Exciting Fork in the Road

Real-time (& a belated Happy New Year!)

Well, you may have wondered where I'd got to after my last post at the end of the year. There we were happily camping at Ohau C Camp beside Lake Benmore waiting for the warm weather to arrive and the crowds to leave when...

Ohau C camp, Lake Benmore

...nek minute (actually 21 days later) we're parked up beside Mum & Dads' house, 1000kms away in an unusually wet Napier, on our way to Tauranga.

Instead of spending summer relaxing, exploring, fishing and photographing some of our favourite and more remote South Island lakes; Mavora, Onslow & Poolburn, we'll be ensconced in a dark warehouse for a few weeks. It's time to sort through our furniture & gear which we've had in storage for the last 8 years. And the reason for the sudden need to do this?

Welcome to our new home town! Twizel, heart of Mackenzie Country and the great outdoors.

Mackenzie Country (aka the Mackenzie Basin or Mackenzie District, and yes, it is a small 'k') is in the high country of the South Island, at the foot of the Southern Alps and part of the South Canterbury region. The Mackenzie is close to my heart and one of my favourite areas in all of New Zealand. Which is just as well, as we have purchased a property not too far from Twizel's town centre.

Kelland Pond

And while I say 'home town' that's not quite right because we'll still do our wandering while we rent the property out for short term holiday accommodation.  And then when we need a break from the road we'll be able to put the sign up for a couple of weeks 'No Vacancy'.

Ben Ohau & Lake Ohau

There is so much to do in the Mackenzie District, it's a very busy and fast growing tourist area. The Alps 2 Ocean Cycle Trail passes by our front gate, there's trophy fishing in the canals and three lakes within close proximity and another 4 or 5 lakes within an hours drive.

There's day walks and tramping tracks, birding and boating. The Mackenzie is also an International Dark Sky Reserve which has great appeal to me; Lady Aurora will never be too far away. Of course I'm in seventh heaven with the photography opportunities; magnificent autumn colours, wild flowers (including those love 'em or hate 'em lupins), snow covered mountains, high country tussock landscapes, big blue skies and turquoise coloured canals and lakes. And dare I mention hoar frosts!

I can't believe that I can now say that Aoraki/Mt Cook is in my backyard, just 45 minutes away.

We'll be back in Twizel in early April to unpack the container and then we'll have a little bit of work to do on the property over winter and be ready to hit the road again late winter/early spring.

I will share more information on the property further down the track, in the meantime I am going to try and catch up on some blogs! (New Year's resolution that begins February 1st!).

Lake Ruataniwha

Lots of Lovely Lupins

Real-time

You didn't think you were going to get away without seeing lupin photos did you? After I'd finished taking photos of the McLarens at Omarama I headed to the Ahuriri River Bridge just down the road. 

After the disappointment of finding that many of the lupins around Lake Tekapo had been sprayed and the ones that were still flowering, past their prime, I struck it lucky with the lupins at Omarama. They were just perfect; full flower heads with tips still in bud and very few seed pods. 

I crossed over the a couple of the side streams (part of the braided river system) and walked  up the river away from the carpark where people with only a few minutes to spare, stop to admire the flowers (and trample through them taking selfies)

I made my way to the main river and followed a track upstream. I had the whole place to myself; totally surrounded by beautiful lupins and their lovely perfume. I spent an hour or so taking photos, sitting on the river bank, watching terns fishing in the river and just enjoying the lovely scenery.

We called in at the river again yesterday on our way past- to have lunch, and also so I could take a few more photos using my macro lens. Many of the close up shots here and near the bottom of the post were taken with my macro lens on maximum aperture of f/2.8. Aperture has a big impact upon depth of field- that's how far you can see into the photo, it makes the subject stand out against the blurred background or bokeh as the out of focus area is called. There is good bokeh and then there is great bokeh, see if you can decide what makes great bokeh- hint, look for a sparkling background.

I'll let the photos do the talking now, don't forget to click on the photos to enlarge.

Ahuriri River bridge on SH8 in the distance

I've been wearing my flower hat for this post but I do need to mention that I have an issue promoting lupins. The dilemma I have is between three of my loves- photography, birds & flowers. I know the lupins are a major pest along the braided rivers of the MacKenzie Country, they are destroying the breeding grounds of many of our native birds, including critically endangered birds like the Black Stilt. 

If people were to move off the main roads and see the great swathes of lupins snaking their way up into the mountains, they'd be horrified. There is major cause for concern. I have noticed this year that councils & DOC have sprayed many more areas and killed many of the roadside patches. I've also noticed a river island, where black-fronted terns were nesting last year, is this year covered in lupins! 

But I also love the lupins and they make gorgeous photography subjects. Perhaps by promoting them, I'm also making people more aware of the problem, which in the end may help when DOC talk about eradicating them. Not that, that is ever likely to happen, just like rabbits, possums, wildling pines, broom & gorse amongst others, there are just far too many.

Across Lindis Pass

Catch-up

It was time to break camp at Omarama and head off into the rat-race. Well, rat-race for the South Island anyway; that love it or hate it town, a town that is full of young people and adrenaline and runs on a high all year round, a town located in the most stunning and beautiful location. That town, Queenstown.

We had Christmas shopping to do and chores to complete before we headed to Mavora Lakes for a month and Queenstown is the only town on the way (I don't count Cromwell, you can't do any decent retail therapy there). Actually, Queenstown isn't that bad, it's just a full-on town overflowing with tourists and campervans and once one has visited it, the next visits are always done at high-speed so you can get out of there, or through there, as fast as possible (so don't ask why we're heading there again in a few days time!)

Anyway, we headed off over the Lindis Pass which, surprise, surprise, was lined with more lupins.

Approaching the summit and I think this is the first time we've come through when there's been no snow.

It would have been nice to have found a few places to stop to so I could take some more lupin photos (really?) but with 'Out There' on the back, a steady traffic flow of traffic (even though you can't see any vehicles in my photos- that's good timing) and a reluctant driver, I had to be content with shooting out the front window. 

We had trouble with a hire campervan in the Pass, the driver kept wanting to stop (in the middle of the road) to take photo of the flowers. There was nowhere to pull over, so he thought he'd just stop and click. He got the short shift from us at one stage but then did it again and again, hesitating whenever he spotted a small area he thought he might be able to pull into. In the end he got a big shift from a large truck that had to slam on it's brakes. For the rest of journey, and at a snails pace, he had a long line of vehicles trailing behind him and many frustrated motorists.

We even saw a small rental car parked (no people about) at the top of a slow-vehicle lane, actually in the lane itself with a truck fast approaching from behind, he had to take evasive action to avoid the rear end. We then spotted the people, back down the hill taking photos of a bridge and creek surrounded by lupins. It's no wonder there are so many accidents around tourist hot-spots.

I love the landscape through the Pass, it's not unlike the Crown Range, with scree slopes and rust coloured tussocks covering the mountains.

The lupins were spectacular alongside the road and tucked up the waterways or where there was any hint of moisture, probably more so than that back around Twizel and Tekapo. Although, that might have been because they had only just started flowering when we were back there. 

They were especially thick through the Lindis Valley beside the river.

Lindis Valley farmland, I'd love to see these willows during autumn.

Advertising from the paddock! It's great to see these Icebreaker signs on many of the sheep stations in the high country. It does make you think about where your thermals come from. Just wish they weren't so expensive though.

The Queenstown/Lakes Council is pretty strict with its freedom camping policy and readily enforces it with $200 fines and clamping of vehicles caught camping in non-designated areas. Which is good, even though it is a pain for us as most of the designated sites are too small for our rig. Plus we actually don't like parking in marked out carparks or areas that you have to vacate by 8am. We prefer to stay in a holiday park just for the convenience; to have our own site, be able to do our laundry, hooked up to the grid, and be handy to the shops; we can get our town chores done without too many worries.

Even if it does mean sharing the park with dozens of hire vans! Here we are at the Shotover Top10 Holiday Park at Arthurs Point.

My camera stayed in its bag most of the time we were in Queenstown, (I know, hard to believe) but I did take these two below with my smartphone-

Queenstown's 'Piano Man'- Mathias Lefenbvre, a Belgian who became world famous when a photo of him and a little girl won a National Geographic Travel Photo award.

And the world famous hamburger restaurant, Fergburger which serves gourmet 'as-big-as-your-head' burgers. It also has a queue of customers out through the doors and along the footpath at all hours of the day and night. So many people have approached the owner wanting to franchise Fergburger but he refuses to let go the reins (and the quality); he has a license to print money and he's quite happy with what he's got. He has also added a bakery and an icecream shop, but it's the burgers that attract the punters.