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.