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Published: November 28th 2008
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This is a jewel in a sapphire and emerald setting. A charming town on Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand's second-largest after Lake Taupo. It reminds me of some of the ski resorts I've been to in Europe with chic shops, international cuisine and tidy streets. The bus drove through the snowy peaks of the Southern Alps, rainforest on the western side, dry slopes in the lee shadow on the eastern.
Sweet as...
This is a typical Kiwi expression meaning “nice” or “good”. But sweet as what? It turns out to be an expression common to Kiwis and Aussies. In Australia you just say Sweet and that's the way the Kiwis started out saying it, too. For a reason no one has been able to explain to me so far, they've added the word “as”. Maybe sweet as Pavolva, the national dessert. This is a vanilla cake with a crispy biscuit bottom covered in whipped cream and topped with whatever you'd like to put on it, often fresh fruit or berries. Does sound sweet.
Queenstown is a holiday place, a little resort town in the middle of the country and one of the principal things to do here is go to
Milford Sound, a four-hour drive away. Early the next morning a cold wind was blowing as drove out of town through endless pastures with sheep like white boulders on green felt. Before settlers came the land was covered in blonde tussocks, the kind I'd seen at Mt. Tongariro. But sheep farmers cleared this away so not much of the tussock land remains. New Zealand boasts about 40 million sheep, five million cattle in a rapidly-growing industry as sheep farms convert to dairy farms, and 1.5 million wapiti raised for venison.
Deer jumpers
The latter offer an interesting story. Settlers brought deer in, along with brown and rainbow trout, to remind them of home. Deer for hunting and fish for angling. But there are no predators here so the deer flourished and soon became a problem as they began to destroy the forest. The government introduced a culling programme to deal with it and a new profession grew up. Instead of shooting the deer, they decided to capture and raise them for export as venison to Europe, primarily Germany. To capture them, cullers used helicopters that would fly in close enough for a man to jump out onto the back
of the animal and wrestle it to the ground. Trussed, the deer were flown to enclosed pastures and released for domestication. Profession: deer-jumper. Would have made a great What the hell...? photo.
I met one of them on the way from Franz Joseph to Queenstown. He runs the Bush Museum now, a man with a biting sense of humour that, judging from some of the grouch mail he had posted on his walls, some don't understand or appreciate. I thought he was very funny, but I like quirky humour. He had a weathered face, a beard and twinkling, mischievous eyes that radiated good humour and keen perception when it comes to bullshit. He was busy with people, so I didn't get a chance to ask him about deer-jumping.
But, back to the Milford trip. We drove on through hilly land like lumpy felt ground smooth by glaciers aeons ago until the road began to climb and beech forest appeared, green and black. Trees choked with moss and ivy, the result of heavy rainfall. And it began to rain again as we rose and rose towards the Homer Saddle - a pass through the mountains with the Homer Tunnel
below. Snowy peaks, thin white cascades flowing down dark, wet cliffs and a forest of fuscia trees with pinkish coloured bark.
I'd made friends with Paolo from Como in Italy and Christina from Barcelona in Spain and at Milford Sound we boarded a cruise boat that sailed out into the fjord. Spectacular cliffs dropping from peaks into the cold Tasman Sea. Because of the rain there were dozens of temporary cascades like white strings streaming down the cliffs and several permanent waterfalls. It cascades down over several levels so from the ship I could only see the final drop of a few dozen metres to the sea. Here we got soaking wet and trying to take pictures in the spray was like photographing the inside of a car wash. We sailed to the mouth of the fjord, turned and came back as the weather began to clear, cameras firing like machine guns the entire trip.
The sky cleared fully as we returned to Queenstown, turning the land from dull green to brilliant emerald and putting fire into the yellow flowers of Scottish Broom that lined the highway, another import by settlers.
Many Aucklanders have built holiday homes
in Queenstown for weekends and vacations, so it's a little like a miniature version of that city. Wonder what it'll become in the future.
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Jenny
non-member comment
Chez moi
I have not checked out your blog for a while so have read through it with interest... this is my home territory. I left Queenstown to travel the world. I always found it funny when people would try and coax me out of my home sickness with murmurs of mountains, lakes... skiing... You can see now why I laughed and said that I have that at home.