6 January 2015 - Lumsden, Southland

We ended up staying another night in Gore, mainly because it was almost mid-afternoon by the time we had shopped and wandered about the streets. We had woken to 6 degrees but soon warmed up once the diesel heater was turned on. The new motorhome has an Eberspacher Diesel heater installed, the same kind we had in the Winnebago, which is very efficient, however that did little for the temperature outside. Fortunately we are carrying warm woollies, and an extra woollen jersey, a coat, gloves and tweed hat made life a whole more bearable. Even after lunch, steaming hot soup and a fresh ciabatta loaf,  the temperature gauge up on the wall of one of the buildings in town still showed 11 degrees, but the heavy rain forecasted didn’t ever come to much more than nasty intermittent showers. Had we been in a hurry to arrive at our next destination, we may have gone on, but we were happy to return to our nice little camp at the racecourse.

Gore really is a very nice little town, and would have seemed even more so if the sun had been shining. The hanging baskets and council gardens are still very pretty, and the shops all seemed busy and prosperous. It is Southland’s second largest town and the hub of the surrounding farmland, as well as the home of New Zealand’s Country Music and the Brown Trout Capital of the World. The annual New Zealand Golden Guitar Awards are held every Queen’s Birthday Weekend (the first weekend in June); it is really the New Zealand version of Australia’s Tamworth.  The Mataura River flows through the town and is apparently brimming with brown trout, and they do grow big here if the massive sculpture at the northern end is anything to go by.

I mentioned that we had called into the Information Centre the day before; this is also the location of the Hokonui Heritage Centre, an excellent little museum which explores the history of the area’s insobriety and prohibition, along with more regular regional historical exhibition.  We spent some time here on our last visit, so didn’t bother this time, but its well worth calling into.

In keeping with the theme of alcohol consumption, or more particularly, consumption of illegal whisky, the town hosts the Hokonui Moonshiners’ Festival every year, an orgy of music, food and whisky, no doubt, although my use of the word “orgy” may be somewhat misleading. Maybe we should return late in March to attend? 

And again on a related subject, although not about whisky, we were reminded today when we re-provisioned our stocks that Gore has recently aligned itself with the restrictive liquor licencing laws of Invercargill, one being the prohibiting of liquor sales  by supermarkets. While I accept that alcohol causes a plethora of problems and open slather sales twenty four hours a day are absolutely not okay, I do find it annoying that we are restricted to buy wine in specially designated liquor outlets. 

Today we  found our way to the local Liquorland, a large barnlike building that promised a wide range of goods; not so, there was a small display stand for “Wine Under $12” as if this was a special little niche for a few cheapskates, and the rest of the range was priced at top dollar. Such a system allows for no competition and the decent sensible consumers are disadvantaged.  I guess that is the point; that such a market puts alcohol out of the reach of those struggling to make ends meet? And yet, when we asked about a display of little coloured glasses, we were told these were shot glasses full of alcohol and the young people loved these. So it is okay to develop bright shiny new ways to market alcohol to entice the young with their frivolous spending to indulge? I am confused.

Another landmark in Gore that caught my attention this time as well as last, is the tall structure still bears the faded names of long remembered products. Flemings Creamota Mill still stands across the railway from the town centre, but is now used to manufacture stock food, a far cry from Sergeant Dan, the Creamoata Man, the promotional hero of pre-cooked porridge we all grew up with. The operation commenced back in 1920 and continued in a similar vein right through to 2001 when Goodman Fielder bought out Flemings and closed the factory, moving their operations overseas. That must have been a sad day for the people of Gore.

Today dawned just as cold but we were better prepared, although icy cold squalls blasted across the racecourse and we delayed our departure waiting for a window of better weather to fill the water tanks. The moment came, but no sooner was I committed to the task, down the rain came again and I was cold and wet by the time I had stored the hose and crawled back into our house on wheels. (There are some jobs that are mine, and many more that are my husbands; filling with water is mine, in case you are thinking my gallant husband should have been the one subjecting himself to the weather.)

It was still raining as we drove back up through the town centre so we did not pause to check for items missed off our grocery list yesterday, but blatted on through, turning toward Te Anau rather than Alexandra or Dunedin at the town clock. The road passes along the northern side of the Hokenui Hills which rise to around 650 metres ASL, then across the arable Waimea Plains and through the small settlements of Mandeville and Riversdale, where we tried unsuccessfully to find the dump. Carrying on up the highway, devoid of tourist traffic, our eyes were soon drawn to the snow covered mountains ahead of us, tentatively identified as the Eyre Mountains.  Even at this distance we were able to see that this was fresh snow, some perhaps on leftovers from last winter, but mainly the light covering of last night which might not last the week. We recalled hearing on the television news that there was likely to be snow above 800 metres; this was it. So here we are in the first week of February, the middle of the southern hemisphere summer, with snow! No wonder we have felt cold the last couple of days.

About sixty kilometres north west of Gore, we pulled into Lumsden, a small rural service centre, once a major railway junction with lines leaving in four directions: the Kingston Branch running north – south, the Mossburn Branch to the west and the Waimea Plains  Railway that connected with the main South Line at Gore. The lines closed one by one through the 1970s although parts of these “pathways” are the basis for the Around the Mountains Cycle Trail, a 175 kilometre trail that takes one in a wide cycle south from Queenstown and back again, the last leg across Lake Wakatipu. Only the first stage is open to the public for now, the second still undergoing the consent process, which is being dragged out by Fish & Game. But like all such projects, it will breathe life back into this rural community and invite newcomers offering accommodation, refreshment and related services.

The nearby Five Rivers plain was the site of a significant battle between the Ngati Mamoe and Ngai Tahu tribes about three hundred years ago, so there were obviously Maori living or using the land about long before the European settlers arrived. The first of these took up land in the district on 1861 and the first building, the Elbow Hotel, was built in 1862 on the east side of the Oreti River. The name Lumsden was given to the town in 1876 as a compliment to the Honourable George Lumsden, a Scottish trader who became a politician.

The Oreti River, aside from being near our NZMCA Park camp, has come up a couple of times in the last day or two; we reminded ourselves that it is this 170 kilometres long river that flows south into the New River Estuary at Invercargill and from there out to sea and that it rises near the Mavora Lakes between Lake Te Anau and Lake Wakatipu, the very place that Fish & Game don’t want random cyclists going through and disturbing their peaceful pastime.

Now with only about a population of about 400 people, the village has little more than a Four Square and a couple of tearooms / cafes, a library, but no laundry. We did think the Information Centre in the old railway station looked interesting and will call back there before leaving tomorrow if the weather is pleasant enough to invite an outdoor wander.

In the meantime we have set up in this Association Park over Property, which is less attractive than it appears in the Directory. Obviously there have had flooding problems and the grassed area is now a great big gravel square. But from here, when the clouds lift a little, I can see those snow clad mountains, to which we will travel closer tomorrow. 

As an aside, as we closed in on Lumsden this morning, we could see a series of wind turbines on the hills beyond, and remembered them from when we were in the area last time. The White Hill Wind Farm is actually situated between Mossburn (twenty kilometres to the east) and Lumsden, closer to the former. It was Meridian Energy’s first wind farm development in the South Island,  its second in New Zealand, and the twenty nine turbines cover an area of approximately eight by three kilometres. Construction took approximately seventeen months; it opened in June 2007, which means it must have been brand new when we saw it last. The wind farm generates enough electricity for 30,000 average sized homes.

And here this afternoon, electricity has been an issue; I suggested that Chris entertain himself watching the International Rugby Sevens being played in Wellington and broadcasted live and free to air. He suggested it was a frivolous use of precious power since there was little sun on the panels today. This is all very true; however I am frivolously using it in his stead by “playing” on my computer.