On the road to Moeraki

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We got up first thing Tuesday morning for a walk down to the Queenstown CBD to pick up the car. We had previously scouted out the Avis location and found a bakery for breakfast around the corner. While it wasn’t as good as Fergburger is sufficed to get us going. We picked up the car, a pretty new Camry and set off on the left side of the road. The first excitement, right outside the Avis lot, the town was doing something major to the street so a bit of a construction detour, but we got through that and came to our first round-a-bout (or rotary or traffic circle), as the signs say we “give way” to the cars on our right and turn into the circle to the left. By this point (about 50m from Avis) we’ve discovered two things. First on a Camry the driver can’t see the passenger side corner of the car. Second while most of the controls are where you would expect them, except on the right side, the windsheld wiper and turn signal stalks are reversed, so we kept wiping the windshield before changing lanes. We got back to the hotel to pick up our bags without much problem and headed out of town. Of course at the first turn, Pat tried to turn into the wrong lane but Connie caught him. After that it was pretty smooth sailing through the rest of Queenstown and out on the open road. The open road is where not being able to see the front left corner got fun. While NZ has great roads, they don’t believe in wide shoulders but do believe in placing road markers about every 50m. Since the driver is edging away from the oncoming cars this means the passenger is always anticipating a close encounter with whatever is just off the pavement on the left.

We had planned our first stop of the day at Arrowtown, a little town just up the road from Queenstown. In the early 1860s (while the US was otherwise occupied) gold was discovered in a stream near Arrowtown setting off a major gold rush. Arrowtown was the center of the action much like the towns on Cal Rt. 49 were in the Sierras. It has reinvented itself as a tourist site with a couple of blocks of cute shops and a little museum about the gold and the development of the town. It could just as well have been in California, but it made for a nice little break.

The next stop was Wanaka, but first we had to navigate the Crown Range. This was our first occasion crossing through a mountain pass. Twisty road going up, a spectacular view at the top, and more twisty bits going down. Since there isn’t a lot of traffic it’s not really a problem but you do have to keep your wits about you. There were a goodly number of bicyclists on the road, usually in ones or twos or in small groups; on the up side of the hills they certainly didn’t look like they were having much fun. In an hour or so we arrived at Wanaka, which sits in a wide valley at the southern of Lake Wanaka, but our reason for stopping was the Warbirds & Wheels museum consisting of (three guesses…) yes, old cars and planes. The museum started as the private collection of Sir Tim Wallis, a Kiwi entrepreneur. I mentioned in the Milford Sound post about going past deer farms, and that’s where Sir Tim enters the picture.

As we did many places, the English introduced deer to NZ in the nineteenth century for some reason that probably made a lot of sense at the time. As you would expect, the deer got into the bush and without natural predators the population exploded. Fortunately, rather than importing some deer predator (wolves anyone?) the government began paying a bounty for deer. While this was a good start, the lack of roads made it difficult for hunters to get to the deer and to get the carcasses out. By the ‘50’s the hunters were shooting the deer from helicopters. Sir Tim realized there was a market for venison in Europe and a surplus of deer (and grazing land) in NZ. He devised a way to shoot a net to capture deer alive then use the helicopter to airlift them back to farms in the valleys. With the breed stock he collected he was able to develop the commercial deer farming operation and afford his hobby of collecting WWII fighters. He was doing well till a few years ago when he augured in his Spitfire at the Wanaka Airport and suffered severe injuries. He’s slowly recovering, but probably won’t fly again. I’ll include a couple pics of the collection, but won’t bore you with all the details.

Just down the road from W&W is the Transport and Toy Museum which had a Canberra bomber and Centurion tank parked out front. We were getting pressed for time and trying to decide whether to pay the admission till we saw the crew working on the Canberra (look closely at the guy painting the right wing). With that we decided to press on to Lake Moeraki Wilderness Lodge.

Our home for the next two nights, the Wilderness Lodge, is about 25km north of Haast sitting pretty much by itself is a vast tract of temperate rain forest which runs from the mountains all the way to the Tasman Sea and has never been developed or disturbed in any significant way. The owners of the Lodge, Jerry and Anne are dedicated to showing people the wonders of the forest and telling about the Maori natives of NZ. More on the lodge and our activities there in our next post.

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Photos

Warbirds
ex-RNZAF A-4K

and Wheels
a '35 Aurburn, from IN

One Lane Bridge
One of many

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