Perfect Puriri Bay- Part 1

Catch-up

We said goodbye to our Whangarei family and carried on north, taking the Old Russell Road which winds and weaves it's way up and over high hills along the coast. The road is also mostly gravel. We're heading to a DOC camp on the north side of the Whangaruru Harbour.

After 40kms or so we take a side road that weaves down the length of the Whangaruru Peninsula, past some local real estate.....

....past popular Bland Bay on the ocean side...

...and then over a couple more hills where from a vantage point looking back, both sides of the peninsula can be seen.

Tuparehuia Bay on the left, Bland Bay on the right

Towards the end of the road we squeeze through a gate and across a cattlestop into the DOC reserve. Then it's along a narrow section of the road hoping we'll not meet anyone coming the other way, around a corner and there below us is our destination, Puriri Bay...

...the perfect campsite and a beautiful sheltered bay on the edge of the water. And what do you know, there are our friends, Jocelyn & Murray in their 5th-wheeler. We had briefly caught up with them at Uretiti DOC Camp so it was great to be able to spend some more time with them.

David inflated the Takacat dinghy and went fishing...

..with limited success for the first few days. He's been so used to lake fishing these past few years it took him awhile to get back into the swing. But that wasn't a problem because Murray is a (very) keen fisherman and is well known for regularly feeding the entire camp. He'd head out in his kayak early in the morning, usually as I was waiting for sunrise and on this morning, moon set at the same time...

...and he'd be home a couple of hours later with a full house.

Later in the day we might have a 'cook off', we decided both Murray & I make a mean Kokoda (raw fish salad) and Jocelyn makes excellent fish cakes. David just enjoyed the sampling! 

Within a few days, David got the hang of sea fishing again and started bringing home the bacon....I mean snapper...

A sign and a flimsy rope at the far end of the bay alerted us to the fact that there was one very large wasp nest hanging from an old pohutukawa tree on the foreshore. I gingerly crept up as far as I dared to take some photos before pest control arrived to take care of it.

Centre below the large epiphyte 

Thank God for long lens (click on the photo to enlarge)

A few days later pest control arrived covered from head to toe in bee suits and stuffed a thin pipe up into the nest over and over again. Afterwards a large cloud of powder hung around the nest and angry wasps swarmed about.

A couple of days later, with a little bit of trepidation, I approached the nest and was frightened out of my wits when hidden behind the tree trunk, three ducks lifted off from underneath quacking in alarm. They had been feasting on the dead wasps that had dropped out of the nest, how they handled the poison I'm not so sure. In this photo you can see some of the numerous entry points to the nest on the left.

Much of the outer shell had fallen to the ground exposing the many layers and cells of the nest. Isn't nature truly amazing, what a shame wasps are such a terrible pest. 

With the Labour holiday weekend approaching we were expecting quite a number of extra people arriving but we were pleasantly surprised at the lack of campers, most had a front row site and then there still a few gaps. The weather was one out of the box too; perhaps it was just a little bit too far to come for a long weekend.

During our time there, there were some amazing sunsets across the harbour...

This one had some strange black lines through the cloud

And then there were the sunrises including this unusual one.

To be continued... Part 2

Salmon & Cows- MacKenzie Country

Catch-up- Once again I'm getting behind with my blog posts. We're on the road at the moment exploring the Canterbury high country while filling in a couple of weeks before we need to be back in Christchurch for an appointment. Very soon we'll be in one place for more than a week or two and I'll be able to prioritise catching up on blogs, so hang in there, I won't miss any. And I have lots of exciting places that we've been to share!

You'll recall we left Ohau C Campground after 60 hours of thick fog and on the morning the sun finally came out. We didn't move very far, just up the canal to our old familiar Ohau B NZMCA campsite. David still had a salmon to catch.

5th-wheelers rule!

We were treated to some spectacular sunrises (and a few very heavy frosts)...

...and some mind blowing sunsets. 

David fished on and on, freezing his butt off along with his toes and fingertips, and not enjoying it as much as he has in the past. He was determined to catch a salmon though and he must have cried a little too hard on a fellow fisherman's shoulder because before too long, he came home with a nice sized pannie. Thanks Murray! 

It's that time of the year when the weather is very fickle, several weather fronts swept through while we were there, this one arrived and departed with such speed it was hard to believe.

The photo below was taken just one hour after the one above. Hard to imagine isn't it?

The front approached from the south just as I headed over to the bridge to see what all the commotion I could hear was about- shouting, banging, barking, tooting and motorbikes revving. A herd of cows were being pushed onto the bridge but were very reluctant to cross. They'd come from the huge dairy farm on the right at the rear of the photo.

Once across the canal bridge, they strung out as they made their way to the spillway bridge. You can see the weather front heading north here...

...and just after this shot I made a dash for home as the heavens opened up and a massive downpour caused a quite a bit of surface flooding. 

Later that day I heard the same commotion...

...not once but twice more...

...and twice the next day too. One herd decided they were not going to cross, the lead cows balking and fussing about at the entrance but they could not be bullied into crossing. In the end, with traffic building up, the farmhands had to take them back down the farm track and regroup them before pushing them forward again, with different cows in the lead no doubt.

In all, five dairy herds of a similar size crossed the bridges on their way to pastures new. I managed to speak to one of the workers and she told me that they were moving them to their winter feeding ground, not far past Twizel and east, somewhere between the Pukaki River and the main road.

If you're a long time reader of my blog you may remember a post from late May, 2015 about Gypsy Day. Gypsy Day being the day sharemilkers shift their herds to their new farms. Well, I'm thinking that it wasn't in fact Gypsy Day then, it was this same farm shifting it's herds to their winter paddocks. 

 And all the while as the cows rumbled their way over the bridge, the fisher people below fished on...

...and finally David caught not one but two salmon, two reasonably sized fish. We offered Murray one of them to replace the one he gave us but he said he was sure to catch some more (I hope so otherwise he might have been sleeping under his van and not in it). So in the end we had three fish and the curse has finally been broken. Now, if only he could catch one of those monsters....

The sun sets on another fantastic time in the MacKenzie.

Camping at Pounawea- Part 2; Fishing

Real-time

Continuing on from Part 1

David has spent a few low tides fishing in the estuary. Fishing for sea run trout along the Catlins River channel far out across the estuary mudflats.

It didn't take him long to realise that his waders would come in handy out on the exposed, windy and usually cold estuary.

Camp families come out to play, collect cockles and fish on the estuary at low tide too.

We had three weeks worth of low tides to collect cockles (also known as clams) but left it until yesterday to finally go and gather some, now I need a whole lot more because I've been reminded of a few recipes I now want to try out.

The water is lovely and clear and it's a sandy bottom, the cockles are just under the surface and huge! 

But still...I only went to hold the bag and take photos! This big boy came scuttling out of the sand and quickly re-buried himself a few feet away. Only to be dug up again a minute later. He was not a happy chappy.

After the keen fishers came home with a few trout one day, everyone, including our family, were eager to try their luck the next day. It's a wonder any fish were caught with all the activity going on.

But one of the men soon caught a fish...

And 'Southern Man' Adam caught another lovely trout, not 10 metres from where David had removed himself from the 'crowd' to fish.

You'll remember me mentioning in Part 1 that Adam caught an eel while out collecting koura, well his Dad sent me a photo. Isn't this a monster? Going by how far the dorsal fin reaches up it's back, it's length (they can grow up to 2mtrs) and the very dark colour, this is likely to be a Longfin eel rather than a Shortfin. Both freshwater eels are found in New Zealand's waterways and lakes.

Longfin eels can live up to 100 years and only breed once at the end of their lives. They leave their home territory where they've likely spend most of their lives and undertake a mass spawning migration, swimming all the way to the subtropical Pacific Ocean, where they spawn en masse in very deep water. Adam carefully returned this beauty to it's home, it might have another 40-50 years before it needs to migrate. And it's probably also why they didn't catch too many koura in this particular spot! All I could think about after seeing the photos was how much slime would have been coating Adam.

Often, while the others fished, I wandered over the estuary, checking for birds and taking photos, especially of the two amazing old tree stumps in the middle of the estuary.

Catching their reflections in left-over tidewater late one evening...

...and again the next day.

Ollie was keen to go fishing with Poppa by himself, so with his parents off having a few hours by themselves and Ruby chilling with me, he kitted himself out to catch the big one! It was freezing cold with passing showers, hence the amount of jackets and hats(3) he's wearing. He even got his 'camel' backpack out to wear in case it was thirsty work. I thought he looked like a scuba diver! 

Can you tell this is a Southland family below? They're in shorts and up to their knees in the cold water! They were out on the mudflats with David and Ollie when they had a bit of a shock. An aggressive leopard seal launched itself out of the water very close to one of the girls fishing. They all made a hasty retreat as it dived back in and swum over to the other side where another fisherman and his dog were fishing in the water just off a point. 

There was much shouting of  'get out of the water', before the guy realised there was something wrong. The seal splashed about where he'd been standing and then disappeared back into the depths. After this close encounter Ollie was a little spooked and decided he wanted to head home...without a fish. 

Murphy's Law, because the very next day after the family had left for home David came home with this beautiful Brown...

Which we smoked and devoured, after sharing some of it with our neighbours. It was very tasty too, the flesh quite pink compared with the last few lake trout we've had, more like salmon.

Ruby was more keen on 'fishing' for crabs under the rocks and in the small pools left behind by the tide, she carefully brought them home in a bucket to show everyone and then safely released them back into the tide afterwards. I'm not so sure she'd have been as keen if she'd seen the size of the one David dug up while gathering cockles.

To be continued...Part 3