Meeting the locals in Murchison

Monday 20 October

A day of fun & adventures around Murchison. Had a chat with Errol who was staying onsite with his very cute griffon, then Louis went off wandering to find coffee and announced he’d discovered the best pies in town; so as we set off on our bikes for a cycle ride down to Six Mile we swung by the Tutaki bakery truck and pre-purchased a spicy lamb mince pie to pick up on our way back… Lee bakes once a day and when everything is sold he closes up for the day so we didn’t want to take any chances!

We followed Fairfax Street then Mātakitaki Road south out of town for about 10-11km, passing calves, lambs, horses, a lone hiker and some cute properties. As we hit the gravel road up to the Maruia Saddle we called it a day & headed back - bumping into the hiker who had made it about 4 miles out to Six Mile… turned out he was a local called Paul who ran one of the Murchison motels and was training to walk the Camino Real in Spain next year!

We collected Louis’ reserved pie and had lunch in Banjo then I popped out to the church op shop (bought a tin opener as ours just died - and decided against a floaty flowery summer top which is rare for me!) I was also disappointed that there were only 5 "Where's Wally?" T-shirts on the $1 rack - if there had been 6 then I'd have got them for the gang! Dropped into the Mātakitaki Gallery too and had a great chat with Hohepa who was a local Māori carver and had great plans for sharing his culture with locals and visitors alike. He carves pounamu, bone and wood and showed me a fascinating local stone that is almost unique to this area and Karamea in NZ, called orbicular granite. This mainly white/grey stone is dotted with onion like orbs of black and white striped granite which presents as nodules on the surface, but when cut through reveals layer upon layer of rings, just like an onion.

Louis meanwhile had woken from his siesta and set out in search of sustenance - a real fruit ice cream from Frank’s… nom nom! The eclectic gallery & studio behind the food truck was sadly closed, but looked like fun - and we are thinking of upgrading our Baby Weber to the fabulous towable BBQ on the right above!!!

We decided that while the weather was still holding well we’d drive out and explore the Maruia Saddle Road up into the hills.

We passed through some stunning rural landscapes, over a gorge on the Mātakitaki River and up a narrow gravel track, crossing several fords up to the Saddle at 580m above sea level. It was all about the journey - the destination was a mud fest where we executed a 5 point turn and headed back down to civilisation. I took one for the team, opting to wade barefoot across a ford to capture Louis driving through on film... it was spectacularly cold!

Back in the valley, along the Mātakitaki Road we encountered a pair of runaway horses off on an adventure. They were quite spooked so I hopped out the car to try and approach them and calm them down (human versus motor), but they still freaked and fortunately found a side farm track to canter off down, so at least they were off the road.

Burgers again for dinner - so good - and then around 10pm the long predicted rain arrived… and didn’t stop for 14 hours!