Yesterday yet another gorgeous day dawned, the sun rising over the
range, the ducks lined up at the door for the end of last week’s sliced bread
and the young uninhibited tourists stripping off their wet swim wear to change
into something comfortable for their breakfast of noodles and bananas. Alas by
the time I made my way over to the toilet block, the suntanned lithesome girls
were queuing out the door; I was glad I could retreat to our own facilities.
We had a list of to-dos for the morning, none of them tourist related;
laundry, grey waste disposal, water refilling, grocery shopping and the
purchase of timber.
We found the laundry at the far end of town between the light industry
and surveyor’s office; a spacious and very clean establishment, with a small
book exchange, excellent parking, many comfortable seat and a clean table to
fold one’s washed clothing and linen. The only negative was that their prices
were the same as those in Queenstown that we had checked and rejected as being
too expensive; $5 for a wash and $6 for thirty minutes drying, however given
that the machines are all well maintained, and clean (which I seem to be
over-emphasising) the completed task worked out as reasonable as when one is
required to feed the machines with less coinage.
Cromwell’s New World is modern, spacious and also has excellent parking,
but the price of the fruit and vegetables was atrocious and as we ticked off
the items on our rather long list, we were appalled at the prices we were
obliged to pay. We should have done our big shop the previous day at Frankton,
although there the parking is not as good.
At the Mitre 10 we received brilliant service, the yardman giving Chris
a couple of offcuts of timber which made the saw and nails we bought seem all
the cheaper. Back along the lake, we parked up near a solid table and bench
affair, put the awning out and Chris constructed some very cunning levelling
ramps, more permanent and functional than the plastic ones we have, although so
much heavier.
It was still early afternoon, we consulted our journey ahead and the
likely overnight camps; Chris decided we should return to our lakeside camp at
Lowburn Harbour and worry about tomorrow tomorrow; manana le manana. We found yet another spot squeezed between a
couple of campervans just a metre from the shore, and discovered our neighbour
immediately to the front was a women of more than middle years with four, yes
four! dogs; three little white bichon frises or similar and one King Charles
Spaniel, and every time we dared to speak loud enough for our voices to be
heard beyond the walls of our camper, they yapped. Needless to say when we
ventured out of the interior 31 degree temperature in our togs to test the lake
waters, they yapped even more. Stupid woman! Fancy travelling in a motorhome with
four yappy dogs!
It took us a long time to travel the distance from the pebbly shore into
the depths of the lake, deep enough to cover all the bits that cause
consternation as one undertakes slow emersion into cold waters, but once there,
we lingered and revelled in our daring, glad to have bothered at least once to
“swim” the waters of the Dunstan.
After drying off and delighting in the fact that our togs had not rotted
in the interim since our last swim, taken either in Broome or the shark
infested waters of the Bonaparte Archipelago eighteen months ago or so, we
opened a bottle of red purchased in the morning, before dining on a jointly
prepared feast. It was a little after this that Chris vocalised his concern; he
wondered if we was suffering another bout of gout. We rejected the possibility
of fish sauce, oysters and other delectable shell fish, all forbidden foods in
his diet, and decided that it sadly must be the result of our return to the
fruits of the vine. We have yet to decide what we will do with that
information.
After yet another excellent night, apparently shared with in excess of
seventy other camping parties, we headed north up Lake Dunstan, driving through
extensive vineyards all swathed in bird proof netting. Soon we passed the road
that comes in from the north east, that through from the Lindis Pass, and
before we knew it we were passing Wanaka’s zany Puzzling World and the parking
area for the walk to the top of Mt Iron 548 metres ASL, one we did on a
previous visit but not particularly appealing today. We called into DOC’s local
headquarters, an excellent information and general educational centre, seeking either
encouragement or the opposite for our intended drive up the road to Mt Aspiring
on the western side of Lake Wanaka. Some years previously we had driven part of
the way, as far at the Mt Aspiring Station, across some of the most hideously
corrugated road ever encountered. Chris hoped that the road would have been
upgraded to a more acceptable level, and that this time, we would drive to the
end and enjoy the natural wonders of that corner of the region. Alas, the
assistant in the centre, a woman I remembered from our previous visit, could
not vouch for the condition of the road although she did paint the available
walks in good light. I could see that Chris was not keen to expose our classy
new camper to possible damage, however I played along and we left her believing
we had changed our mind about staying on.
We continued on into town, parking up on the spacious foreshore and dumped
our bags of rubbish, some recyclable and some not, and walked up into the
compact streets to check out the supermarket and the cinema. We found that
Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” was playing at 12.30 pm so retired to our
lakeshore posse, lunched early and were back in time to spend the early part of
the afternoon catching one of the recently applauded cinematic events.
This had been on Chris’s wish list, and I was not averse to attending;
we were duly rewarded. “American Sniper” is a very good movie, sympathetic to
the fact this is a tribute to a soldier recently assassinated leaving a widow
and children. The noise and slaughter of
war is never attractive, but then it should not be portrayed otherwise; war is
hideous but a part of human existence. We found the movie poignant, well caste
and altogether worthy of the artistic nominations it had received.
The Cinema Paradiso is a small
two theatre movie house with big comfy couches and equally comfy leather
loungers for those who prefer to sit alone. The Paradiso is as much about eating and drinking as visual
entertainment; the café and bar serve meals, homemade ice-cream and fresh “cookies”
before, during and after the movie. Amongst the many hard-case announcements
before the feature is one advising that intermission, that old fashioned
“half-time” – remember? will be when the screen goes black, and so it was. We
all filed out, all five of us, to relieve ourselves and some to eye up the menu
at the bar. And when the manageress had done a head check to see that we were
all back in the theatre, ready to watch the rest of the movie, she signalled
the technician and away we went. Interestingly, and probably not surprisingly, Lonely Planet lists this as one of
Wanaka’s star attractions.
Back down at the shore, we phoned my parents to check their whereabouts,
frustratingly close and yet so far, and send a text “postcard” to my older son
who spent his honeymoon in this lovely spot almost nine years ago. Then we set
off away from Wanaka, crossing the Clutha River which exits the lake a few
kilometres to the north east, then on to Lake Hawea, on up the western shore of
this lake, crossing the narrow isthmus between the two lakes before continuing
on up the north eastern shore of Lake Wanaka, until we arrived at this DOC camp
on the lake shore, already busy with a variety of camping parties.
Lake Wanaka and Lake Hawea, on the map, appear to be very similar in
size, although it is the former that tourists bother much with. Lake Hawea is
393 meters deep, 34 kilometres long and 342 metres ASL. A good part of it
extends beyond sight of all but those who run the high country stations or seek
to climb the high peaks with names like Dingle Peak at 1,833 metres ASL or the
McKerrow Ranges. Lake Wanaka is of a more interesting shape, The Peninsula
extending out into the lower section of the lake and two significant islands
taking up other surface area, which makes any comparison with Lake Hawea
somewhat problematic. Lake Wanaka is 311 metres deep, 45.5 kilometres long and
is at 277 metres ASL, these facts of no use when trying to ascertain which is
the larger. Later I learned that Wanaka is in fact larger than Hawea, the
former covering an area of 192 square kilometres and the latter, 141 square
kilometres.
The outflow of Lake Hawea is the river of the same name, on the southern
edge and provides both a power source and an outflow control for the waters
that provide power further down the Clutha River. On the past two trips through
here, we saw the lake level particularly low and unattractive; today those low
levels had either settled and developed to be the new normal or were higher. Today
we did not stop to measure.
Here at Boundary Creek, our own camp is in a least attractive spot, but
without the likelihood of being locked in by anyone else’s tardy departure
tomorrow. There is only one small corner of the camping area that could be
considered lovely, and half a dozen motorhomes commandeered that place earlier
in the day, if not days before. The rest of us are just glad to have a low cost
park.
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