Almost Directly South to Invercargill

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It should only take us a couple of hours driving to make it to Invercargill and on the map it looks about as direct as any of the drives so far on the Grand Tour.

Again the day has dawned clear and crisp and the forecast is clear for all day.

It was a bit sad to be moving on from such a comfortable and well appointed apartment but the adventure on Stewart Island beckons.

One would think there was no other highway to take us down to Invercargill but Highway 6 which we have been on since Nelson. There really isn’t another option as we start out from Queenstown, so 6 it is!

Sometimes when you are speeding along the highway you can’t pick up the name of any little side road that you pass but there was one this morning that caught our eye.

In this politically correct world that seems to dominate these days as we passed by Maori Jack Road that ran down to the lake, we wondered whether the name of the road might be changed when we pass by here again to keep everyone happy.The road was named for a local Maori man who was credited with being the first to find gold at Jack’s Point just outside of Queenstown.So perhaps the name can stay.

Soaring up towards the sky to the left of us were the Remarkables with its highest point being Double Cone at 2324metres.For the past 3 days we have had a wonderful clear view of this imposing mountain range. And when you are driving beneath it and looking almost directly skywards to take in the tops, the Remarkables can make you feel very insignificant.

Driving on towards Kingston we had to slow and take evasive action to allow a hawk to continue to stand over a possum road kill that the bird had decided to own.

This hadn’t been the first time on the Grand Tour that a hawk guarding it’s ‘property ‘had given us the eye as we slowed down because it was on the edge of the road as we approached.

More local animals came into sight a few corners further on as we caught up with something we didn’t think was part of the NZ Highway scene these days, sheep being moved between paddocks on the highway.

It was a large flock of sheep but with an energetic dog in front of our car yapping and barking, the way ahead on the right hand side of the road was being cleared for us to proceed slowly.

For the first time in 4 days we noticed a light breeze as we turned off the highway and drove down to the old Kingston Railway Station in the hope that we might catch a glimpse of AB795 the steam engine known as ‘The Kingston Flyer’ that once hauled the NZ Royal train.

The station is still there and for all intents and purposes is now a café. What was encouraging was to note that the rail tracks were still there and looked like they had been used recently.

A look back at where we had crossed the rail line revealed a locked gate with a small shunting engine, carriages AND The Kingston Flyer behind the barrier!

As we took photos a man came along and Gretchen got into talking with him. He explained that he was battling beauracry to get a permit to run The Kingston Flyer on a regular basis so he could offer a service to the general public with timetabled runs down to Fairlight about half an hour away where the rails are still laid to.The ‘Flyer’ had been out on a private corporate occasion at the weekend.

We had ridden the train many years ago when we holidayed in the South Island with our girls and it was a very enjoyable occasion and one that would still bring to pleasure to many people if only the powers that be and some locals who ‘don’t want a steam train in their ‘backyard’, would allow it to happen. Apparently there is a petition online to support the reinstatement of the train so anyone reading this and who love steam trains find the petition on the internet and get your signature to it!

The railway line south of Fairlight was taken up in ????as road transport was more flexible and probably more efficient than NZ Railways, which didn’t have a great reputation.However,as we continued south through wide-open farmland between the Hector Mountains in the east and the Eyre Mountains in the west, it was interesting to see that the embankments and line the rail took was still obvious almost everywhere.

Midday was approaching as we arrived into Lumsden which is a crossroads for not only north/south traffic, which we were but also east/west taking you either to Gore in the east or Te Anau in the west.

An enterprising couple had established a very appropriate named business ‘Café 6’around the theme of Route 66 in the USA with replica cars and interior decoration of the café. The place was doing a steady trade and the coffee stop was a welcome one for us.

During the golden days of the railway, Lumsden was an important station and even though trains no longer run through the small town, the station has been retained and refurbished housing a craft shop. You can still walk the platform and take in a board noting all the stations to Kingston, a set of handles that shifted the points in the rail yard and a restored carriage from the early 1900’s at the end of the platform.

Highway 6 continued taking us south towards Invercargill through farmland gradually featuring more and more dairy cows rather than sheep.

Once the sizable farming service town of Winton was behind us it wasn’t long before the city of Invercargill was upon us and we followed Dee Street into the city itself to our motel accommodation near the impressive was memorial.

It was a self check in situation and once we had that worked out we took a stroll downtown further on Dee Street.

Invercargill is not dissimilar to other provincial cities with shopping not necessarily located on the main thoroughfare so there wasn’t a lot to window shop at.

One shop that did catch our attention was Hubber Emproium, an absolute treasure trove of antiques of all kinds that so well stocked that one’s mind was blown away by the amount of product on view. The owner was keen to get to the Bank so we guessed he had made some sales today. He was very talkative but herded us through the myriad of ‘stuff’ to the front door so he could close up and go off and complete his banking.

Something was telling us that we should have found a restaurant to have dinner out and somewhere there were oysters on the menu just in case we couldn’t get to try the delicacy where they are grown near Stewart Island.

However we were both still a bit full after lunch and so we opted for fast food from McDonalds thinking that we might not have done justice to a full serving of Foveaux Strait Bluff oysters.

The weather forecast for tomorrow looks a bit dodgy with a very deep low passing well to the south of NZ which may throw some wild weather through the strait and we are pleased we paid a bit more to fly across on a 15 to 20 minute flight rather than an hour or longer on the catamaran in what can be very rough seas.

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