The Drive from Invercargill to Queenstown is lovely. It passes through wide glacial river valleys and basins of farming land, with pretty hills and mountains in the distance. To be savoured and not to be rushed….. I stopped at a town called ‘Winton’ for no other reason than it looked pretty, had amazing planted gardens and borders all along the main street and public gardens – lupins, foxglove, daisies, roses etc, provided (according to a plaque) by the Winton agrocultural society – well, all I can say is well done to them. The town itself would look fine in a wild west movie – a saloon, hotel, court building, shops with wide walkways and small church. Pretty. Further along the Highway the gorse and lupins are in full swing showing off yellow, blue, purples, creams in the roadside and meadows. Past the turn off to Te Anau I was on a road I had travelled before with the tour group. However, last time I didn’t have the freedom to stop when I wanted so in Garston I stopped. This claims to be the most inland village in New Zealand and has a sign to prove it. It also has a cute wooden church on a small hillside surrounded by pine trees giving a strong disinfectant perfume to the place, and a loo – but that’s about it. Further along, Kingston has a fully operating steam train and then the start of Lake Wakapitu and in the distance, Queenstown. This scenic drive wiggles along the shoreline of the lake like Lake Como in Italy but without all the villages along the way – there are no settlements until you reach Frankton merging into Queenstown. The Remarkables are the mountain range which dominate the views – famous from Lord of the Rings which was filmed on Deer Park Heights. I had a booking at the YHA Lakefront so I headed there. However on arrival I got a bad vibe about it and made cancelled the booking. Sometimes the hostels just don’t work for me – and lucky for me I have the funds to choose something a bit better. So in the car I drove about a bit looking for a motel or cheap hotel. I found a fab place called the Whistler Apartments with views of the Gondola and Tooth Mountain. It is by far the best place I have stayed and not expensive. It has a King size bed in it’s own large room, a kitchen with oven, microwave, TV,DVD, Stereo, Balcony, comfy sofa, armchair, bathroom and washing machine! All for the bargain price of $100 per night (about 40 quid). Added to that, the staff are great and I got 2 DVD’s to watch for free (Whale Rider and War of the Worlds). As it was only 3pm, I dropped my bags and headed in the car to ARROWTOWN. A small settlement north which was founded on Gold in the 19th century and home to a chinese population who worked the gold mines but were treated badly by New Zealand. I’ve used a lot of adjectives to describe places I like in New Zealand, but Arrowtown is just lovely. It is the nicest town I have been to. I admit it is all done for the tourists, but I don’t care. I went to the chinese village to see the remains of the stone houses they lived in – a shop run by a chinese chap (I’ve seen bigger kennels) but not much is left. The river runs nearby and there is still gold to be found here. This was a gorgeous day. The warm sun, lupins, cotton trees, birdsong and bees made me feel like I was in a Disney movie! I went in search of gold, paddled in the freezing water of the stream and picked at rocks and stones but none of them gold…….. bugger! Bored and hungry (not eaten since Invercargill) I walked to the main street and fell in love with it immediately. It is charming. It’s tiny, but every shop is immaculate and original colonial stone, timber and signage. It’s like a living movie set. The shops sell tourist stuff, but the museum inside the millhouse was excellent- Settlement stories, gold mining and below street level, a bakery, wheelwright, schoolhouse, printers and other life like reconstructions of pioneer life. I loved it. There is a gaol, cottages which are still occupied a village post office and green. I spent an hour wandering and forgot I was hungry. Before leaving though, I had a bagle and fruit smoothy in a coffee shop. Perhaps living here would feel artificial though. It would be nice to spend more time in that river though! A chap found a nugget here a while ago whcih was worth 30 thousand dollars.Back in Queenstown I bought some groceries and relaxed in my ‘apartment’ as the sun went down, the party people came out to play and parachuting thrill seekers floated down from the top of the gondola station……After Whale Rider and War of the Worlds I hit the pillow at 11pm with faint sounds of dance music throbbing up from the town centre – Saturday night in Queenstown!
Archive for December 15th, 2007
The trouble with traveling alone is that there is nobody to tell you when you’re about to make a bad decision and stop you from doing it. So it was that I left Dunedin on a shitty wet Friday and drove to Invercargill via the ‘Catlins’ – an area of forestation over low lying hills near to the coastline. Well, it was boring. I can’t put it any other way. It looked in parts like Devon, then Cumbria, then the Severn Estuary and finally at Invercargill it lokoed like East Anglia on a bad day. I only stopped once on the 4 hour journey to walk to an unimpressive waterfall inside the Catlins rainforest and it was wet, water falling over mossy rocks amongst tree ferns and other rain loving plants. In hindsight I should have headed straight to Invercargill down the Highway. Anyway, at Invercargill I put the city on hold to explore BLUFF – the most southerly point in New Zealand (OK I am not including Stewart Island which has people on it, but by all accounts is less interesting that the Catlins). In the drizzle, approaching Bluff along a wetland area of mud and marshes, the only significant landmarks were a agrinutrient plant the size of The Pentagon, and a meat processing factory. That about sums up this area. Bluff tried to be cheerful as I slowed from the Highway along the main street with jovial signs about Oysters and a rainbow coloured sign “where the Highway begins” whatever that means. Along main street are remants of the shipping days, warehouses in decline, rusting equipment, dead ships stuck in the mud under delapidated jetties. It’s all a bit depressing really and the shops and houses look like a small version of Blackpool but without the twinkly lights and pleasure beach. I headed up a very steep hill to the lookout point, but I can’t imagine why I did (refer to the first sentence above) to see nothing but fog. The Starlet was knackered and I could smell burning from the engine, so I left her to recover (I swear I could see the car panting) A spiral visitor walkway leads to the top where it tells you about the landmarks around you but all I saw was a communication mast buzzing nearby and some wet looking vegetation. Feeling stuffy from the long trip I talk a walk down a footpath to a ‘lookout’ hoping to catch a glimpse of the southern ocean. Getting rained on and dripped on from the huge ferns and bent over trees down a wooden staircase and on and on for about half an hour – and no lookout. I arrived at a wooden seat with no sign of an end to the path and gave up. It was wet, I was cold, the view was crap and I had one hell of a hill and hundreds of steps to walk back up, so I turned round and trudged back to the car. Determined to find the ‘famous signpost’ at the end of New Zealand I drove down the hill to Stirling Point passing seafront homes which would look at home in Torquay complete with china dogs on the windowsill and net curtains. Past a small lighthouse poking out onto very rough looking sea the road ended with a small carpark which was full of buses and cars and the compulsory tea shop/gift shop. I couldn’t see a sign – just some construction work and cordon, so I assumed it was being repaired or replaced. Bugger. By now both me and the car were tired, wet, overheated from too much exertion and hungry and with no bed for the night I thought I should abandon my search for the signpost and leave Bluff to find a hostel or motel in Invercargill. Halof an hour later I was in the surprisingly interesting and wide streets of Invercargill. Without a map I drove around using my ‘Jedi’ senses to find something interesting or helpful – this is the best way to explore and quite stress free . If you think about it – how can you be lost in a city if you have no planned destination? You should try it. Passing monuments to the war dead, grand hotels, a water tower and some very smart public gardens with a golf course and an Emu I found the Southland Museum which also houses the information centre – Bingo! Parking up, I noticed too a large advertising board for a Burt Monroe exhibition – Brilliant! If you don;t know who he is – rent a movie called ‘The World’s Fastest Indian’. After browsing the hotels, motels and hostels (there is no YHA in Invercargill) I picked on a funky modern looking apartment block called ‘Living Space’ which with the help of the information staff rented me a room for $80 (about 35 quid). Now that I had somewhere to sleep I set about enjoying the city in the rain. The Museum was OK – the usual Maori artefacts and geology stuff with some awful modern art, but the best thing was an area containing several Tuatara’s – the oldest known lizards on the planet and native to New Zealand. ‘Henry’ was about 8inches long and looked liked godzilla – he was born at the end of the 19th century. Blimey. At 540mm long and 1.2 kilos he is the heaviest Tuatara in the world but also the grumpiest so he lives alone in his pen. I suppose if Iw as over 100 years old and fat, I would be grumpy too! And grumpy I became very soon after as I learned that the Burt Monroe exhibit had closed 2 weeks ago – all the stuff removed – except his duck egg blue car which was locked behind a door. Shit…. I really wanted to see it all. Oh well. Back to the car I found my hotel and checked in then wandered the streets in the rain but there wasn’t really much to see or do. Grabbing some food I headed back to relax, dry off, warm up and watch TV. The next morning I felt like I was in another city. With the sun shining Invercargill looks totally different and better. The buildings looked colourful and interesting and being Saturday it was quieter on the streets. I decided to head back to Bluff and try once more to find the sign and see the Ocean. The drive there was nicer, but still a bit bleak. In the bright early morning sunshine the peninsula looked fresher and the dereliction seemed nostalgic not depressing. Back on the top of the Lookout I saw all the things I was told to look at by the signs in the spiral walkway thingy and it did look cool. I felt like I was at the end of the world. Which I suppose I was. Further south than the bottom of Africa and South America and closer to Antarctica than anywhere else. Back at Stirling Point it was too early for the coaches and I found the ’sign’ immediately (it was hidden behind a bus yesterday) so happied myself taking cheesy photos next to the arrow showing London to be 18,958km away…… then I walked along the pebbly beach near the lighthouse and watched fishing boats going out to sea. The Southern Ocean is harsh – out there the waves reach 30m high and the winds alone can break boats. Feeling satisfied I got back into the car and decided to call it a day on exploring the bottom end and drove north towards Queenstown to spend my last 2 days in the South Island.
