Lake Mahinapua is just back from the coast about 10km south of Hokitika. Before there were any roads in this area, there used to be a couple of paddle steamers travelling up the Mahinapua Creek and across the lake transporting gold miners to Ross, the next town south.
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Tag: campervan
Lake Kaniere
Just south of Greymouth is the town of Kumara where the famous Coast To Coast multi-sport race starts. Joy suggested that we head out to the start line and walk along the beach to the mouth of the Serpentine River.
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Fox River Caves
Bullock Creek didn’t flood and wash us away during the night, so we woke to another fine day in paradise. After breakfast we drove back down to the highway, then even further north to the carpark at the mouth of Fox River, where the Inland Pack Track begins.
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Punakaiki
The rain arrived on Saturday morning as advertised, so we decided to drive to Greymouth and visit our friend Joy. Two days parked in the hot sun with almost no driving meant that our house battery had gone flat and the fridge defrosted, another good reason for running the motor for a while.
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Charleston
At 8.30 am on the first of January we turned up at the base of Underworld Adventures Ltd to join their morning cave rafting tour. This takes place through part of the Nile River Cave system in Paparoa National Park.
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Constant Bay
Just south of Westport is Charleston, which used to be bustling town with a population of 30,000 people. It was also once the demographic centre of New Zealand, ie: 50% of the countries population lived south of it. Nowadays there are less than 300 permanent residents, and the demographic centre is probably somewhere near Hamilton.
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Denniston and Cape Foulwind
We visited Denniston back in Easter after walking the Old Ghost Road, but our hostess convinced us that we had barely scratched the surface of this old coal mining area so we drove up the hill after breakfast this morning. Lerey is friends with Gary and Sylvia James who are some of few people that still live up there, so she rang to find out if the Friends Of The Hill museum was open – which it was.
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Charming Creek
The Charming Creek Walkway runs from Ngakawau through to the Charming Creek Road at Seddonville, a 19km return trip. We had planned to walk it together today but when I discovered you can ride it on a mountain bike I came up with a cunning plan.
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Millerton
Up a winding road from Granity on NZ’s west coast is the old coal mining town of Millerton. Like its much more famous neighbour Denniston, it had an incline which allowed wagons of coal to be lowered down to the railway along the coast.
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Six Mile Hydro Matakitaki
About ten kilometres south of Murchison is the site of New Zealand’s oldest hydro power station. We had stopped in town to do some shopping and visit the information centre and it sounded like an interesting place to visit.
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Wairoa River
We only had a couple of kilometres to drive from our camp-site to the bridge over the Wairoa River. This is not to be confused with the river with the same name that we walked along at the end of our Richmond Range tramp a week ago; this one empties into the Whanganui Inlet out on the west coast past Collingwood.
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Lake Otuhie
After a stop in Takaka to stock up on food and diesel, and for me to do a couple of urgent web update jobs for clients, we drove out past Collingwood to the west coast.
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Totaranui
My last visit to Totaranui was almost three decades ago when Felicity and I tramped the Able Tasman Track. That time we just passed through this huge camping area, so it has been nice to spend a bit more time here.
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Takaka
With our stowaway rat on board we drove over the hill from Nelson to Golden Bay. Ms Rat was obviously rather hostile about us killing her babies, because she had destroyed a brand new packet of coffee overnight.
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Wellington waterfront
Wellington on a fine afternoon is a very pleasant place to be. We are parked on Waterloo Quay for the night, waiting to catch a ferry to the mainland tomorrow morning.
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Kaniwhaniwha and Pukemokemoke
We were sorry to have missed the last Indian Ink Theatre Company production, so we decided to attend the opening night of their new play, The Elephant Thief. This meant an overnight trip to the Waikato, because the Meteor Theater is in Hamilton.
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Culloden and Findhorn
This morning we visited Culloden Moor, site of the last battle on British soil, where the Jacobite reballion was put down by the English.
Rosemarkie
We have done a lot of driving today, so now we are back in the lowlands, a few miles north-east of Inverness on the shore of the Moray Firth.
Loch Eriboll
Today we have been exploring the Scottish district of Sutherland, in the far north-west corner of the country. It is so named not because the Scots are geographically challenged, but because this area was once part of a Norse empire.
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Strathcanaird
For the last couple of days we have been exploring the Scottish national scenic area of Wester Ross, but now we are north of there, on the edge of Assynt Coigach.
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