Otago

Otago is the second from bottom region of mainland New Zealand. To its south is the imaginatively named Southland, whilst, to the west, is the equally inspired West Coast:


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For current purposes, what's important is that it contains Queenstown. I've written before about Queenstown and, I have to confess, it's not my favourite town in NZ. Its setting is beyond perfection - sitting on Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by majestic, snow-capped mountains. In a country of superlatives, Queenstown must be in the running for the best situated town. What a pity they built Queenstown there instead of something nice.

About 70km to the north of Queenstown is Wanaka, situated on the lake of the same name. About half-way between the two is Cardrona, an old gold-mining town and my home for four days.

After emptying what needed to be emptied and filling what needed to be filled, I returned my van to to the hire company who then gave me a lift along to the airport where I met Rosanne, an airline pilot based in Christchurch who is a friend of my friends Alex and Brock in Melbourne. She and I flew down to Queenstown:

These days, flying has become much less enjoyable - seemingly just a sequence of inconvenient steps before being crammed into a tiny seat. For our domestic, turbo-prop flight, the only pause between the street and the aircraft was to have our boarding passes scanned. The lady in the yellow vest in the picture is about to tell me that photography is not permitted. What a shame she wasn't about 5 seconds quicker...

Our accommodation must rank amongst the best in the region. Nominally a bed and breakfast, the Waiorau Homestead is pretty much the nicest place I've ever stayed. It's set in a little copse with extensive grounds containing a Pétanque pitch, firepit, hot tub, swimming pool...

 The views are stunning:

 

In that last picture, the patch of snow in the gap between the trees is part of the Cardona Alpine Resort. If you know where to look, you can just make out one of the chair lifts, which was accessible from a little car park some 4km below the main car park.

The B&B even has (or would have) its own curling rink:

Unfortunately, it's been a very warm spring in New Zealand and the curling rink was more of a shallow pond.

More or less across the main road from the B&B was the turn off for the ski area, though it was a good 20 minute drive up a tightly twisting road with vertiginous drops for the unwary before you reached the ski area.

Cardrona is a good, mixed resort with plenty of good areas for beginners and pistes for all abilities. It's a little limited if you're looking for seriously challenging black runs, but none of our party were. Its only real drawback was the incredibly slow main access chairlift which is a pity as, apart from the Valley View lift I mentioned before, every single visit to the resort will probably include at least one ride on this lift. It's the one nearer to the camera in that picture, for what it's worth.

These are the other three in our group - left to right they are, Alex, Brock and Rosanne. Just to prove I was actually there, here's one of me:

You might have to take my word for it, but that's me on the right.

Having skied Cardrona for two days, we thought we'd ring the changes on our third day and headed for Treble Cone, on the other side of Wanaka. This turned out to be a major mistake. The weather wasn't co-operating as it was very cloudy (or foggy; we had an in-car argument about the difference) which wasn't the resort's fault but what was their fault was the wildly misleading description of some of their runs as suitable for beginners. Even under ideal snow conditions, the only route back to the car park would be steep and narrow and, on the day we visited, the snow was a long way short of ideal - deep piles of ice crystals with the texture of damp sugar. For Alex and I who are both reasonably good skiers, the conditions were a serious challenge. For the other two, it was amazing that they made it down at all without injury. We passed lots of people who were picking themselves out of the snow. We even passed one girl who had given up entirely and was walking down.

The lift passes we had were good for both Cardrona and Treble Cone but, as we discovered, only one per day. So, having used the lift once at TC, we could no longer return to Cardrona without buying new passes, which we were reluctant to do. The TC staff couldn't have cared less that they'd charged us $97 for a single ride, but then, why should they? They'd done well on the deal.

Suddenly finding ourselves with a day to spare, we first stopped at one of the many vineyards in the area:

 For a tasting session:

After which, we had a wander round Wanaka, a much nicer town than Queenstown.

For the afternoon, we returned to the B&B, changed, and then headed for Arrowtown, a very picturesque town about 20km east of Queenstown:

The centre of the town is full of lovely old buildings, many dating to the late 19th century gold rushes that are the reason the town's here at all.

The road from Queenstown to Cardrona rises around 700 metres in about 10 km - more of the hair-pin bends that I'd experienced on my way up to Denniston, or on the access road to the Cardona resort. It does, though, have some stunning views:

Just above and to the left of the centre of the second picture is the runway of Queenstown airport. Rosanne's company, Jet Star, flies into Queenstown and she took great delight in scaring us with the details of the approach, which winds its way through the mountains. It's even more scary if you're coming from the other direction and have to carry out a missed approach. Some things you'd just rather not know, but, certainly, it's a dramatic approach and departure - looking up at the cars on the mountain road several minutes after departure is a new experience for me.

On our final morning, we took a ride up the Queenstown Gondola which provides stunning views of the surrounding countryside:

This being New Zealand, there is, of course, an opportunity to do something insanely stupid:

It would take something with more power than wild horses to make me try Bungee jumping under any circumstances but I cannot think what incentive you would have to offer me to throw myself off a platform into that clearing in the forest. Kiwis, though, are a strange lot sometimes. Lovely, but strange.

After returning our hire car it was time to catch the Melbourne flight.

This time, nobody told me that photography wasn't allowed.

Full circle

Whilst at Hanmer Springs, I filled in something I'd tried to do from Westport but failed to pull off. From the resort, I drove down to the main road, and boarded this craft:

For a trip on the Waiau River. I'd never been in a jet boat before and it's quite something. The boat can operate in only 10cm of water and we proved that many times as we skimmed past shingle banks with only inches to spare. We reached speeds close to 100 kmh - the speed limit on the main roads. Apparently the water being pumped through the jets would fill an Olympic swimming pool in an hour.

The river flows through farmland and stunning gorges:

If you look closely at the bridge, you can see the platform where they do the bungy jumping. I didn't try it.

And then I headed back into Christchurch - rather ahead of schedule. I checked into a campsite and then drove into town for a last look around.

I popped back into the museum as well. Last time I was here, I posted this photo:

Like John Robert Godley, Captain Scott didn't come through the earthquake well:

Round the back of the new Cardboard Cathedral is a monument to the 185 people who died in the February earthquake. The memorial consists of 185 white-painted chairs - one per victim. The chairs are just a random collection and include a wheelchair and a baby's car seat.

Almost unbelievably I heard reports on the radio of the theft of some of the chairs.

The Joyfully Unmunted series of concerts was still running at the Cathedral and I managed to get a last minute ticket for the night's organ recital. I know digital organs will never be to everyone's taste, but it sounds pretty good to me.

And then it was time to head for the campsite and my last night before heading south.

The Lewis Pass

There are three passes through the Southern Alps – north to south they are the Lewis Pass, Arthur’s Pass, and the Haast Pass. When I went from Christchurch to Fox Glacier, I went through Arthur’s Pass. Coming back from Westport, you take the Lewis Pass.

The two nights I stayed in Westport, I set up camp on a little shingle beach inside the river mouth:

Camping here is permitted as long as your van is fully self-contained. There’s something nice about waking up in a nice warm van and having a hot shower and a cup of tea in the middle of nowhere.

A couple of (not especially exciting) shots of Westport – you know why it means more to me than you.

Looking up-river from the south tiphead:

You can see the Shingle Beach on the left. The tall white structures are something to do with the concrete manufacturer just outside town.

Yes, a proper airport – with real flights to real places. Well, Wellington.

Heading out of town, the road follows the Buller River upstream:

The Buller Gorge Road is a spectacular drive, and a little scary in places. One lane bridges are common in the area but this road has areas where you go round a blind bend on a single lane:

You can see the road, carved into the rock face. To be fair, at the point where the road went round two blind corners, there were traffic lights to control access.

The road then branches off the Buller to follow the Inangahua River, which flows through the town of Reefton – named after the reefs of gold which were discovered there.

It has the feel of a “wild west” town about it.

Apart from gold, Reefton’s main claim to fame is that it provided the first public electricity supply in the southern hemisphere – in 1888. With all the engineers in the area, it’s perhaps not surprising that they came up with the idea here.

To generate the power, a hydroelectric scheme was built, diverting river water through a turbine. There is nothing left of that original power station, but there are still traces of a later one, from 1935. There are plans to do the site up and make something of a tourist attraction of it, but there isn’t any money at the moment. They have their work cut out. This is all that’s left of the tail race:

Access to the powerhouse is across the river on this bridge:

Looking down on the town from above:

A little further upstream is the Inangahua Swingbridge:

As I returned to the van, this little chap came wandering out to see what was about. He was really well camouflaged against the forest floor, so the camera had a hard job focussing, but I’m pretty sure it’s a Weka – an indigenous bird to New Zealand.

Heading further east, you get to the Lewis Pass:

The road bends round into the gap between the mountains.

Looking back a little further on:

My destination for the day was Hanmer Springs - a natural hot springs resort:

You know those charity collection boxes where you roll a coin into a sort of bowl and then it spirals round and round until it eventually falls through the hole in the bottom? Well, now I know how the coin feels. That yellow and blue stripy bowl is exactly such a thing which you are fired into perched in a sort of inner tube thing. Perhaps such things are common in water parks.

There are also two more normal flumes as well as fresh and natural water pools at various temperatures. It’s very pleasant to lie in what feels like a lovely hot bath and look up at the moon.

By night, it takes on a Dantean appearance:

A town built on coal

Do you know what whale oil smells like? If the answer to that is “no” then I cannot urge you strongly enough to maintain that position. If the answer is “yes”, then you’ll surely second that.
Whale oil?

High on the plateau overlooking Westport from the north, is what’s left of the town of Denniston, once a thriving community and now home to fewer than 10 people.

The town existed for one purpose only – the extraction of high-grade coal from the hills around the town. The main problem was access – getting miners up to the mines and getting the coal back down to sea-level again. To solve this problem, the Denniston incline was built – essentially a funicular railway where the coal carts were attached to a rope wound round a pulley so that the descending, full carts pulled the empty carts back up the hill. Although not officially sanctioned, it was common for people and goods to ride up in the “empty” carts. In some cases, the experience was so terrifying that the individuals involved refused to travel down again and just stayed up in Denniston. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the incline, known locally as the eight wonder of the world, was designed by Scottish engineers.

Eventually, a path was built which allowed for a safer route up and down for pedestrians and horses. Later still, a track suitable for vehicles was constructed which quickly led to the death of the town itself. Once it was possible to get to and from work easily without actually living on the plateau, the miners and their families moved out in droves to live down at sea-level. Quickly, the town vanished leaving only the mine buildings still in use.

Today, very little remains of the old village – the camp as it was called, as, originally, that’s exactly what it was. A few foundations, some overgrown paths, but little else. Life was harsh in Denniston. The weather was highly changeable and often foul. Thick fogs would last for days. Eventually, people just didn’t want to put up with it anymore. Whilst waiting at the beginning of the tour, and having found out that I’m Scottish, the guide mentioned that he’d seen a programme about the Hebrides on TV (I think it’s the one narrated by Ewan McGregor) which had included a segment on the evacuation of St Kilda. Without meaning to, he’d put his finger on a similarity – the St Kilda islanders eventually had had enough of putting up with life there and asked to leave.

Today, the Denniston Experience has been created to allow visitors once again to enter one of the mines and to learn something of the life of a miner. Unfortunately, coal mines do not lend themselves to photography so the pictures are poor.

Outside, though, much of the old industrial infrastructure is still there, albeit heavily rusted. There is much to see, but it’s best to try to see it in sunshine…

Overlooking the top of the incline, this area was used for marshalling coal trucks before or after descent:

In the background (and a long way below) you can see the Waimangaroa River reaching the sea. The top of the incline itself is at the top-right corner of the yard.

There were, in fact, several mines in the Denniston area. The tour takes visitors into the Banbury Mine – the first to be opened up, in 1879, which is down off the bottom-right corner of the first picture in a straightish line from the top of the incline. The track ran over these arches to the mine entrance itself:

The arches were constructed by Cornish stone masons and contain no mortar of any kind.

The tour starts on a little train which runs along the original track over those arches and into the mine itself, just off the left of the picture. The Banbury mine eventually worked its way right through the hill and out the other side. After it was worked out, it was left open as a tunnel to allow access to new mines, both for getting miners in, and for getting coal out. A continuous ropeway was created to pull the loaded carts through the mine but this proved unreliable and it was later replaced with an aerial ropeway over the top of the hill.

 

For the purposes of the tour, each member of the party was assigned a role – union leader, hewer, shot firer, etc. We were given our union cards, detailing rates of pay. For example, as a shot-firer, I would have received 2/6 per day (perhaps £50 today).

The actual miners – the hewers – were paid 3d per ton. To give you an idea, this cart:

holds about half a ton, so the 3d was for two of them. And the miners worked in pairs, splitting the money so that halves it again. I reckon it was three farthings to fill one of those carts with coal. And that was the sieved coal - the company only paid for reasonable sized lumps - the small pieces were either left in the mine or thrown over the side of the hill.

The miners worked in different areas of the mine in three-month blocks. Every three months, names would be drawn from a hat to see who’d be working where. In a bad area, you might be lying on your stomach all day and manage 5 or 6 tons. In a good area you’d have the luxury of kneeling and manage perhaps 15 tons.

In the course of your twelve-hour shift, there was no allowance for a lunch break. Instead miners would steal, or crib, some time. Perhaps whilst they were waiting for the shot firer. To this day, your packed lunch as a miner is called your “crib” and the meal break is the “crib break”. We “workers” on the tour were shown the sort of things miners might have had in their crib.

As a time when miners were gathered together, the crib break was often used to discuss union matters. The tour includes a mock union meeting as well as a holographic projection of a ghostly miner of yore telling us of a mine disaster.

When sitting eating their crib, the most common form of lighting was a little lantern powered by, yes, whale oil. Having smelt it raw, I can only imagine the stench in the mine when those lanterns were burning the stuff…

The company controlled every aspect of the miners’ lives. Nothing could go up the hill unless it went up the incline – the company refused to help in the construction of the alternative paths. You spent your money in company-owned shops and pubs. Eventually a union was established to campaign for better conditions and wages. They also campaigned for proper regulation of who was allowed to work in the mine – the company essentially pulled people in off the streets who knew nothing of mining and were often dangerous to be around.

One group who were not welcome as miners were dangerous people such as Methodists who, it was feared, would foment unrest and create a demand for a stronger union.

It’s easy to romanticise the old workings, but life as a miner was tough. You’d be unlikely to work beyond the age of 40 and unlikely to live much longer than that in retirement. There was nothing in the way of social security – the nearest doctor was in Westport, many hours away. So, yes, the old, rusted bits of iron might conjure up a “days-of-yore” type image, but working at Denniston would have been hell. There’s no two ways about it.

There is still coal mined on the plateau – the Stockton mine is an open cast mine. The coal still goes down to Westport (by road) but it's shipped out by rail now, rather than sea. There is pressure to allow more mining still, but these days the environmental lobby is fighting the proposal. It is, of course, a question of steering between the economic benefit and the environmental cost.

The road to Denniston is definitely a challenge. At one point, I found myself dropping to first gear – I can’t recall ever having done that before. You do, though, get spectacular views as you go up. This is Westport – on the spit of land in the middle distance on the right-hand side of the picture.

  

The large body of water just this side of the town is the Orowaiti River at high tide. The Buller River, after which the whole area is named, is on the far side and not really visible.

I travelled up to Denniston twice - not wanting to risk the weather on the Sunday, I went up on Saturday afternoon as well as the sun was splitting the skies. There were a few clouds when I arrived for the tour, but, during the time we were in the mine, it went from sunny to rainy, so I'm glad I went the day before as well. This is what the valley looked like on the way down the second time.

This was the sort of fog that could last for days up on the plateau.

Finally, on the way out of town, I spotted (admittedly with some prompting) a woodpile outside someone’s house. I only know one person with a woodpile, but I know nobody with a woodpile like this one:

Greymouth To Westport

Having spent the night in Kiwi’s garden, I had a quick drive around the town. As its name suggests, it grew up at the mouth of the Grey River. Looking south from the river bank, the coast is spectacular:

From more or less the same spot, I turned round and looked up-river:

 

You can also see the gap in the mountains through which the river passes. And, as well as the river, the gap provides a way for the mountain fog to flow down to the sea. It is funnelled by the Grey valley and then spreads out on either side as it reaches the coast. It is known locally as “the barber” because, I’m told, the wind that brings it down can strip the whiskers off your face.

One thing I noticed in Greymouth was this sign:

We have a similar sign in the UK, but our elderly aren't nearly so sprightly looking as these ones. They breed them tough in NZ.

And, talking of road signs, here’s another you won’t see in the UK:

In the UK, the distance would, of course, be in miles.

A little way north of Greymouth I revisited the Pancake Rocks – named after their appearance, but also from the Maori name of the place, Punakaiki. I wrote before about these formations and I couldn’t resist stopping again to have another look. It’s impossible to photograph them adequately with my camera. As well as the problem of balancing the light and shade, you have to get the timing just right as the tide smashes into the cliff, forcing spray high into the air.

When I was here before, it was low tide. This time I was an hour or two ahead of high tide and it was quite different. There was a constant, low-frequency rumbling as the waves crashed through the formations. An odd rushing-wind noise as a blow hole suddenly exploded with spray.

Anyway, here are some pictures:

This is just part of a spectacular coastal drive.

Bang in the middle of that picture you can just see the road as it hangs on to the next headland along.

After my last posting, you know why arriving in Westport felt so much like coming home. This is a town I've been visiting in a virtual sense for several years now.