Camping at Pounawea- Part 3; Exploring

Real-time

Continuing on from Part 2

We did a couple of day trips when the weather was settled, the first was to Purakaunui Falls, which we've visited on one of our previous trips through the Catlins. 

With a shortage of rain in the Catlins at the moment (really?), they were nowhere near as impressive as our last visit but the kids still enjoyed scrambling over the rocks...

...and climbing inside an old tree, with a hollow trunk, along the path.

We then drove out to beautiful Purakaunui Bay which, other than being a spectacular beach with a dramatic cliff backdrop, was also one of the locations used in Narnia- The Lion, the Witch & The Wardrobe.

There's a large DOC camp at the end of the road and overlooking the beach although not all the area is waterfront.

There were plenty of campers already set up for the coming holiday period and more arriving while we were there. 

The road into the bay is narrow, single lane in places and winding but the rewards for persevering with it are well worth the effort...

We may take the 5th-wheeler in on this visit but if not, we will definitely return after the crowds have gone home.

We walked along the beach to the end of the bay and back again, stopping to watch as a guy launched his jetski high into the surf  Can you spot the person sitting in the rocks in the top photo? It wasn't until after I took the shot and continued on towards the crib that I saw her sheltering out of the wind.

On another day, the families (ours and their friends) drove to Papatowai to have lunch and a walk on the beach.

Rain threatened but never arrived, the kids enjoyed exploring the rock pools, and afterwards we did a bush walk around the point to King Rock. Although by the time we broke out of the bush we were all a little weary so we told the kids the walk ended at the top and not down on the beach, by the rock below. I'm not so sure they believed us especially as marker poles marched off along the ridge.

There are some very generous people out there, here's a lovely vegetable patch you can help yourself to. I stopped to see if there were any herbs I could pick, but sadly there weren't, and while there were a few veges- spinach & lettuce, I could have had a few leaves off, I left them for the next person. 

But look what I did find, a blast from the past- a gooseberry bush! We used to have one growing wild on the farm when we were kids. It was a race between Mum and us to find and eat the ripe ones. Sadly these berries were like bullets, another month or two and they'd be lovely and juicy.

I was actually more interested in the two gorgeous donkeys in the paddock behind the fence. I was hoping they would come over and say hello but they stayed put, sheltering out of the wind beside the house.

Our last stop for the day was at the Lost Gypsy Gallery on the main road near the Papatowai settlement. You couldn't miss it, there were cars lined up and squeezed in here and there, down both sides of the road.

A far cry from when we paid a visit to the gallery back in February, 2014, when there was just a handful of people visiting the old bus.

Because we had seen it before, we left the families exploring and carried on home after checking out the Papatowai DOC Camp which was also very busy gearing up for New Year. It's a nice enough site close to the river and beach but surrounded in bush with no water views.

I haven't done a blog on random photos so I decided to slot this one in here- it's too good to leave out. A few of the guys had a game at the Owaka golf course one afternoon and Allister was the 'lucky' recipient, winning the inaugural Pounawea Camp Golf Challenge trophy. What looks like a pig's ear is a dried up sealion flipper that one of the kids brought back to camp after finding it out on the estuary. I bet this trophy doesn't find its way home in a hurry.

All too soon it was time for the family to pack up and head home, we had a fantastic time sharing Christmas and the New Year with them for another year (Mavora Lakes last year) and enjoying their company without living in each other's pockets. I know they were keen to get home and finish unpacking and sorting our their new home but it was sad to see them go.

Thank God they've gone.... (click on the link for the family joke)

And a few days later, reluctantly, it was time for us to up-sticks and move on too. You know you've enjoyed a campsite when the daisies are flourishing around your wheels and the grass has died under the mat.

If you're visiting the top-end of the Catlins and looking for somewhere to stay, try the Pounawea Motor Camp, it's an awesome family and dog friendly camp tucked into beautiful native bush on the edge of the ever changing Catlins River estuary and surrounded by bird and wildlife with some great fishing. Thanks Glenn & Lee-ann for your hospitality and a big thankyou to the regulars- camping families that have been visiting Pounawea for generations- thanks for making us so welcome.

(NB- for NZMCA members; the camp is not in the NZMCA directory or on the app (hopefully corrected soon) - but the link above takes you to their website.

McLean Falls & Papatowai

Just up the road from the McLean Falls Holiday Park are the McLean Falls (funny that). It's a 40 minute return walk through native bush on a well formed track to get to the falls & they are a popular attraction in the area. Obviously all the rain & mist that the Catlins receive (although we've had mostly fine days so far) helps create this beautiful luxuriant emerald green bush full of ferns & sphagnum moss that drapes & drips off every available limb. The forest floor is thick with spongy mosses, ground cover & fungi. It's damp & cool under the canopy even when the sun is beating down outside.

The McLean Falls (named after an original landowner/settler who allowed people to cross his land to visit them) are something quite special. There are two quite separate layers to the falls, with a lovely deep pool below the top falls that would be a great spot to take a cooling dip. You can see a family that have clambered up on to the rock in the photo below.

We rated these falls 9/10 on our waterfall scale, the falls were impressive & the walk even more so.

After the falls we headed to Papatowai, a small sleepy seaside settlement just up the road. At the top of the hill is Florence Hill lookout which overlooks the beautiful Tautuku Bay & beach. You might recall we stopped here on our way south back in early December; it sure wasn't so busy back then!

And the sight was just as impressive the second time round. Now with time to explore, we took the gravel track down to the beach which was totally deserted. There are a few fishing huts & cribs around at the end of the bay & across the river, these are reached by 4WD driving along the beach at low tide.

Back along the main road are two short walks, one passes through bush down to an estuary with a boardwalk out through the rushes to the edge of the river. The same river that I mentioned above at the far end of the bay. A perfect location to spot the very shy Fernbird but today all we caught was a very powerful odour of rotting flesh! Just to the right of the viewing platform at the end of the walk was a very large & very bloated carcass of something, well, very large.

It was hard to make out what on earth it was, the rushes disguised any appendages and the mud was thick so we couldn't get close (not that we'd have wanted to)  I did catch sight of a flipper when the breeze parted the rushes at one stage & we decided that it must have been a sealion. It definitely wasn't a cattle beast which was what we first thought of as it could have been washed down the river. And it definitely wasn't a whale which is what a foreign couple told us they thought it was.

No Fernbirds were spotted but I did manage to catch these two gorgeous Tomtit fledglings on the walk back to the car.

The next walk was to Lake Wilkie, a small lake that has formed after the last ice age behind the sand dunes in Tautuku Bay. Bog lakes like Lake Wilkie are uncommon in this part of the country & Lake Wilkie is also unusual in that it is populated by a tiny introduced frog called "The Whistling Frog" hence the name of the café just up the road. There are no natural streams entering the lake which also means there are no fish found in the lake, the water is all from the surrounding run off & seepage.

It was rather a strange walk down through the bush and then onto a very short boardwalk that crossed a corner of the lake & then promptly returned the same way. It would have been nice to have a track right around the lake.

After the walks we headed on to Papatowai in particular to visit the Lost Gypsy Gallery a unique & interesting place to spend some time. This realistic mannequin is first to grab your attention and then from the moment you pull in your don't know where to look next.

Just recently the Lost Gypsy Gallery has beaten our national museum Te Papa (Wellington) in a nationwide travel award competition, it was named the Museums and Galleries winner for 2013 in the Traveller Voted Awards run by the travel website Rankers - thanks Danelle for the article.

Artist Blair Somerville calls himself an organic mechanic & he obviously loves to tinker. His quirky creations- or automators, as he prefers to call them are everywhere. They're made from other people's throw-aways; springs, switches, tins, bottles, shells, old radios, cameras, TVs, toys, circuit boards etc. From pea size to life size his works of art are everywhere, outside & inside. Most creations are powered by gravity, solar cells, pulleys & winders & you're free to test them out. With care of course.

This guy has imagination plus! Well worth the visit & you can grab a coffee from the Coffee Caravan to drink while you explore.

Inside the bus with the artist's workshop off to the side. A bizarre wonderland of the weird & wonderful.