Here Be Dragons

Go West

Being an account of Sara and my journeys across the West Coast. Guest blogged by Sara with me like this. 'Cause I'm lazy, and also it kept her busy for awhile. Rah Rah.

Easter Weekend. We went to the Coast. We had KFC before leaving.... Tim decided that the threat level of mashies should be up graded to high. Damn mashies, they taste soo good. Damn them.

We drove through Arthurs pass. Good work Arthur. Got to Greymouth too late to do anything exciting she says this like there is something do do in Greymouth if only you arrive early. Not so. so we went for tea ...at the Union Hotel. A remarkable Westcoast institution that gives us pause to comment on the large portions of steak heaped upon plates (with bowls of mushrooms and gravy... mmm yummy). HUGE steak.

Also worthy of a mention is the fact that we don't get the sun setting on the sea, I think this is a real shame.

After breakfast, we went to the monument of Tourism that is Shantytown. This was to get Tim some gold (one of the main goals of the trip). We successfully retrieved some after large amounts of blood sweat and tears... and that was just the guys that were showing us how to pan for gold. ( I have some amusing photos of Tim with his concentration face on as he pans intently) Gold!

We then drove the three hours to Fox Glacier on gently winding roads with visually spectacular scenery and no radio, cd or tapes. This due to the fact that the rental car we had while my ute was panel-beaten (not my fault) (nor mine), had no booster on the fm, didn't play the cd-tape-converter thingy for my discman and who has tapes these days anyway?

Frans and Fox weirdly have that feel of ski towns (or maybe villages would be more appropriate) with bus loads & bus loads of tourists with appropriate souvenir, remarkably cool(ish) cafes and a token petrol station. Not to mention the oversized DOC information warehouses. I have never seen so many camper vans in all my life. And whenever we say one of those green Kiwi experiences busses Sara would scream "shag bus, shag bus" and giggle...

At Fox we stayed with Dale (a friend of Mum's). I was apprehensive at first but he turned out to be the most laid back dude (and not stoned) with the most giant home theatre system. They gave us food, warmth and importantly Tekken Tag (which kept Tim and the kids amused). Also (and probably most usefully) a room with a bed. the view from this room was amazing looking straight out to Aoraki, Mt Cook and Mt Tasman. It was really pretty.

Under instruction (from Mum) we travelled to the remarkable Lake Matheson. It was really reflective...until I threw lots of bread in to feed the eels, but the ducks miraculously appeared instead and made the lake all wavy. We left speedily followed in hot pursuit by some grumpy but luckily oversized American tourists.

We then made our way back to Hokitika the Home of Jade (it says so on the sign). Taking note of this we thought we should get some. We went to the what turned out to be the briscoes equivalent of a jade shop, it didn't have anything nice so we minced ? around for a while then left. Wandering fortunately around a nearish corner and past a nice little shop which was much cooler. From which we purchased a piece for each other. Which I'm told is the only way to do this kind of thing. Mine is a beautiful koru style piece and Tim's a funky transluscent(ish) kindof Oakly koru.. very cool, if a little hard to explain.

Upon returning to Greymouth and rating it still not very exciting we thought we'd drive to Blackball (about 25 minutes away) We got there, drove down the main street stopped outside the "Formerly the" Blackball Hilton and rated it also not very exciting and drove back to Greymouth. The renowned salami shop wasn't open.

The following morning we wound our way up past Punakiki. Tim gave much kudos to the pathways and little stonewalls that guided our way around the rocks to a non full tide blow-hole (more appropriately called a hole at the time we saw it).

But I must say I love the coast, it has the most rugged beautiful coastline. Really wow...... words fail me.

After a brief lunch a Percy's (though stuck in Westport still a super nice cafe) we meandered up the Buller gorge. Deciding to forgo Reefton, the first place to get electricity in NZ, in favour of walking across NZ's longest swing bridge. This miracle of modern engineering traverses across a spectacular gorge to a place where you can view a cliff where the southern alps rose 4 metres in the Murchison earthquake. I wanted to see that. 4m! cool. So if you ever get to go DON'T. Not for $15 to walk across a maybe 20ish metre bridge above a slowly not quite garbling brook to... well I don't know cause we weren't going to pay that much. Twas L-A-M-E

Continuing on we happened across two forlorn hikers that were about 30 minutes drive from Murchison, so in the middle of no where. I'm at a loss to describe Cloud and Carrot. They travel and write or draw respectably. In some regards I'm sure the unemployment benefit is good but to think of my hard earned money funding these guys worry free life... anyway. Carrot didn't say much, but Cloud informed us that they were heading to Dunedin to buy a van to write a book about travelling around NZ by van. I tried to pursuade him to drive around in it solving mysteries, but he didn't seem interested. They would take any and every road that they hadn't already travelled down, in an attempt to find out of the way places that they can scam whatever free goodies, on the proviso that the goodies would be mentioned in the up coming book. Oh, we also picked up an 18 year old Brit who worked in Oamaru. Between Greymouth and Hokitika.

We dropped them at Springs Junction cause they would have a much better chance of getting to Chch from some-where that people were stopping or slowing down regularly. And continued on a small way down the road to Maruia Springs. This is a place that I have regulary driven past (at speed) and after stopping would recommend that more people stop... but not enough so that there are too many people there.

They had three bouldery pools (one that was freezing) and wicked shoulder massage water fall things that were so good after travelling. There was all of about six people enjoying the tree clad valley walls and luscious limpid pools. After a fair amount of soaking we thought we'd go and experience a different culture in the traditional segregated Japanese bath house. Very tranquil. In all worth many more visits.

We then headed home over the Lewis Pass, which Tim missed due to it's unremarkable change in gradient. Eventually making it home late on Tuesday.

It felt longer than the few days it was.

So ends my story of the journey.

- Sara.

I say: They owned me at Tekken with their crazy Eddy styles until I eventually set up the combo buttons properly. Also Eddy v Eddy ended in my victories.

Also, Dale had a kick arse home theatre system. It was wang. Wang I say.

Also the Stanley Graham Incident.... never heard about this, but at all the info station thingies I checked out on the trip it always showed up. Discussing it with Dale he told me that the Japanese propaganda minster advertised the incident in Japan saying that the west coast had declared civil war on the rest of the country. Yeah.

From a page now living only in google cache:

The route to the Hokitika Gorge passes through the locality of Kowhitirangi (at 22.5 km), the scene of the most tragic of New Zealand's manhunts. When a local farmer, Eric Stanley Graham, patently suffering from a deep-seated persecution complex, took to threatening his neighbours with firearms in 1941, local police decided to intervene. Arriving to remove his considerable arsenal, all four of the Hokitika police contingent were shot. Three were killed outright, and the fourth was later to die from his wounds. Over the next 12 days home guardsmen, volunteers, police from other areas and troops armed with machine-guns hunted for the deranged farmer - a superb shot who could shoot a stag between the eyes at 500 paces. As terror gripped the area and residents huddled together in public halls for safety, the 200-strong army of searchers was augmented by a spotter plane and a bomber carrying live bombs. Three more were to die before a police sergeant finally stalked the fugitive Graham and shot him from a range of about 25 metres. Within hours Graham died from his wounds in hospital to end the strangest manhunt in the country's history. News of the state of siege even reached Japan, then at war with New Zealand, where Tokyo Rose broadcast a message to Graham, exhorting him to hold the South Island while a second man was sent to take the North. To erase the memory of the tragedy Graham's house, scene of most of the deaths, was burned down (it stood almost opposite the Kowhitirangi School). However, a memorial on the Kaniere Hall records the district's debt to those who died in the hunt. The incident was the basis for a successful feature film, Bad Blood.

All in all, the West Coast is over there and it is cool.

Posted by luther at May 15, 2003 07:10 PM