop in Invercargill is short and we push on to Riverton. This is a pretty town and if the weather was better I could imagine we would never have made it to our accommodation that night. We stop to look around a gallery that Sue had read about and chat with the lady owner. (Its for sale if anyone wants to move south). She tells us that despite the weather it is a good time to come down here. In the summer the camper vans travel in convoys and you can’t find parks at the sights. I was very pleased to hear that we had avoided that period as you might imagine. I had thought we had seen too many already.

After Riverton we head to Lumsden to stay the night and make contact with Cameron Dawson. We navigate along some back roads that are fast moving and pretty and make good time. It’s a B&B this time and as usual very nice people running it, Paula and Roger who greet us with wine and pizza bread.

After dinner we are talking and Roger drops ideas for 4WD trips. Every few minutes is thinks of a new one and Sue gets all excited and starts making notes. It looks like we may have to return to this area to try all these drives. But today (it is morning now) Cameron says he has a view he wants to show us so we will try that and see how much time is left.

Owaka was a good base, it has a 4 square, 3 café’s and a gas station. Oh and cell service. But we left this morning at about 10 and topped up on food, gas and communication with the outside world.

Unfortunately it is raining a little harder today Still a sort of Auckland drizzle but fairly sold and consistent so even Sue did not walk for more than 5 minutes along the first beach we stopped out.

Our destination is Curio bay which is only an hour of so along the coast but there are beaches to stop at and falls to see. The most important being Niagara Falls which is only 100m off the main road. Just as well really as it might annoy a few people, as it was named by a surveyor who had a sense of humor and is the smallest water fall in the world. The other redeeming feature of Niagara, besides the short walk to it, is the café. It is built in an old school and has wonderful fresh food all day. It seems also the only source of eating in this area.
 

 

 

 

The accommodation Sue has found at Curio is quite wonderful. It is a little single room unit that looks straight out on to the sea. And reading the visitors’ book it seems that the penguins come up on to the deck and can keep people awake. We shall see how this evening goes.
 

 
We heard the penguins in the night but none visited the deck. I am a little disappointed. Sue went for a 2 hour walk along the beach this morning, in the pouring rain. When she returned she looked like a water rat.

Because it still raining we head back to the Café for a meal, I am not sure which meal it is as the time is 3pm but the food is good, and they have WiFi so you may get to read this.

We have come a long way since the last post, and even longer since I wrote anything substantial on the blog. Now as I sit in our “Tourist Cabin” at the Newhaven holiday park it is difficult to chronicle all the places we have been.
I think that if I tried to write a detail chronicle it would not be interesting and the details of the places we went can wait until either Sue writes something or I post the GPS track I recorded.
 
Instead I will just write what comes to me:
 
The trip Tony Bridge planned for us was extensive which I have already mentioned is why there was little time to stop and write or edit images. Few people managed to download and backup each night the dozens of images they collected each day. This meant we all received huge value from the time we spent with Tony and I hope for other people that he manages to arrange and offer similar trips in the future.
We never really spent much time on the main roads, if there was a track between two points we took it, if there was a mountain to get around Tony found a track over the top. The result being we saw vast areas of the country side and were able to take in the true size of the land down here. Even Jill, who had many a flight over this area in a small plane, commented on how wonderful it was to see it from the tops of hills.

Tony also arranged all of the accommodation and we stayed in a selection of excellent places. The Vulcan Hotel at St Bathans will be know to many, but the Black Forest Station accommodation was out of the way and quite special. This is on the side of Lake Benmore near the northern end and it was a perfect place to stop for a few days (except we didn’t) because it had a large living area and four bedrooms. If it wasn’t so far I could see a quad bike trip to it being on the cards.
There were a couple of farm stays which meant we met some wonderful people and spent time in their homes. When you sit and talk in the evening you can learn a great deal about the area we are travelling through. Every place was comfortable and pleasant which is what we all wanted at the end of long day.

Most of the images posted so far have been straight out of the camera. I have been shooting with an IQ160 back on the Phase One 645 and a Cambo technical camera. The term phaseology moment was coined when Tony and others deemed the scene to be worth getting the Phase One camera out, if it was really special the Cambo was assembled. For the rest of the time and for the fun of the simplicity of it, I carried a Fuji X-E1 and a lot of the images posted came directly from that. For the readers of the trip blog I considered a selection of snaps showing where and what were up to would be interesting so they are not all meant to be art pieces.

Our last day led us over Thompsons track down into Cromwell. A short stop for lunch, and then on to Queenstown where we dropped off the other three Aucklanders to catch a plane home. This was the end point of the organized trip and we said goodbye to each other and to our guide Tony. He was heading back to Ranfurly to see a friend and then back home, a further 600kms on top the 1600 we had already made.
Sue and I came back over the Crown range and into Wanaka to meet up with Priscilla. We had arranged this trip to precede a reunion of the friends we met in 2008 travelling to Canada with Sally Mason and Don Kelly. This would be our second reunion as the group had got on so well during the trip and formed many friendships. That trip was chronicled in our blog at the time, which may be of interest to someone:

http://sean-canada-2008.blogspot.co.nz

We had three days meeting up for meals with the group and on the last night played a number of slideshows made from the trip. As you might expect this brought back plenty of memories for people and a few comments from some who had not even seen the places depicted. Again showing how multiple photographers can see the same place completely differently.

During these three days Sue started to think about where we would head next. She had of course planned about 3 months worth of sight seeing for this trip and had to get back to something we could actually manage. Val had been a travel agent in a previous job so one evening worked with Sue to try to work out where we could or should be each day to get back to Auckland by the appointed date.

This was very helpful in working out when we should head home even if it was modified soon after we left Wanaka. We removed a couple of items as we left Wanaka because Sue started to realize that we would be rushing all over the place and after the action packed week with Tony a more relaxed pace would be welcome.

So we drove straight to the Catlins and booked to stay at Newhaven in Owaka.

Up to this point we had perfect weather and no problems. So we shouldn’t have pointed out the weather to our Auckland friends who now had rain. Because as we neared Owaka the car started to handle funny and very quickly the computer complained that the air suspension could no longer maintain and even keel. It had been for the last minute or so hiding the fact that we had a flat tire and it was not obvious until it gave up and flashed lights at us. Very clever I guess.

Followers of Facebook may recall I purchased some Cooper tires for this trip, not wanting to rely on road tires for some of the roads I knew we would be heading through. These are supposed to be near impossible to puncture so we run all over the place with complete confidence. Unfortunately this confidence has been dampened a little!
Luckily it was only about 4:30pm and the town was in sight so as I fought to jack the car up with the scissor jack suited to a Corolla, Sue walked up to catch the service station before it closed. They came down with a jack and took the tire away to repair. It was badly damaged and need two plugs. The tread at one point was worn way down in a manner that looked like it had been bulging. So it may be that we had a bad tire from the outset, which makes me think we are lucky it did not fail on a 30 degree incline on a dirt track somewhere!

We are staying at the Newhaven for four nights, using it as a base to travel too and from the sights nearby. So first thing Friday morning I went back to town (to get cell service) and got on the phone to source a replacement tire. These are not a common size so there are none sitting in a tire shop waiting to be purchased.

I spoke with David from Professional Tires in Takanini and he got on the phone to Coopers while I rang the nearest agent, the Nissan dealer in Balclutha. Both David and Justin (from Nissan) were fantastic, pressing home the urgency that we wanted the tire overnight for a Saturday delivery to Balclutha. This was not a normal service and they both spent some time talking to the suppliers and the warehouse in Timaru where there was “one” left, to convince them make the effort to send it urgently.

Friday was mostly raining so Sue and I spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon at the Owaka museum, which is very interesting for a small town. We did not want to drive much on the makeshift repaired tire so we went back to the lodging and rested up. This was very pleasant in the end and probably needed. I have finished my second book already!.

On Saturday morning we went for a walk up the beach while we waited for the shops to open. Justin was to call us if the tire arrived and as luck would have it there is cell service on the beach so we got the call and the tire had arrived! Great news.

After getting the tire fitted we were more confident driving about and returned via Kaka point and Nugget point where the lighthouse photos are from. We also stopped at the Kaka point pub for a nice lunch.

Today we went and visited a handful of waterfalls and the Cathedral caves. The weather has been overcast and drizzly but not enough to prevent a walk in the bush. Although I did resist walking up the beach in the rain where there would be no shelter from the rain.

Tomorrow we head around the coast a bit into south Catlins to base ourselves at another beachfront location and explore that side. We are told that there is no cell service at all around there so I am using the Zenbu WiFi to post this before we leave Newhaven.
Most likely we will go dark again for 3-4 days until we start to head north again.

For anyone who read all the way to the end … Here is a link to some more images.

Another Series

We have been going pretty hard for the last few days. Not much time to do any computer work or write anything down.

Sunday we headed out towards the Rainbow road through the St James station and into the Molesworth again. Stopping on a small hill in the middle of St James and then out to Lake Tennyson.

Then in the afternoon over the Mailing pass into the head of the Waiau river which was quite a steep climb and descent. This was the first road that really needed a 4WD and the Landrover did not disappoint.

On Monday we went back to a wool shed at the start of the track and spent the morning photographing in and around this. The afternoon was the first time for some of us to be able to edit images but most went to the famous Hanmer hot pools and a walk around the shops. So because there were several requests for images, rather than words, I have created slides shows of the images that I have made quick edits on. This means that the edits are a little rough and I will certainly revisit the full res versions when I get back to my desktop computer.
Each link jumps to collections from one or more days. There is a slide show button at the top right which will let you view the images fullscreen.

Day 3 and 4 Images

Day 2 Images

Sue and I had been wanting to travel through the Molesworth station for some time. It was supposed to be one of the majestic trips in New Zealand and I don’t think it disappoints. There are multiple opinions as to whether the Rainbow side is better or worse but I think they both have different things to offer so you need to see them both.

Our accommodation in Blenheim was great and the staff very friendly. Our room came with a gift which has now become the trip mascot. He has taken to using the Phase One with very little trouble. Between Tony and him I hardly get to use it myself. Luckily I have my Fuji X-E1 which was used to take most of the images in this post.

This is my second attempt to finish this post. We are spending all day out on the road and little time to process images or write anything. So I will cut back on the words and hopefully get time to catch up images from today in my next post.

This next image is the view from the middle of the Awatere river road before you get to the Molesworth station. You can see it is expansive.

At the station there is this humble accommodation for the ranger. You can see a pair of sandals and chair out front. Simple living way out here in the middle of nowhere.

We stopped for lunch at the place that has a cottage which was part of original station and the rangers hut above. Our guide Tony Bridge relaxes while waiting for everyone to come back from photographing the area. He is starting to realise how long it is going to take to get anywhere having not factored in the length of time it takes to collect everyone back together.

Playing with the Fuji X-E1 I discovered the panorama function. It works really well and is a great way to represent the huge spaces we are travelling in. This is the view from a small hill which you walk up to look down on the current Molesworth village. On the walk to this point I actually made a video so I could traverse the 360 deg view from atop this hill. It was quickest way to record the entire expanse.

And a single shot of the village. Supporting 180,000 hectares being the largest farm in New Zealand. I am told they have 80 horses and 40 dogs working on this station.

The first Phase One image in this post. Tony knows many spots to drive off the road and look back on some vista. His image of choice is large sweeping views like this.

The image above was taken from this small hill. You can see all the party at work making their own images. Our special group Lead by Tony Bridge includes Sue and Sean Dick, Anna Mandeno, Jill Phillips and Richard Gemmell.

One of the only glitches in our Molesworth trip was the meeting of a historical society who were driving the same route as us. About a dozen cars in total with 3-4 people per car they kept stopping to view and talk about places on the trip and we would leap frog each other. Unfortunately they travelled quite slowly most of the time and held us up. When we passed them we would often as not fall behind again when we stopped too long to take photographs.

The hill mentioned above had  small track to get to the top which was not tackled by this group of drivers. So we had it to our selves. The route we took the next day (today) was significantly more difficult and a lot of fun.

As with most of our significant trips the days leading up to departure are frantic. The pace increasing exponentially until we drive out the gate.
Then, Sue relaxes, and then so can I.

Once we are a couple of kilometers from home the trip can really begin and Sue starts to get excited. Except in this case it does not properly start until we arrived in Blenheim but she is full of smiles before Pokeno.

So to start we take a day to drive to Wellington. Stopping at the usual spots that Sue wont give up, the Church Shop and Café in Cambridge and Replete in Taupo.
We drive through Waikanae about six and stop at a Wood Fired Pizza shop which turns out to be lovely. A very nice women owner/operator who talks about all sorts of things with Sue and has a splendid selection of Pizza combinations.
I grab a couple of Cheesecake slices to take to Jo and Debs and the owner throws in an extra for us to try. These go down really well with some Whiskey at Jo and Debs when we arrive.

We have a day free in Wellington so Sue wants to go to Te Papa. I head off early and meet a client and then pick Sue up Sue Unity Books. At this stage she is still working on the assumption that we have very little spare space in the Land Rover so thankfully does not buy very much.
Truth is we don’t have much space. There are two of us in a Discovery 3 and we have the luggage pod on the roof, which is full. Never have so few travelled with so much!

We do need to save some space for the extra passenger we collect in Blenheim, and it is fair to say that we have most of the back seats free and the luggage cover over the back so the goods are hidden. But still, how did I ever travel on a motor cycle with a back pack!.

Our ferry departs at 8 am so we arrive to check in a 7. This is quite early but the traffic at this time is light and we depart into a wonderful sunrise. Another glorious day in Wellington. I don’t know why people say the weather is bad here?
We arrive into Picton just before lunch. There are a handful of clouds in the sky and a hundred push bikes on the ferry. There is a 100km ride in Blenheim and everyone is coming over for it. I hope the weekend stays like this for them, and for us.

So now we have collected Anna and Jill and soon I will head of to the airport to collect Richard and our group will be all together. Tony Brdige meets us at the hotel and we met up with Don Kelly for some lunch and a quick catch up. Sadly Sally is away and he is busy tonight so they could not met us for dinner. But we six will be together looking forward to the trip and there will be lots of excited chatter I am sure. We are leaving at a gentlemanly 8 am so we can even stay up a little late!