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Published: March 31st 2009
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First stop down the highway from Christine and Bernard's was Moeraki, place of the boulders.
This spot is unique. On a small area of beach, where countless years of wave action has gently eroded the cliffs, the erosion has exposed large boulders, which have rolled down onto the beach and are almost perfectly round as you can imagine, looking every bit like dinosaur eggs that seemed to be birthed by the cliffs.
We were greeted by the area's beach-combing dog, who accompanied us down onto the sand. His name tag said Rampage, and he was owned by the folks who had the restaurant at the parking area. He followed us all the way up the sand on our close-up visit to the boulders.
We noticed a number of other people squatting down on the beach, exclaiming to each other as they gathered something from the sand. When we got down among the boulders, we, too, noticed and picked up small softly colored snail-like shells, which glittered like jewels in the afternoon sun, and we took some to return home with, as a promised gift to Emily, Graci’s daughter, back in the States.
We had heard about an
exhibition of quilts that had been entered in the annual Hoffman Fabric Quilt Challenge , so we naturally detoured to see it. The competitors had had to incorporate a piece of fabric that was supplied to them and were not allowed to make a square or rectangular quilt.
The quilts that were created for this competition were a treat, and regional differences were interesting to pay attention to. Some featured birds and scenes of New Zealand, printed on fabric, some were completely abstract, some were shaped, all were neat to see and were specific to NZ.
Quilters are similar the world over, friendly, warm and welcoming: The ladies gallery sitting the show were no exception. Its like connecting to friends over fabric and shared interest without knowing their names.
Then we detoured off the main highway onto the coast road, to drive through the Catlins - the south-eastern most part of NZ's mainland. There was a second quilt exhibition in the Logger's museum. We had a chance to vote for the best, and all chose the same one - an art quilt of a mermaid on a rock.
There was an opportunity to see a waterfall
that we decided against walking to (it would have been 30 minutes round-trip) due to the rain bucketing down. But we drove on through beautiful old bush, and later were treated to a lovely full rainbow in compensation.
This is a place we could make a home in, if we decided to do that, and be happy. It is so much slower paced. We truly loved the rainforest areas, walking in all the green, seeing mosses and ferns everywhere. It seemed magical.
Every where we went there was colour that would inspire Graci to want to recreate this experience here in textiles. There is candy for the eyes in all directions.
After driving north again through Southland, we reached Gore and were able to stay at an old-style Lodge, with proprietors who made us so welcome that it felt like another few days would have seen us adopted. Next morning, it was time to take a serious look at the Galleries here, and we said goodbye to the Lodge owners like old friends.
One gallery that we went to was owned by an Englishman, and contained a very interesting variety of art featuring work from both New Zealand and
abroad. It was located upstairs in the old Post Office, and the owner said he would be happy to see samples of Paua’s artwork. Maybe she would have a NZ agent before too long! Later we emailed him some pictures of her work a few days later.
As Paua’s neck and upper back were hurting her badly, she made an appointment with a local chiropractor in Cromwell (our next destination) for 3:30 in the afternoon. We left Gore in late morning, allowing just enough time to get to Cromwell and find the street where the chiropractor was located.
It was not to be, as soon after leaving Gore, shudders and shakes to the front end had us pulling over - a flat tire needed changing. Anthony put on the spare, one of the space-saver types, that fortunately had enough air in it to get us to the next town of any size where we could get a repair. Paua had to postpone her appointment.
It turned out we needed a new tire, and we had the good fortune to arrive in a timely fashion, just before a queue of other customers showed up, which would have meant
we would probably have had to wait until the next day to get serviced. As it was, we were able to continue to Alexandra, through the now flooded Cromwell Gorge, to Cromwell and Lowburn, and to John and Sally.
These were the first hosts to have invited us on our travels, with whom we finally got to stay.
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