7 January 2017 - Punakaiki Beach Camp, Westland

The rope road to Coalbrooktown

Rainy unsummery days have filled the interim but we have not sat about waiting for positive change.  I am pleased to report that as I start this update, the sun is shining and I have had to lower the rear blind so I can see the computer screen. I shall not mention that it was drizzling just an hour ago.

We spent our last morning at Denniston walking through history, having driven further up on gravel to the now long gone township of Burnett’s Face. There we parked and walked up past the spot where once Ropers Hotel sat, before turning up the rope road to Coalbrooktown. Now only a two kilometre walkway for the likes of us, it is littered with fraying iron rope, railway sleepers and upstanding bolts, following the valley to the site of the old Coalbrookdale sheds, then following  the Whareatea and Cascade rope roads to the mine mouths, passing remains of tunnels, building foundations, a haulage winch and delapidated bridges.  At the top end is New Zealand’s best example of an early coalmine fanhouse, built in the early 20^th century to suck foul air from the vast network of mine workings. We poked about the fan house for some time and peered into mine entries, now all barred from the curious. Once this was an area of industry, now only host to the odd tourist, wekas and a multitude of tuis and bellbirds which we observed feeding on the nectar of the flax flowers. The walk is supposed to take an hour but we spent longer; it was lunchtime when we returned to the motorhome, after which we drove back to the Friends of the Hill Museum. 

The rains of old rope road bridges

This is situated in the old hall and is a work of love by volunteers who have done their best to gather memorabilia and stories of past residents. Spoilt by well curated modern museums, we thought it left a lot to be desired, however it does offer a wonderful resource for those wanting to follow up details of the life and times of the miners and families who lived on the plateau during those industrious years. We found the old bus which transported the miners from their homes to the mines quite fascinating;  the slatted seating like park benches and the driver’s controls a very minimum. Somewhere amongst the snippets of information I had seen that the bus would never actually stop once started, it simply slowed right down to make the pick up or drop off, and one could well imagine why. It may have never started again!

We headed back down to the coast, descending the very steep road without event and settled back into a spot at the Westport South Beach NZMCA for the night. In fact we stayed there the next night too, making three nights in total in this very secure spot.

The fam house

The next day,  after dealing with business matters in town, including having printing and scanning done at the library, we spent some time in the Coaltown Museum, once in a shed on the southern edge of town, now immediately behind the iSite. This is well curated, however we felt there was little new here beyond what the previous museum had offered. Certainly the displays are very modern and we would recommend visitors to Westport spend some time here, because coal has, after all, been the backbone of the West Coast, and here the mining, transport and social history, giving special emphasis to the power of the unions, is dealt with well.

Yesterday we spent checking out the area immediately to the south of Westport, lunching at Carter’s Beach on the expansive domain. Here the residences are more modern, more upmarket than those mainly found across the Buller River in the town however there are no facilities here apart from a café. 

View over Cape Foulwind carpark

We drove further south to Cape Foulwind and walked up to the lighthouse. The car park area has all been revamped since we were last here and there are signs everywhere forbidding overnight camping. Years ago we stayed here, but then there were not well tended gardens and toilets, only the wekas and seagulls. From here one can walk nearly four kilometres down to Tauranga Bay, passing by the seal colony. 

The lighthouse sitting on the knoll closely surrounded by scrub was built in the 1920s to replace the original hexagonal wooden lighthouse built in 1876. The original had a kerosene fuelled light tended by the keepers who lived on site. The replacement is a less appealing concrete structure housing an automatic light system.

From the tidal flats of the Okari Lagoon

We chose instead to drive around to the Bay and walk the kilometre back up to the viewing platform. Chris is not keen on seals at all, and really only because of the stench that normally accompanies their habitation. Yesterday the winds were just right and the bulk of the seals must have been out at sea fishing or perhaps had moved away; there was no great odour problem and we stood on the lookout platform for some time spotting the seals far below us, mainly very small pups, much darker than their elders, watching their antics in small rockpools and labouring across the rugged rocky terrain can entertain for hours; certainly there were plenty of foreign tourists to be so.

From the same pathway there are views across to Wall Island, a rugged rocky isle home to a variety of seabirds including  Red-billed gulls, White fronted terns, Sooty Shearwaters, Fairy Prions. There are traps on the mainland to capture any predators that might consider the short swim and a set of binoculars available to those interested in checking out the colony. 

Road and cliffs behin our camp

Back on the road, we continued on south along Okari Road gathering dust and cow dung on the exterior of the van, in search of the reserve that is apparently home to other bird life, however access to any such public way remained ellusive. We wandered out onto the lagoon sands, drying out as the tide receded, admired the surrounding area then returned to our filthy vehicle. Back in Westport we called by the dump site and Chris spent five minutes using the town water supply for purposes other than supply. We returned to camp clean enough to not embarrass ourselves.

Rain and cold temperatures have plagued us through the last few days and this morning was no different. We travelled south down the coast road toward Greymouth in pesky showers, passing through Charleston which has several flash new buildings offering services to the passing tourist and Mitchells Gully Gold Mine now much busier with the curious than it was when we called eight years or so ago. 

Looking back down toward our camp

We paused at Tiromoana to check out the free camping spot by the Fox River mouth and noted its size and popular patronage. Then on we went to Punakaiki, now about fifty kilometres south of Westport. Here there is another spot for freedon campers, provided they are certified self-contained, however the spaces are too short for our vehicle and few anywhere near flat. We called into the motorcamp to enquire about space. I had checked out the app as regards prices and while the host’s pages neatly avoided stating the price, a customers comments suggested that we would only have to pay $25 for the two of us on power. The grammar in the comment was poor, which suggested English was not the first, second or third language of the customer; I should have been suspicious. In reality, it would cost us $20 each for the privelege of staying here before our small NZMCA member discount ; we hesitated and then relented. We had little choice and nor do most of the others in here tonight being fleeced of their hard saved dollars.

Rock caverns at Punakaiki

The camp is right on the beach and is dotted with South Island rata, all in the throes of glorious crimson bloom, and the steep sheer cliffs rise immediately behind. It is a stunning spot, but there are a mere three toilets and showers to serve the women here, and no doubt the same for the men. There are something like eighty five sites here, so that equates for one toilet per twenty eight people. There may well be a rush in the morning!

Punakaiki's Pancake Rocks

But this afternoon after we set up and had finished lunch, we set off a kilometre down the road, up to Dolomite Point. There we joined dozens of other tourists and walked around the paved twenty minute track to the Pancake Rocks and Punakaiki Blowholes. The tide was wrong for the best of the blowholes but the thundering waves in the sea caverns, pools and archways of limestone rock were still incredibly impressive. The limestone has been weathered by air and sea to resemble an immense stack of pancakes creating stylobedding, a chemical process in which the pressure of overlying sediments creates alternating durable and weaker bands. Although we had been here before and were less star struck than many of the tourists today, we still took much longer than the specified time, before heading back down the hill, past the camp to the car park at the entry to the Porarari River track. 

The Pororari River

This is an absolutely lovely walk following the course of the river, through nikau and native bush, between spectacularly high cliff walls, and of relatively good grade, although there are a few steps and rocky riverside caverns to pass through. We walked as far as the junction with the Inland Pack Track, a much longer and challenging route, walked a little further to cross the swing bridge over the Pororari River, then turned and retraced our steps. We were back out on the road within two hours and soon at the motorcamp where we took long hot showers and plugged our electrical appliances  in for a good solid charge.

As the evening has progressed, more and more motorhomes, campervans and cars have come in; I am sure there is a full house, as there has apparently been every day over the past three weeks. There will be a battle for the loos in the morning for sure!

4 January 2017 Brakehead, Denniston, Westland

We left Reefton yesterday morning in the rain which followed us all the way through to Westport and continued to hang about. I had forgotten how very beautiful the Lower Buller Gorge is, even in such inclement conditions; there is something so atmospheric about narrow gorges, native bush and forceful rivers. The road follows the flow of the river, twisting and turning and passing along narrow rocky ledges above the river, in places where you need to be wary of oncoming traffic. At Hawkes Crag there is plenty of visability; it is simply a matter of courtesy to give way or graciously be given way to, but the longer stretch where there are portable traffic lights, yesterday were not in operation. We did meet oncoming traffic who were easily able to back up and were glad we were not a minute later when we would have found ourselves head to head with a motorhome at least a similar size to ours. Now that could have been a battle of wills, or simply a matter of the passengers of each having to do points duty.

South Beach

Westport has dragged itself out of the doldrums and is most welcoming of tourists, almost vibrant even on such a soggy day. If reports in the Christchurch Press are to be believed,  the town is a cesspit of P – users and dopeheads, a hopeless backwater, but that is not what we have seen in the short time we have been here, and given we have been here at least twice before, we do have the advantage of comparison.

However rain is rain wherever you are, and if there is no good reason to be out in it, better to be tucked up in the warmh and security of one’s home. We made our way to the seashore and settled into the NZMCA park over property at South Beach. Chris read and I cooked up a batch of meals for the freezer.

After dinner there was a window of better weather and so we donned our raincoats and set out down to the beach, but no sooner did we arrive, the rain returned. We sought refuge on a cycle track through regenerating bush, a track of about three kilometres that winds this way and that, then back on itself, to gain maximum mileage in the smallest space. Wekas scrurried for cover as we walked along and other birds communicated their displeasure at the disruption of their bedtime. It was very unusual for us to be out and about after dinner.

This morning after finding the old laundry, tried and true, to no longer exist, we settled into the muddle of a backpackers’ hostel and used theirs. We looked rather out of place amongst the young travellers however needs must and washing machines and dryers are the same here as anywhere else.

Over lunch beside the Orawhaiti Lagoon, that which took my great grandfather’s grave with many others in a far distance past, we decided to head for Denniston for the afternoon. The rain looked like it had cleared at last and I was keen to maximize fine weather opportunities.

The eight kilometre road from the coastal road at Waimangaroa winds steeply up the escarpment, a wide sealed route but surely hard work for a motorhome engine. We detoured near the bottom to Conns Creek to check out the ruins at the bottom of the incline. From here one can look up the route of that engineering miracle to middle break, but not walk up too far. The bridge has long laid in bits in the gully below, and this is for looking, not touching.

There we fell into conversation with a youngish couple who were out for the day with their six children, the oldest just eight and the youngest still a chubby baby in arms. All but the latter were down in the creek looking for enough gold for Dad to buy a house here on the west coast. They were a happy lot, but I had the impression that Dad did not do too much work apart from seeding more progeny and filling in new applications at the government offices to meet the cost of each new edition. Both Chris and I thought they would fit in well to West Coast life should they be able to secure the $60,000 property they had spotted for sale “just up the road”.

Looking down over the shed area of Brakehead

Up at Brakehead, we were amazed at the changes made by DOC and Solid Energy to make this historical area even more tourist friendly than it was when we saw it twice before. We found ourselves a spot on the edge of a cliff between some vegetation, near the sign that gave blessing to certified fully self-contained vehicles to park up for the night, next to another whose occupants were obviously planning to do the same. Then we set off around the Brakehead walk, one advertised as a forty minute 1.1 kilometre loop, but currently not a loop and certainly taking a lot longer than the time suggested if you stop to read all the interpretative panels. Like Waiutu, but much better, much of the past has been well documented by photograph and these are well displayed.

A coal wagon poised at the top of the incline

We are near Brakehead at the top of the Dennison Incline from where coal was lowered the 518 metres from up in the clouds of the Rochfort Plateau to Conns Creek railway yard at the base of the hill. Eight full wagons travelled the incline every day, around three hundred and fifty tonnes of coal which was in turn was transported to Westport wharf. The first wagon of coal left Denniston in this fashion in 1880 and the last in August 1967, after almost eighty eight years. A drop in demand for coal coupled with high maintenance costs put paid to the operation.

Like Waiutu, Denniston is a ghost town, these days a collection of ruins, history and walking opportunities. During the one hundred years of mining, Denniston coal was hewn from different mines scattered across the Plateau; Whareatea, Escarpment, Coalbrookdale, Ironbridge, Sullivan, Cascade Section and Traceys Section and Banbury. Settlements spread beyond that Brakehead at Denniston as more miners arrived and mines opened. The population of the Plateau peaked in 1911 at just over 1,400 inhabitants.

Looking up to Brakehead

The two settlements of Denniston and Burnetts Face had grown rapidly and by 1900, each had a library, school, post office and telephone rooms, as well as shops and hotels. Denniston always had the edge also having the police station, fire station, school of mines, volunteer hall and four churches. Later a hospital, high school, bowling green, swimming baths, recreation grounds and tennis courts were added.

After spending a couple of hours exploring the immediate area around Brakehead, we retreated to our campspot and settled in for the evening, glad the weather is still looking hopeful for tomorrow. We have plans for redoing walks of yesteryear.

2 January 2016 - Reefton Racecourse

Certainly we are becoming soft in our old age, as was evident by complete acceptance of Chris’s idea that we move into a powered motorcamp for New Year’s Eve. This was partly for selfish reasons in that I knew I would have time to “play” on my computer during the afternoon given that the forecasted storms would keep us van-bound and I would not be able to do so, with an easy conscience or without upsetting the Practical Captain, without mains power. Yesterday I heard him with my own ears confess to being tight with power, so it is now official; despite the fact we have two solar panels, a generator and, by the very fact we have lived off the grid for several years, have become frugal in most matters, our power is rationed to save stress and heated discussion. So with that, moving in to the Central Campervan Park in Greymouth was a no-brainer.

The park is a small area behind a service station, close to the centre of town, offering power, water amd dump facilities, a laundry and a couple of unisex showers and toilets, catering to the “low-end” of the tourist market. Most of the customers are young folk travelling in cars or whizz-bang vans, on the cheap and currently the butt of many letters to the newspaper editors. Personally I dispute these nay-sayers; these folk who travel simply, not patronising the many starred hotels and fancy restaurants, do patronise the service stations, the supermarkets, the hardware shops and all the other kind of places they would if they had stayed at home, as well as splashing out periodically on meals, booze and adventure tourism. I say, give them a break, and provide toilets and rubbish bins along their routes so they can keep our lovely land clean and green. But then perhaps if I was a rich snob, I might say otherwise.

Anyway, we survived the storm through the night as one year changed to the next. The next morning we left promptly, and headed north east up the Grey valley, the brown sludge created by the night’s deluge soon camouflaged by the shallow gravel river braids and lupin cover. 

Soon after passing through Ikamatua which lies just north of the confluence of the Little Grey and the Big Grey Rivers, we turned west toward Blackwater which is no more than a cluster of houses and a long neglected school building. Here the road turns to gravel, becomes narrow and passes up through wonderful beech forest. 

Ruins on Prospect Hill

It had surprised me to see our destination, Waiutu, promoted in the glossy toruist brochures, because quite frankly, who wants to meet an incompetant tourist driver on this road! Especially when you are driving a large motorhome, or worse, if they are too! All I can say is that I had my toes and fingers crossed all the way in and was very very pleased when we arrived having met no-one. After the night of rain the roadside was boggy and any place that might sometimes be consider safe, would have been quite treacherous, but then,  I did say just a few days ago, I have become a poor passenger. 

Our camping spot from the Post Office

Waiutu was New Zealand’s richest gold mine in its day, the last of the West Coast’s great gold discoveries. The first big find was in 1905, and the lucky prospectors sold their rights to a speculator for £2,000. After about £1,000 had been spent proving the reef’s potential, it was bought for £30,000 by the London based Consolidated Goldfields of New Zealand. By mid-1908, the Blackwater Mine, as it was known, was fully operational and Waiutu was steadily growing around it. The population, which peaked at over 600 in the mid-1930sm enjoyed facilities which many larger centres went without. In 1936 when the reef had been worked well to the north, the Company switched its operations to Prohibition shaft on a hill above the town. It would eventually become New Zealand’s deepest mineshaft at 879 metres, more than a third of it below sea level.

In mid-1951, with enough rich quartz left to keep it going for years, it closed abruptly. The Blackwater shaft had collapsed, letting water and poisonous gas into the Prohibition workings. The company already struggling with falling production, labour shortages and wage increases, decided repairs would be uneconomic. With the closure of the mine, came the end of the town; the citizens dispersed and the town became a ghost town except for a few hardy souls who remained.

The mine had produced nearly three quarters of a million ounces of gold from over one and a half million tons of quartz. From over £4,500,000 in revenue, the company had paid nearly half a million in dividends. Of all New Zealand mines, only the Martha at Waihi produced more during the same era.

Arriving at the edge of what was once a thriving town, we headed up to the Prohibition Shaft. We had been here almost eight years ago, and then it had been a matter of taking great care how one went and picking about the ruins with little signage. The Department of Conservation now has management of the site, and with the help of the Friends of Waiutu, has done a magnificent job in making it all tourist friendly. Massive amounts of drainage and contouring, concreting and signage made our visit to this rather damp misty spot up in the clouds a most interesting experience. The little road up from the town is even narrower than that to Waiutu, so we hurried back down through the dense beech forest before any other visitors should arrive, then settled ourselves into a car park beside another motorhome by the ruins of the Blackwater shaft and associated buildings.

The Barber Shop

After lunch we walked a circuit of the town visiting the remains of the post office, the school, the recreation area, the tennis courts, numerous residences and shops and the swimming pools to name but a few. Fortunately a Czech miner by the name of Joseph Divis, with an avid interest in photography, spent some time working in the mines here, and then after being injured, continued to document life in Waiutu, and it is many of these reproduced photos that are the basis for the interpretative display boards about the town, which make the whole business so much more worthwhile.

We spent the night in situ, as did the other motorhomers who had already passed a couple before our arrival. We spent a short while chatting with Neville and Barbara, fascinated to find that not only were they living the gypsy life as we were but they had also spent three years travelling about Australia, however they had done it in a motorhome, whereas we had a car and caravan. We found too that we are heading generally in the same direction and may well meet up during our further exploration of this part of the coast.

Both parties agreed we would be best gone as early as possible in the morning to avoid the possibility of encountering oncoming traffic. I was all for getting out straight after rising and breakfasting further up the road, however Chris felt there was no such urgency and he was, of course, quite right. We left before our fellow campers, met no one and were in Reefton, thirty or so kilometres further north, before 9am.

Reefton with a population of little over 1,000, sits on the Inangahua River which rises in the Victoria Range and flows on down through the most beautiful beech forest  along the road from Springs Junction to Reefton. The town’s claim to fame includes the fact it was the first town in New Zealand,  and one of the first in the world, to have its own electricity supply and street lighting. During that innovative time, Reefton was the centre of numerous gold-bearing quartz reefs, most of which were over exploited in the 1870s. It still exists as a coal mining town and did spend many years in the doldrums, a real little backwater, but these days Reefton is actively promoting itself for tourism. Apart from sitting at the intersection of the roads to Greymouth, Christchurch and Westport, a geographical position that brings tourist trade by default, it has more recently become very popular with mountain biking.

The iStite was still to open when we arrived this morning, so we wandered up the street buying a newspaper from the superette and several books from a second-hand shop which has thousands of books lining the shelves in one premises, immediately next door to a premises selling second-hand items apart from books. The shopkeeper seemed rather overwhelmed by the number of books hanging about and was in the throes of moving cartons outside available at $1 each. Bookworms that we are, we could of course not resist; the van is now heavier again with volumes yet to be read.

Heading up the Murray Creek

We parked right beside the river and read then dined accompanied by the din of the water over the stones; it was as if an air-conditioner were running in the van. Then we set off a couple of kilometres toward Springs Flat to the tiny remnants of Blacks Point, the starting point for several excellent walks in the 182,000 hectare Victoria Forest Park, most of these in the Murray Creek Goldfield. 

There are several quite long loop walks on offer, but we had been warned by our unreliable weather app that rain was expected again at about 3pm, so we did not wish to head away from shelter for too long. We decided to head up Murray Creek to Energetic Junction and on to Cement Town, a distance that took us one hour to complete. The walk climbed steadily up into the stunning forest, following the creek on what appeared to be an old packhorse track, a gravel-like surface buried under the confetti of beech leaves. Apart from one small bridge cordoned off when we had to step across a stony creek, the pathway is well maintained and is truly beautiful. 

Before mining commenced in the 1880s, the steep hills were covered in mature red and silver beech forest with an understory of fuschia, kamahi, quintinia, five-finger jack and coprosmas. Red beech was used extensively within the mining industry and large areas were cleared, today much of the forest is regenerating, with red and silver beech the dominant species. We were pleased to see so many mature trees along our route. 

And crossing on the swingbridge

Cement Town is just a couple of minutes off the loop track that goes on to the Waitahu Junction, and was as far as we intended to walk today. We had thought the name of the town rather odd, unimaginative, even ugly, however did manage to make some sense of it all before too long. 

Gold-bearing conglomerates, known as “cement” to the miners, were worked over after the supply of gold nuggets ran dry. Here in 1968 a crude stamping battery was set up for this process, and the “cement” turned up gold, copper and even precious stones, but none in payable quantities. The associated coal deposits eventually proved more viable.

Here in this little mound above the Murray Creek there were once a hotel, store, bakery, slaughterhouse and market garden. Today there was little else but the sign marking that we were in the right place and the odd scrap of metal. It is so sad that a lively settlement can almost disappear without trace.

Retracing our steps as far as Energetic Junction, we decided to detour down to the Energetic Mine Shaft. Work started here in 1878, and eventually the shaft reached a depth of 692 metres, approximately 200 metres below sea level, at the same level those up at Prospect Hill were. Production ceased here in 1927 due to shaft collapse, a combined output of 203,785 ounces of gold had been achieved.

Standing in the middle of Cement Town

Despite the “twenty minute return walk” to this shaft, we still managed to reach the car park within two hours of setting out, that a clear indication of the effort required on the ascent compared to the descent. We shed our heavy boots and headed back into Reefton at once, happy the rain had yet to arrive. We were soon set up at the racecourse, which avails itself to members of the NZMCA for the princely sum of $2 per person per night, and still the rain had not arrived. In fact even as I write this up tonight after 8pm, it still has not come.