Winter Beauty- Butchers Dam

Yesterday morning, after nearly five weeks parked in our Winton family’s driveway, we headed back ‘Out There’. We were sad to be leaving but we know we’ll be back down south in the summer so it won’t be too long before we see them again.

We had an awesome time, lots of laughs, a few surprises and thoroughly enjoyed spending time with Ollie & Ruby especially as the last two weeks were school holidays. It’s great to see that the family have settled into Winton well after shifting from the ‘big smoke’ Invercargill.

I’m afraid we wouldn’t enjoy the winters very much if we had to live that far south though. For at least the first three weeks we had minus 2-5 degree frosts nearly every morning which wouldn’t have been so bad had the day warmed up to something above 5 degrees. At least the sun shone brightly every day. And then the snow came, but that was definitely a highlight. Although it refused to melt for nearly a week which shows you how weak the sun’s warmth was.

I think we’ve jinxed Southland; on the first visit we spent 5 weeks in Invercargill over Christmas & New Year (2013-14) and it blew a howling gale and was freezing cold for all but 3 days and everyone said it was the worst summer they’d seen. This time it’s five weeks in Winton and everyone said it’s the coldest winter they’ve ever had, never mind the dump of snow. Oh, and in between we made a special trip back to attend the Bluff Oyster Festival. Well we know what happened there- we got evacuated when a storm blew the marquee apart. And hail fell on the ground at the campground two inches thick! Hmmm…perhaps we’ll meet the family on neutral territory next time.

We left Winton just as the heavens opened up and it was a wet and gloomy trip all the way through to Gore where we stopped for lunch. Blue sky arrived as we crossed into Otago and by the time we arrived at Butchers Dam it was a relatively warm late afternoon, even with a solid coating of snow along Old Man Range behind us. Butchers Dam is 9kms from Alexandra in Central Otago.

Butchers Dam was built between 1935-37 during the great depression for an irrigation scheme, as were many dams in the Central Otago area. During the 1860s Butchers Gully teemed with gold mining activities and up to 150 people lived in the Gully. Most of the mining took place in the basin that is now the reservoir behind the dam.

A store, butchers shop and hotel were set up in the gully during the 1860s. The hotel was destroyed (by fire) and replaced twice before the last hotel was built in stone in 1890. This hotel was submerged under the reservoir in 1937. It is said that when the water is low the chimney stacks can be seen below the surface.

The remains of a stone cottage belonging to a well know and generous Chinese gentleman, Lye Bow, is located in the poplars across the dam. Initially he mined in the gully during the 1860s, then went on to purchase land and planted the first apricot orchard and market garden in Central Otago.

Butchers Dam is a well known freedom camping area, there are any number of spots to park along the west and north ends of the dam tucked in and around the small coves. It’s a busy place during the summer but all we have for company are the rabbits and a few hardy birds.

It was autumn when we last passed the dam (we didn’t overnight then) and the poplars and willows were stunning in their brilliant autumn colours. One of my photos of the dam then is the cover photo of the NZMCA member’s handbook. But as you can see every season has its beauty.

The owners of the dam allow access across the dam wall to the  Flat Top Hill Conservation Area which has a number of walks around and over it and forms the backdrop to the dam. It also forms part of the Clutha River gorge on the far side.

The dam wall is 24 metres high and 69 metres along the top.The concrete arch varies in thickness from 762mm at the top to 2.7 metres at the bottom. The far half of the dam wall is slightly lower allowing excess water to spill over, falling onto a series of rocks to break up the energy on it’s way down so that the dam base and creek bed are not worn away.

The day’s end at Butchers Dam. Tomorrow we will tackle Flat Top Hill.

Meyers Pass, Waimate

Next stop was the NZMCA Park at Waimate, another great little site just on the edge of town. It was obviously once a dairy farm, here we are parked beside the old milking shed, they must have had small cows, tiny herds & short farmers back then. Nothing like the huge dairy sheds we've seen on our travels. Up behind us on the hill is the "famous in Waimate" White Horse, a nod to the work Clydesdales did in breaking in the farms around the district.

We've been very impressed with beautifully kept towns that we've been passing through on our way south, lovely towns with lots of old buildings, mostly brick & stone. Of course I've been taking plenty of church photos so we get to see some of the town back streets. In Waimate, while not "pretty" this very old flour mill is right on the main street at the end of town. The plaque reads: "Built in 1890, the mill produced a range of products including flour which won awards at the Anglo-Japanese exhibition, London, 1910, at the Festival of Empire, London, 1911 and at the Auckland Exhibition 1913-14."  The building & the silos are rated Historic Places.

On Tuesday we decided to do a 4 hour round trip and cross over Meyers Pass which started inland from Waimate through the Hunter Hills to the Waihao basin where the Pass started climbed up & over and then dropped down into the magnificent Waitaki River valley ending in Hakakaramea. We'd been told about it by a couple who we'd met at the Park & as it was a beautiful clear sunny blue sky day, it was a perfect day to go exploring.

A patchwork of fields along the way

For the last few days I had been fighting an urge to change our travel plans & head inland to Burkes Pass & Lake Tekapo & continuing south from there. And the reason? The famous lupins are in full bloom and the timing would have been just perfect for some great photos against the lakes & mountains. But, I didn't want to pre-empt our travel in this area next year & it would have also added quite a bit of mileage to the trip. So I resisted. Just. And I was rewarded, well it was a small consolation really, we came across some lupins on the road to the Pass. Not the masses & masses that I could have seen but enough to take a few photos & whet my appetite for next year when we'll definitely be waiting for the bloom in Central Otago.

At the beginning of the Pass, the signs told the story, there were about 8 gates on the road but I only had to open 3 of them, we saw a few cows and a dozen or so sheep but I'm guessing that the fenced areas are huge & remote and a lot of the stock would have been way back in the hills. I'm sure this road wouldn't be suitable to cross in the winter, there would be snow on the surrounding hills and probably deep on the road as well.

We saw these cool flowers spikes on what looked like some sort of tussock, the area was fenced off so it's obvious of some importance. The historic stone bridge was built in 1879 and the only one we crossed although we passed over a few dry fords.

The views were fabulous and landscape fascinating & the road not too rough either. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip & will plan to do many more of these remote routes in time.

Waitaki River valley

It was with some surprise that we spotted a figure walking towards us when towards the end of the Pass. You don't expect to see a person out for a Sunday walk in such a remote area and on such a hot day. We stopped to check he was OK, which he was & then saw his car further on down the valley.

Waimate is wallaby country & we saw a couple of  "flat" examples along the road through the Pass but it wasn't until we saw one dead on the side of the road driving back home that I got David to stop so I could take a photo just to prove that there are wild wallabies out there. Another unwanted introduced Australian that has become a pest, the wallaby was liberated in the area in 1874 by the first European settler to the area. The local habitat must have suited them because luckily this is the only area of NZ that they are located (other than a few on Kawau Island in the Hauraki Gulf up north, & oh, a few in the Rotorua area)

We crossed over the huge Waitaki River to have our lunch in Kurow. The two very long & very old & rickety bridges are in the process of being replaced.

There is obviously a battle going on as to who has the brightest coloured pub in town. I'm sure they are a treat to the eyes in the middle of the winter though, when the town is snowed in.

 

Heading for home we followed the river through the valley where once again there were so many irrigators & dairy conversions happening. And so many Devan water tanks everywhere, now that would be a great business to own! :)

We stopped under one of the irrigators that reached out over the road to wash the dust off the ute.

We passed this historic cob cottage along the way. It was built around 1880 from Penticotico clay & tussock & was occupied by a local farmer, James Paterson & his family. He also sold liquor & provided casual accommodation to passing drovers.

The long road home- are your eyes deceiving you?

Ealing & the Rangi

It's been a busy few days & I know you'll be keen to see what we've been up to & where we've been. We carried on south after leaving Christchurch to the NZMCA Park at Ealing, a tiny dot on the banks of a huge braided river, the Rangitata, affectionately know to locals as the Rangi.

And as luck would have it, that's a church beside the Ealing Park

Like it's big brother the Rakaia these two rivers & all their tributaries are the life blood of the district. They provide millions & millions of litres of water for the irrigation of hundreds of farms & thousands of acres that cover the Canterbury Plains.

These rivers are snow fed from high up within the Southern Alps and travel 120kms out to the coast. We found it extremely fascinating checking out all the huge irrigation ponds and canals that criss-crossed the countryside. A very fast canal  ran past the back of the Ealing site just across the road from one of the ponds.

Also across the road was the Ealing Hall & this tree which has ended up in the middle of the road. It was planted in 1943 in memory of a local resident who lost his life at age 24, flying a Lancaster Bomber in WW2.

All roads lead to Ealing; three very straight & very long roads ended on the road outside.

Ealing, with only 3 or 4 farmhouses in view, was a very busy place for a Sunday. In fact for Saturday night and early Monday morning too. For most of the day and late into the night milk tankers roared past Ealing, back & forward they travelled, I would say at least 40-50 passes & probably more each day. There's obviously a dairy factory close by and many farms down the roads that branched out from the intersection where we were. 

On Sunday the milk tankers were joined by dozens of trucks carting hay along with hay baling machinery & tractors. We had a huge hedge between us & the road so it wasn't too noisy; although part of that hedge had been uprooted in the horrendous storm that blew across the Plains back in September. Everywhere we travelled you could see the after effects of the storm, hundreds of fully grown trees blown over or the tops snapped off. In some cases whole plantations & long shelterbelt rows of fully grown trees had been uprooted.

We followed one of the roads alongside a canal and stopped often to check out the workings. No matter in what direction you look there are hundreds of irrigators which look like giant millipedes snaking across the paddocks, some had up to 20 sections attached to them. Some move on wheels in a great arch from the hold down point near the canal, others sweep down the paddock in a long line.

We climbed up the rocky face of a very tall stop bank that we came across to find this humongous irrigation pond in the process of being made. This is just one corner of it; I wonder how many litres it will hold once finished.

Traditionally the Plains have been the main grain growing area of New Zealand and while we have still seen plenty of wheat, barley & oat fields, dairying is obviously making big inroads into the district with new dairy sheds & large herds of cows in amongst the green of the crops.

And it's about here that I should be posting photos of our trip out to the Rangitata River Mouth & especially of the Rangitata Huts; a collection of what I'd call small baches/cribs/one or two room fishing huts. But sadly I cleaned the data disk before downloading the photos! I am so mad with myself. We travelled 24kms, from here at Ealing on the main highway, down  to the beach and then raced a storm back to the site. I also can't show you a picture of the layer of hail on our door mat or the hail banked up on the car wipers or the beautiful full rainbow that appeared after the storm passed by. Maybe next time we're in the area we'll take another trip to the Huts, it's a very rugged, wild & windswept coastline but has a huge estuary which would be great for bird watching & apparently the salmon fishing at the mouth is world famous. It's a 2kms walk from the huts along a spit to the mouth, most of the huts had quad bikes outside, it is very hard walking on the large stony banks.

But I can show you a photo of the wild rose that was climbing along the fence between the site & the little church next door.