Moody Mavora & Snowy Garston

Catch-up (early October 2019)

From the DOC camp at Cascade Creek on the Milford Road we returned to the NZMCA Park at Te Anau for a few days. After a week out of range, it was good to have cell phone & internet reception again before we headed to our next destination Mavora Lakes- one of our favourite South Island destinations- which is also out of range. 

The road to the lakes leaves the main highway about halfway between Te Anau & Mossburn and from there, there's 'just' 34kms of gravel to travel until you reach the lakes turnoff which is then followed by another 8kms of gravel to the lakes; past South Mavora and onto North Mavora Lake.

For the first 15kms or so we travel in an unseen grader's freshly scraped track. We not-so-quietly curse as clouds of dry dust billow out behind us. Sometimes you just can't win; another couple of days and the dust would have settled and the road would have been silky smooth. I guess dust is better than being rattled to death by the corrugations although we have them to contend with for the last half of the journey.

Never mind, our favourite camping spot is free which isn't really a surprise, only the hardy (or crazy) camp at the lakes at the tail end of winter when the weather swings between bitterly cold & freezing cold.   

North Mavora Lake & Mt Cerberus

That would be hardy people, crazy people or hardy crazy hunter people. There's a hunter's camp up the back of the plateau, tucked into and sheltered by the thick bush. There are a couple of pig dogs in a kennel beside a horse float and down in the horse paddock I can see two horses. 

As soon as they spot me, they gallop over to the fence for a chat & a pat and then follow me along the fence line hoping I have something tasty for them. I don't, there's just dry grass and more dry grass.   

I'm keen to cross the swingbridge and check out the bush for Robins/Toutouwai & Rifleman/Titiponamu...

...but all I manage to find is one lonely robin who watches me expectantly, hoping I'm going to scrape some leaf litter for him. Of course I oblige.

It really was bitterly cold. As night closes in, snow starts to fall and David is not impressed. He's turning into a fair weather fisherman. The snow doesn't amount to much and is gone by dawn. Thank God for our diesel heaters, we're kept toasty warm inside.

The next day I walk up to the plateau behind and disappear into the bush...

...there are a few more Robins up here but still no sign of any riflemen. In fact the bush is very quiet, perhaps it's just too cold for them and they've moved deeper into the bush seeking shelter.

I break apart a rotten log and several birds are very keen to see what I've unearthed. Although not so keen to share as they chase each other about trying to keep the spoils for themselves.

Several more 'crazy' people have arrived overnight, one parked up in the wide expanse of tussock on the lake shore below Mt Cerberus...

...and the other sheltering in the trees near the fire pits. 

David has been reluctant to get the inflatable boat out, it has been very cold & windy, and the forecast is for more wind and heavy snow. We'd also had some unsettling news from family on the way in that had us distracted and with no cellphone reception, we'd started to worry that we really should be in range. 

So when we woke the next morning, and with the weather no better, we made the decision to head on out.  

We'll leave Mavora Lakes for the summer this time. 

South Mavora Lake & the road out

We decided to head to the NZMCA Lowburn Park at Cromwell, somewhere where we could settle for a few days and re-plan our next few weeks. We needed to stay around the lower half of the South Island in case our Southland family needed us to head back to Winton to look after the house & cat if they were suddenly called away.

On the way to Cromwell we stopped for a night at one of our favourite (and 'secret') freedom camping sites near Garston.

Brightwater & Castle Hill, Garston

Although we missed the 'Closed due to Lambing' sign on the way in, seeing it on the passenger side of the road the next morning on our way out. Oops! We'd both been reading the trout fishery sign on the driver's side instead.  We also didn't see any sheep until the next morning, they must have been hiding under the willows at the far end of the paddock.

But we did see the neighbours walking their goats. The goats were having a great time too, snatching mouthfuls of grass, running to catch up, kicking up their feet and racing ahead of the others. 

It was once again bitterly cold overnight, our diesel heaters working overtime until we went to bed. We very rarely need to leave them on overnight due to the van's insulation and our winter bedding.

Sometime during the early hours of the morning I heard the familiar gentle splatter of snow on the roof. I silently hoped we'd be snowed in for a few days but on opening the door the next morning there was just a thin layer covering the ground. 

Never mind, it was still a wonderful sight and a winter wonderland 'Out There'. I love waking to snow, being 'johnny-on-the-spot' and able to step outside in my dressing gown & gumboots to take photos, all within 5 minutes of getting out of bed.

The Mataura River had turned a dirty brown, rain has obviously fallen in the back country.

Here's the stock bridge the afternoon before the snow fall (this bridge is my favourite piece of farm equipment in all of New Zealand) 

Thick cloud gave way to blue sky...

... and the snow started to disappear before my eyes.

And by the time we were ready to pull out the snow had gone and dark clouds had rolled back in.

Back in the Land of the Living

We're back in the land of the living, we've returned to civilization and the cellphone. We're now parked up in Te Anau at the new NZMCA Park, after spending 25 glorious days off the grid and out of internet & cellphone range, camping at Mavora Lakes in Northern Southland, right on the edge of Fiordland National Park and at least 40km inland from Mossburn along a dry and dusty gravel road.

We had fantastic weather for most of our stay; one wild night of rain a couple of days after we arrived, a couple of overcast days during and three wind beaten days to finish with.  The remainder of the time was hot and sunny, we even had two heavy frosts. But it was very dry and dusty and every vehicle, bike and caravan arriving over the last 3 weeks has arrived caked in thick dust. Any movement through the camp created clouds of choking dust, luckily for us the lake breeze blew the dust away from our site. 

The surrounding bush is also very dry, with the beautiful emerald green mosses that carpet the forest floor dead and dying. Rain is definitely needed very soon. One benefit of the dry weather was that there were mostly no sandflies. We'd purchased a new insect proof sun shelter which worked well and provided relief when there were sandflies about. There's a funny story to tell you about the shelter but that'll have to wait until I get up to the Mavora blogs.

 The fishing was also great!

Hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year, here's a photo of my matagouri Christmas tree which I decorated.  

I'm looking forward to posting the backlog of blog posts for you and hopefully catching up to date. Although there has been a couple of minor hitches there too (and they could have quite easily become major)- I thought I'd moved out of technology range while we were at the lakes but no it caught up with me there too. First my laptop charging cable died on me so I couldn't recharge my computer to process my photos or write the blogs. Luckily David's laptop cable was able to charge my computer but at a lower wattage so I had to turn the laptop off each time I ran out of battery and wait for it to charge. It takes an age to charge and doesn't last as long so I'm doing things in short bursts. Hopefully we'll get a new cable couriered down tomorrow.

The second thing was much more serious- this morning as I gathered the gear to put in the ute before we pulled away from the site, I realized my cell phone was missing. How could that be? There's no reception, I haven't been using it for anything other than mapping our walks and calling in birds with my bird song recordings. And it would have to be on the last bloody day. We turned the van upside down and I was convinced David had misplaced it (he's been checking a few apps on there lately in preparation for his new phone). I knew I had it yesterday afternoon when I went looking for birds over the swingbridge. 

Long story short (well short for me)- we couldn't find it so decided to hitch up and head off until we got back into phone reception so we could call my phone to see if it rang and I'd be able to locate it in the van (if it hadn't run out of juice). 20kms later we dial the phone and no it doesn't answer, so David unhitches and I leave him on the side of the road with the 5th-wheeler and drive all the way back to the lake to check out the track I walked yesterday. 

I ask a tenting family that are about to load their trailer and leave the area near the track entrance, if they've found a phone, no, they haven't but a guy on a mountainbike was looking for one too. I retrace my steps and find the half dozen logs I sat on or kicked apart for the robins- no phone and my memory tells me when I last knew it was in my pocket- just before I crossed the swingbridge. 

I cross back over and find another tenting family packing up. I ask them and they say 'yes'. They say what? YES, they've found a phone and it wasn't the guy on the mountainbikes' either. He'd already checked. I couldn't believe it when the woman reached into the car and brought out my phone! Her daughter had found it yesterday, out on the grass patch nearby. Right where I'd stopped to talk to fellow movanners after rescuing a plastic gold panning dish that had blown off down the road; it must have slipped out of my pocket as I bent over to pick the pan up. Twenty minutes later and they'd have disappeared down the road and back home to Invercargill with my phone. How's that for jammy luck! :)

So then it's back down the road to the van, hitch up again and wind our dusty way to Te Anau, arriving a couple hours later than anticipated.

And now my laptop is running low on battery and I want to post this tonight so I'm going to sign off before it shuts down, without doing a check over so excuse any mistakes. It'll take me a day of two to catch up on laundry and shopping and then I'll be back to posting blogs. Catch you then!

Goodbye Mavora

This will be my last post for a week or so, we're leaving for the Milford Road & Milford Sound tomorrow morning and we'll have no reception again. We've had a relatively quite time here in Manapouri catching up on various chores and computer work. But we did manage to walk part of the Kepler Track & visit Doubtful Sound & the Power Station, I'll post those blogs in due course. Catch you soon.....

 

I'll finish my Mavora Lakes blog posts with a pictorial of some of the wonderful scenery we were privileged to enjoy during our two week visit. We had a fantastic time and are looking forward to returning in the not to distant future.

 

Ka kite anō  Mavora

 

 

 

 

 

Mavora Kayaks

We were woken early one cold morning on the weekend by a lot of shouting which was kind of strange considering we hadn't seen many people for a few days. When I opened the door (thankfully in my dressing gown) I was surprised to find a whole heap of people waving at me as they paddled by in kayaks! The shouting was coming from instructors who had a group of five or six people each; there were about ten groups & they were getting them to do a barrel roll as the paddled down the lake, making sure they could right themselves afterwards. Some were very reluctant to do it & I don't blame them as it was freezing cold.

I knew it wasn't the school camp as they had left before the snow arrived so I dressed and wandered down to the end of the lake where they were congregating before disappearing down the river. From the conversations I heard they appeared to be foreign students & when I saw a couple of their transport vehicles it looked like they had come from a education institute.

The river that joins the lakes isn't too long, is quite slow flowing, shallow & wide at the top but then narrows with a few rapids in the middle followed by a fast flowing section before it empties into a wide delta at the north end of the south lake. An easy grade for beginners to learn on.

I followed a couple of groups down the river to where I could hear more shouting, laughing & some big splashes followed by cheering to find that some of the braver ones were dragging their kayaks up to the top of a stony bank, climbing in and riding the kayak down the slope to land with a big splash in the river.

An instructor was near the bottom shouting instructions "lean forward, hold your paddle up and keep you shoulders high, now GO!"

Some didn't quite keep on track and landed awkwardly in the river but they all popped up straight away laughing and whooping. Most paddled straight back over to the edge and hauled themselves up the bank again.

As each group left to continue on down the river the next group arrived to try their hand at "gravel surfing"

And the following weekend it all happened again, I'm not sure if they were the same students but it was the same shouting!