Leaving Richmond

I'm not sure when my next post will be, we're leaving for Okiwi Bay in the Marlborough Sounds today and then we'll spend the next 5-6 weeks exploring the rest of the Sounds. Internet & cell phone reception will be intermittent. I'm hoping that I'll be able to post occasionally as we move between areas otherwise I'll have to do a few day trips out to civilization to keep you up to date. 

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Take care, catch you soon.....

Another brilliant day in Nelson, and what a view for the last chore before we leave- Richmond Dump Station.

On The Road Again

Finally after a few false starts we will be back on the road again this morning a little over five weeks since arriving in sunny Invercargill. Those first brilliant sunny, calm, blue sky days lulled us into a false sense of promise; it's been downhill all the way, and fast, since then. Even early this morning as I type at the table watching the camp come alive, the wind is still strong & gusty & the rain has begun to fall.  But we will pull out of camp this morning, we've made that decision and we are more than  ready to go. In preparation we pulled off site yesterday to empty our tanks as usually the camp dump station is busy in the early mornings as other vans empty before heading off so we decided to do our ablutions in the relative quiet of late yesterday morning. Our camp ground host, Doug had rigged up some extra pipes for us to use because as some of you might remember, we couldn't quite get to the sump before and had to use a Public Dump station when we left for the farm on Christmas morning.

We are once again stocked to the gunwales and have completed all our last minute errands, all except one that is; we do need to get a WOF (warrant of fitness) on the 5th-wheeler which will be our first port of call but after that it's be around to say a last farewell to the family, point the rig north east back towards the Catlins and with a brisk tail wind it shouldn't be too long before we can set up camp again. We have a tentative plan for the next few weeks; the first step is to complete the Catlins before moving inland. But as we're finding out, and the beauty of not working to an itinerary, plans can change from one day to the next so who knows where my next post might come from.

 

Despite the weather we have loved being in Invercargill, I now know why it is such a lovely city; that's to distract you from the weather- although Southerners are quick to point out that they had a glorious summer last year - yeah, OK,  we believe you. We have loved catching up with the family and while we'll miss them we know we'll be back in May to see them again.

 

I made a few notes & took some shots of a few quirky & odd things that I came across in the city;

 

This barber shop is just down the road from the camp-

 

 

 

Potatoes are sold by the bucket on the side of the road- "Bucket of Potatoes $20" and you get to keep the bucket albeit without a handle!

 

Virtually every shop has a sign "Please remove muddy boots"- this just goes to prove that the weather is crap! ;)

 

A good Southern Man (or woman) doesn't drink & drive

Cherries are sold by the box load (on the side of the road also) at around $8kg- big fat plump juicy cherries! Yummmmm....

The standing joke was that Tim (Invercargill's colourful mayor) would turn up to welcome us at the café where we had lunch a few times. Instead of Tim we got Marcus (TV celeb) & his brand new baby!

 

 

A good Southern family mostly eats white bread, or white bread covered in cheese- yes, there are different styles & flavours of bread but nowhere near the variety & amount I've seen elsewhere. My favourite ciabatta might have half a dozen loaves or buns available if I'm lucky and that's in the large Pak 'n Save & Countdown supermarkets.

There are plenty of low flying wood pigeons around the city-

This van was in our campground-

Wine is very expensive & not available from the supermarkets, the Trust have a monopoly in Invercargill city and you can only buy from a liquor store. My usual bottles of wine are $3-$4 more expensive, and that's on special.

Cheese Rolls (that Southern specialty) are sold in the supermarket by the half dozen!

Keep smiling, see you "Out There"

Southern Hospitality

Well here’s another first for us. If anyone had told me last Christmas that we’d be parked at a dump station at 7am next Christmas morning I would have said “yeah right!” But that is exactly where we were on Wednesday morning. Christmas day dawned cold & wet here in Invercargill but we were up with the sparrows as we had a date with the grandkids beside their beautifully decorated Christmas tree & monster stack of presents that we wanted to see them open.

We’ve been parked up in the holiday park for the last 12 days and our tanks were full and they needed to be emptied before we headed to the farm later in the morning. The park’s dump station was too tight to get our fifth-wheeler into so we had to find a public dump station close by. There we were driving through a deserted Invercargill inner city looking, firstly for a non-existent station & then locating another one not too far from Rach & Cams’ house.

Duties done we arrived to find two very excited children who had been patiently waiting for us to arrive so they could get started on the second sitting of present opening, they had already opened their Santa sacks on waking. It was fun to watch them attack & demolish the pile of parcels under the tree and see the expressions on their faces as they jumped about & exclaimed excitedly “Wow, I asked Santa for one of those!”, “Look what I’ve got” etc before quickly moving onto the next present Mum handed them.  There was a bit of an interlude when everyone vacated to the bathroom & bath to help fill the bean bags with “beans”. Hmmm…..that went well. Not.  

Santa, Mum & Dad, grandparents, aunties & uncles all did very well in their gift choices this year. I think there’s something extra special about Christmas when there are children involved, especially young children, you can’t beat the excitement & that sparkle in their eyes.  

After a lovely cooked breakfast & a tidy up we headed out to the farm, it was still raining so rather than cut up the grassed area we backed the fifth-wheeler up to the front door which proved to be very handy in transporting food into the house & conducting “tours” of the van! 

 

 

What a fabulous day we had, Darnelle & James did a wonderful job in making us all feel very welcome. And the food was outstanding, the ham cooked to perfection, everyone pitched in and there was more than enough to feed 19 hungry mouths for Christmas dinner & tea later in the evening.
 

 

And I have to mention the Gingerbread House, this amazing piece of "art" was made from scratch by Bayley, Darnelle & James' eldest daughter. She is obviously as talented as her Mum & I can see why she'd like to be a chef when she leaves school. I don't think I'd have the patience to make this & if I did I certainly wouldn't want anybody to eat it!

Everyone stayed the night in a range of accommodation; a motorhome, a fifth-wheeler, a tent, the lounge room floor & of course bedrooms in the house itself. It was great that we were able to drift off to our own beds when we were ready to retire, some a lot earlier than others. And even thought it rained solid for most of the day the tent was nice & dry inside for the family, thankfully they put it up earlier in the week.

After a slow start for us the next morning, (others were up early cooking breakfast- poor Darnelle) we went on a tour of the farm which both David & I thoroughly enjoyed. It’s a whole different world to the dairy farm I was brought up on.

 

 

I took the following photo on the way home because suddenly it all made sense after James offered information on why a lot of hay bales are spaced at regular intervals across paddocks. The paddocks are usually planted in a fodder crop like swede for winter food (this one hasn't been ploughed & planted yet) During winter the paddock would be electric fenced in strips every few days & two (or more) evenly spaced hay bales opened up to provide feed for the herd along with the swedes in that strip. This way there's no carting the bales back & forward from another storage area & because it's usually very wet in winter there's less topsoil removal & wear in the paddock from vehicle movement. Brilliant! Except they are a type of visual pollution dotted all over the countryside.....oh well, you can't win 'em all *wink* < that one's for James.

I might be a farm girl at heart but just to make sure I didn’t get too cocky I got a belt from the electric fence when I was taking photos of these gorgeous Murray Grey calves that were in the house paddock.  I did try to open the gate but it seemed to be tied shut so I climbed over the fence. That was ok, I got into the paddock without realising the wire around the wooden railings was live; it was when I was climbing back out I got a shock! Ye-owl! That’s 3 belts this year; the previous two when I was stalking rare brown teal ducks in the Coromandel.

 

Aren't they the cutest things out, I love Murray Grey cattle, they look so soft & cuddly, their hair looks like down & those eyes just melt your heart.

 

One of the chooks (chicken) that provides the family with those elusive fresh free range eggs I keep looking for!

Thanks so much for your hospitality Darnelle & James, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and had a fabulous time.

 

 

 

Lucky Escape

1250kms, 41 days, 12 camping sites & 50,000 photos (not quite but you get the picture, or should that be photo) we are back in Tauranga after our wonderful trip around the Coromandel Peninsula. We’ll be here for a month or so catching up with visiting family & tying up a few more loose ends before we are back on the road again, hopefully in early June.  Our next adventure will be exploring the "Winterless North” during winter(of course) before we finally head, in spring, to the South Island for a year or so.

Our last night at Waihi Beach was very unsettling. The drought has definitely broken in this part of the country.  I had thought the rain at Broken Hill was torrential but it had nothing on the hammering we got at Waihi Beach. The noise was deafening, the rain ran off the van in a solid sheet, the paths & roadway around the site were flooded & poor Maddie thought the world was going to end. With the school holidays starting, I felt sorry for the dozens of campers that had arrived late afternoon & early evening to set up their tents & caravans. I could also hear the stream that flowed just behind  our van roaring through the narrow gap on its way to the beachfront.  I was thinking it was lucky we gave those eels a few feeds because they’ll have surly been swept away or if they did manage to hunker down in the stream bed they wouldn’t be seeing the light of day for a few days.

The stream runs under the bridge just beside our camp site

After a very long night and just before daybreak the rain got even heavier, solid & torrential for a couple of hours & then it just stopped.  After that a steady stream of bedraggled campers & excited kids started making their way to the showers & kitchen but generally their camp sites looked like they had survived the night reasonably well. There was a lot of surface water lying about and that benign stream that was at the most about 6 inches deep yesterday was now a raging torrent. I took the photo below with my cell phone from my bed when I woke. 

Wet & bleak

And I bet most of you reading this are thinking we got caught in the breaking news; the Waihi Stream has broken it banks, there are flash floods, dozens of campers at the Top10 holiday park have been evacuated, firemen are using ropes to help campers across a bridge. Waihi Beach Road is flooded & cars are stuck in flood waters etc. Well that was our “lucky escape”, we left yesterday morning after Friday night’s heavy rain. The latest problems have been caused by Saturday’s downpour. Here’s the stream before & after Friday’s rain, it’s now burst its banks & flooded all the cabins, the bridge that fireman were called to help with evacuations is the one that was beside our campsite.  Maybe we would have floated out of there had we still be on site, David is so relieved we were gone.

That's what it looked like the day before

Before leaving Waihi Beach, we had a reasonably quite last day letting Maddie enjoy the campground facilities & making friends with some of the arriving children. It was lovely for us to have the time with Maddie but we can both honestly say we NEVER want to be in such a popular family orientated campground during school holidays again. The noise & activity went on all day & well into the night. I seriously think that some parents must come for a break themselves, they seem to release their kids into the grounds & say “go for it” just be home for dinner!

Maddie & I went to feed the eels again, there seemed to be lots more & I noticed all the red swirls on a few of the eel photos that I had over-exposed, maybe it's the slime that they're releasing as they slithered about all over each other.

Notice the red swirls, maybe slime?

Maddie also wanted to go shell hunting again, she didn’t think she had enough shells to take home for Mum & she also wanted to find some more of my special ones for me.  I think she felt guilty as while her & Poppa were washing her shells yesterday she tried to help by washing mine too. She threw my delicate shells into the bucket with hers & gave them a good rinse around & broke most of them. She told me Poppa broke them but then later must have thought better of it & said, she & Poppa had broken them but we’d get some more tomorrow.  True to her word she found me lots more.

Shell Pasta

Waihi Beach

We did our last dump station duties at the fairly new & well appointed Waihi Beach dump station, Maddie was intrigued to see what was going on, although quickly took a few steps back when the lever was pulled. She had been curious whenever she  used the toilet as to where it was going, she even took  a look underneath the van to check it out once.  Maddie has also named out water pump Mr Woodpecker, & it does sound like a woodpecker everytime it hammers through the van.

The connected hose is to flush the black tank

And that was that. We drove through to Tauranga yesterday morning in overcast weather, managed to park up the van & unpack a fair bit before the rain hit us as well, solid torrential rain that has flooded parts of Tauranga too. The drought has well & truly broken.

The rain pouring off our slide-out roof back in Tauranga.
I really wanted to get out there & save some of it :)

We have had an amazing six weeks & have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Life on the road is all it’s cracked up to be & more. You do have to have an open mind & be ready to step outside your comfort zone should the need arise, you do have to prepared to compromise on some things that you might usually take for granted but generally it’s a fantastic way of exploring our beautiful country & we're loving it. It’s a thrill to wake each morning to a different view & know that each new day will bring new experiences. We have met some great people & without exception everyone is so friendly & welcoming. We really do live in Paradise.

We threw ourselves in the deep end by tackling the Coromandel as our first major trip but we’ve decided that David will be able to handle anything that comes his way now, nothing could be worse than some of the roads that we have travelled.

I’m working on a map of our travels with links to all the places we’ve visited & links back to the blog which I’ll post here in due course. In the meantime a big thank you too, to the dozens of people who are following my blog, it’s nice to know you’re  “Out There” following along.

See you up north…..

Glenfalls, Mohaka

Before leaving Napier we had one more "first" to do; empty the black & grey water tanks at a dump station. There are numerous dump stations located in every city & town around NZ. RVing(recreational vehicle) is a very popular pastime with Kiwis & tourists alike, it pays to be self contained & have the certification to back it up. A "green" sticker allows you to camp both in official sites including council & NZMCA owned parks along with DOC(Dept. of Conservation) reserves amongst others and in some cases freedom camp anywhere within reason, as long as that province or council allows it. Sadly a few people have ruined it for many in some of the most popular holiday spots, leaving behind their rubbish & human waste to pollute the environment and causing councils to ban freedom camping for all.

The empty went better than expected & was really quite simple thankfully...as long as you held your breath for a few seconds on the initial connection.

A dump station with a view on a prime beach front site!


Once emptied  we were back on the road heading to Glenfalls about an hour north of Napier on the Napier-Taupo Road. Glenfalls is a DOC camping ground and very popular over the summer months as it sits beside the mighty Mohaka, a great trout fishing & rafting river. Except it wasn't so mighty due to the drought, it was more of a shallow trickle. Never mind, school holidays were finished and there were only 3 other vans parked up.

 

We had the pick of sites & after a quick walk around settled on the river bank just a few strides from the water. Perfect!

 

Once levelled & set up David arranged his 24hr fishing license on line(by driving back up the road to a high point :) ), got his gear organised & was off to catch the evening rise. It was another very hot afternoon and with no breeze in the valley the river looked very inviting. After a leisurely swim to cool off I too crossed the river with my camera and followed the narrow sheep tracks around the point to where David was fishing. With the river being so shallow & clear David did well to catch 6 trout in total, all small or very small & all sent on their way. As any fly fisherman will tell you the thrill is in the hunt, catching dinner is of little significance and not a necessary outcome.

 

 

I left my fisherman happily casting away & working on his strategy(in fact I don't think he even noticed I had gone) and climbed to the top of the brow to take some photos of the valley.

As I climbed further up the hill I came across a flock of wild geese (these were of the domesticated type that have obviously moved on from a farm pond), they weren't too keen to see me and took off on foot for the hills, it was rather strange to see them filing up the steep hill one after the other like sheep. Bringing up the rear were two canada geese, one limping badly & his mate helpfully nudging him along. Going by the mess & feathers on the shingle flats, they all must come down to the river at night to roost. Each morning two or three V formations of canada geese flew low up the river past the camp site obviously on their way to a grain field or some such somewhere & then back again in the evening.

Even though it was a scorcher of a day I was determined to carry on to the top of the hill, again following the narrow sheep tracks, so I could take some photos looking down over the camping ground. It was a great view once up there but with quite a steep descent I had to carefully watch my footing on the way down.

 

 

Later the next day we took a drive further down the road to check out a another two DOC camp sites, located on the edge of the river too. The road turned to gravel just past Glenfalls & was very badly rutted due to the dozens of logging trucks using it at the moment, there are quite a few large pine plantations inland that are getting felled. David wasn't too pleased with the constant rattling and juddering not to mention the dust that was coating the ute.

 

 

At the turn off onto a dirt road that took us down to the camp sites is a large cleared area with a lookout over the river. An amazing view awaited us, the river has formed a perfect horseshoe (called an oxbow) and is overlooked by the remarkable 'Organs', a rocky outcrop sculpted by the elements into what look like a giant set of organ pipes.

The Organs, Mohaka River

Both Everett camp sites were deserted although we could see from the trampled grass and dead patches that both sites had had a busy Christmas/New Year too. There were also signs that hunters frequent the area, using anything handy along with stolen road signs as target practice. After a bit of fun with one of the signs we returned it back up the road to where it belonged.

We decided that we actually liked Glenfalls better, not that we would have been able to tow the fifth-wheeler into the lower Everetts site due to the climb out of the ford & a washout further on.

Back on the "main" road we drove further on, I was hoping to get to Boundary Stream, a "Mainland Island", a bird sanctuary which is protected by a predator free fence. But after driving a further 10 kms or so on the dusty & bone rattling road we decided to turn around and head home. We could tackle Boundary Stream later when we are exploring the East Coast, come in from Tutira which is the more common route. We stopped before turning around so I could take some photos of the farmland which, because of the drought, is tinder dry.

If you would like to see more of Glenfalls & the surrounding area please click here;
 Glenfalls, Mohaka River

After our first trip away we've decided we quite like this lifestyle which is just as well considering all that we've done to get to this point, and after a day at home we're both keen to get back on the road. That will have to wait for a couple of weeks as we still have a few things to sort in Tauranga but already the van is reloaded and waiting.