Bathing in St Bathan's

Thursday 13 February

With our host Jonny, on his day off, we went over to historic St Bathans to explore and check things out as we are due back this way in July for the Ice Swimming Championships (spectators NOT competitors!)

St Bathans was a gold mining hub with a population of around 2000 in its heyday in the 1860s. Now it has about 20 houses, some historic old buildings and the fabulous Vulcan Hotel. The fantastical, weird landscape is a direct result of the mining which closed down in 1934 when the sides of the mine got too close to the village and the hole has subsequently filled with water creating the beautiful blue lake, coloured by the minerals in the surrounding rocks. It is incredible to realise that this 168m deep lake was once the 120m high Kildare Hill until the pioneers struck gold and just dug away the entire hill!

We took the easy loop down one side of the lake & back - there was a harder loop which circled the lake with amazing views from the cliffs to the right of the top two pics below, but after Graveyard Gully my knees were not feeling up to this!

It was so hot walking though this bowl of white cliffs & rock scrapings, which would have made the perfect backdrop for a Star Trek or general sci-fi "other planet" landing, that we were delighted to get back to the beach and have a wee dip. Louis sent a video to Sue Sherwen to say he was just testing the waters... Sue and Bex will be here in about 5 months time for the International Ice Swimming Association NZ Championships when the water temperature will be less than 5*C!!! For us it was a far more balmy 20*C - Louis swam about 1km up the lake and back, I climbed in gingerly then bobbed happily in the cooling waters chatting to Jonny on the dock who just dibbled his toes!

I walked back up the hill to the pub as the guys drove up, and it was fascinating seeing how the erosion of the area continues - the scrapings from the mining era are not stable and the artificially created cliffs and mounds are subject to collapse at intervals. See the hanging fence post on the picture below right.

Lunch at the Vulcan was interrupted by the arrival of Laurie the corgi pup who I met at Hampden Beach a few days earlier, who flirted with EVERYONE! Formerly the Ballarat Hotel (I presume there were Aussie miners in the gold era who imported the name from Victoria's gold rush capital) the Vulcan is a Grade 1 listed heritage building with an allegedly very active ghost! Lunch was delicious - Jonny had a chicken hawker roll, Louis had a fabulous burger and I had pulled lamb and tzatziki on pita - two of them.

We checked out the historic buildings up the road from the pub and were shocked by how structurally storong but basic the build quality was - some of the walls in the old Post office/postmaster's house were in a state of disrepair and appeared to be weatherboard on the outside, then the frame then hessian stretched across the framing and wall paper applied to this - it must have been bitterly cold in winter. (see central pic below)

Our next stop was Ophir where we looked at some more historic buildings and grabbed some afternoon tea. The Post Office here is the oldest still functioning one in NZ (closed by the time we arrived though) with a nineteenth century jailhouse in the back garden. The bridge is also pretty special - anchored at either end in solid schist piers this suspension bridge was built in1880 and for a few months recently was the only access to Ophir as flooding washed out a central pillar of the other bridge into town!

Back at the Websters we threw together a yummy BBQ dinner, packed up Banjo ready for the morning departure and watched a stunning sunset. We could get used to this! 🧡