Sunsets, Churches & Memorials- Glacier Country

Catch-up

One last post from the West Coast to tie up some loose ends, before the rain chased us to Canterbury and then back to the North Island for the remainder of winter.

I managed to catch a couple of reasonable sunsets at Franz Josef, jumping in the ute and racing down to the river for this one when I saw the mountains behind turning a beautiful pink.

Often people are looking at the sunset itself rather than over their shoulder at the more subtle colours that appear on the landscape behind, especially when it's mountains and snow. Here's the sunset looking down the Waiho River towards the coast. I was actually a bit late to catch the brilliant gold that filled the cloudless sky before the sun disappeared over the edge, it's lost some of the colour here. 

You'll remember we were parked at the NZMCA Park in Franz Josef for about 10 days, most of them in the rain and with the park to ourselves. There was no point in moving on until the worst of it had passed and we still managed to do a bit of exploring between the heavy downpours. There's nothing worse than breaking camp in torrential rain.

We did have two little buddies who kept us amused; a Tomtit/Riroriro couple, who obviously called the bush that surrounded the park, home. Everyday we'd hear a little scratching at the window and one of them would be peering inside. They see their reflections in the windows and are trying to chase the 'intruder' off. That's the female on the left and the male on the right. They also attacked the mirrors and windows on the ute.

Everytime I stepped outside the van the male would fly in to check me out, especially if I wandered around the park's perimetre.  He's got his hackles up, perched on the gate; perhaps there was another male nearby.

The park was certainly a lovely place to be when it wasn't raining. Although when it wasn't raining the glacier tour helicopters were flying past very close, there were a few days when they started at first light and ran until dusk. A slight negative to the peaceful scene but it is a tourist village afterall.

Next destination, Hokitika. We stopped for a quick photo at Lake Wahapo, a brooding lake with very murky water and a drowned Kahikatea and flax swamp at the north end where the very wide gravel braided Waitangitanoa River flows in. I bet the fishing and birdwatching would be great in amongst there. 

We stopped at Whataroa, a sleepy town having a rest over winter from the many tourists that come to see the White Heron sanctuary. And it was here that I found the fourth and last in the church series; Our Lady of the Woods.

We headed north out of Whataroa catching a glimpse of the Southern Alps before crossing the Whataroa River- another wide gravel fan cascading down from the rocky mountains behind, and turned back towards the coast.

Another stop in Harihari to add more churches to my ever growing collection.

That's St Annes Catholic church at the top and sadly the church at the bottom is going the same way as it's sign...

Further on and we pull into rest area that has a number of memorials on top of a small hill overlooking the coast. 

This is the Surveyor's Monument Reserve and also the gateway to South Westland (if we were coming from the other direction).

Our next stop is the gold mining town of Ross, where once again there's hardly a soul about in the sleepy little town. Ross was settled during the 1880's gold rush and at the north end of town is the Ross Goldfields Heritage Centre which includes an information centre and a number of historic buildings and gold mining relics. You can also pan for gold. Once again it's closed up for winter.

Ross promotes itself as the start(or end) of the 136km West Coast Wilderness Cycling Trail which starts(ends) in Greymouth and passes through many areas we've already visited on the Coast including Hokitika, Lake Kaniere and along the canal where we found the Blue Ducks! 

We stopped into say hi to Matt Dove at the Totara Bridge Station (we know his parents & sister from Tauranga). Matt is in the process of developing a fabulous camping ground and accommodation modules for his "Coastal Container Retreat". It's right on the beach and is also strategically placed at the end of the cycle trial. It will be opening for the summer season and we'll certainly be back to check it out.

The sun set on our West Coast travels a few days later; we stayed a couple of nights at the Hokitika NZMCA Park but with more incoming rough weather forecast, we decided we'd really had enough rain to last a month of Sundays, so we made the decision to head back over Arthurs Pass to Christchurch to dry things out, do a few errands and decide on our next move.

Hokitika River Sunset

Art Deco Town & ‘Thomsons Barnyard’

We left St Bathans Domain on a very bleak and overcast morning with rain threatening. David was less keen to leave, he’d cleaned the vehicles and if it did rain while we were on the road all his hard work would be undone. We took the long route back to the main road to avoid the muddy gravel road just past St Bathans settlement. It didn’t help our case, the rain started before we reached the turnoff and we drove through to Ranfurly in a steady downpour.

Needless to say I didn’t take these photos of the iconic Webberburn Goods Shed on our way past, we drove back there on a fine day. Once again the 1975 Graham Sydney painting “July on the Maniototo”, made this goods shed famous.

After the closure of the Otago Central Railway line, the goods shed was moved 5km away to an open cast coal mine at the head of the Ida Valley. It eventually became home to feral pigeons. When the Rail Trail began the community was keen to see the old building put back in its original place. In 2002 it was returned on the back of a truck and restored to its original green colour (it had been painted red). It is now an icon of the Trail and the Maniototo – and it is still home to the pigeons.

The original small Wedderburn Station, built in 1900, was also recovered and restored to its original home (a curling club had moved it 300m to the west). This is the last remaining Vogel Class 5 Station and ticket office in New Zealand, with a simple lean-to design.

Just up the road from the goods shed is the historic Wedderburn Tavern, built in 1885. Once the a stop-over for coaches and wagons, it is now a favourite destination and half way point for cyclists on the Rail Trail.

Our next camping site was at the Ranfurly Holiday Park, it was time to plug back into the grid and give the generator a bit of a break. We are very power hungry couple (well David will say it’s just me) but the truth is we both use a lot of power in various forms and while we do quite adequately cope with our solar panels and generator it’s just nice to sometimes plug in and not worry about turning off the extra lights, watching TV a little later, leaving the computer running between jobs or using the toaster & the microwave (both out of bounds when off the grid). Then there are the long hot showers we can have, although they're usually outweighed by the bitter cold run across to the ablution block. We also had laundry to do, and there aren’t too many freedom camping spots in the area.

Ranfurly is known as the rural Art Deco town and is the smaller (much smaller) Art Deco sister to my home town Napier, the Art Deco Capital of the world (that link will take you to my blog on the Art Deco Weekend in Napier, there are more Art Deco posts out in the menu on the right). Ranfurly also has a popular art deco festival that attracts people from far and wide and I was looking forward to comparing notes.

Following a series of disastrous and suspicious fires in the 1930′s that destroyed many of Ranfurly’s buildings, including the town hall and the hotel, the fashionable, inexpensive and simplistic Art Deco style was introduced to Ranfurly to replace many of the towns buildings.

The Centennial Milk Bar is the iconic art deco building in Ranfurly. It is located beside the I-Site (once the Railway Station) in the main street and in its heyday it was a bustling place serving hungry passengers from the trains and afternoon teas and icecreams to the locals. By the mid 1970’s the trains had stopped running, the town’s already small population had dwindled and the milk bar was abandoned & rundown. The only interest in the prominent but derelict art deco building on the main street was from the local fire brigade who were looking for something to burn down for a practice exercise.

After the economic decline of the 1990′s, the local community was thinking of ways to attract people to Ranfurly and came up with the idea of reviving the forty-odd art deco buildings located throughout the town to create an ‘Art Deco’ theme for Ranfurly. In 2000 the Central Otago District Council purchased the Centennial Milk Bar and leased it to the town’s Art Deco Society who set it up as an Art Deco Gallery. Local families have lent or donated their treasures and the displays, set up as rooms; bring to life the glamour and glitz of the era- it was closed while we were in town.

Street art and murals reflecting the Art Deco era are attached or painted on a number of the buildings along the main street, some are subtly placed so that unless you’re specifically looking for them, they can easily be missed.

The former Railway Station and now the i-Site (information centre) taken before and after the snow fall we had while we were in Ranfurly.

To be fair, we did visit Ranfurly in the middle of winter, but some days when I went walkabout it felt like I was the only person in an abandoned town, a few tumbleweeds rolling down the main street would have completed the picture.

More Ranfurly buildings…

The restored Fenton Library (1926) building houses Ranfurly’s own home grown community trust radio station ‘Burn 729am’. I was searching for a radio station in the early hours of our first morning in Ranfurly and came up with just one station loud and clear. Music was playing for awhile and then the most softly spoken boring monotonous voice I have ever heard came on, he prattled on for ages before playing the next track. I thought to myself, it must be hard to get decent announcers in Central Otago and they’ve given him the grave-yard shift so he doesn’t scare the punters away.

It wasn’t until I went for a walk in the morning that I realised I was listening to Burn 729 out of this building just a few steps away from where I was trying to go to sleep. You can see the campground in the background. I just know the guy sitting outside & nodding off in the sun, with a fag in one hand & a coffee in the other, was my man.

I loved the simplicity of the butchers shop just a little further down the road, right down to the huge home-kill cattle carcass they were man-handling out of the small truck and into the shop. You’d never see that in the city, someone would report them for animal cruelty.  No fancy meats here either; eggs, sausages & steak (where are the chips), hearty meals for the hard working rural folk.

And I bet you’ve been wondering when I was going to mention, ‘Thomson’s Barnyard’. On the corner of the main street opposite the Centennial Milk Bar stands the figure of a man looking through a theodolite. This is the memorial to John Turnbull Thomson, he emigrated to New Zealand in 1856 and worked as Chief Surveyor of the Otago Province, surveying and exploring large sections of the interior. One man on a mission, he virtually shaped Central and North Otago. He later became Surveyor-General of New Zealand.

Many names in the area can be attributed to Thomson's Northumbrian background and are often in the form of a Northumbrian dialectic name for an animal including Ranfurly which he originally named Eweburn.  Names such as Horseburn, Mareburn, Fillyburn, Hogburn, Houndburn, Sowburn and Swinburn were given to streams in the area. Then there’s the Horse Range & the Pigroot. The Kyeburn (cow), Gimmerburn (hogget), Stotburn (steer), and Wedderburn (wether) settlements were all named by Thomson, hence the reason that occasionally the area is referred to as “Thomson’s Barnyard”. Perhaps he'd have been better having the name McDonald.

He certainly wandered far and wide, maybe the fact that he had nine daughters had something to do with having to get out of the house. Once he was appointed Surveyor-General he covered most of New Zealand introducing his more accurate method of triangulation survey, using true bearings rather than compass bearings to survey the country.

And finally, to book-end the post with another Rail Trail Goods Shed, the Ranfurly Goods Shed after the snow fall.