Things to Look Out For

From Mannipouri we cross the whole country again from west to east (knowing we'll be coming back the other way quite soon). There is a logic to this but I won't bore you with it. Having discussed ways of staying sane on long drives I'll add an extra one. History and Culture, the Kiwis are mad on it.

Every three kilometres or so they are signs to points of historical, cultural or topographical interest. We've been trying to find the most bizarre. You rapidly give up on historical houses, 'historical' here means anything before about 1920. If you follow a notice board saying 'Ancient Homestead' you'll probably find a small house which would be newer than most of us live in. Another popular option is 'Unusual Rock Formation' - can you imagine, just on the basis of random erosion, how many odd looking rocks you get in a country composed mostly of mountains? Bridges are also popular, "you are passing over an historic 100 year old bridge", can be slightly nerve wracking as the division between 'unsafe' and 'historic' seems to blur at times.

Clifden Bridge (guess who they copied)

A whole subcategory are places where white people did unpleasant things to Maoris, Maoris did ditto to white people or Maoris did equally nasty things to each other. Presumably when whites were that unpleasnt to each other there was nobody left to record the fact. Often (to avoid upsetting people?) the sign say 'Historic Plaque' so you can stop and read it rather than just 'Historic Massacre' (where you'd just think, 'Oh, another one" and drive on).

We have three favourite signs. "Windswept Trees" is on section of coastal road with a strong prevailing wind. The "Concrete Horse Trough" sign is on one side of the road and points to the other where there is, guess what? And finally, "Gate" shown as a tourist attraction in the road atlas. You have to go about twenty miles down gravel roads to find out what is historic about it so we didn't bother. Probably missed the high light of the trip.

This one isn't in any of the categories but it still puzzles me


Having resisted several hundred historic homesteads, we succumbed to an historic lighthouse. It seemed a possible place to have lunch though as the road got longer and longer and the gravel worse and worse we began to have our doubts. But "It's not our car", we thought callously. And eventually reached a pretty spot with the required odd shaped rocks stretching into the sea and an old lighthouse. It looked much like lighthouses everywhere else but a bit smaller. Still we went down to the rocky beach to have lunch.

We got a slight shock when one of the rocks went "Humph" and then kicked sand in the air. Just as well we hadn't sat on it - it was a big bull sealion, sleeping. As we looked around we realised there were others, and indeed two, with a look which clearly said "This neighbourhood is going downhill", pulled themselves out of the sand and headed for the sea. There were five left. The big bull had almost dug himself into the sand, he looked as though he was there for the day. Every so often he'd snort and flip sand over himself with a lazy flipper (sandflies aren't afraid of sealions). The others were smaller and I decided they were a family. Near the bull was a mother and not far from her two small ones lying side by side (the twins). Considerably further off the teenager who wanted to be alone and did nothing and hardly moved the whole time we were there.

Sorry they aren't very photogenic. Mostly they just look like sand and rock.


They seemed to work themselves into the sand by wriggling which worked best for the bull - the twins just wriggled about but nothing happened. On the other hand their sand flipping had the advantage that though they often missed themselves they often managed to spray the other one.

I'd like to report that they barked, clapped their flippers and balanced plastic balls on their snouts but they didn't. They slept and grunted with an air of sleeping off a truly wild night before. Once the bull dragged himself up for a couple of seconds, looked around and, realising it was all just too much, collapsed back in the sand.

Further along the coast was a petrified forest. Voila -

Though it was amazing to see, the thick kelp that grows all along this coast is almost more so. It annoying for fishermen but strangely beautiful when it fills rock crevices with thousands of green, brown and black strands which can be up to twenty feet long and over a foot wide.

After that we forced ourselves to resist odd rocks, strange caves and "New Zealand's Own Niagra Falls" (with cafe). Sometimes you can have just too much excitement.

According to the tourist guide, cafe society has come to Glenfurley (an increase of one in the number of cafes making, well, one) and the Middlemarch Singles' Dance attracts women from as far away as Auckland but Dunedin is the New Edinburgh so we went there.