Fond Farewells as we go our Separate Ways...

Tuesday 17 June

A sad day - the parting of ways as Abby & Jez head north for a few weeks at least to do some warranty work on the Moho and catch up with friends and rellies in Auckland. They may be back… who knows?!

While Abby worked we pottered into town to explore Waimate. It’s a really cool country town with lots of well recorded and celebrated history.

The lady with the washing line is Stella Chamberlain - the first female member of the Waimate Rugby Club who handwashed and wrung out the First XV's rugby jerseys for 35 years!

The Empress' Flour Mill built in 1890 produced high quality flour which won international awards in 1910/11/13/14; the silos were less successful - the concrete did not cure fully leading to sweaty grains so they were not fully utilised until 45 years after their construction in 1921!

The silo murals represent local history including Norman Kirk who was born here and was Prime Minister in the early 70s until his sudden death in 1974.

The statues are of Dr Margaret Cruickshank, the first woman doctor registered in NZ - she worked tirelessly for twenty years in and around Waimate until succumbing to the 1918 influenza pandemic. The bushman is no one person, but representative of a way of life in this area over a century ago.

The Waimate Bakery (run by the same guy as last night’s restaurant) was awesome and I fell off the no-carb wagon once again - being lured in by an Anzac buttercream sandwich biscuit!

Back at the NZMCA we packed up and said our tearful farewells to our travel companions of the last 6 weeks or so. Here we are being happy because it happened, but sad because it is over. It’ll be strange moving on without them - but looking forward to seeing the Fernandi in a month or so… and maybe the Tomkinsons will be back too!

While they headed north, we branched right, heading south to Oamaru. Our favourite spot at Old Bones was closed for a few days so we paid up for the Harbour Tourist Park and got a front row site overlooking the beautiful seafront.

I took a late afternoon stroll around the harbour, checking out the hundreds of cormorants on Sumpter Wharf then Louis came to join me and see if we could spot any penguins coming in at dusk or thereafter. I was rather taken with the old fishing smack sailing back into the harbour just before sunset - blasting Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" as it chugged in... presumably in honour of the cold conditions they had been sailing in!

The cormorants in their sanctuary on Sumpter Wharf were amazing to watch - hundreds of hem huddled together with the fluffy grey youngsters at the land end of the wharf and the sleek black and white adults in prime position at the far end. The gulls also tried to elbow their way in at times, but they were argumentative and scrappy and the cormorants appeared to do their best to ignore them. I could not ignore a beautiful pair of Honk/Wah ducks who were fossicking around in the grass by the boat ramp - their feathers positively glowing in the golden hour light and their distinctive calls cutting through the cacophony of the squabbling gulls.

We had been warned by the campsite custodian that sightings were a bit rarer this time of year, and rough conditions out at sea recently meant many were hunkering down on land and not going out to find food in the day. But we crossed our fingers and sat there in the cold for an hour or so! As we watched, the young cormorants appeared to line up along the edge of Sumpter Wharf like tube passengers on a London Underground station - then in batches of 2, 3, 5, 8 they would launch themselves off the wharf, usually drop their toes into the water for a flap or two, then fly off in a big loop - towards the land and then a U-turn out to the harbour entrance and off out to sea. We were transfixed watching them until the near end of the wharf was almost empty. But still no penguins even though our waitress at Waimate had told us they hide out under the red sheds we were sitting by.

Eventually it got too dark and chilly by around 6ish so we sauntered back to the campsite and had pumpkin soup for dinner in Banjo to warm ourselves up! Proper comfort food.