South Island Trip – April 2013 – Part Two – Molesworth Station

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.