Beach Hop South- Castlepoint

Catch-up- Well, we're now back on the Mainland after a very smooth crossing Monday morning. I know how to pick 'em! We'll be catching up with friends and doing a few errands around Picton and Blenheim before heading out into the wild blue yonder again. To check out new places, revisit a few of our favourite haunts, do some fishing and most importantly, catch up with our Southland family again. Although that won't be until we're closer to Christmas but at least we're on the right island and heading in their direction.

Now, back to the beach hop blogs-

From Pongaroa we headed into Masterton to fill up with diesel and groceries before carrying on to our next beach destination Castlepoint, 65kms away.  And wow, what a fantastic camp site we ended up with. Right on the beach with stunning views around the bay and of the lighthouse that is synonymous with Castlepoint. And as it turned out this was going to be our view for the next 7 days.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Just before we reached Masterton I took a photo of this small church which so far, I have been unable to locate any information on. This is very unusual as normally I'll find at least one photo on the internet, even if there's no written information. I uploaded it to my Flickr 'Country Churches of NZ' group in the hope that someone there could fill in a gap or two. I also sent a few emails to various organisations but have yet to hear back from them. 

And then, the unexpected happened. The photo above got *Explored* by Flickr. For those that don't know, Flickr is a photo sharing site and I use it to upload, store & share my photos. Flickr receives around 6,000 uploads every minute - that's about 8.6 million photos a day. From this huge group of images, Flickr choose only 500 images to showcase as *Explored* for each 24-hour period. That's only one image in every 17,000. So now thousands of people worldwide will see my church photo but still nobody will be able to help me. Talk about ironic!

And while we're on churches here's another beauty just out of Masterton, this one is St Albans Anglican Church (1905) at Taueru, a 'blink & you'll miss it' settlement on the road to Castlepoint.

What I loved about this very well looked after church were the flowering trees framing the church and the mass of daffodils and jonquils blooming throughout the paddock behind it. 

We stopped 20kms from Castlepoint at Tinui, a small picturesque village with a ton of history attached. Tinui's claim to fame is that the first ANZAC memorial service in the world was held there at the Church of the Good Shepherd. It was great to be able to add this church to my collection. And no, this isn't a blog on churches (although looking at the photos so far you'd be forgiven for thinking so), I shall move on to the beach soon!

There's a memorial cross up on the hill behind the church (the bare hilltop to the left above), but I couldn't spot it against the gloomy skyline. I failed to see it the next time we passed by too.

The significance of holding the very first ANZAC service here in Tinui is shown in the size of the War Memorial Hall. It's huge for such a tiny settlement. The hall was built in 1954, and until 1960 the Memorial Room could only be used for public meetings if a lady was present. Wise people who put that particular rule in place. The Gallipoli sign post is a poignant touch.

While I took photos David parked outside the fire 'station'- I like the sign directing trucks to the toilets! I think they mean truckies.he 

They were asked not to park on the new tarseal outside the public toilets or use the lovely clean loos (dirty boots probably, not dirty habits). The toilets were located inside the old Tinui School porch. That's kinda weird; having loos inside a school porch. The porch looked kinda weird standing there all by itself too.

Beside the 'Porch' were the old Police Station, the jail, random farm equipment and plenty of historic information about the village. All very well looked after by some very dedicated residents.

Across the road from the hall is the old General Store (1868) which is now a craft shop...

...and on the opposite corner the former Post Office (1902).

Once I'd finished exploring, I waved out (half a dozen times- I think he was snoozing) to my ever patient husband who came cruising up the road to collect me and we carried onto Castlepoint.

There is a freedom camping area at Castlepoint, in the carpark at the end of the road but we've heard that it can be very exposed when (not if) the wind gets up and includes a free sandblasting for any vehicles parked there. We were going to stop for a few days so we decided to stay at the lovely Castlepoint Holiday Park. 

And being the only ones in camp the obvious choice of site was right at the front! What was that about wind? No worries. Not a breath of wind and a calm sea for the first two days at least. And there weren't any noticeable sand dunes nearby, so we should be ok, right?

Our only visitors were these escapees from Castlepoint Station. Every time I walked around the campground I'd find them lurking behind a building or munching in a garden. 

The very well looked after Castlepoint Holiday Park overlooks the beach and of course that ever present lighthouse. The campground rises five levels up the hill behind and stretches back quite a distance from the beach. There are many permanent caravans with built-in decks and sheds but no full-time residents. I can imagine every available space of this camp would be filled with people over the summer holidays. 

The view from the top level is spectacular...

...and especially from this deck beside one of the permanent caravans.

I went for a walk along the waterfront while we had a blue sky. You never know when that's going to change at this time of the year.

"Hear ye, hear ye" 

How many photos can one take of a lighthouse? I think I might have broken the record. Just be pleased I'm not posting them all on here!

The Castlepoint Store, a necessity with Masterton being so far away although only recently re-opened. 

An assortment of typical Kiwi baches all with waterviews except that bottom right bach. What do you do when you want to check out the surf before leaving the house? You build a deck on your roof of course.

The remnants of the Castlepoint early settler cemetery were just outside the camping ground.

Given the amount of names on the board there are very few grave sites left.

The family of this guy certainly didn't want anyone to forget him. A pity a few more graves weren't marked like this, it would certainly help historians track people down.

And here's another lighthouse photo to finish the blog with, this one taken at sunset.

More to come...

Maniototo- Out in the Styx; Part 2

Carrying on from Part 1

After driving through Patearoa, we continued on up the Maniototo valley passing along the way, quite a number of new dairy conversions and some still under construction. It was a surprise to see dairy farms all the way out here, I wondered where the closest dairy factory was, we haven’t seen any tankers on the road while we’ve been in the area. We slowed to let the tail-enders of a large herd cross the road, followed by a couple of quad bikes with farm workers on board. Most of the farm labour we’ve seen around the dairy farms here and further south have been Filipinos. I bet the Maniototo would have been a major culture shock for them, especially the isolation and the bitter cold.

We leave the dairy farms behind and move into sheep country, large station homesteads appear here and there and near the entrance of one, we stop to take a photo of this old salvaged & restored gold dredge.

Further on we pass Patearoa Station’s beautiful stone woolshed….

…which is across the road from this long abandoned homestead. The 5000ha Patearoa Station was purchased by the Hore family a few years ago and added to their own large station next door.

The 8000-odd hectare Stonehenge Station is home to the Hore family, this is the family farm of past All Black Andrew Hore whose great-grandfather came to the Maniototo in 1910.

Stonehenge Station cottage and farm shed.

 

We pass over the Tairei River once again, it’s getting narrower so we must be nearing it’s source. There’s also a couple of small power stations on the banks of the river. We start to climb again and we’re looking for a sheltered place to stop for a late lunch.

Towards the top of the rise we pass over a large pipe that is channeling water down to the power stations below. The view out over the vast Maniototo Valley is stunning, small irrigation ponds and dams are glistening in the sunshine, and across the valley is the snow capped North Rough Ridge.

At the top I spot an NZ Fish & Game angling sign beside a closed gate. There must be a lake or dam nearby so we decide to check it out and maybe find that place to have some lunch. We follow a steep track up the side of a bank and find ourselves on top of a dam wall and beside the intake to the pipe. This is the Paerau Irrigation & Power Scheme and a track follows the dam walls in both directions.

We head towards the far end of the dam and before we realise it, there’s a large mob of sheep advancing on us (coming round the mountain). They think we’re the farmer and have their feed with us.

They hesitate for a moment & we make a hasty retreat and finding no shelter beside the dam to have lunch, we park on the track between two huge rocky outcrops. It’s once again bitterly cold outside with a stiff wind blowing but at least the rock offers a little bit of shelter as I pour the soup standing between the open doors while David stays warm in the cab. The white on the rock beside his door are frozen icicles, water that has seeped out of the rocks has frozen on it’s way down the rock face.

We don’t hang about and nor have the sheep, they ambush us on the track over the intake. They must have taken a short cut because we didn’t see them pass us by.

We nudge our way through avoiding eye contact as they stretch their heads upwards looking expectantly for food. When we look back there’s still dozens coming over the rise. We can’t get out of there fast enough. What's with sheep and us, we seem to have spent much of our time in the Maniototo being harassed by hungry sheep.

We carry on down the road, we’re getting close to the end of the road. This is Paerau (meaning many ridges) and formerly known as Styx, as in ‘out in the styx’- and this really is out in the styx, the back of beyond, the wops, miles from nowhere. This road does end, but before it does, it crosses the famous Dunstan Trail, a trail used by miners on their way to and from the inland gold fields of Central Otago back in the late 1800s.

The Dunstan Trail is a Dry Weather Track (summer only), we drove part of it on our way to Poolburn Dam the other week and hopefully we’ll be back to drive it’s length next summer. There are other tracks that branch off from the Dunstan Trail, one heads to Lake Onslow- The Dismal Swamp, where we visited awhile back from the Roxburgh side of the range. Another track passes the most isolated church in New Zealand, the Serpentine, a rough stone ‘hut’ out in the middle of nowhere. Of course I’m hoping we’ll make it to there too.

We cross the Tairei again and as we head up the other side I spot some old buildings down the bank beside the river. These are what I’m looking for and one of the main reasons we’ve driven to the top of the valley.

At the top there’s a gate and a track leading down to the river. It’s private property with a sign on the gate.

This is where the old Styx jail, hotel and stables are located. This is also the junction with the Dunstan Trail and it’s where miners stopped for the night- there were originally two hotels, one on either side of the river so there were options if it was in flood. The Styx Jail was built in 1863, but rather than for prisoners, it was mostly used to secure gold during overnight coach stops.

I thought I had it sorted but the sign wasn’t to scale and didn’t quite make sense (to me anyway), we were parked at the sharp point on the sign, at the Dunstan Trail junction. Talk about being picky- the owners of the land around the jail must have had issues to be so pedantic. But it didn’t matter because when I got to the bottom of the track I found I couldn’t get to the jail anyway due to having to cross the river.

There was no way I was taking my socks & boots off and crossing through the ice cold water and it was actually about knee deep even though it doesn’t look it here. The stables were visible and another building which was possibly the old hotel but I couldn’t see the jail even through the bare trees. I was a bit disappointed not to actually see the jail but  that'll be another reason we’ll have to come back this way in the summer.

As I was getting back into the ute, we heard a whole lot of revving and laughter coming from the Dunstan Trail ahead of us, and high up on the range we spotted three 4WDs weaving their way down the trail. They disappeared into a gully for awhile; we could still hear the revving and yahoos, before they popped over the rise in front of us. They skidded and spun their way out onto the road and were gone, as fast as they appeared.

We turn around and followed their wheelie tracks back up the valley before we turn off and head across the head of the valley to the west side. We stop at another old stone woolshed, this one I think is on Linnburn Station.

A little further on we pass the another entrance to the Dunstan Trail, not too far over the range is the Poolburn Dam. The section of the trail between here and the Styx is the one we’ve just travelled and is the normal public road.

The sun comes out as we turn our nose towards home and head along the bottom of North Rough Ridge passing more sheep stations, deer farms and dairy herds along the way.

Ahead of us I spot a gang of turkeys near the roadside fence- I like gang myself, but rafter or flock, they all refer to a group of turkeys. We pull up so I can take a photo just as I spot another flock of sheep making a beeline across the paddock towards us. ‘Quick,’ I call to David ‘Let’s get out of here!’

Just around the next bend is another larger gang of turkeys spread out across the road. They dash for the fence and as we slow down peel off to the left, running fast along the fence line trying to find a break in it to escape.

I know what my family will be thinking reading this; did you lean out the window Shellie and go ‘gobble, gobble, gobble!?’ My mother did this when we were kids, whenever we’d pass turkeys while out driving around the countryside (in fact she’s been known to do it when we were adults too). I think (I bet) she got it from her father- if you get the call right, the turkeys will answer back. They didn't talk to me.

The long & undulating road home- it was a shame the cloud hung low over the snow covered mountains ahead of us otherwise this would have been a magic shot. All the same, and despite the weather and the chilling cold, we had a awesome day exploring the beautiful Maniototo Valley.

And that was us for the Maniototo too, we left Ranfurly a couple days later driving over the Pig Root (Kyeburn to Palmerston) and through to Kakanui, heading north to see our family again. We decided we'd do the last third of our Cheats Otago Rail Trail, from Kyeburn to Middlemarch, later in our travels.

We had an awesome time exploring this amazing part of the country and especially doing it during winter. I missed my hoar frost (much to the relief of the locals) but we had our fair share of snow, ice and beautiful winter sunshine along the way. Our 5th-wheeler did us proud, we were so toasty warm because it is so well insulated. We hardly needed our second diesel heater- we have two, one in the bedroom and one in the lounge. And as long as we layered up with clothing we managed very well outside in the sometimes extremely cold weather- one day we woke up to -12 degrees Celsius. An extra bonus was the lack of people, we could have been the only people on earth some days.

We'll definitely be back another day, another season.