1st-8th April 2008 The Catlins Coast to Queensland, South Island


http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/findthebinghams/42CatlinsToMilfordSound for more pix.


This wonderfully scenic stretch of southern coastline is spectacular – often rugged and windswept, with rocky cliffs, sometimes vast sweeps of sandy inlets gently wafting with bull kelp, all breathtakingly beautiful. Purakaunui Bay was simply gorgeous and the Petrified Forest in Curio Bay was fascinating - you can see Jurassic tree stumps and fallen trunks from 180million years ago – we could even see bark and count rings.

Weather has been very kind and has stayed sunny and warm. We’ve done lots of great walks, many through forests, with enormous totara trees, ancient beech, giant tree ferns with carpets of green moss covering slowly decomposing timber– beautiful and very comfy.

Rick finally got to see the Hydro-Electric Power Station at Manapouri. It was really exciting, a trip across the beautiful lake, a 2km coach ride down into the mountain to see the huge generators churning out up to 825 megawatts of power for the aluminium smelting plant at Bluff. Before returning, the bus took us up the track to see Doubtful Sound (correctly a Fjord) from above – wow!

We delayed our cruise on Milford Sound (8m rain a year!) by a day for a better weather forecast. It was majestic, surrounded by towering mountains rising vertically from the fjord for 1.5km, with 150m high waterfalls - the scale of it is hard to grasp. It’s origins? Well, it’s either a drowned glacial valley and/or was created by the Maori demi-god, Tu-to-Rakiwhanoa, using ice-axes. Take your pick (sorry...).

The road from Te Anau to Milford has to be one of the most amazing, we’ve been on so far, flanked by mountains, forests and rivers, chasms– so many photo opportunities!, including a Kea (alpine parrot) that we had to shoo off the top of the van when it tried to re-arrange the satellite dish cables.

Queenstown has a pleasant water-front and is very activity-orientated. We resisted the urge to go white-water rafting, para-gliding, sky-diving, swinging (?), horse riding and ballooning. Instead, we stood on the A.J Hackett bungy-jumping platform at Kawarau Bridge (the world’s first), looked down and promptly retreated... Rick also had a close shave wet haircut experience, by a gay Ecuadorian with a penchant for fondling ears...that really made him squirm.

Lots of the Lord of the Rings film locations were in this area of the South Island (scenes are marked on many of the maps), so we’ve played the soundtrack and tried to compare with the DVD’s on our laptop.

We’re still meeting lots of people – Happy Hour (or 3) with 4 Kiwis, lovely evening at Gavin and Tania’s (they own the wonderful HouseTruck). There are loads of others making life-changing journeys too..

Rick is contemplating............ retirement.

26th – 31st March, 2008 Sheffield, in Canterbury, to Dunedin

For more photos, see http://picasaweb.google.com/findthebinghams/41SheffieldToDunedin

All this wildlife is such a privilege to see. Having 30 ton whales 30m away was an awesome experience; equally so was being 3m away (in a hide) from rare Yellow-Eyed Penguins. They’re known as ‘noisy-shouters’ – and they were. The rarer Little Blue penguins were so dinky (25cm tall) and such a funny sight, rolling in on waves, then being rolled out again before finally making it on to the sand and waddling up to their nests in the grass. Royal Albatrosses are damned impressive too, with 3.5m wingspans.

As for this chap – 2.5m and 150kg of Hooker’s Sea Lion. He rather surprised us by flopping out of the sand dunes just in front of us and then waddling to a suitable position on the beach, to just lozz, occasionally flicking sand over himself. They can move pretty fast, so we stayed the advised 10m away!

We had to visit Sheffield, of course - all of 40 houses, 2 churches, a garage and a fantastic pie shop with very friendly people (of course!). Rotherham was 10 houses and no pub, while I was intrigued by the origins of this...

After driving through the rather flat Mackenzie Country, (so-named after a jail-avoiding sheep-

stealer), with fields full of Merino sheep, cows and deer, we reached the magnificent glacier-fed Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki – achingly beautiful. ‘Rock flour’ (pulverised rock) gives them their beautiful turquoise colour. In the distance was Mount Cook looking suitably impressive (although it’s10m shorter than 1991, after the top dropped off.)

The Hooker Valley Track in the Aoraki Mount Cook National Park (UNESCO) is reputedly one of the best in the country. We thought it was fabulous and we were lucky enough to have sun all the way. We walked by the riverside along valley floor, between 700m high mountains with glaciers crawling down their sides. The lake below the terminal moraine was milky-white - beautiful but very cold!

We found yet more water at Benmore Hydro-electric Power Station - closed for repairs!

We’ve been fascinated by intriguing rock formations. Moeraki Boulders on Ortago Peninsula were certainly strange, formed by concretions around a lime crystal core (not my words, needless to say!). Some were 2m in diameter. The Elephant Rocks were similarly fascinating; hundreds of large, soft sandstone bottoms, shaped by wind and rain.

We liked Dunedin’s railway station building (1906). Much to Rick’s delight, we spent 5 hours on the Taieri Gorge Railway, the only route through the gorge-ous (sorry!) scenery of enormous rock faces, rivers and forest, over viaducts, bridges and up hills to see the most fantastic views. You had to spare a thought for those who’d cut through the schist rock in 1879 to create 235km of track for access to gold mining country – hard and dangerous work.

We’ve had yet more amazing stop-over spots – sometimes, we just sit there, not believing where we are and what we’re seeing!