Central Otago - Geraldine, Kokonga and Ranfurly

It's been a lovely few days here as we have made our way down from Rangiora, into Otago and now Central Otago.

We had a couple of days and nights at the Geraldine Top 10 motorcamp and it is absolutely wonderful. Beautifully set out with a mix of shady and open spaces - guess which we opted for?, very very clean facilities, and extremely helpful and friendly staff. I'd recommend it for tenters, motorhomers/caravanners and those wanting cabin accommodation.

We had lunch one day (see previous blogpost) at the Central Cafe - a nice place to be to get out of the extreme heat - well, it was about 28 degrees, I think, and that is a bit too hot for me. We managed to see the giant jersey which is now housed at the Information Centre - slightly smaller than I remember at 7.5'high.

The giant jersey I mentioned in the last post - pretty impressive.

Read all about it here.

While we were at the Top 10 in Geraldine we met a couple who are doing a cycling holiday; they are from central Nelson, and Ann is the age group champion for speed cycling - I only found that out after she had set off to Fairlie leaving Peter to pack up the tent and drive to Fairlie, park up in a camp and then ride back to meet her. I did think he was taking his time a bit ... They are both extremely fit and a very good example to those of us (like me, in particular) who do not do anywhere near enough exercise.

We had found out that we could meet up with Clare at Ranfurly, as her daughter Missy (her weather forecast interpreter and communicator) had informed her it would be wet and very windy on Friday. So Clare scheduled her first rest day in three weeks...

And we made our way there, down to the coast and then inland again, and on the way we ticked over on the odometer from 9999km to 10,000km.

Please note that I did stop to take each of these photos, OK?

David checked out Kokonga, where his Dad was the sole charge teacher back in 1950, 51 and 52, when David was 1 to 3 years old and his sister Ginny was born (1951). There is now a boutique lodge there for the rail trail market, so we organised a night's stay. Very expensive now we are on a pension, but it was worth it for David to sleep on the same site he had lived in as a little one, and lovely for him to be able to go over to the fence that he used to climb on to wave to the steam train going past each morning. He has always said how amazed he was that his mum let him go on his own, through the pine trees to the fence. But unless he climbed through, he wasn't in danger, and he was a good kid. So we took photos of him standing where he used to, and he also went into the old school building.

I am not sure if he remembers, or if he knows because his dad told him, that each week, John had to dig a hole to bury the toilet waste from the school's long drop toilet; and in the winter each week families took turns donating the coal and wood for the school furnace. It is clearly there at Kokonga that John developed his skills, philosophy and knowledge of sole charge schooling that led later to the family going to live in Tanganyika (as it was then) for John to work for Unicef setting up sole charge schools and the system for training teachers to run them.

As we had arranged to meet Clare in Ranfurly before we arranged the only night available at Kokonga Lodge, we checked in at the latter and then drove to Ranfurly to the NZMCA camp and checked in and paid for a night as well. Clare appeared, having ridden and arrived earlier than us, much of the same route was had driven - we'd felt very pleased at how well the motorhome handled the hills (lots of up, up and down getting to a height of 2400 feet, I think). Clare had done 69kms of that on her bike!!! She did say that she had walked up some of the steeper bits, but even so, that is very bloody impressive!

When she came over to us, looking bright and sunny, happy, but very hot, I was just finishing rinsing the washing - I had put it in a bucket (collapsible one from Geraldine Hammer Hardware) before we left Geraldine, and relied on the bumps and turns in the road to agitate the clothes in the soapy water while we travelled. Worked a treat!

So when I had done a couple of rinses, and wrung out the clothes, Clare sat with her feet in the bucket to cool off a bit more. I offered her a wet shirt, but instead gave her a cold wet facecloth to put on the back of her neck. That is a great way to cool off, and less extreme (and more decorous) than the wet shirt ...

We had a BBQ dinner with chicken kebabs (soy and honey) purchased in Oamaru New World plus Waipawa sausages, as well as coleslaw and potato salad and some yummy fresh bread purchased at the Oamaru NW too (northern branch) - I forgot to mention we had lunch in their carpark - the fresh bread, and some very nice fatly sliced ham. I think we need to go back through there ...

There were left overs from dinner so I prepared doggy bags for Clare as a change from her usual fillings in her lunch time wraps... She was very pleased to have fresh homemade salad, bless her.

Over to her little tent went Clare, and it was back to Kokonga Lodge for us.

From our room

Sunset from upstairs balcony

In the morning, David went for a walk around and in the old school building - a very emotional time as he was remembering his mum and dad - when they were in the early and mid 20s, well over 60 years ago.

Standing on the approximate line of the original fence that he used to climb up as a little tacker to watch the steam train go past each day.

Kokonga Lodge's back gate for the rail trail cyclists to enter.

A last look at the school as we left

We called in to see the Ranfurly Hospital where Ginny was born. We saw signs in the town about a new hospital being built, and we were unsure of the fate of this building. It now houses the medical centre as well.

Then back to Ranfurly in the morning to the NZMCA camp again - when they look at the records and the payment history, they will probably wonder why there are 2 entries for contiguous days ...

The promised rain and wind arrived, all of a sudden, as we were setting up - just as we had got the awning out thinking the weather forecast was a bit OTT.  Damn! It is the closest we have come to having the awning fly away - I had to put the legs away while David held the bar, and then we swapped and I held the bar while he wound it in. The sudden change in the weather was instructive indeed, and was accompanied by a sharp drop in the temperature.

Clare arrived and we decided that we would teach her how to play the card game Up and Down the River. She had declared she only played Snap but learned UADTR very quickly - so quickly that she won - bitch!

Mel is a bit unsure ...

More comfortable with me there to protect him ...

By the time we had eaten lunch (fresh corn on the cob which I had been going to BBQ but the wind would not have made that a viable proposition) and played cards, the bad weather had passed through, and we went out for a walk. Clare had already done a scout round at 7am (!!) so knew where we should go. We started out though with a tour of her campsite.

The bike and the tent

The open vestibule and Clare's bed with blow-up mattress and pillow comprised of her down jacket - dual purpose.

This statue is of John Turnbull Thomson - he was the original surveyor of Ranfurly.

Guess who these are for?

The Information Centre here is impressive, and we bought the grandsons' birthday presents which we will post in Dunedin on Monday. David may end up with a piece of Weaving Memories work sorting out their video of Ranfurly's history with the railways. He volunteered to do it for free. I hope the council accepts the offer as the video is getting old and they need to preserve it.

This poster was on one of the buildings and shows many of the former businesses in town - the Knudsons seem to feature.

We headed for a drink in the Ranfurly Hotel and on the way saw something which really pissed me off - a van-load of reasonably local boys on their way to the rugby - they had stopped and were peeing against the wall of an office building right next to the airconditioner - I am fairly sure they had seen the public toilet sign and pulled up a few yards further on and then thought 'nah, here will do.' AAARRRGGGHHH!!! I wanted to go over and suggest they use the toilets, but David wouldn't let me in case I got threatened. But I wasn't worried as I was sure they would respond like naughty little boys rather than aggressive men - after all, the school teacher voice does come in handy ...

Last night's dinner with Clare was chicken wrapped in bacon and with a choice of either apricot and capsicum, or chilli, both topped with garlic butter (purchased, as all good things mentioned in this post were, at New World in Oamaru). I cooked them in foil in the oven, but I reckon I could have done them on the BBQ - I couldn't persuade David to get it out of the garage though.

No leftovers for Clare - well, I did try to give her the 4th chicken thing but she declined, although she'd loved it. Too much to carry and she still had leftovers scheduled for today's lunch. We sent her off back to her tent, and we headed for bed - when we woke up it was about 10 degrees and 7.37am. Clare had already been on her way for about an hour - I bet she was pleased it was cold.

It is a beautiful still sunny day, but still not too hot. We are heading in to Dunedin to stay with Clark and Sue today. But first, lunch - David has come back from a second wander around the town and stopped at the pie shop - we MUST support local businesses, eh?

This is the week that was

It is now 9 days since we left home to head down to the South Island.

Leaving Wellington - the CROW is outside in front of the funnel and only part of the front can be seen - third from the left of the vehicles facing to the left.

Approaching Tory Channel at the entrance to the Sounds  - as the ferry heads there it is pretty much impossible for passengers to differentiate the opening, so it's a good thing the captain and crew know where they are going!

Somehow it feels a lot longer than that, but neither of us are sure why. It may be that we have travelled a reasonable distance, although not terribly far really. The odometer has turned over from the 8000s kms to the 9000s kms and we have purchased more Road User Charges (required for diesel vehicles here in NZ). The new certificate is waiting behind the original one until we hit 10,415 kms. As we are not sure how prevalent the options are for their purchase outside of main centres, we bought them in Kaikoura. Thinking it through, of course, as a significant number of diesel vehicles are used in the rural areas, it makes sense that there are plenty of places to purchase them, but it is also true that many post offices have shut around the country and the post shops are fewer and further apart than in previous years; so it is likely people apply on line and have the certificate posted out.

This morning we woke from our first night in Geraldine - we arrived here yesterday afternoon, got set up and had a late lunch followed by sitting outside under the awning, reading, sudoko-ing (me) and watching something on the phone (David), sorting out IT stuff inside (guess who ...).

Dinner was going to be out at a restaurant, but as is often the case, I get to the point where I think 'I could cook something and we'd be just as pleased with it and it won't cost anywhere near as much.' So I made a fish pie that was very yummy. I always used to make it with a bechamel sauce (a fancy name for white sauce ...), but recently kicked that to the kerb and just use a small amount of cream with tabasco sauce. It is much simpler and quicker and probably about the same calorifically (is there such a word?) given the bechamel has butter and flour and milk. I have also started using a small can of tuna to supplement the smoked fish and that seems to add to the flavour too. I put plenty of veg (carrots, peas, capsicum, parsley) plus eggs in with it so it becomes a one pot dinner.

So this morning, the intention is that we will go out for brunch - but that is by no means certain as I'll probably decide I can do it cheaper ... Update - David is finishing off watching a movie, so we are going for lunch instead, no brekkie ...

We have been to Geraldine once before back in 2001, when we did a South Island tour instead of going to the US and the UK after 9/11. I am keen to see if the giant jersey (7 feet tall) is still here and if the replica of the Bayeux Tapestry developed from small pieces of the spindles from old knitting machines is still open to view. It was amazing. If it is still here, I will show you photos later.
Update: OK, the Bayeux Tapestry replica is in Hastings UK for the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings - how about that? So if you are reading this over in the UK, you can find it ingood old Blighty! The giant jersey is now residing in the Information Centre as the people who made it and the Bayeux replica are in the UK with the latter.

But back to the beginning:

Our first stop for two days and nights was at Cowshed Bay where Jim and Judy were acting as camp hosts at the DOC campsite there. A lovely place on the Queen Charlotte Track so lots of hikers would arrive in the late afternoon and evening to set up camp. There were also quite a few motorhomers who had made the long winding drive in along the sound from Linkwater.

On the Grove Track, from Picton to Havelock, we stopped at Shakespeare Bay. This cruise liner was moored up next to the timber port. A strange place to stop but the scenery is wonderful.

On the way to Cowshed Bay after Linkwater

Isn't that beautiful?
There are houses dotted in the hills on the road in - their driveways are the most horrific I have ever seen, and that goes for in Italy too or Wellington! Steep and sloped horizontally as well as vertically ... Some of them looked difficult to walk down, let alone drive down ...

Jim and Judy had saved us a spot down by the water next to them by parking their truck across it so no one would co-opt the space.

I think I was standing at the water's edge when I took this photo.

It's a tough life, eh?

It was a fabulous place to be in spite of the strong wind on one day and night. We found out the next day that the wind on the east coast had gusted up to 170kms per hour, so ours of about 50 - 60kms ph wasn't such a bad deal!

We forgot to take the selfie stick on our walk ...

We are on top of the hill above Cowshed Bay. The road to the right goes down to The Portage and then back to Cowshed Bay (we climbed the track through the bush). Judy and I went back down to the right while David and Jim went left down to Toria Bay on the other side of the sound.

As we walked up the track, stops for photos were required - not at all because I was puffing ...

Another photo stop - honest!

This is where Judy and I swam when we got back - David and Jim arrived while we were still in the water, but David was faffing about getting in to his togs and then deciding it was too cold, so he was too distracted to take a photo of us still in the water, dammit! And it wasn't cold, it was beautifully refreshing, and much warmer than the river at Tongaporutu usually is!

Judy gave us a list of the places they had particularly liked on their South Island odyssey last year, so our first stop after Cowshed Bay was at the beach at Kekerengu south of Ward. Wild and woolly and such totally different terrain and seascape from the Sounds. And breakfast at The Store was very good too - I can make hollandaise sauce, but it is always better when someone else does it!

An oyster catcher, I think - I recognised its sound before I saw it, knowing that the noise was NOT made by a seagull!

And there's the motorhome - couldn't get much closer to the beach, could we?

The drive along the coast was amazing - the road and the railway were devastated (not an exaggeration) by the earthquake in November 2016, and the rebuild of them both was accomplished in record time with the road being re-opened (one lane in places) just over a year after the quake in time for xmas holiday traffic in 2017. Work is ongoing and the results are not yet complete, but it is a wonder to behold. It was very emotional driving on it as the superlative efforts to repair and restore and rebuild were very evident.

The first view of the Kaikoura Peninsula from the north

Part of the new road and the large slip in the distance.

Before the earthquake, all of this was part of the seabed.

And so was this.

We stopped for lunch in Kaikoura, having found a tree to park under.

The Seaward Kaikouras in the distance.

We decided to head in on the Inland Kaikoura Road and had a couple of days at Waikene Lodge - it is a very lovely place, like freedom camping but with facilities and a very reasonable charge. It isn't used as much as it used to be because a couple of freedom camping sites have been opened in/near Kaikoura. Joy and Ross are great hosts and the facilities (kitchen with washing machine, showers and toilets) are kept spotlessly clean. You can even contribute food scraps to the chickens ...

The view from the front of the motorhome at Waikene Lodge

Part of the farm

Trying to get in the shade of the eucalypts ...

It was so hot there that we didn't do any of the walks we had planned on; instead we spent the time blobbing and blobbing. And I did do a load of laundry just to make sure we were clean and that I wasn't being too lazy!

We spent time with the only other couple there - they were coming to the end of their 3 month motorhoming trip around NZ - it's the second or third time they have been here from their home in Hamburg. Sue is American and Wolfgang is German. We BBQed together - we were going to use ours, but I couldn't find either of the BBQ hoses - how could we possibly have left them behind, I asked??? So we used the BBQ built in to the side of Sue and Wolfgang's Britz camper - a very good feature, I think. While the rest of us were sorting food, David did a thorough search and found the hoses in the bag that also holds the outdoor matting - then I remembered putting them in there so they wouldn't rattle and clink ... Doh!

We had a night at Hanmer Springs but it was so hot there that I could not venture away from the awning, so a bit of a wasted trip, apart from the drive which was pretty spectacular in places.

On our way south from Hanmer we stopped at Waipara Valley vineyard and had lunch - well, it was right on the main road, so it seemed sensible. I had a glass of their Equinox chardonnay (2015) and it was very very delicious and oaky, so I was going to buy two bottles. But it turned out that it was cheaper to buy three, so I said I'd have three; then I thought I'd have six as the price for three was a bargain - however there was an even better deal on for six bottles! Yay!! We had to take Derek and Ted's idea of keeping the wine carton in the shower. I think they have more than one carton though so I am going to have to search out more vineyards ...

Waiting for food and wine

I liked these roses

David had spring rolls with a miso and maple spicy sauce - yep, who knew that maple syrup goes with miso? and I had a cheese board, plus a glass of chardonnay. David did have a glass of wine, but he wasn't tempted to purchase more of it to take away.

David has been keen to re-connect with people from the past and had tracked down two of them. One is Jack Morris who was the deputy principal at Wainuiomata Primary, the school that David and I were teaching at when we met. So our next stop was in Rangiora where Jack and his lovely wife Joy have recently moved to after many years on a lifestyle block out at Lowburn. It was excellent to catch up with Jack, but he was more than a little obsessed with his memory of my delaying him getting to the pub at the end of one term because I hadn't balanced my attendance register**. His solution, as I recall, was just to fudge the numbers and put the same number in each column (the two that were meant to be the same). Mine of course, pedant that I was even back then, was to find the error and fix it. I did and Jack wasn't very late to the pub - I made sure of that, because I was ready for a drink too!

** The attendance register (aka the roll) had each child's name in it on the vertical axis and the days/weeks on the horizontal axis; and each half day's attendance was noted by a / and a \, making a cross for each kid who was present for each full day. Attendances had to be added up each week and entered in the appropriate column or row. (of course, that was what we were meant to do, but often it got left until the last moment - my pedant nature doesn't extend that far!) And at the end of the term, the totals of the columns and the totals of the rows were meant to match - as they would mathematically speaking as all the numbers being added in either direction were the same.  Hence my aforementioned pedant nature needing it to be RIGHT, Jack!!!

We parked the motorhome in Jack and Joy's driveway - that was an adventure as we only just fitted through the gate. Getting in was OK but getting out backwards was a bit of a stress. Paul Avery would have been pleased though as he growled at me once in Westport and told me I HAD to be able to reverse wherever I needed to be, and made me do it. This time it was tricky as I had to pull one side mirror in and it is very spooky not being able to use both. Jack of course at first was guiding me on the side where I did have a mirror available, leaving me feeling very vulnerable on the other side ...

It was a lovely evening spent with them both - I had invited them to have dinner with us in the motorhome but their house was lovely and cool (their heatpump was on its cooling function) and the motorhome was hot hot hot inside. So the prep, cooking and consumption were done inside their house. Made sense to me. We had thai chicken noodle salad (veg and chicken prepared by me, marinade and sauce prepared by Joy) and Jack Potter's carrot salad (made by David). As you have noted I am sure, Jack Morris did not contribute at all. He did however contribute by drinking my chardonnay, having told me as a sop to make me comfortable with sharing, that I had very good taste. However when he told his daughter on the phone about the attendance register, I confiscated his glass immediately!

Strangely enough, this is the only photo we took of Jack. He is begging for chardonnay and had to kiss my foot as well.

As a young teacher, Jack had taught with David's dad when John was principal at Harley Street School in Masterton. Jack said that John was one of three principals that he learned from and based his teaching methods and philosophy on. One of them was also the guy who was principal at Wainuiomata when we were there - but his example was everything not to do, according to Jack. As a teacher in the infants, I had very little to do with the principal, because the senior teacher junior classes (STJC) was the person I reported to and she was great - I think she may have shielded her team from him. But David had similar concerns about the principal to Jack's. Of course they both had David's dad as an example of how to inspire and empower teachers and kids, so the differences were stark.

Another friend from the past that David has tracked down is Clark Bragg - we will be seeing him and his wife Sue in a few days. However, in the meantime we are going to to a side trip to Ranfurly to see our Paraparaumu friend Clare who is cycling around the South Island - she is making faster progress than we are ...