A Wet Week

Well I'm afraid this is the only photo I have of a brown trout from Gore! The rest of the week was wet, cold & miserable, the streams & rivers high & dirty. Definitely no good for fishing. We were originally only going to stop in Gore for 2-3 days but ended up staying five nights; there just wasn't any point in moving on until the weather cleared. 

 

 

While in Gore we had a significant wedding anniversary to celebrate & if anybody had said to me earlier that we would be celebrating it in Gore of all places I would have said "Not bloody likely!!" Not that I have much against Gore, it's a great little town but I had ideas of a night or two at a luxury lodge somewhere in the mountains or perhaps even a week in Fiji! Yeah right, dreams are free. So there we were on a cold, wet day celebrating our day with a huge "Southern Man Breakfast" at a little café in town! Maybe the flash dinner can wait for a bigger town. And I shouldn't complain, we're living our dream, what more can I ask for.

 

It was with great surprise when we passed the Flemings Creamoata Mill building, which is just off the main street in Gore. The big trout & the big guitar have always featured in any promotion material I've seen on Gore, I've never associated Sergeant Dan the Creamoata Man with Gore! The Flemings Mill was established in 1878 to mill the large crop of wheat that was produced by the NZ Agricultural Company (see my next blog post). The famous Creamoata brand was developed in the early 1900s & mascot Sergeant Dan made his appearance in the 1920s.

Gore is covering it's bases; not only is it the NZ Capital of Brown Trout fishing, it's also very well known & probably more so, as being  the NZ Capital of Country Music, hence the big guitar  very near the big trout!

 

We did take a couple of tiki-tours around the area checking out the rives & streams during the last few days, we had travelled this road the day before, the next morning we saw that this car had failed to take a slight curve in the road and had rolled a number of times crashing through a fence & landing in a cow paddock. We had seen evidence of what we thought was their handy work at every intersection prior to the crash site. Karma.

North of Gore is the small settlement of Mandeville, well known for the Croydon Aviation Heritage Centre, David had a quick look there while I took some photos in the area. Outside the hangar was this Rogers K 92 Steam Locomotive, the original Kingston Flyer. The train once ran on the Kingston to Invercargill and Gore to Kingston lines and is slowly being restored as funds become available.

We completed a loop after leaving Mandeville by driving back home to Dolamore Park on the gravel country roads between the Waterfall Range & the Hokonui Hills.

When we arrived back at the park on Friday afternoon we were surprised to see that our quiet, serene & peaceful park was a hive of activity; marquees were going up, flags & banners being erected, fences & barriers being banged into place.  The annual Hokonui Mountain Bike & Cross Country Running race was big held the next morning starting & finishing right there in our "front yard"! 

We were woken by muffled voices, passing traffic & the sound of heavy rain the next morning. It's a bit surreal waking up & taking a look out your bedroom window to see a wave of lycra clad bodies passing by. So much "eye-candy" at that time of the morning is surely not good for you!

The rain eventually stopped & the entrants were sent off racing, I bet most came back covered in mud. We took the opportunity, in aewe became hemmed in, to hitch up & head on out before they returned.

We are now parked up at the NZMCA Park in Lumsden. It's a brilliant day & David has gone fishing. Brown trout for dinner? Time will tell.