Cruising Around Southland

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On the 12th Dave and I did a tour of the Manapouri Power Station. To get to the power station we had to cross Lake Manapouri, which is NZ's 5th largest lake covering 14,164 hec, 35,000 acres. Again the lake was surrounded by islands and cliffs. This lake has the most islands in it at 33 and is know for its high rainfall 4.5 m or 179.7 inches a year. Fortunetly for us we had a clear day with no rain in sight.

The power station is different because it is built underneath a mountain and is the largest power plant in NZ. As part of our tour we were taking underground through the tunnel in a tour bus. The tunnel is 2kms long and is made through solid granite, which is one of the hardest rocks in the world. The tunnel is 6m wide and 5 high, made big enough to transport the turbines down. When taking the turbines, etc down into the machine hall the trucks had to back down as there was nowhere to turn around, 7-12 hrs in reverse, anyone for that job ?

The power plant was built to support an aluminium smelter that is 191kms away in Bluff. The power station was started in 1963 and was finished in 1972 and has 7 turbines that are powered by the water that comes from Lake Manapouri. The most expensive road in NZ, the Wilmot Pass, was also made here and is used to connect Doubtful Sound and Lake Manapouri; it is 23km long and cost $2/inch to make (and it wasn't even paved!). After touring the power station our bus drove us on the Wilmot Pass to a lookout point for Doubtful Sound. After that our bus took us back to catch our boat back across the Lake and then headed back to Te Anau.

We left Te Anau the next day and took a different way back to Marianne and Geoff's. We drove the Southern Scenic road, which took us south to the bottom of the South Island. We crossed a Historic Suspension Bridge, which is the longest bridge of its type in NZ. But saying that there aren't many suspension bridges in NZ so its a easy record to have! As we got closer to the bottom of the South Island and closer to the Tasmen Sea we discovered what windswept trees look like. After putting up with the wind of the ocean the trees start to have a definite lean to them!! They grow twisted and gnarled, they we're pretty interesting to see though! We continued to drive past where Marianne and Geoff lived and went through Invercargill and headed to Bluff. Bluff is a small town and is know as the last town of the South Island and you can't go any further unless you have a boat or want to swim! It is the end of State Hwy 1, so now that we've been to Bluff we can say we've crossed all of NZ! After crossing that off our list of things to do we headed back to Winton.

Today Marianne took us through the Freezing Works where she works. This plant is the largest sheep slaughter plant in the Southern Hempishere and kills around 26,000 sheep a day. That's a lot of lamb chops!! We couldn't take any pictures but it was pretty damn interesting. They had 4 chains of sheep coming in the plant at once and it took 18 mins from the time they were stunned to the chillers. The plant wasn't quite as automated as some of the other plants that both Dave and I have seen, and there was lots of people around; that was until smoko arrived then everyone disappeared !?!

After that we headed to the museum at Invercargill to check out the Burt Munro Exhibition - The World's Fastest Indian, for anyone who's never heard of the movie its about is a kiwi hermit who spends his time working on his Indian motorcycle in his garage, his dream is to travel to the Bonneville Salt Flats and see how fast his bike can go. In the early 1960's he gets his chance, on one of his runs, his Indian reaches speeds of over 200 mph, setting a land speed record, (which is still held), and earning it the title of "World's Fastest Indian". All pretty interesting the mixture of historic and movie props that was on display, even Kendra agreed !

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Photos

Lake Manapouri
Just another scenic lake, part of it was used in Lord of the Rings.

Inside the mountain
View of the machine hall

Sheep and Mountains
Typical of the South Island

End of the road
Cant go any further

Worlds fastest Indian
vroom, vroom 200 mph+