Tag Archives: Landscapes

The Third Island

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Wednesday 18 March 2026 – We could afford to make fairly stately progress southwards because our only dependency was on a ferry whose time had been rescheduled to 5.15pm, and that was a mere 200km away or so.  The weather outlook was pretty decent,

so the Southern Scenic Route seemed a good idea. We exited Te Anau past the Fjordland Vintage Machinery Museum,

which was intriguing, but not sufficiently so as to divert us. The scenic route was, indeed, scenic, with some lovely cloud pattern in the hills.

Jane had looked out a coffee stop at the Brunel Peaks Cafe,

which didn’t immediately look promising, but turned out to be a delightful choice – excellent coffee and cake, displays of local art and produce and friendly service.

As we wended our way southwards, we noticed an area where tussock grass had taken over – not something we’d seen before.

Tussocks are normally something you’d only see in alpine areas in NZ, because by and large the lowland areas were forests – not a tussock growth area – until people came and then they converted forest to farmland. So it was interesting to see the tussocks making a comeback where (I assume) farmland has been left untouched for a while.

Our next stop was at the Clifden Suspension Bridge. The name sounds suspiciously like the famous bridge in Clifton, Bristol, in the UK, and actually the NZ one even looks a little like Brunel’s creation.

It was built in 1899 to a design by the Southland County Engineer C H Howarth, and at the time had the longest main span (111.5m) in the country. It’s a pedestrian-only bridge these days. Jane noticed that there were some young things Up To Something on the far side of the bridge, accompanied by much shouting and laughter.  In the end, this is what they were doing.

They were wearing safety helmets, and so we supposed that what they were up to was legit; but they were clearly having some fun.

Jane had noticed something else on our route that had piqued her interest:

The Templeton Flax Mill Heritage Museum. All over New Zealand we had heard of the importance of flax to both indigenous and immigrant communities, so we were interested to understand more.

A few words about flax, first.  New Zealand flax (Phormium tenax) is a completely different plant from that which we call flax in the UK (Linum usitatissimum); delicate, blue-flowered UK flax is cultivated for its fine fibres – used to make linen – its seeds and their oil. In the UK, flax seeds are linseeds: I remember from my childhood, for example, the importance of linseed oil for treating cricket bats to stop them cracking or splintering. New Zealand flax has huge spear shaped, architectural, fibrous leaves, of huge importance to the Maori because of its “flaxibility” (ho, ho). The coarse, strong fibres could be made into rope, clothing, baskets, nets, canoe sails, even; the plant has medicinal properties and food value. Flax plants grow everywhere across the country; it’s amazing that something so easily available is of such huge utility. When the European settlers encountered the plant and recognised its utility, and recognised the similarities between the Maori processing of its fibres and the processing of flax back home, they applied the familiar name of “flax” to this foreign plant.

So, we were intrigued. The Templeton Mill Museum is only active on special Open Days or by appointment, so Jane got in touch with the owners to see whether there was any chance we could see it. They said that they weren’t officially open today but that, since the door was unlocked, we were welcome to look inside!

It’s the only authentic flax mill plant operating on its original 1940s site, showcasing 1860s to 1970s flax processing technology. It was in full operation until 1972, amazingly.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of information inside about how the final flax products are made from the leaves (foreground below)

The process involves harvesting, stripping, washing, bleaching, drying and scutching (a process of removing impurities from the fibres) before the fibres are baled into hanks (background above). Outside the mill, various varieties of flax are grown

and there is a drying rack for the fibres on display.

All of these various stops were pleasant diversions on our journey, which led us to Bluff, where we had to catch a ferry to Stewart Island. This ferry is another exclusive by RealNZ, by the way. We had thought that perhaps we could grab a coffee in the ferry terminal building, but the operation was a bit more basic than that; they operate a car park for ferry travellers and there’s a waiting room, but that’s about it. When we checked in, the chap who helped us suggested we went to “the pub across the road” for a coffee whilst we waited.  So we did – sort of. Actually, we’d noticed, on our way in, that Bluff was a very basic sort of town, but it did seem to have a lot of street art. So before we went for coffee, we strolled around for a bit, and found a decent array of murals

and other installations.

There was an artist’s studio/shop called JIMI RABBITZ, with some really bizarre creations,

and (allegedly) the world’s most southerly chippie.

We called into the Eagle Hotel for a coffee

but they didn’t do hot drinks, so we had a cold beer instead. It was a pretty hardcore traditionalist sort of place, with a monosyllabic barman, a dartboard, the rules of Quoits posted on the wall, and other pub games of a more mysterious nature available to play, too.

The time came for us to board our ferry, which was a catamaran type, a bit smaller than the ones we’d travelled on the day before,

and so we trooped on board and took our seats.  The skipper gave the usual safety chat and then set off.  He said that it was “pretty calm” on the water. If so, I’d hate to be in what he called rough, because on the first stretch of the journey, it felt like the ferry was airborne at times. It certainly crashed around a lot, but he seemed unfazed by it and no-one on board was sick, so maybe this was normal. After a bit everything calmed down and the remainder was a smooth journey (about an hour in total). I noticed, as we headed into Stewart Island, that the skipper had given one of the crew a chance to have a go at driving.

So: Stewart Island, then. Had you asked me, before this trip, how many islands constituted New Zealand, I would have said “two”; and I would have been wrong. There are three main islands, and Stewart Island is that third island, roughly 1800 km² in size. 85% of that is a national park and the only settlement is a town called Oban, which is a small place with fewer than 500 permanent inhabitants.

We were due to be staying at the Kaka Retreat. Rather than having to heave al our bags on to the ferry, we had only brought our backpacks and one small suitcase, so, since everything in Oban is close to everything else in Oban we were happy with a plan to walk to our accommodation. On the way I was less than happy, because although the distances are short, the streets are not flat and although it was a short walk it was quite a steep one, so I was glad to get there. There was no reception evident, so we wandered in and Jane was greeted by a woman at the first chalet who simply said “you’re not in this one”. Somewhat taken aback, Jane asked how we found out which one we were in, and was told to call the Bay Motel. She did so, and that’s when we found out that we’d managed to walk straight past the Bay Motel reception committee on the wharf – they had been waiting there with a sign with our names, and a van to take us up to the Retreat. Thank God for mobile phones, eh?

Anyway, the lady in charge came up from the wharf with a couple of other guests who were staying there and showed us around the accommodation. We settled in (yes, Twinings finest Earl Grey was involved) and prepared ourselves for our activity that evening, which was due to start in about an hour’s time….

…and which you’ll have to read about in the next entry. See you there!

 

Making Haast (Slowly) to Wānaka

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Saturday 14 March 2026 – The morning dawned at Lake Moeraki with bright sunshine, and mist on the lake.

We had to leave the Lodge, but there were birds fossicking about outside our bedroom, and so I had another go at photographing them. There were a couple of Tomtits,

and I finally managed to get a photo of a Fantail fanning its tail!

It’s about 170km from Lake Moeraki to Wānaka, which was our next stop. According to Google Maps, it should take two and a half hours. It took us seven. Admittedly, one of those hours was due to my forgetting to hand in our room key before we left the Wilderness Lodge. I only discovered this at our first stop, providentially just 30 minutes down the road, so we hightailed it back to the Lodge and I slunk in and left the key on an unattended reception desk. Hopefully, no-one will have noticed.

Our first stop, though, was rather charming. Virtually the entire journey to Wānaka is through bits of the country which have the Haast label, so Julius (or Johannes, depending on your choice of AI) von Haast was obviously a chap of considerable pith and moment as far as New Zealand is concerned. There’s a Township, a River, a Mountain, a Pass (which leads to Wānaka) and, oh yes, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With a visitor centre. To get to Haast, we had to cross the longest single-lane bridge in New Zealand

which is so long it has two passing places along it.

It’s rare to find a visitor centre described as “outstanding”, but this one is, and it’s a description that’s hard to fault. For the centre attendant upon such a small town, it’s huge,

and has a lot of information inside.

The information covers the environment, the ecology, the geology, the history and the wildlife – and it has a lot of each of those.  One animal we’d hoped we might be able to see in the flesh but couldn’t is the Fjordland Penguin, or Tawaki.  The reason we couldn’t see it is twofold: it’s endangered, and therefore somewhat rare; and its breeding season is December so it has wisely buggered off in search of a life at sea. But the visitor centre had an example in a display case

which shows it’s a crested penguin, similar to the Macaroni and Rockhopper penguins we saw on our Antarctic trip, in South Georgia and the Falklands. (Coo! Three plugs in one sentence! Nice one, me!) There’s also some decent scenery outside to be taken in.

After returning the key to the Lodge, we took coffee at the Spiker cafe again before pressing on towards Wānaka. The Lodge had thoughtfully provided driving information, which gave us the very strong impression that there was a lot to see on the route, and Jane’s researches had confirmed this. As well as the formal Things To Gawp At, there were times we could stop and marvel at the landscape surrounding the River Haast

including its confluence with the River Landsborough.

There were three waterfalls to be Gawped at: Roaring Billy

Thunder Creek;

and Fantail.

We had hoped to be able to see the Gates Of Haast, which is an impressive gorge with a road bridge over it; but the road was subject to roadworks and we would have been pretty unpopular had we stopped, so we had perforce to skip that. The final Gawpee was the Haast Pass Lookout, which, we discovered, was up quite a climb. The track to it is through rainforest

and is occasionally steep and clambery.

But were we put off? No! (Well, not since we were half way up by this point, anyway.)

The view at the top is worth the climb, particularly once you combine that with the smug sense of achievement attained through clambering 100m vertical up an average 1-in-7 slope.

Just as we left the lookout platform at the top, three young girls came charging up with some kind of music playing boom box, obviously intent on a bit of a shindig, so we had a narrow escape there.

After the lookout, the road drops down towards Wānaka, skirting two lakes, Wānaka

and Hāwea.

It’s clearly very photogenic, but what also struck us was the complete change in landscape, from green rainforest to tawny grassland. It’s a very sudden and marked change

and this is the landscape surrounding Wānaka. Stopping to gawp at the scenery was the main reason that a two-and-a-half hour drive took us seven hours to complete, and we’re glad that we made a day of the journey. We arrived at our accommodation, the Criffel Peak View B&B, and were made heartily welcome by the very animated host, Caroline, who provided us with tea and gave a running commentary about the state of the town, which, she said, would be utterly heaving, because of the A&P (Agricultural and Pastoral) Show, now probably the biggest show of its kind in the country. Fortunately, we’d taken a bite to eat en route, at the Blue Pools cafe in Makarora, so didn’t need to find a place at a restaurant. But we fancied a glass of something cold and a peek at the town, so we pottered in as the sun set

and found the bit by the lake where all the bars are.

Indeed, it was, erm, vibrant.

but we managed to find somewhere to sit and order a drink, and absorbed the vibe as the light faded.

We headed back to our accommodation and did the sort of thing that occurs to one after a glass or two: we looked at the stars. Well, it was a clear night, and we’re in a different hemisphere from normal, so it’s an obvious thing to do, right?

Photographically, it was always going to be a bit challenging, what with no tripod and that. but we took a few pictures with Night Mode on the phone

Southern Cross visible towards the bottom
Might this be the Milky Way?

and a couple with the Nikon, handheld,

Southern Cross towards the bottom
Maybe the Milky Way?

and the results were not entirely unusable.

That was it for the day, then. We had no formal activity planned for the morrow, but Caroline had planted an idea about what we could do with a day on our hands. So that’s what we’ll probably do and you’ll have to come back to find out what that was.

 

 

 

What, The Actual Fox?

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Wednesday 11 March 2026 – As is becoming a common pattern in this trip, a short journey from one accommodation to the next turned out to be rather less dull – in a good way – than the simple journey of a couple of hours it might have been had Jane not done her usual thing of finding Things To Do En Route.

What we had to achieve was to get from Franz Josef to Lake Moeraki, a journey of just over 100km. Since the journey passes by the neighbouring Fox Glacier, Jane suggested that we should investigate a couple of viewpoints that present themselves on Google Maps. Although the distance between the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers can be as little as five kilometres up in the mountains, it’s about 25km by road from one township to the other; as usual, quite a scenic drive.

The Fox Glacier township is even smaller than Franz Josef.

There is a Fox Glacier viewpoint marked on the maps; counter-intuitively, one drives 10km away from the glacier to reach it, but, distant as it is, it does offer a decent view of the glacier.

It also offers a fine view of a sweep of the southern alps, and a thoughtful person has installed a sighting device to help you identify what you’re looking at.

In theory, one can see Mounts Cook, Tasman, Dampier and Teichelmann (or, to give them their Māori names Aoraki, Rarkiroa, Rakiroa and Rakirua), but the weather was against us that day. As well as the sighting device, the site has an installation called “The Canoe of the Gods”.

An info board explains how this pays tribute to the myth of the creation of the mountains, which are named after four brothers whose canoe capsized and created the South Island.

We called in back at the township for a coffee and (in Jane’s case) a vast cheese scone (of which someone else ate half – Ed) at the excellent Cafe Nevé, and then carried on to the next viewpoint possibility, which is reached by a walk starting at a car park just outside town. The walk goes by the south side of the Fox River

along a well-made path. (It’s robust enough that one could drive up it and save all that energy; but that’s not allowed, and I’m rather glad, as it’s a pleasant walk. I was careful to walk in a butch kind of way, as I wanted to avoid the Fox Glacier mince.)

It’s exceedingly rainforesty – probably the most rainforesty rainforest we’ve yet walked in this trip.

We saw this sign

which indicates something I’m hoping for back in the UK. The temptation to see how warm the actual spring was by sticking a hand in evaporated somewhat on looking more closely at it.

The path leads gently uphill for about three km to a couple of viewpoints for the glacier, the first of which allows me to indulge in some photographic nerdery, because the light conditions were quite challenging – very dark foreground and bright background.

I had the Nikon with me as well as my phone.  Taking photos with the Nikon requires care – it would be easy to overexpose the bright parts, and once those highlights have been clipped they cannot be recovered. So the trick is to turn the exposure down so that the highlights are not lost. It is possible to do this on the phone, but it requires special buggering about which I can’t be bothered with. So I just pointed the phone at the scene to see how its software dealt with the conditions.  Here are the results.

Nikon, no processing
Phone, no processing

The phone’s Gallery app has its own processing capabilities and so I tweaked the phone image using the “Light Balance” slider. And, once I got to my laptop, I processed the Nikon RAW image using DxO Photolab. Again, here are the results.

Nikon, RAW processed
Samsung, Gallery processed

As ever, a certain amount of personal taste comes into this, but the Nikon image unsurprisingly has a lot more detail in it and I think looks a lot less garish. But putting the processed Nikon image next to the unprocessed phone image shows what a good job a modern software can do to improve phone images.

Nikon, RAW processed
Samsung, not processed

The path carries on from this viewpoint to another one where That Chap is on duty again to make sure you don’t do anything you might regret.

The view was fine enough

but Jane spotted that the clouds were moving leftwards so we waited a few minutes and – lo and behold!

we got a cracking photo of the glacier and the mountains beyond.

Much of the time we were there was accompanied by the soundtrack of helicopters whizzing about, and I wanted to wait to get the perfect shot of a helicopter against the glacier. So we waited and listened for a helicopter. Finally, one came along and flew by the glacier, as I wanted. You can see it in this photo.

Oh, yes you can.

I think that gives a great insight into the deceptively huge scale of the glacier.

Rather than just walk back along the path to the car park, we took a small diversion along what was signposted as a “Moraine Path”.  This was even more rainforesty.

It was a delightful diversion, including taking photos of the tiniest mushrooms you ever did see, which were growing out of a tree.

The path was quite up-and-downy for a while, but then offered the pleasing illusion of being part of a narrow gauge railway track.

It was a very enjoyable walk, but now it was time to head to Lake Moeraki, and our next destination, the Wilderness Lodge there. The weather had closed in a bit by then, and the landscapes on the drive were quite dramatic in places.

The Lodge is basically in the middle of nowhere – the nearest town is Haast, some 33km away.

It has cabins for guests

many of which, like ours, have a lovely view over the Moeraki River.

The lounges are very comfortable

and, as we discovered later, the food is excellent. But before we ate, we joined a guided tour organised by the Lodge, to explore a bit of the local area. Jack, our guide, explained a little bit about the unique nature of the environment. Lake Moeraki is near the west coast, but most of the bits north of it have been exploited in some way – what was forest is interspersed with farmland, which has changed the nature of the nature in it. But the Lake Moeraki area has never been exploited, and so is closer to what it was once originally.

The six of us were enjoined to don welly boots and Jack led us across the Munro Creek

and along a path where he explained about some of the trees we could see.

Silver Beech
White Pine (Kahikatea)
Red Pine (Rimu)
Mature Rimu
  • The Silver Beech, particularly one as old as this one, is a rare tree these days. It’s slow growing and doesn’t bear fruit – it reproduces via wind-blown pollen and seeds. The last ice age, 12,000 years ago, did for them and since that time other, faster growing trees have tended to dominate in the rainforest.
  • An example would be the White Pine, which is not a pine, actually – as any fule kno it is Dacrycarpus Dacrydioides. This particular tree was the basis for some added CGI and use in the film Avatar. It’s a faster-growing fruiting tree, hence being able to compete in the silent, slow war that is a rainforest. (Fruiting is useful – the fruit get eaten by birds, which then distribute the seeds.)
  • Finally, Jack asked us to guess the age of the Red Pine, or Rimu tree. To cut a long story short, we were all out by a long way: the one he showed us, not much taller then him, was about 100 years old – surviving by consuming tiny amounts of resource in order to grow.
  • He also showed us a mature Rimu, which, having got to the point where it reached the canopy, could compete on more equal terms with the trees around it and grow much faster. This one, like the other mature trees he showed us, is thought to be about 900 years old.

Then Jack took us towards the banks of the Moeraki River where he intended us to see a wildlife cabaret. But first we were distracted by a bit of birdlife – a fantail was flitting about in the trees near us, feasting on the insects we people disturb as we crash through their landscape.

I took many, many photos in an attempt to catch it with its tail doing the fan thing, but only managed to get this.

Not perfect, but you get the idea.

By the banks of the river, we had a view back to the Lodge

and Jack started the cabaret act by rinsing the chunks of meat he had in a container with river water and splashing the rinse water in, before throwing a couple of pieces of the meat into the river. Obligingly, the local denizens started appearing to feed.

and soon there were a lot of them.

These were Longfin Eels, the same species we’d seen in the Wildlife Centre in Hokitika, but living wild in the river. It’s worth emphasising that the eels are in no way dependent on this feeding, but they’re happy to join in if the food happens to be there.

Guide included for scale

Drinks and dinner followed our return to the Lodge and, well fed up and agreeably drunk, we retired for the night.  We had no formal activities planned for the next couple of days – a chance to relax, maybe, but my money is on Jane finding Interesting Things for us to Do.