Blue Lake- St Bathans

Catch-up

The next few blogs are going to be a bit of a photofest (so don't forget to click on the photos to enlarge them) due to the fact that we spent seven days at one of my favourite Central Otago locations...

Blue Lake, St Bathans, Central Otago

... the tiny man-made Blue Lake at St Bathans. We set up in the nearby DOC Camp...

...once we managed to squeeze through the gate.

This is out third visit to the DOC Camp and once again we have it to ourselves. The Blue Lake and St Bathans village are just a short walk away (on the left up behind the ute). 

We woke to fog on a couple of mornings but we mostly had beautiful sunny blue sky days with several heavy frosts. We still had to wrap up warm when venturing outside as the temperatures hovered around 4-5c for most of the day before dropping back into the negatives again once the sun set. Our diesel heaters certainly earnt their keep, keeping us toasty warm during the day. 

A St Bathans' rugby scrum- 

The DOC Camp is beside the St Bathans Domain where the rugby goalposts (from a bygone era) are still standing. A mob of sheep were being held in the paddock for a few days before being shifted to the St Bathans Station woolshed to be shorn. A large tractor & silage trailer did the rounds every morning dropping silage for these sheep and another lot across the road.

The snow dusted Mt St Bathans is a prominent feature in this quiet back corner of 

Manuherikia Valley.

Further down the road another mob of sheep that belong to a different station are being wintered over in a strip feed paddock. These are hardy merinos and in this light (late afternoon) they certainly blend into their surroundings.

And on another day they still blend in, this time with the soil. The snow covered Hawkdun Range forms a backdrop to the valley.

Present day St Bathans, now part of the Otago Goldfields Park administered by DOC, is a remnant of an old gold mining town originally named Dunstan Creek. The historic Vulcan Hotel is at the centre of the village; it's also for sale if anyone fancies themselves as a publican.

The shamrock on the front facade is a relic from the times of rivalry between the mainly Irish settlers from St Bathans and the Welsh settlers from Cambrian just down the road. The rivalry was known locally as “The War of the Roses” and at one time the acrimony between the villages was quite bitter. In the 1990s the hotel was put into a trust with shares owned by locals who lease out the hotel. There is also purported to be a friendly ghost in Room 1 of the hotel.

Gold was discovered here in 1863 and over 2834 kilos of gold was extracted from the three largest mining operations. By 1864 1000 people lived in Dunstan Creek with a further 1000 in surrounding area including around 50 Chinese miners who lived in caves excavated in the local cliffs.

Dunstan Creek was changed to St Bathans in 1866 after miners requested the original name, given by the first surveyor of the district, be re-instated. By the late 1860s St Bathans was well established with 15 hotels, a number of gambling and dance halls and many businesses. Nowadays the Vulcan Hotel is all that remains of the hotels.

This is one of the most unusual Post Office building I’ve seen in a small town, and rather an imposing one at that. This one opened in 1909 and replaced an earlier small ‘dog box’ that began business in 1864. The building is now owned by DOC.

St Alban of the Martyr Church sits up on a slope overlooking the 'Glory Hole'. The original church blew down in a severe gale in 1870 and it’s replacement met a similar fate in 1883 (the wind must really blow in these parts).

Frederick Dalgety, founder of the stock and station agency Dalgety & Co, and then owner of Hawkdun Station bought the quarter acre section on which the church stood. He then arranged for a new church to be shipped out in sections from Britain, one of the first prefabricated buildings in New Zealand. He imported every item for the church including altar cloths and kneelers. And yet looking at the church and it’s corrugated iron exterior you would swear it was totally kiwi.

It's amazing the things you find when you're walking the streets of a deserted village.

Of course the main subject of my visit was the Blue Lake. Before gold was discovered at St Bathans in 1863, the 120 metre high Kildare Hill stood where the Blue Lake is now located. 

The hill was named after their home country by the Irishmen who made the original find. Sluicing whittled the hill down to become first the Kildare Basin, and as it sunk further it became known as the Glory Hole, celebrating the riches it yielded.

The Kildare Hill Claim became the site of the deepest hydraulic elevating operation in the world, an operation that would eventually turn a 120 metre hill into a 68 metre hole over 800 metres long. 

The hydraulic elevator acted like a giant vacuum cleaner, sucking water and gravel out of the pit to where it could be worked for gold.

Mining was halted in 1934 because the sides of the pit were getting too close to the town and once abandoned, the Glory Hole filled with water that became a striking blue colour, due to the high mineral content of the surrounding tailings. Hence today’s Blue Lake. Although much of the colour has been lost now that the minerals aren't leeching quite so bad.

And when there's not a whisper of a breeze, the water's still and the right light catches the clay cliffs, the golden reeds and grasses and the bare trees, the lake provides perfect mirror reflections; one of my favourite photographic genres.

These photos were taken on the first evening when I thought I'd just drive up and reacquaint myself with the lake and just maybe the conditions might be right. And how right they turned out to be. On arrival there was a gentle breeze, if you look at the photo at the beginning of the blog you can see the slightly ruffled water.

I took a few shots from the top of the cliff near the carpark and then drove down to the lake edge and from there watched as the breeze departed and the lake became a millpond.

I quickly drove back up to the top and hurried along the path that winds it's way in and out of the tailings to the far end of the lake. And because I knew from previous visits where the best spots were to catch the reflections, I was able take a few short cuts right to the edge of the cliffs which involved in some cases, carefully climbing a slippery slope of wet tailings. Luckily I was wearing gumboots as anything off the gravel path was either a muddy bog or thick gluggy clay. 

I had to hurry from one spot to the next as the sun dropped behind the mountain range and the light began to fade.

Eventually I gave up on the chase and headed back to the carpark, stopping in the middle of the narrow stream that rushes down the edge of the reserve. No matter how hard I tried I could not budge the clay, in the end I had to rip some leaves off the Lamb's Ear and scrape the sticky stuff off, my hands immersed in the freezing water. 

As I headed back up the path I caught sight of one of the buildings in the village catching the last of the winter sunshine. What I love about this photo is the fact that this cute little cottage is in fact the side profile of the second storey of the post office!

Later on as the temperature took a tumble, the clouds  provided the perfect backdrop for a brilliant sunset.

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.