Truth be
told, a dozen or so ideas for the day were raised over breakfast, not least detouring south to Oamaru to visit the Art Gallery
recalled with pleasure, however when The Chauffeur learned it was over fifty
kilometres distant, he decided that wasn’t such a great idea after all.
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| St Patrick's Basilica |
Instead
after filling with water and dumping our waste, we popped into the Waimate New
World supermarket for a couple of bits and pieces then wandered up and down the
main street. Surprisingly, even at the relatively early hour of this Sunday
morning, the cafes and second hand shops were open for business, although there
were few customers. We checked out the exterior of the two interesting looking
churches in the town, one St Patrick’s Catholic Basilica built around 1910 and
the other, the Anglican Church St Augustine built in the 1870s , both rather
“grand” for such a little town, although one would not even make such a remark
if this were England. There they have great cathedral like churches in the
tiniest of places. The interiors had to
be left for the gathering congregations; they seem to be a devout lot here in
South Canterbury.
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| St Augustine |
Back on the
road again, we headed south west, on through the Waimate Gorge where I had
fancied taking a bush walk, however when we discovered the gorge to be covered
in broom and other scrub, we were glad we had not bothered. The road soon
reached the Waitaki River and we followed it along the northern bank until we
crossed at Kurow.
Since
leaving Waimate and continuing through the rural landscape, we were surprised
to find so much of the irrigation infrastructure in action, unlike that seen
over the past few days further to the north. Perhaps this was because the
irrigation offered by the pumps and canals of water diverted from the Waitaki
is so available. Or perhaps it is because so much of this land now travelled
through was more hilly, albeit of a gentle nature, and required this boost to
cater for the large dairy herds seen.
It was
along this road nearly a decade ago that we came upon a couple of dead
wallabies on the side of the road. Now having spent three years on the roads
around Australia, this would not be worthy of the morbid photo I did take then.
Marsupial road kill was still unknown as was the fact how a wallaby, albeit
dead, had arrived in this rather unbecoming position. It turned out that there
were over 130,000 of these little Aussies up in the Hunter Hills, and here like
possums, they are a pest. Every year since 1991 the South Canterbury
Recreational Sportsman Club has run an annual wallaby hunt. In 2008, 2,000
wallabies were shot over one weekend, and in 2015 over 1,000. There are prizes
handed out for the heaviest and for the largest tally, a little like a deep sea
fishing contest.
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| A remnant of the old bridge |
On the
other side of Waimate there is a little petting zoo where one can touch,
cuddle, feed and photograph over sixty tame wallabies. Hopefully the juvenile
customers of this establishment are not told about the annual hunt.
We pulled
into the rest area on Kurow Island after crossing a new bridge. We had been
looking forward to parking up beside the old quaint bridges that had served the
road traffic for over one hundred years, so were rather disappointed. Here the
river spits into two and a ten hectare island sits in the middle. I was rather
horrified to learn today that from the early 1900s to 1996, this central area
was used as a Waitaki district landfill. Following closure of the landfill, the
area had become a waste area covered in gorse, broom and noxious weeds, an
illegal dumping site and a fire hazard. Imagine trying to get resource consent
to have a landfill in the middle of a braided river today! Between 2008 and
2010, work has been done to clean it up and plant out trees and other more
welcome vegetation, this making it a rather pleasant area to walk about as we
did after lunch today.
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| Views through the borage from Kurow Island |
Construction
on the two new bridges commenced in 2013, both opened in 2014 having cost the
tax payers a mere $19.4 million. It is intended that these new iron and
concrete structures should serve for at least one hundred years and so they
should because their predecessors did better than that and they were made of
wood.
The two old
wooden How Truss bridges were built in 1881, during a time of great expansion
and growth in New Zealand, when new roads and railways were needed to open up
the country for settlement and farming. Initially the bridge structures were
built using kauri beams but these were not durable, and were later replaced
with hardwood timber. Flooding was an on-going threat to the bridges. Even
before they were completed, three piers were swept away during a major flood in
October 1878. The completed bridges carried both road and rail traffic until
the 1930s.
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| Downriver from Benmore Dam |
The Waitaki
River is 109 kilometres long and has the second largest catchment in New
Zealand after the Clutha River in Otago. The river forms the boundary between
Otago and Canterbury. The hydro scheme of the same name is a series of
interconnected lakes and canals used to generate electricity. It is made up of
eight hydro stations along the river, two owned by Genesis Energy and the other
six by Meridian. These six generate enough electricity each year for about
832,000 average New Zealand homes.
Today as we
travelled north-west up the southern bank of the river, we passed the Waitaki
Hydro Dam, the Aviemore and finally the Benmore. This latter is the largest
earth dam in New Zealand and holds the largest constructed lake. It is the
second largest hydro station in New Zealand.
We pulled
into this last dam on today’s route and checked out the views from the top of
the dam, or at least I did. There was a fair old breeze blowing and Chris
decided the views were more pleasant from inside the motorhome.
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| The Ahuriri Bridge beyond the lupins |
We carried
on through to Omarama, basically a supply post at the junction of the roads to
and from Queenstown, Twizel and the east coast. It now sits on the more
recently formed Alps to the Sea cycle trail and has no doubt gained more custom
from this tourist drawcard.
It is also
the gliding capital of New Zealand, perhaps even of the world, offering
consistently excellent conditions for the sport; the north-westerly winds that
blow across the flat basin provide a reliability that is seldom experienced
elsewhere. Today we saw more than a couple of gliders towed up into the thermals
but were unable to track their descent. Sometimes they can be gone for hours
from here unlike the short unsatisfactory flights Chris and I have done in
Northland in the past.
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| Views up the Ahuriri River |
After
refuelling with diesel at more than 125% the price we could have down on the
coast, we found an overnight spot across the Ahuriri River at the standard DOC
camp. “Standard” means it is a pack-in-pack-out your rubbish, with only water
available from the river and toilet facilities a very bare minimum; a camp best
suited to fully self-contained campers.
We were
delighted to find the multi-coloured Russell lupins still in bloom, all about
the river bed. While reviled by the Department of Conservation, tourists and
visitors find them quite splendid. So here we are surrounded in the kaleidoscope
of forbidden colour as well as the other familiar flowers: the yellow mullein,
the purple borage and the vibrantly orange Californian poppies.
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