1 February 2015 - Lowburn Harbour, Lake Dunstan, Cromwell, Otago

It rained heavily through the night, but only puddles gave credence to the nocturnal weather. The day dawned bright and with promise.

We hung about our spot on the canal, having agreed with Pam that we would meet up and exchange contact details. We’d met up with her on the opposite bank of the canal last night, sitting on a stool doing Sudoku puzzles while fishing, the combination of cerebral and sports exercise. Her husband was downstream fishing and pondering the matters of the world as is the case with most leisure fishermen and did not notice us at all. We discussed motorhomes, children, travel and retirement with Pam, who harked from Christchurch, but had been on the road for about as long as us. We hit it off and could have stood in the evening air chatting and swapping life stories for several hours but I knew that Chris was keen to return to the camper to see how the cricket was coming along. So we agreed that she would pop along in the morning since we were in no hurry to leave. And so we hung about until after ten, and then popped along to their motorhome ourselves thinking it rude to simply head away with no word, but their blinds were still drawn, so we left without following through. A  shame really because I liked her immensely and I am sure her Graeme would have been as likeable; she was too forthright a person to have suffered anyone less so.

The road south took us to Omarama, centre of the gliding universe if you are to believe all the hype; the area’s northwest thermals being particularly suitable for high altitude long flights, something we ourselves never experienced when we dabbled briefly in the sport in Northland many years ago. Apart from that fame, Omarama lies at the crossroads of the highway coming up from Oamaru on the east coast and that running more or less north-south that we were travelling. 

We had called and lingered here before, staying at the DOC camp of the Ahuriri River, another lovely braided river which at the right time was host to a million Russell Lupins blooms. From here one can drive the short gravel road to the Clay Cliffs, a bizarre moonscape resulting from two million years of erosion of layers of silt and gravel exposed along the active Osler fault line. The cliffs are on private land and the owner asks for a token donation at the gate to “maintain the road”. Six or seven years ago it was obvious that the donations were funding his holidays rather than any upkeep of the road; it really was in an appalling state. Having said that, if it is the first time one has come this way, the Clay Cliffs are certainly worth a visit.

But instead we found our way into the local Four Square store and came out bearing a large Boston Bun which should, by volume, last us several days; time will tell. We consumed one quarter with our morning coffee; I suspect the next portions should be larger or it will grow stale!

From here we continued up the Ahuriri River, across flats strewn with small rocks, yet harrowed for planting; we wondered at the state of the machinery subjected to such materials. On the riverside of the road we saw small cairns of stones, as we had on our last trip through. One wonders at the builders; perhaps travelling children pausing for a break, filling the minutes of their boredom, before the advent of iPads and such?

The road passes up over the Lindis Pass, through dry steep barren mountainous country, an elevation of 971 metres. We stopped at the lookout to take a photo or three, and to check out the memorial. This is one dedicated to not a Lord as that at Lake Pukaki, but to an Earl who gifted another scourge on conservation; the red deer.

In March 1871 the 11^th Earl of Dalhousie of Brechin in Scotland shipped seven deer to Dunedin which were liberated in the Lindis Pass area after being shipped further to Oamaru, then transported over the pass by bullock wagon. It is they who form the base of all the feral red deer who have added to the decimation of the high country natural vegetation. God bless the Earl!

The road south of the Pass is far steeper, more windy and slower, more than we recalled. But then when I checked the elevations later, we should not have been surprised. Omarama sits at an elevation of 420 metres ASL, the Lindis Pass at 971 metres ASL and Tarras to the south where the land levels out into the upper reaches of the Clutha River valley, sits at 268 metres ASL. Say no more!

Tarras is an interesting spot, little more than a school and a collection of shops that base their existence on the fame of Shrek, the hermit merino sheep. Ah, the wonders of Shrek! This very woolly and long neglected unshorn ram gained international fame in 2004. The story of how the shepherd caught the sheep with the mammoth fleece that had avoided being shorn for six years captured national, even international, attention. Media from around the world reported on Shrek being shorn of his 22 kg fleece. Alas, under the weight and glory of his coat, he was a scrawny nondescript. But he became the subject of three books, and featured prominently in a fourth, and so we, New Zealand residents in the main, equate the name of Tarras, with Shrek. In June 2011, a the apparent age of sixteen, a very grand old age for a sheep, he died and was mourned by the New Zealand public who had bothered to note his existence in the first place. 

In 2007, or whenever it was we passed through Tarras, we did stop and visit the one shop to check out the souvenirs and left with none, far too tight with our hard saved dollars. Today, had we bothered, we could have been more discerning, checking out several in the little village that has grown out of this amazingly quaint history. 

Beyond Tarras, the road splits, right and west toward Wanaka and left and east toward Cromwell. It was this second we took, having decided our route this morning. From here one travels down river of the mighty Clutha which flows from Lake Wanaka all the way to the sea, a distance of  338 kilometres, the second longest river in New Zealand, and the longest in the South Island and the river of greatest volume in the entire country. And it is near here that the river begins its useful life as a generator of electricity, as so many South Island rivers do.

Near Bendigo, along Lake Dunstan, we pulled off and lunched. Again as so oft before, I was enthralled by the fact that a great body of water can be surrounded by such desolate dry country. This struck me in Australian when we followed the Darling River and the Murray where irrigation was not prevalent; it seems to defy the nature of the universe, that so much water can exist adjacent to much parched land.

Cromwell is New Zealand’s town furthest from the sea, and has an annual rainfall of 400 mm, a temperature range of -10 degrees Celsius to 37 degrees, on average it snows three and a half days per year and frost arrives on 174 days per year on average. Interestingly today, I February, patches of snow are clearly visible on the Pisa Range immediately to the south of the lake.

The land hereabouts is considered semi-desert with tussock, scab-weed, thyme and briar, a most uninviting group of plants. Wild flowers bloom in spring and early summer, hence their absence now.

The Clutha valley is a basin lying between two elongated schist mountain ranges, raised and tilted during the last five million years. Prominent are the series of terraces formed by the rivers transporting gravel from the glaciers; large landslides mantle much of the steeper slopes. The area is rich in mineral deposits; so typical of such inhospitable land.

Cromwell is part of New Zealand’s gold mining history, the reason that so many countries or areas of the world began their European settlement. But that history also incorporates a more modern twist and so this is an evolved (European) town.

Overlooking what was once the meeting of the waters of the Clutha and Kawarau Rivers, The Junction, later renamed Cromwell, was sited here following the Hartley and Reilly gold strikes in 1862. Early Maori hunters and traders, and European explorers, surveyor and sheep-man had left its mark. It was gold-mining which transformed the landscapes and it was the demands of the miners for goods and services which gave birth to the town. When the rush ended, farming and the coming of the railway ensured Cromwell’s survival.

Now largely under the lake, the main street of the old town once extended from the bridge which spanned the river below the convergence of the two rivers. Although the building of the Clyde Dam and the erection of Lake Dunstan have meant drowned orchards and farmlands in the Cromwell Gorge and much of the upper Clutha Valley, they have also opened the region to a new wave of settlors and the growth of tourism.

The old stone buildings still in use, the re-creation of part of the old town in the Old Cromwell Historic Precinct, and the re-creation of a Chinese mining community at the Mining Centre in the Kawarau Gorge are testament to the spirit of the community.

Robert Muldoon, Prime Minister from 1975 through to 1984, the Master of Think Big Projects, promised that “The Clyde Dam will be the best things since sliced bread!”

In 1976 the New Zealand Government approved the building of a Hydro Dam at Clyde on the Clutha River. By 1992, the Clutha and Kawarau Rivers upstream from the Clyde were flooded to form Lake Dunstan, providing water for the dam. The original town of Cromwell at the junction of the two rivers was flooded.

An estimated 280 people lost their homes, some of whom had been in the same family for generations, and although compensation was made, many never got over the loss. Six farms and seventeen orchards were submerged or made uneconomic. A further twenty five to thirty farms were affected. The creation of Lake Dunstan flooded a total of 1,405 productive acres. 

While there is no question that the dam has been able to provide much needed electricity for the country, there have been concerns expressed about the safety and on-going stability of the structure.

With the fault line running along the Clutha River bed, a “slip-joint” was incorporated into the dam’s design to withstand any credible displacement which may occur during an earthquake. Geological evidence dating back several hundred thousand years shows some of the hillsides around Lake Dunstan are prone to slippage. With over 14 kilometres of tunnels, sixty kilometres of surface drilling and seventy eight kilometres of drainage holes, the slide areas have been stabilised.

The survey pillars located through the Cromwell Gorge are markers for measuring slip movement, Although unlikely, a slip of land into the lake could cause a wave to flow over the top of the dam and flood the land beneath. A “backwash” wave could cause some flooding in the gorge toward Cromwell.

For myself, with these facts and those gleaned from the information centre when we were in Clyde some years ago, I would baulk at settling in Clyde or even Alexandra! And that was before the Christchurch earthquake.

The area of the resulting lake is 26 square kilometres, the surface at about 194 metres ASL, with a maximum depth of 60 metres. Like all such developments, there are always positives and negatives and today watching locals out water ski-ing and enjoying this manmade watery mass, it was hard to find anything negative to say.

The buildings in the old town were demolished and the land where they stood contoured to form Lake Dunstan’s shore line and lake bed. In 1985 a group of concerned Cromwell’s residents got together to save eight of the most important historical buildings from the old town. These buildings are now part of the Old Cromwell Town Historical precinct where we first headed on arrival. Old Cromwell incorporated continues to reconstruct buildings from the old town to create a unique historic precinct.

After wandering about enjoying many galleries and noting others enjoying the cafes and restaurants, we agreed this was a delightful attraction for tourists and locals alike. We scored a small bag of fresh cherries from one gallery; the mother of the artists holding the fort and generous with an oversupply of ripe fruit.

After calling into the Information Centre, upgraded since we were last here, but (wo)manned by equally helpful staff, we came north to this large reserve on the western shore of Lake Dunstan where free-camping is tolerated if not encouraged. I fed the local ducks with stale bread I had been reserving for just such a purpose and then we settled down for a quiet late Sunday afternoon, the sun still shining although the doomsayers on the weather channels keep telling us to expect otherwise.