"Closed for the Season"

It rained on & off all night but by daybreak the worst appeared to be over & the sun was trying to make an appearance. The birds seemed to be very pleased as well, there was an amazing dawn chorus with lots of not so common bush birds we recognised.

We would love to stay on here at Broken Hill, but after looking at the forecast for the next few days and seeing that heavy rain & gale force winds are due back later today & for the next couple of days we decided we really didn’t want to get stuck out here in the wops by a slip or the river bursting it’s banks. Even with the rain, this has been a great campground, we’ve both loved the isolation & the peace & quite although I’m sure, going by the large number of sites dotted around the reserve, it must get very busy during the high season.

The sun came out for a brief couple of hours so before we headed off we decided to do two of the short walks that start near the campsite; the Broken Hills Battery Walk & the Gem of the Boom Creek Loop Walk. This area was once a bustling gold mining settlement & rusting relics from two of the batteries litter the bush alongside the tracks although we only managed to find some old wire rope, a  large scoop of some sort & a round metal sheet that may have been a tank.

Broken Hill Battery

Of more interest to us were the two mining shafts we came across. It's hard to believe that over 200 people lived in this area early last century, along the side of the river & this stream were a hall, post office, shops & houses. By 1914 the two large batteries had ceased production & people had moved on.

 

If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know what I’m going to tell you we found in the mining sharfs aren’t you? Cave wetas! And dozens of them again.  Here’s the link to the other post on the wetas where you'll find some detailed facts - Gold Mine, Wetas & Glowworms

In fact one of these shafts wasn’t a shaft afterall, it’s thought that this was some kind of jail. There was the remains of a steel bar protruding from the roof & the end opened up into a wider space. Someone with a sense of humour has added extras for special effect!

 

The mining shaft was much longer than the other one we visited at White Star Station & of course pitch black, it also turned a couple of times which always un-nerves me as you can’t see the light from the entrance. Did we have our head torches? No, again we forgot them. Thank God for mobile phone apps. I held on tight to the pack on David’s back as we walked through & tried hard not to think of the wetas swaying about just above my head. It didn’t help that I hadn’t realised that they can jump long distances! Duh, of course they can, that’s why they have such bloody long legs!

Back at the campsite we packed up and pulled out, still nobody about & just a small tree down across the road which David was able to skirt around. We did try manhandling it out of the way but it wouldn’t budge. Must remember the chainsaw next time! ;)

The river was still high but was dropping fast

 

Our next stop was not far down the line to another campground near the beach, small, private & with a great recommendation from some people we met at Colville;  Opoutere Coastal Camping. I’d already earmarked the area as there were a few walks & bird watching opportunities on the beach & in the estuary nearby. 

Opoutere Estuary

Down the road we went, all the way to the end only to find a sign up ‘CLOSED FOR THE SEASON’ And there were the owners with their car & trailer packed to the gunwales with kayaks & bikes strapped to the top parked outside their house; obviously off on their own holiday (the guy was quick to disappear inside when he spotted us). So there was nothing for it but to turn around, luckily in a paddock that had the gate conveniently open, & head back to the main road.

But not before rescuing a friendly old, fat, black & white corgi cross dog. We came around a corner & there he was stumbling down the middle of the road looking very tired & hot & bothered. David thought it was a small pig at first. He came straight up to me when we stopped & as there weren’t any houses nearby I decided he needed to be rescued. He had a collar on, no name tag but about 15 years worth of colourful registration tags. He lapped up a little water I offered him & followed me around to the door like he wanted to hop in. David wanted to drive on. I told him there was no way I was leaving him.

There should be a photo right about here of the dog but I figured if I got my camera out at that stage David would have throttled me!

The dog continued to plod along the edge of the road. I ran ahead around the corner until I found a house; an old run down house that I had to fight my way through junk to get to the door. An old guy answered it & told me that he thought the dog might belong to someone quite a way back up the road. He told me this after he told me he wanted to shoot all dogs. They were nothing but trouble.

When I got back out on the road David must have decided if he wanted to continue this journey he had to find a solution. We (as in the royal we) have saved a number of animals over the years, once David was in his suit & tie on his way to a conference when I made him climb a barbed wire fence to haul a sheep out of a very muddy bog(he's done this a couple of times since), in Ireland we had to turn around & travel quite a distance back to a spot where  I was sure I’d seen a sheep with huge horns caught in a fence. I had & it took all his effort to free him plus a seriously squashed finger that got caught in the wire.  Another time he had to run in amongst  morning rush hour traffic along the Tauranga expressway with the cat cage after I saw an injured plover up against the centre concrete barrier (I've been told to insert here the fact that I continued onto golf while he carried out the rescue). So he knew we wouldn’t be going anywhere until I had helped this old dog. My hero.

He had stopped a guy in his ute and after I came out & told them where the dog may have come from David convinced the guy to take him up the road & drop him off. So we bundled him onto the tray of the ute where he promptly collapsed on all fours, tied him with a bit of rope to the deck so he wouldn’t jump (not that he could possibly manage that) and sent him on his way. Job done. I’m sure the guy in the ute thought we were barking mad.

By now we’d decided to head all the way through to Waihi Beach. We had tentatively suggested that Maddie, our grand-daughter, come & stay with us for the last few nights of our Coromandel Odyssey & especially now that her mum & baby brother had chicken pox which she had kindly passed onto them.

And with the weather about to turn to custard & school holidays due to start on Friday we decided we were about done with the Coromandel. So now we are parked up in a tight little spot at the Waihi Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, under a huge pohutukawa tree where we have no TV reception (we keep forgetting to check that option; make sure the satellite reception has a clear view) with the wind gusting & a few showers passing through & one happy excited little girl trying to fall asleep in her very own bed on the sofa.

 

The Waihi Top 10 is an excellent holiday park  for children, there’s a great playground, heated swimming pool & spa, a huge bouncy cushion & you can even feed the eels in the stream that runs through the park behind our van. The beach is just across the road too, along with a couple of great looking cafes.

Gold Mine, Glowworms & Wetas!

This will be my last post for 10 days or so as we'll be moving up to Port Jackson later today where there is will be no internet connection. After Port Jackson we are coming back down to Colville & then crossing over to the east side of the peninsula to the DOC camp at Waikawau Bay, another area where there will be no internet.

We stayed an extra day here at White Star Station so we could go exploring out the back of the farm. The station is named after the White Star Goldmine that's located high up in the hills and having a 4WD ute was of great benefit to us. The mine has glowworms inside it & we hoped they'd still be there, they need dampness as it's been so dry they may have moved on. There are maps for visitors to follow & they said the walk to the mine would take about an hour. More like three hours I would think, it was a very steep & steady climb up a bulldozer track cut into the side of the hills.

We climbed & climbed in the ute and very nearly thought we were on the wrong track, I'm sure the sheep thought we were mad, it certainly looked like they hadn't seen anyone in a long while. This was the first real 4WD outing the ute has had & David was very impressed with the performance especially on the downhill leg when HDC (hill descent control) is selected & the ute takes over the whole descent. You only have to steer it.

We finally saw the mine sign & then couldn't decide if we wanted to do climb down a very steep & slippery hill & fight our way through scrub up the otherside to it. In the end we figured we'd come this far we might as well complete the task. The mine is located on the rock face in the centre of the first photo, you can see the track up to it on the otherside of a stream we had to cross first. And if you click on the photo & look closely you'll see our vehicle parked on the track just about where the row of pines finishes, the second photo is taken from the mine entrance.

Half way up the vehicle track we suddenly remembered we needed a torch! Duh! Visiting a pitch black old disused mine without a torch would be just silly. Luckily David remembered he had a small magnetic LCD torch that he uses to check that the hitch has grabbed stuck in the tray under the hitch in the tray of the ute. That would have to do. I even have a head torch I use when doing night photography that would have been ideal for the cave. Next time we must be more organised!

The mine had three tunnels, two didn't go very far and after stumbling through the pitch blackness, me holding David's shirt tail so I didn't get left behind we found another entrance. We didn't spot any glowworms on the way through but found them on the way back, dozens of them sparkling away on the ceiling and sides of the walls looking like a lost milky way. Of course we had to turn the torch off to see them and any photos just don't show the tiny grubs although we you can see their hanging threads that they use to catch food.

Before we saw the glowworms, in a little short side tunnel when David shone the torch up on the ceiling just a foot or so away from our heads we found dozens of cave wetas! My mother's favourite insects. Not. Yikes! I know they can't harm you but they were quite scary all the same. They have such long legs & feelers & moved quite fast when disturbed.

I made the pictures large just for you Mum :)

 

 

Weta Facts

• The weta is only found in New Zealand and is so old it has outlived the dinosaurs.
• Weta are large by insect standards. Some of the giant weta are enormous and are amongst the heaviest insects in the world
• The weta is sometimes called the dinosaur of the insect world
• The weta is more primitive than the tuatara. The weta has changed very little in the past 100 million years.
• Weta have their ears on their front knees and can feel the vibrations of noises around them.
• You can tell a male and female weta apart because females have a long ovipositor, which looks a bit like a stinger, which they use to lay eggs.

Types of Weta

There are five different types of weta – tree weta, cave weta, giant weta, tusked weta and ground weta. All together there are over 100 different species of weta.

 

There are 60 species of Cave Weta. 

 • They are mostly found in caves, which is a good place to hide from predators like rats, but they can also be found in other dark places such as under houses and logs.
• Cave weta have big back legs and can jump up to two metres!  (luckily I didn't read this before we went!!)
• The cave weta has very long antennae and legs. It uses it’s antennae to feel around in the dark.
• The cave weta can live up to seven years

 

 

 We also found this large spider & web(last photo) on one of the walls.

And that was that, we had a great afternoon & slept well last night after clambering up & down hills. We're packing the van up now, tie-ing everything down ready for the gravel road, will be heading out of here early afternoon to park up by the water until about 4pm when we'll set off on our next "little" adventure.

Happy Easter everyone.

More photos here from White Star Station, Colville