Quailburn Station- Upper Waitaki, North Otago

Catch-up

After our disappointment walking to the Wairepo Kettleholes and finding them dry, we carried on up the valley to the end of the road, and into the Ahuriri Conservation Park. Which was once Quailburn Station, which in turn, was once part of a vast property known as Benmore Run, one of the largest properties in Otago during the 1870s.

All that remains of the Quailburn Station are the old woolshed, sheep dip, some holding yards and the abandoned homestead.

The woolshed had taking a beating from severe winds in October (we were there in December) and the side holding shed's roof has collapsed.

Built around 1920, the woolshed was still in use in the mid 1990s. There's a photo shown on one of the information boards of the NZ Champion Blade Shearer shearing in Quailburn in 1996. Perhaps it was a special occasion as the woolshed certainly looked like it had been abandoned alot longer than 20 years ago.

The interpretation boards certainly talked of a tough life on Benmore Station, a run that had was over 200,000 acres and held more than 80,000 sheep and then later on the smaller Quailburn Station. Quailburn was named after the native quail that lived here but in fact they were extinct by the time Quailburn started, sheep competed for their feed and they also were a meal for the locals.

If only walls could talk....the interior of the woolshed is fast deteriorating but you can still see the lanolin stained gates and rails and the odd clump of daggy wool in the corners. An old horse buggy seat sits on the floor covered in nest material and bird poop.

You might have noticed the large old beech tree behind the woolshed in one of the photos above. The tree has certainly seen better days but wrapped around the branches at the top of the trunk was beautiful flowering NZ mistletoe. You'll remember we saw quite a number of these rare plants growing in the beech forests alongside Lake Ohau.

Nearby was the old sheep dip; a round concrete pool that would have been full of water and dip (containing pesticides), the sheep were 'helped' down the ramp into the pool, a few at a time, dunked with a shepherds pole and swirled around, or made to swim around, and then clamber out again, all done and dipped for another few months. Oh the indignity.

Up  behind the woolshed we found a large flat platform that looked like a building had once stood here with it's grand view out over the valley below. 

There were a few bits and pieces (pipe, concrete block) lying around and an overgrown garden lily of some sort(not native) that suggested this, but I couldn't find any information confirming a building once stood there.  Perhaps it was the Benmore Station homestead, the site certainly suggesting that this would have been an ideal spot for a grand homestead.

It was in total contrast to the little house we found in the trees over to the side; the old and abandoned Quailburn 'homestead'. 

At first we thought it must be one of the farm huts, but on further investigation I can confirm it was the old Quailburn homestead.

The front door had been padlocked at some stage but somebody had kicked in the front door panel and we were able to step through into the abandoned & slightly spooky interior. The wood and tiled mantle pieces above the coal range & fireplace were still intact, scrim and wallpaper hung off the walls and water stains covered the ceilings. Old lino still covered the small kitchen floor and a food safe was accessible via it's door in the wall. 

Branches piled up beside the fire place and ashes in the grate indicated that hunters or trampers have been using the house as a shelter. It's a miracle it's still standing and hasn't accidentally (or on purpose)  been burnt to the ground. The food safe can be seen hanging off the back of the house here.

There are a number of tramping tracks that leave from the top of the valley; the wind that caused some of the woolshed to collapse must have brought down many of the beech trees in the forest, these were just at the beginning of the track.

It was time to head back down the valley, with just enough time to stop and capture two of my favourite subjects....

...those ever present lupins and an old house!

Which had a 'Private Property' sign to stop me in my tracks. Quailburn Road is on the Alps2Ocean Cycle trail and I'm thinking there have been a few too many people stopping to take a look. Oh well, from the gate is fine with me.

Then it's home down the long and winding road.

The Walk to Nowhere- MacKenzie Country

Catch-up

You may remember my post about The Road to Nowhere. Well now we have the walk to nowhere! 

And just in case you've lost where we're at, this is a catch-up post from December and we're still parked at the DOC camp beside the Ahuriri River in Omarama in MacKenzie Country.

I had a DOC brochure mentioning a walk to the Wairepo Kettleholes, a series of shallow ponds (called tarns in the high country) and that they are important feeding grounds for a number of bird species including black stilts, wrybills and black-fronted terns. "Great!" I thought, lets do some dedicated bird watching in an area that wouldn't have too many visitors.

The entry point was 14km down Quailburn Road which wasn't far from our camp site and in fact carried on past the turnoff to the Clay Cliffs, heading towards the mountains.

It was a big surprise to round a corner and see the prominent and familiar shape of Ben Ohau across the farmland and to find that we weren't that far, as the crow flies, from Lake Ohau, hidden out of sight below the ranges in the distance. The road we explored a few weeks beforehand up the west side of the lake, was also just across the paddocks.

We parked near the entry point to the Kettleholes... (and now I'll try & let the photos do the talking)

...and headed off down an old farm track via a public easement...

...over the first hill and the road stretches off into the distance on a day that's getting hotter by the minute...

...then over the next hill and still the road stretches off into the distance. This is starting to get a little boring. David is getting hot & bothered. "Surely we don't have to walk to the far end?" he says. Where are these elusive kettleholes! 

We're escorted the length of one paddock by a herd of frisky cows. This beautiful- if somewhat boring when you're walking it- landscape & former sheep country, is being converted to dairy farming. Hence the newly widened and gravelled access track we're walking and the new fencing and water troughs we're seeing. 

The hunt for 'white gold' has reached way back here in this stunning high country. Where winter temperatures drop below zero, snow lays on the ground for weeks on end and the soils are poor, how will cows survive? Not to mention the unnatural effect pivot irrigation has on the surrounding landscape, turning dry and arid tussockland and alpine herbfields into pasture. 

Finally we reach a stile and the only tell-tale sign that it must be a conservation area is the orange DOC marker pole. No signs. No directions. Nothing.  

David scans the horizon- dry tussock as far as the eye can see. We head off towards the middle, I think I can see some taller growth indicating a waterway.

David checks his 'go-to' GPS app- ViewRanger on his cellphone. It seems that whenever I look around to see where David is, his head is down and he's reading his app. A bit like me I suppose, all he sees is a camera stuck to my face. 

Anyway he tells me I'm heading in the wrong direction and we should be heading up the fenceline, so we weave our way back through the tussock to the fence and follow a vehicle track that runs alongside it. Off to the side and a good distance away I see first one, then another, and another rust coloured depression in the ground (zoomed in below). These must be the kettleholes; I had read that red tussock is a feature of them. But there's no water. They are bone dry.

I can see a slight rise ahead of us. Perhaps there'll be a bigger and wetter kettlehole up there. Well I got it half right, there was a bigger tarn but still no water. Which meant no birds. David was utterly incredulous- "you mean we walked all this way for nothing?" Yep, seems like it. He walked off in disgust, heading back towards the entry point leaving me to marvel at the landscape and the photographic opportunities that lone bright green willow provided.

And to wonder what the two short parallel fences were for that ran down to the dried up tarn in various places around the outside. There were at least half a dozen of them. You can see one to the left of the tree in the photo below (click to enlarge) and another part one to the right. And I still have no idea why they are there.

Never one to miss an opportunity, I took a few photos of the flowering groundcovers-

And then rushed to catch David up; another herd of cows, young heifers this time, had rushed over to the dividing fence to check us out. They were now skipping (see far left),bucking and running after David down the fence. I don't think these cows had seen any humans for a few days, and were probably thinking we had food for them. 

Once I got to the corner where they were gathered of course I had to stop to talk to them, and take some photos. They all crowded in around me, nosey ones at the back pushed others forward until they broke away snorting. 

Being heifers they would have been used to handling during their rearing but even though they were keen to come forward and sniff my hand, or push their tongue out far enough to touch,  they just weren't game enough to let me pat them on the head. 

By now David was way ahead of me. Time rushes by when you're having a chat...

...and finding another subject to photograph. Maybe that's why there's no water in them tarns, the tank is leaking!

And finally I arrived at the stile where David is patiently waiting, and reading his app again....or maybe it's the news. 

We head back up the farm road, the first herd of cows have broken into two, one lot are chasing the sheep across the paddock, the others are running up the fenceline with us. These guys really must be lonely.

At the top of the last hill I look across the paddock to see that lone willow and the tiny black dots of the heifers I said hello too. Even as the crow flies it looks a long way off; our walk took us off to the left, out of picture, before turning in along the fence to the willow. A bloody long way, all for naught.

I smiled later when I re-read the DOC brochure; 

- "...the result is gently rolling hummocks of moraine and a series of depressions which are sometimes filled with water"

'Sometimes' being the operative word. And as it was early summer when we visited I'm guessing that they only have water in them during the middle of winter after snow melt or after a long period of rain.

It wasn't until I was choosing the photos for this blog post that I discovered that the DOC sign post at the beginning of the walk had the words 'Department of Conservation/Te Papa Atawhai" painted over. And now I need to know why; the walk is still listed on the DOC website, it's still in the brochures. I'm wondering if all the dairy activity around the site has or is going to curtail access. I'm now on a mission to find out why....watch this space.

Update- How's that for service I fired off an email this morning to DOC's Twizel office and I got a response this afternoon. Some retched beggar has blown bullet holes in the sign and those are the repairs! Problem solved. I also asked about the fences around the tarn. They are permanent vegetation monitoring plots. The plants within the plot are being monitored for research purposes around the wetland areas. Cool. You learn something new everyday.