Heading North - Ship Creek then a Gravel Pit!
Wednesday 23 September
No penguins last night and none this morning… disappointing! But we did get a gorgeous golden sunrise and a calm blue skies kinda morning.
Given the confusion over whether or not we were camping illegally, we packed up early on a glorious morning in Jackson’s Bay, decided to take a quick stroll along the Wharekai Te Kou walk to the bay on the Tasman Sea side of the headland.
The path goes through the Okahu Wildlife Refuger, over a low saddle connecting Jackson Head at the north end of Jackson Bay to the rest of the coastland. It's just under a kilometre until you pop out at a rocky bay, pounded by waves and sheltering some fascinating geological formations. The one I am holding in my hand looked as if a bunch of smaller different types of rocks & pebbles had been squished together in a blob of plasticine! There was more of this conglomerate rock around - apparently it is called Breccia - multiple types of rock crushed together by tectonic or volcanic forces.
Walking back along the pathway we came across these two intrepid adventurers - off to do some spear fishing in the bay, in search of butter fish.
Back at Jackson Bay in the glorious sunshine, I took a few last pics - checking out the graves honouring the settlers who died here over a century ago. I love the stunning calla lilies which grow around their graves.
We hitched up and set off, heading north towards Haast. First we had to get through the last 5kms of the Jackson Bay Road which is littered with landslips and rock clearances - yikes! Our plan was to stop at the Waiatoto River Safari POP for a night (about 20kms away) and then get the bikes down and cycle back to Lake Ellery, a gorgeous glacial lake we’d been recommended to visit. Sadly the carpark which doubles as a POP is not huge and a big bus was there dropping off tourists for the boat ride so we had to sail on past - no room for a big rig today! So we crossed a bunch more river mouths (with many whitebaiters fishing for their seasonal crop of whitebait - juvenile galaxids) and ended up back at Haast.
We used the dump station in Haast, filled up with diesel, then carried on northwards to Ship Creek. There are two fascinating walks there - one looping inland around the swamplands of Ship Creek and another round the dune lake. I'd seen the signs on our previous West Coast trips when we just whizzed past and had them on my To Do List - then Leopards go Wild posted a video from there and I was sold.
Ship Creek or Tauparikākā - the English name commemorates the SS Schomberg which foundered on a sandbank in Victoria, Australia - but whose hull was washed 2000kms across the Tasman Sea and was discovered here 16 years later! The Māori name means “parrots all walking in a row”, noting the proliferation of kākā birds that lived in this swampy area. We checked out the swamplands walk first - the actual creek here is stained by tannins and is a rich reddish, rusty brown colour, almost black in places. Apparently there are tuna, eels, living here but we didn't spot any.
Most of the trees here are kahikatea, a native podocarp which populates the swampland by taking root on other kahikatea roots, creating a giant network of interconnected trees. Many of the trees had huge ecosystems of mosses, lichens and ferns climbing up them - absolutely amazing...
The whole of the Haast Plain was created by the erosion of a giant glacier which stretched for miles up & down this coast. The dunes stretch for kilometres in each direction and lakes are held back behind them, unable to drain into the sea. The vast dune lake here was rich in reeds and had a backdrop of the Southern Alps.
We dropped down onto the beach to walk back - watching the crashing waves - it really is a magnificent coastline. A small flock of red billed gulls, tarāpunga, were resting up near the end of our loop, all facing into the wind, their wings ruffled by the strongest gusts.
Very cool and loads of info boards explaining about the area’s flora, fauna, geology and history.
We pushed on up SH6 another 20kms or so to the Blue River (Moeraki) POP which lured us in with the promise of kea. Heading up the coast, this huge landslip not far from Knight's Point was one we had encountered on our first trip down this coast in January 2025. The road has now been diverted out around the headland to the left to avoid further slips. Despite being told it was easy to miss the entrance to the freedom camp, it was not signposted but had a wide entrance and we stopped there and walked down to see what lay in store at the bottom of the track - and whether there was turning space for a big rig like ours.
It turned out to be largely a gravel pit for the local roading companies, but we chose a rocky pitch relatively close to the Blue River, or Moeraki, Louis drove Banjo in and we settled in for the night. The rocks that are washed downstream here are quarried by a local agency, broken up into different grades and stored for roading jobs. It wasn’t quite the serene freedom camp we had expected, but at least there was no noise from the two trucks who came in to load up with supplies! I wouldn't call it scenic, but the river was quite pretty, it was quiet and we were surrounded by birdsong. According to the NZMCA app comments everyone has been woken by kea here, often the bird sitting on their moho or caravan roofs... but we were hearing korimako, piwakawaka and tauhou rather than big parrot sounds.
Did some blogging, wandered up to explore along to Boulder Creek, had a chat with some West Coasters who had come into the area for a look (they recommended Monro's Beach which was on our radar for tomorrow) and then cooked massive sausages for dinner - thanks to the New World Wānaka reduced to clear section!
Hoping to be roused by kea in the morning as so many have reported!
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