A Blustery Old Day

Wednesday 2 April

Leaving Invercargill we followed SH1 west and a bit northward - with a wee detour to Wyndham where Louis’ mum had grown up. Unfortunately we didn’t know where her old house was but the place seemed rather sad & derelict these days. There were signs that it had once been quite a lovely town, with big stone houses and formal buildings - but most were in need of serious TLC or had "Quake Prone Building" notices on them. The 1980s Range Rover probably summed up when the area was last feeling prosperous. Louis went in search of a decent coffee but came back disappointed - while I walked down the middle of Balaclava Street (the main road) at noon with no fear of being hit by a car - there was no traffic anywhere. Louis stopped to take a photo of the sign on one guy's gate and immediately got challenged by the house owner - it was a strange wee town.

Back on the main road our next stop was Gore which was much bigger and buzzier so we paused for lunch by the war memorial, bought some food supplies and made a mental note to come back one day to see what the town had to offer. It is the World Capital of Brown Trout (one up from being the Kiwi capital of anything as claimed by Taihape, Tuatapere and others we have yet to visit!) and has a large trout statue on the way into/out of town. I miss trout, but it is illegal to buy & sell in NZ, you only get to eat it if you catch it yourself or a kindly angler shares their catch.

In Clinton we filled up with diesel in a much more normal fuel station than Bluff and waited for the first train we’d seen in weeks to cross the level crossing. The Chairful Studio had some lovely home furnishings for sale, but we had nowhere to keep them in Banjo so just enjoyed window shopping and wondered how it survived in such a small farming community. They are very proud of their agricultural heritage here - probably considering themselves to be the Ploughing Capital of NZ! The Shire horse statue was kinda cute!

Balclutha seemed nice, but I was snoozing by then, so really only saw the cool road bridge over the Clutha on our way out - amazing that this mighty river was the same one we swam in up near its source at Albert Town in Wānaka!

We headed towards the coast, getting a shock at the 3.2m bridge clearance required (Banjo is 3.1m so we hogged the middle of the road for the highest part of the arch!) Apparently there was another route to Kaitangata, but we didn't know we needed to look for it until we got to the bridge! Kaitangata was a coal town back in the day with a focus on steam engines. The Clutha flows down the edge of the town and is very popular with the large local duck population.

Our campsite was on the main road into Kaitangata - it didn’t look much but the custodian was so friendly & helpful and the facilities were great. We had a pitch right by the road and asked about traffic noise - she advised that there was a cheese factory nearby so big trucks went through but not at night, they just started around 4.30am!!! Sounds like night time to me!

She suggested we head out to Measly Beach if we wanted to see the coast - but that proved a mission, and we ended up at Toko Mouth virtually being swept away by the howling gale! Toko Mouth was so tiny that the "Welcome to" and "Farewell from" signs either side of the same signpost!!! Apparently it is a popular summer seaside spot, but it was not super enticing at this time of year... bracing would be a good word to sum up our visit!

Fish & chips from Kai takeaways - famous for their $2 scoop of chips that feeds about 4 people - and an early night. Down here the darkness falls early.