Another Dam, Done and Dusted- Central Otago

Catch-up

From Lowburn we headed through the Cromwell Gorge to one of our regular Central Otago camping spots, a great freedom camping site (3 nights max) which is provided by Contact Energy and is not on many apps. 

The reserve is just above the huge Clutha Power Station overlooking the calm waters of the Clutha River and is perfect for a few days relaxation away from the hustle & bustle of small town provincial life.

We've been here in the autumn & the summer, this was our first time in the middle of winter and and unfortunately the weather was dismal (our first, and as it turned out only grey days for all of our winter in Central). Fog settled around us for much of the three days and when it did lift, heavy grey clouds hung off the surrounding mountains. 

We couldn't see the water at the back of the van for most of one day, the fog was so thick (middle right). I was impressed with the lady from the motorhome parked beside us though, she went off paddling in the fog, up the dam for over an hour (middle left). Each evening local rowers came to practice, gliding swiftly and silently through the still water. 

And when the fog did lift for a short time mid afternoon one day we felt sorry for the people in Clyde, down below the dam, the township stayed blanketed in fog until after nightfall and probably through the night.

If you'd like to read more about the Contact Energy camping site & the damming of the Clutha River, my earlier blog is here.  And in that blog link you'll also read about another dam that we visited back then, the much smaller Conroys Dam which is used for irrigation and is located in the hills behind Alexandra. 

There was one more dam nearby that we wanted to visit the next time we were in town so we decided to shake the cabin-fever off and head into the hills. I would have preferred blue sky & fluffy white clouds for my photos but sometimes you've just got to work with what you've got. And I guess there's nothing better than 50 shades of brown & grey to convey how barren, bleak and uninviting winter in Central can occasionally be.

Dry Weather Track to Fraser Dam

Fraser Dam is one of the many Central Otago irrigation dams that were built during the depression to supply water to the large farm stations, orchards and other properties in the province. The dam is located in the foothills of Old Man Range up behind Earnscleugh and is reached by driving a 13km gravel and clay track. And as per normal, gravel (and dusty) roads usually feel like double the distance.

Panorama overlooking the Manuherikia Valley and Alexandra (centre right, click to enlarge the photo).

The road climbs sharply out of the Clutha River basin and the views behind us open up. Raggedy Range (my favourite range name in all of the South) is the prominent hill in this photo below, behind that is the Ida valley. Poolburn & Upper Manorburn are at the back to the right.

My favourite range, snow capped Hawkdun Range is at the far end of the valley.

This is looking west; at the back on the right you can just see Leaning Rock, a tiny nipple atop a mountain in the Dunstan Range. Right below that is the Clyde Dam & our camp. On the left you can see the Fraser Dam Road winding it's way over the hills. 

Towards the end, the road it branches into two, one climbs up and over Old Man Range and on the horizon at the top we can see a digger working away. While we are stopped a guy in a ute comes towards us, he tells us we can drive up there if we want but beyond the digger it's very boggy. 

The digger is repairing the track for the heavy vehicles that are using the road at the moment. A new power station is being built at the top of the Fraser River Gorge (3km upstream from the dam) and they are using the road for access. We decide to continue on along the lower track to the dam wall. He tells us to look out for deer at the next track junction as he's seen plenty as he drives between the top and the bottom of the power station site regularly. 

We don't see any, but that could be because he's just roared along the road ahead of us! We slip and slide down the last hundred metres of track to the dam wall, hoping it won't be too bad when we climb back out. 

David heads off along the wall with his binoculars; he's now hunting for deer on the slopes over the far side of the dam.

The dam wall is 32m high and 137m in length, the catchment area of the dam is 119km².

I walk out to the gate on the dam wall, take a few photos looking up to the top of the lake...

...and when I look back I see David, ever hopeful, still scanning for deer. We've been in some very remote places in our travels and while we have seen deer on a few occasions (even in some not so remote places), we've always thought that we should have seen more than we have. We always live in hope.

We scramble back up the track, bouncing and sliding through the mud. Water seeps out of the hundreds of burns in the ranges and when it crosses the tracks they can soon turn into deep bogs, especially if they've been helped a little by heavy duty 4WD vehicles.

Back on dry land we take the next turn and head to the top of the dam, a DOC (Department of Conservation) sign tells us it's 2km to the Shek Harn Historic Reserve.

Shek Harn is Cantonese for ‘big stone ditch’, and the historic reserve has remains of early alluvial gold workings and Chinese dwellings. Apparently the most impressive is the Long House, located 2km up the Fraser River from the dam. We decided we'd come back in warmer weather to walk the track. 

We started to drive up the new road/track that has been put in for the construction vehicles to reach the bottom of the power station but after passing one too many signs saying 'No Entry', we chickened out, did a 30 point turn and returned to the reserve for lunch. You can see the early signs of the dam construction in the Google map at the end of the blog, I've put a marker point in.

The view back over the dam on the way down to the reserve.

It was a such bitterly cold day, we were jumping about from one foot to the other trying to keep warm as we had our hot soup and sandwiches.

David then had a quick scout for trout along the river, nothing to be seen though...

...and then we headed back to the main track, stopping on the edge of a steep drop to look over the dam, it's a little distorted here. This is 5 photos stitched together, I think I needed another 2 or 3 to get the right angle although the dam does have a curve in it.

On the way back down I spotted a small pond that I thought would make a good foreground subject in a photo so my ever patient husband stopped once again...

...which was probably just as well because around the next corner & thankfully a wider section of the road came this beast!

We were able to pull over into the grass to let him past but as you can see we wouldn't have had much room had we met him on a narrower section.

Any further down and we may have met him on one of the many blind corners.

I took one last photo overlooking Alexandra and used the opportunity to make sure there were no more trucks coming up the road and then we were back down and heading home. Another dam, done and dusted.  

Along the Canals- Mackenzie Country

Catch-up 

Another hiccup has put me behind again- my computer crashed, well not quite crashed, it was hanging on by a thread and we felt it better to replace it and transfer all my files before it did decide to spit the dummy. And with a new laptop- a fabulous HP Omen- & no, I'm not a gamer- I needed heavy duty & a 17' screen- came a new inverter for the van to power it. Which in turn created a few issues of it's own. 

I'm now back up and running thanks to my wonderful computer savvy husband and I'm thrilled with my laptop. The high definition screen is superb, my photos are now crystal clear and even I am amazed at some of the photos! And the speed that I'm able to process photos is fantastic, no making a coffee now while I wait for a bulk lot to download. So anyway here's the next blog, we're still in Twizel.

Now that I had the hoar frost out of the way (until I find another one), I was able to focus a little more on some of the stunning sunrises, sunsets and winter landscapes of the Mackenzie Basin. This blog takes us along some of the canals, the next one will be around the lakes.

Sunset over High Country Salmon Farm, taken from the NZMCA Ohau B Canal camp.

Obviously there's a reason for all the man-made canals that criss-cross the Mackenzie Basin; they feed the hydro power stations which in turn provide much of New Zealand with electricity. And with power stations come the pylons, hundreds of them. So there's no choice but to make them a feature when taking photos around the Basin.

These next few photos were taken from the top of  the hill which I traipsed up and (slid) down in the freezing cold for several mornings in a row while we were parked at Ohau B. 

High Country Salmon Farm and Wairepo Arm, a large pond that is fed from the canal-

Always look behind you when taking sunrise photos, sometimes the colours are just as spectacular...

... and if you have 360 degree views there's a constantly changing colour and light show going on around you.

The sun rises over Lake Ruataniwha, with Ben Ohau (far left) and the Ben Ohau Range behind.

Twizel township sparkles as it wakes to another spectacular high country day. 

And you'll recall I mentioned attempting to do some car tail-light trail photos using the vehicles heading to the escaped salmon canal when my camera battery ran out. Here's another attempt a day or so later. There weren't enough vehicles in the end to give a good trail of red and you can see my shutter speed wasn't long enough because the lights come to an abrupt halt halfway down the canal! 

And here's three last photos from a very intense sunrise, I know it's going to be a good one when I look out in the early morning gloom and see that the clouds are thick and streaky overhead just before the sun pokes it's head over the horizon. 

There's those pylons again, this time looking like space rockets on a launch pad.

The colours start to leach out of the sky by the time I get back to the van but there's still some awesome colour over the top of the two buses parked behind us, and whose occupants are happily snoozing away tucked up in their warm beds, totally oblivious to nature's spectacle happening overhead. 

As the sun rises, the mist lifts from over the canal to reveal early bird fishermen on the other side of the canal. Camping is not allowed along the canals but a lot of people arrive at their favourite spots well before sunrise.

The sun rises over Ohau B Power Station and the early fishermen who passed by me while I was on top of the hill.

And once again from my vantage point above the power station I can clearly see Aoraki/Mt Cook across the Basin.

The curve of the canal below the power station is hot property, it's where most of the early fishermen head to, chasing those elusive escaped salmon.

On this morning I walked along the north side of the canal to the salmon farm, there were a few people fishing along this side too but only the hardy, as you have to walk to your spot and leave your creature comforts in your vehicle back at the gate. Non- salmon farm vehicles aren't allowed.

It's interesting watching the activity at the salmon farms, although usually they are only feeding the fish; throwing out scoops and scoops of pellets over the top of the large nets that contain the fish. But on this day they were netting the salmon and putting them into bins.

I thought they were harvesting them but it looked like they were weighting & measuring them and then putting them into another bin and then back into the main net again. I'm still not sure what they were doing; maybe milking them of roe? But look at the size of those fish, the poor fishermen nearby looked on in envy at the size of them.

Meanwhile over on the other side of the canal, fishermen were still catching the escaped salmon and discreetly as possible preparing them for their chilly-bins. Though nothing is discreet when you have me on the other side of the water! 

A lot of people park their motorhomes and caravans along the canals while they fish, it provides a place to keep warm, have a cuppa or lunch and for partners to relax in while the other half is fishing. 

David's heart wasn't into canal fishing on this visit and he hadn't been feeling too well- although he did fish from our canal and at Lake Ruataniwha a couple of times, though had no luck. I wanted him to at least give the escaped salmon a go, so he humoured me for all of an hour but still had no luck.

Although he did enjoy chatting to a few of the others about their catches or lack of.

I was looking forward to tucking into some salmon of our own but I did had a backup plan...

...buy some frames from the salmon farm shop! I've only ever bought salmon sashimi and fillets from the shop but they are expensive. Thanks to a tip from Colleen, a fellow motorhomer who we  caught up with in Fairlie you can buy five salmon frames for $10 (they actually gave me six frames).

I took the heads & tails off (you could make a lovely broth from them, I didn't bother this time) then halved each frame as they are huge! Then I simmered them in two batches for about 4-5 minutes each (if that), drained and cooled them and then pulled the flesh off which in fact just fell off the bones. I had enough for salmon potato cakes for dinner that night & a fish pie the next with still enough salmon to fill two medium sized freezer bags. A perfect solution if you don't catch any fish (although a little time consuming to prepare).

A canal that I don't mention often is the Pukaki Canal which runs along the bottom of Ben Ohau Range; it is in fact the one that is most visible to the many visitors passing through MacKenzie Country. The canal exits Lake Pukaki near the lookout to Aoraki/Mt Cook and passes under the highway further down the road. 

From there it flows along the bottom of the range, with a canal road on both sides; one sealed and one gravel. Lake Poaka and a basic DOC camp are off the gravel road; a long, steep rocky descent off the canal wall at one end and a shorter version at the other end. 

Towards the end, another canal which exits Lake Ohau  joins Pukaki Canal and they both flow into Ohau A Power Station which is above Lake Ruataniwha.

There's a large river terrace alongside the power station which overlooks the water flow from Ohau A and also the smaller Ohau River which has a bypass at the Lake Ohau dam wall. 

Both flow into Lake Ruataniwha and on past our camp down to Lake Benmore.

 At the eastern end of Lake Ruataniwha and a short walk from our camp is the Ohau River spillway (look at that colour, that's MacKenzie Country colour right there!)

And the historic Old Iron Bridge which looks a little drab surrounded by a monotone of dry grasses and bare trees.

Unlike the time I shot it surrounded by snow back in June 2015.

The pond did have some unusual reflections but I was too lazy to walk down to see them. 

Back at camp, it seems that this is the story of our life at the moment; on our own at many of the NZMCA camp sites. Just as we like it....most of the time.