Tag Archives: History

Scenic drive to Te Anau

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Monday 16 March 2026 – Our next stop was in Te Anau, which is at the southern end of Lake Te Anau, some 230km south-west of Wānaka and about a three-hour drive. Once again, we spent a great deal longer on the journey than the bare bones of the drive, as we had a couple of interesting towns and an encounter with flesh-eating and occasionally cannibalistic worms to fit into the journey. As well as that, we discovered as we went, there was a lot of scenery to photograph admire en route.

Our first stop was none of these things, though. As we were driving along, Jane said words which sounded to me like “pull in on the left here, there is a bra fence.” I couldn’t make sense of the second bit, but, because I know my place, I followed the basic instruction and pulled in on the left.  And, behold!

There was a bra fence! Its history is rather chequered. It started because some wag put four bras on a fence, and, rather like the padlock bridges which one sees around the world, grew as people informally contributed to it and eventually was deemed an eyesore. It lost, erm, support from the local council who ordered it to be removed. Eventually it was set up at its current location, a private driveway belonging to Cardrona tour guide Kelly Spaans and her partner Sean Colbourne, and a donation facility added. It has currently raised over NZ$200,000 for breast cancer charities.

Having made a small donation to what seems like a good cause, we carried on, over the Crown Range Pass, about 40km south of Wānaka. There is a scenic lookout there, and with good reason. The view is simply staggering.

It even improves as you head down towards Queenstown,

with, at one point, a 270-degree panoramic view.

Queenstown, which is the lakeside town you can see in the first of the photos above, is very well-known as a place to visit. Less familiar to us was the name of the next place we visited, at the suggestion of Phil and Chris, our friends in Brisbane: Arrowtown.  It’s a town with, we learned, a considerable history around gold mining and Chinese immigrants, so we drove in to take a look.  The first challenge appeared to be to find a parking spot, but we followed a P sign which led to a full car park but one with an overflow area. We reached the furthest depths of the overflow area before we found a space, and I was worried that we would have a major hike into town until I looked to my left and saw a building whose picture I’d seen on Google Maps. It was actually this building

which is part of the Historic Arrowtown Chinese Settlement. So we had accidentally parked just a few yards away from a key part of the town we wanted to see!

So: Arrowtown, then. It’s a historic town, and the start of this history is marked.

In August 1862 Jack Tewa (known as Maori Jack) found gold in the Arrow River at this spot, and – who’d a thunk it? – very soon a town of 800 miners sprang up. The context of what follows is the Otago Gold Rush, which brought miners from all corners to this area of New Zealand in the 1860s. By 1865, the first flush was over and the provincial councils were worried about the local economy collapsing, so invited Chinese miners to come over and have a go. Altogether, some 8,000 miners came over and worked in the Otago area. In Arrowtown this was an inglorious episode where the Chinese were invited but not welcome; they were forced to live in huts beside Bush Creek, a tributary to the Arrow River, and endured considerable hostility from the local community. But the Chinese community in Arrowtown held together and developed while in others the Chinese, having made their money, moved away and any sites were abandoned. The site in Arrowtown is a partial restoration of the settlement, and “a mute reminder and tribute to the contribution made by Chinese goldminers and business people to the region’s gold mining, cultural and business history”.

There are several buildings to be seen on a short trail beside the creek. The building shown above, the one that caught my eye, is Al Lum’s Store, which stocked many of the European and imported goods that the Chinese miners needed. There are a few others, some dwellings and some used more for storage.

The main street in Arrowtown has many historic buildings still in use, and is a pleasant area to walk around. I wonder what the locals think about the large numbers of tourists who come to the town; one hopes they appreciate the income this represents.

Queenstown is basically next door to Arrowtown, but there’s still room for some scenery between the two.

It’s even more challenging to park in than Arrowtown. Caroline had recommended that we park at the Ice Arena and walk to the town through the gardens, so that’s what we did (but had to wait for someone to leave before we could park even there).

The gardens form an attractive area, with ponds and statuary

“Kuri”, by Richard Wells

“The Good Book” by Trevor Askin

and an area with some commemorative works in it

Bruce Grant, son of Queenstown, who ascended K2

Scott, Oates and the team who reached the South Pole but sadly didn’t make it back

From the gardens, you can go down to the waterfront and walk back to the town

above which one can see the Queenstown Gondola ascending.  This is one of the many Things To Do in Queenstown, but we only had time for a quick coffee (OK, OK, and a scone, yes) before we had to move on. So we left Queenstown largely unexplored, but we needed to get to Te Anau in time for our date with those worms. The rest of the drive was quite scenic

without any particular Lookouts to look out for; and the scenery softened somewhat from the jaggedy mountains to a more rounded landscape.

The area is very pastoral, with lots of farming. At one point it appeared that neighbouring farms were competing in the number of hay “marshmallows” they could dot around their fields.

We had to get to Te Anau by 4.30pm in order to join a trip to some glowworm caves. We’d seen glowworms in the wild before, but were intrigued by the idea of an exploration into caves.  The excursion is exclusively offered by RealNZ, which offers a number of excursions around the South Island (as we would see during the rest of our trip, actually). We checked in at their waterfront office in Te Anau and joined the happy throng

awaiting the boat which would take us to the caves.

It’s about half an hour’s cruise to Cavern House, where RealNZ have a visitor hut, which they use to brief people about the cave expedition. We kind of knew about the worms and the threads they dangle to ensnare insects attracted by the light they can emit, but we got a lot more detail via this briefing. Jane took photos of some of the pictures they showed us.

Glowworm threads

A glowworm exuding a thread

Among the nuggets we were told:

  • The largest insect they can deal with is a moth. Having ensnared it, they attack it through its eyes, the only way the worm can get at the moth’s good bits
  • The worm’s light comes from a mixture of three chemicals; it takes a worm around 45 minutes to kindle a light and about 10 minutes to extinguish it
  • They are territorial; one worm might knock a neighbour off its bit of cave roof if it encroaches
  • They are also cannibalistic; they might eat the other encroaching worm in order to maintain territory

We were also told that photography was forbidden; I knew this in advance, and so was emotionally prepared for this hardship.

The punters were then split into groups who each did something else whilst another group was looking at the worms. It’s a slick operation that RealNZ runs there, with 11 tours in a day and two to three dozen people in a tour. Since photography is forbidden, I can’t bring you my own photos, but there are some on the RealNZ site.

We had a short nature trek whilst the other group were in the caves, then we filed in (under a very low rock entrance) to the caves, which have been caused, of course, by rushing water. It’s still rushing, and in huge quantities – the name Te Anau comes from these caves, meaning the place of swirling waters – so at first things were very noisy as we followed a walkway past subterranean waterfalls and over rapids, with the glow of numbers of worms already visible. Eventually and in almost total darkness we clambered into a boat on a subterranean lake; this was manoeuvred by our guide pulling on a cable along a channel and into a chamber illuminated solely by the light of thousands, probably tens of thousands, of worms. It was quite the spectacle and the magic would have been ruined had people been trying to capture it on their phones, so the moratorium on photography makes complete sense.

We were glad that we’d made it to Te Anau in time for our cruise, which was a very good experience. The only suggestion I’d make is that they sell photos of the various parts of the trip – the waterfall and the rapids would make good images, and of course the worms themselves, difficult as it is to convey photographically. If they need a jobbing photographer to attempt these things, then they can contact me through this site…..

Only after this trip could we get to our accommodation in Te Anau, the comfortable and well-organised B&B called Dunluce. Te Anau was our base for one more activity, which I will tell you all about in the next entry.

 

Arrival to Auckland

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Tuesday 10 February 2026 – In many ways it’s nice to have a late start to one’s travels. No early morning stuffing last-minute items into suitcases, no fretting about non-appearance of taxis to the airport, plenty of time to complete the admin of leaving the house in an orderly fashion, with the heating turned down, the lights turned off, the fridge having been run down to a satisfactory minimum.

Great in theory. In practice it means at least an hour sitting and waiting for the taxi with a feeling of slight agitation as you think up last-minute things to worry about. And specifically in my case, the relaxed start delivered a small but telling life lesson which is this: why not have a spare electric toothbrush head permanently resident in your sponge bag, eh? That would mean you wouldn’t forget to bring one because your relaxed departure resulted in slightly too much complacency about having packed the essentials, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it?

Something of a first-world problem, I realise, but to me the new things one should learn through travelling should be wider cultural issues than discovering how difficult it is to clean one’s teeth with a conventional toothbrush.

Anyhoo.

All the other aspects of the journey to get to New Zealand went very smoothly. The Emirates service was overall superb, and it’s not their fault that it takes 23 hours in the air to get halfway round the globe. As I suspected, I found it quite difficult to find anything among the over 6,500 items on offer as part of their in-flight entertainment that I really wanted to watch. However, I spotted on one screen that there was coverage planned of the T20 World Cup matches.

That’s cricket, in case you need your cultural horizons widened. I searched among their various offerings, but couldn’t find a reference to it anywhere, but spotted someone else watching it and eventually worked out that it was a live broadcast channel. So I was actually able to watch England play cricket in India as I sat in an aeroplane halfway between Dubai and Auckland. Truly, technology is a thing to marvel at.

This is the following match, by the way – Ireland v Sri Lanka

England almost managed to lose their match against Nepal, but won after a thrilling last-over finish. Sam Curran, you are The Man.

Sorry, got carried away there. The rest of the journey was very fine, with lovely food, attentive service and an almost complete lack of sleep for me, but we arrived in good enough order at the Auckland City Hotel, which is not particularly ritzy, but offered us a perfectly decent room which, though unremarkable in most aspects, was outstanding in one.

Check out the tea bags at bottom left. There were big mugs provided, too!

The rooms may be conventional, but the public areas of the hotel are quite funky in their decor,

and it’s located quite near the downtown area. So, having checked in at around 1pm, we went for a walk. Obviously.

Our main objective was to get down to the waterfront where it was a reasonable bet that there would be a good variety of eateries. En route, we passed an impressive-looking church, St. Matthews-in-the-City,

so we looked in.

It’s not a hugely ornate interior, but there’s some decent stained glass, including some lovely modern work.

We pressed on down to the waterfront, which has a pleasant, gentrified air about it,

and found The Conservatory,

which served us a very nice meal, full of tangy Asian-fusion tastes and too large by the amount of one portion of sweet potato fries, the ordering of which was entirely my idea and the source of much regret that we couldn’t do it justice. Afterwards, being stuffed full, it was good to have a reasonable distance to walk back to the hotel, to try to settle what was a lovely but excessive meal. The walk back gave us a chance to see some of the architectural variety on view in Auckland. The city isn’t what I would call a hugely attractive place, but there are some corners where the older buildings have survived the tide of modern steel and glass.

The Ferry Building is an attractive edifice

as is Waitemata train station.

Some of the modern buildings are quite interesting, too.

Thus ended the day, as we found ourselves comprehensively tuckered out when we got back to the hotel. We had enough energy to brew some tea and that was it before we turned in for the night.

Although I was completely knackered – I was within a toucher of collapsing face down on my keyboard as I attempted to edit up some of the photos from the day – I expected that jet lag would prevent me from having a good night’s sleep; my normal experience (particularly when travelling eastwards across time zones) is that I sleep until around 4am and then wake up, completely alert and ready for a day’s activity that isn’t going to start for several hours yet. Last night, however, was not thus plagued. I suffered no major periods of wakefulness, but it was clear from looking at my Garmin Body Battery, a reliable guide to my general state of wellness, that jet lag was going to take its toll for at least another day.

We had paid for a hotel breakfast in advance, which turned out not to have been the best decision; the charitable description of what’s on offer would be “adequate”. But it was sustenance for another day, and so accordingly we set out to discover what further treats Auckland had in store for us.

It has to be said that there’s not a huge amount to see or do in Auckland city. The waterfront that we’d wandered round yesterday is very pleasant, and indeed all of the downtown area is decent enough; but there’s not a huge list of Things To See And Do for the visiting tourist. One thing stands out, literally and figuratively: the Sky Tower.

This was a rather startling demonstration to me of the power of false memory. I have visited Auckland once before, in 1988, and I would have been prepared to swear under oath that I had been up the Sky Tower when I was here last. Since it wasn’t actually opened until 1997, that was patently not the case, and I can’t imagine why I’d thought it was; perhaps I’d just seen photos and conflated it with my experiences of going up similar towers in, for example, Sydney and Toronto. Anyway, having bought tickets online, we blundered about until we found the entrance, and the friendly staff there, in their very striking and colourfully-designed jackets, showed us to the lifts that took us up to the various observation decks on offer. The view is, unsurprisingly, pretty good from up there,

and it’s interesting to see various of the city’s buildings from on high.

St. Matthews-in-the-City
Town Hall
War Museum

It’s possible to bungee jump from high up on the building. We didn’t do that, but, as we sat enjoying a cup of coffee, we also saw that it was possible to walk around the outside.

We didn’t do that, either. I mean, it’s not as if you’re going to get a better view from out there than you can from in here; and you have to get kitted out with jump suits and they won’t let you take your own photos, and so it’s not a prospect that interests me at all. But it was interesting to see others doing it, and there was another cabaret turn going on as well;

the wooden boarding round the building was getting some kind of spray treatment. There was a mystery object, too.

There were supporting stanchions at intervals all around the building, and all of them had an area where a bracket could be bolted on; mysteriously, some of these brackets were missing, but in all cases there was evidence of recent work to excavate a smooth but inexplicable indent in the wood surrounding them. Answers on a postcard, please….

After our sojourn at the Sky Tower, we headed back down towards the waterfront area to take a look at the one other item of interest that Jane had unearthed – the Maritime Museum. This took us past the cathedral, St. Patrick’s. We looked in.

Unusually for a Catholic Church, it’s not sumptuously appointed, but there’s once again some lovely stained glass

but there was an Adoration going on, which meant that I got told off for taking photos, which had the potential to be a distraction for the people there having their spiritual moment. I have to say that in all the Catholic churches I’ve visited – and there have been a few – I have never come across the Adoration before as a formal ritual, so my ignorance rather let me down, I fear. I apologised, of course, but left shortly afterwards, feeling a bit embarrassed.

We made our way to the Maritime Museum and headed for the ticket desk. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but given the fact that New Zealand is made up of islands, one could reasonably hope for an interesting wander round. In the event, serendipity and Jane’s observation skills added a component to the day that was unusual, enjoyable and informative. But first we went into the galleries of the museum. The first area was dedicated to the indigenous history of oceangoing, which was quite considerable and far-ranging.

This being an area unfamiliar beyond having watched both Moana films, there was a lot of interesting content about traditional boat building and sailing. Among the many things I learned from this section of the museum were: the fact that the outrigger of sailing canoes was always to windward (I had previously thought it was to leeward to prevent capsize, but no: it’s there to sit on to provide counter weight to the force of the wind); the fact that outriggers could be sailed in either direction (an outrigger boat with a lateen sail can only go in one direction in any given wind and I wondered what happened if this wasn’t the direction one wanted to go in; the answer is that the yard, from which the lateen sail is hung, can be unshipped from one end of the boat and resettled at the other).

The outrigger sailboat, with lateen sail suspended from a yard

Where the yard meets the deck, it is lashed into a receiving socket. There’s one at the other end of the boat for sailing the other tack

The other, somewhat startling, thing I learned was that there is a tradition of shark-calling. Practitioners could summon a shark by singing a particular melody and thrashing the water with a special shark-calling apparatus made of coconut shells.

This combination would tempt a shark to the surface where it could be captured and eventually killed and eaten. Crikey!

The serendipitous aspect of the museum visit was a short harbour cruise on a sail boat, actually under sail – much more interesting than siting on a boring old motor vessel! The boat in question was the Ted Ashby,

a gaff-rigged ketch, a deck scow, built in Auckland in 1993, a replica of one of the region’s original scow fleet from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (A scow is a flat-bottomed work boat or barge for transporting non-perishable freight.) It was built and named in honour of, surprise, Ted Ashby, a scowman and author who was involved with these and similar boats for most of his adult life. About 20 people at a time can go on board for a one-hour cruise out into the harbour and back. It was a good day for this (not raining, not too windy) and we got some great views of the city skyline and the harbour bridge as we went.

A yacht race was ongoing as we sailed around

The thing that marked the cruise out, apart from the chance to chat with the crew and understand a bit of the history of these boats, was the opportunity for people to help out with the hauling and lowering of the sails.

This replica had an engine, but the boats were originally sail-only and they died out because of the invention and adoption of the internal combustion engine. Nothing to do with putting engines on boats – it was because these engines enabled swift land transport, so the need for the working scows disappeared.

The cruise was a very engaging and interesting way of getting a different view of the city, and once we got back we took a look at the third component of the museum, which was called “Blue Water, Black Magic“, the story of the innovative design, meticulous teamwork and outstanding leadership which led to New Zealand’s international prominence and success in, particularly, the America’s Cup. As well as a huge variety of the smaller dinghies and yachts in New Zealand’s history of sailing, the museum has a couple of the America’s Cup boats which have won them such renown. This is NZL32, the 1995 America’s Cup winner.

Outside the museum is KZ1,

called the Big Boat (no, really?) and a contender for the Cup in 1988. As is common with that particular race, results were often settled in the courtroom rather than on the water, and that year was the subject of a huge amount of litigation about the rules governing the eligibility of boats. These days, there’s much tighter control and less variation between individual boats, but the practical upshot of 1988 was that this Big Boat, the fastest monohull in the world at the time, was comprehensively thrashed by the American entry, which was a catamaran. Any fule kno that a catamaran is vastly quicker than a monohull of comparable size, so there was actually little point in the race taking place at all. Privately, I think that the yanks were so pissed off with losing the 1983 Cup (the first time that America had not won it, despite massive massaging of the rules in their favour) that the 1988 litigation was always likely to end up in an American victory despite what common sense and moral values suggest.

The museum has a replica of the America’s Cup in it, and, tellingly, near it a replica of this replica, made out of plastic from sea-borne rubbish.

After the museum it was time for a late lunch, and Jane had lighted upon an establishment with the unlikely name of Hello Beasty.

It’s another Asian-fusion establishment, and the food was terrific – really tasty and tangy. And they had softshell crabs, so Jane was in heaven. This was an excellent end to a day that turned out to be much more interesting and varied than I had expected.

I’m not quite sure what Auckland has to offer for our second and final day here. Jane has, as ever, been on the lookout for Things To Do, and I guess I’ll find out what they are in due course; I will surely keep you informed.

Raining in our expectations

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Monday 29 September 2025 – Today was our last monastery. You’ll probably be glad, having been assailed by multiple images of multiple frescoed walls and ceilings, but stick with me one last time, eh?

The monastery, Voroneț monastery, is about 10km from the Humor monastery, i.e. about 12km from Maridor, where we’re staying. The original idea, as positied in our itinerary, was to be driven over there and to walk back. Given that we awoke to a damp, dismal day, with the prospect of rain for quite a bit of it, this plan didn’t appeal. We agreed with the lady of the house that we would be driven over there and also get a lift back.

After doing battle with a less-than-satisfactory shower which dispensed only less-than-hot water, we had a late breakfast. It was an ample meal, bearing considerable evidence of its rural roots – fried eggs, copious amounts of two sorts of cheese, meatballs, small cocktail-sized sausages, something that Julia the previous evening had described as buttermilk but which was more akin to a thin, somewhat fizzy yoghurt, bread and butter, plum jam and mashed avocado. We managed to get hot water for our tea, so we were well fed up by 10am, when the man of the house came to take us to the monastery. It was raining really quite hard at this point, and, rather engagingly en route, he picked up an elderly chap who was walking to town (a 7km journey) and dropped him off at the pharmacy. Then he took us to the monastery and, to our surprise, told us he’d wait whilst we looked around. This saved us the bother of working out how to get picked up and we were correspondingly grateful.

So: the monastery. It was constructed by Stephen the Great in 1488 over a period of 3 months and 3 weeks to commemorate the victory at Battle of Vaslui. Its walls weren’t painted until 1547, but they obviously did a bang up job, because the monastery has in its time been called the “Sistine Chapel of the East” for its vivid frescoes, which feature an intense shade of blue known in Romania as “Voroneț blue.”

However.

This is what you see as you walk in through the gate.

It’s a sad sight, not too surprising, I suppose. The monastery was deserted soon after 1775, when the Habsburg monarchy annexed the northern part of Moldavia and the monks only returned to Voroneț in 1991. It’s amazing, really, that those frescoes on the other side of the building have survived as well as they have.

The frescoes on the flat wall at the end of the monastery building also have survived well.

The story of the Last Judgement depicted on this wall seems to be similar to that on the narthex at Humor. (Voroneț came first – Ed)

Inside, as usual there was a prohibition on photography, but again, some others were taking  pictures, so I followed suit, as the interior is, like the others, a thing of joy.

For some reason, there was a seismograph installation in the church.

So there it was – our final monastery.

It was still raining as we went outside to be driven back to Maridor. The weather relented occasionally later and enabled Jane to get a couple of non-spattered views across the countryside from our room,

but the weather was too unreliable to risk going out for a walk and disturbing all the neighbourhood dogs, so we spent the rest of the day in sloth, drinking tea and sustaining ourselves with the delicious fudge-like something-or-other that we’d bought at Pasul Palma.

On this trip, we have now visited four of the six or seven painted monasteries of Bucovina which have UNESCO World Heritage status. The frescoed exteriors all date from the 1500s and of course show various levels of deterioration due to the effects of the weather (generally affecting one side more than the others), deficiencies of technique and degree of upkeep. Looking at them in chronological order:

Humor: one of the oldest, it was founded by Prince Petru Rares and painted in 1530. It is known for the rich red pigments but has deteriorated badly on one side.

Moldovița: also founded by Petru Rares and painted in 1532.

Voroneț: built by Stephen the Great in 1488 but not painted until 1547, it was deserted for 200 years between 1774 and 1991and fell into disrepair, hence the considerable deterioration.

Sucevița: founded by the Movilă family and painted in 1581, Sucevița was the last and is considered the finest of them all. Techniques of painting and upkeep had improved over the fifty years since Humor; the monastery was in a sheltered position and was additionally protected by high fortress walls, and as a result it is possible to get an inkling of how spectacular these monasteries must have looked 500 years ago!

We’ve therefore done what we set out to do – a short exploration of the country’s capital, a little hiking in the Carpathian mountains and a visit to probably the best-preserved of the Painted Monasteries. En passant, we’ve also learned a lot of the history of the country, both ancient and modern, seen a variety of its vistas and cultures, enjoyed meeting its people and feel we appreciate the place somewhat more than we did before we first came. We’ve been extraordinarily lucky with the weather, found gin and tonic in most places and didn’t run out of Twinings finest Earl Grey at any point – a most satisfactory set of achievements all round.

All we have to do now is to get home, a process which will take more than one day. The theory goes that we catch a train tomorrow for the six-hour train journey to Bucharest, overnight in Bucharest and finish by taking a ridiculously early flight back to Blighty. Wish us luck.