Meandering looking at gold mining history and more New Zealand high country

The weather has been so unsettled this summer break, and with this and my son's part time job, we've not done the longer tramping trips I had in mind pre Christmas, however this means we just utilise the camper truck to good advantage and use local weather knowledge to minimise exposure to heavy rain and strong winds.

So a few days ago we travelled an old favourite of mine: the road from Cromwell to Garston, which essentially takes you from Central Otago's dry golden climate, through serious winter snow high country to pastoral Southland province. The route follows the Nevis valley and involves about 24 river crossings - challenging, if not crazy for a car, but not too serious for a judicially driven four wheel drive.

First stop - to catch a fish...


An hour or two later we're deep in gold mining history - this was once a gold dredge pond...




With a weather forecast predicting heavy rain I once again thought it wise to get the river crossing out of the way and camp on the saddle above Garston. This was the landscape we woke up amongst...


Before descending we spent a few hours wandering about exploring the unique New Zealand High Country landscape photography potential before the rain came in again. This first photo below is a Spaniard plant - sadly they proliferate where there has been too much burning off at the expense of snow tussock and soil values. They're unpalatable and the ends of the leaves are like hypodermics...




This lone pine, a noxious weed in this landscape, intrigued me and sensing a photo I hounded it, but did not get the shot I'd hoped for, so interestingly I "let go" of the idea and wandered elsewhere, but coming back the same way I made this "grab shot", and as is often the case when the mind is freed of labeling and preconceived ideas it turned out to be the one capturing the essense I had in mind...


A very youngNew Zealand Pipit, which I think maybe quite rare, but I'm not sure as they frequent the high snow tussock areas which by nature are very "open", and I've never seen one this close ever before despite all the time I've spent in this environment. They can also be mistaken for the Skylark. I did get much closer for more photos, but I like this first one as it shows something of the nature of the bird's environment...


On the descent, and heading post-haste to the tea rooms that I love to have a coffee at in Athol, the track goes past the old and historic Southland Ski Club hut...




I have a thing about the land forms of this part of Southland - maybe it's the contrast to the flat land, or maybe it's because being near The Nokomai there is a genetic link with my ancestors who were born there and frequented the area...


The rain caught up with us so we drove back via Queenstown and got home early to dryer climes. It was the day of the huge and growing annual Challenge Wanaka race, and as Mike a neighbour was one of the helper/organisers he had a drink station opposite the house. The race went on until midnight so we had quite different noises and energy in the neighbourhood for a few hours...

A thought provoking week of bird survey work and another mountain accident

After waiting for good settled weather for almost a month, finally mid last week I was off on a two day braided riverbed bird survey as a volunteer for DOC. This is an annual event I really look forward too and this year the river was the Matukituki that drains all the eastern slopes of Mt Aspiring.

A handful of us spread out across the braids and then walked downstream for about 30 Kms recording every bird we saw ahead of us. It's a physically demanding job, peppered with the need to cross and re-cross many of the branches and sometimes even the main flow, deal with the relentless reflected heat from the riverbed, very nasty quicksand [actually gravel over glacial silt], and any wind that is about.

Because we were a month late our survey coincided more with the juvenile stage of the large and prolific [Southern Hemisphere] Black Back Gull. This species seems to be on the increase and this is probably to the detriment of the increasingly rare Black Fronted Tern. Our course took us through several of the gull colonies and so we saw some chics...


These riverbeds are very raw, but they also have amazing landscape perspectives - we had this view of Mt Avalanche [centre] and Mt Aspiring [behind on the right] over our shoulders for two days. Little did I realise though, as I gazed often indulging my passion for panorama landscape photography, that a tragedy was unfolding: two of my client friends were on the classic South West Ridge, and one of them fell to his death on Thurs. The top of the ridge can be seen here in profile just to the left of Aspiring's summit...


The NZ Herald has the nicest article honouring John - one of the best "top drawer" people I've ever met. My sympathies go out to Meg and his family.

This is myself in full kit on the right complete with sun hat, binos, clipboard and a ski pole [to help with river crossings]. We also carry radios so we can check any duplication of sightings as we travel...


Black Back Gull chics in conference with attendant parents overhead [not seen here] making quite a racket [it's best to not look up!]...


On this survey we noted quite a delightful increase in Banded Dotterels. Although nesting was over for this spring, I took this photo of a protective parent last year...


Also early last week, before the survey, there was lots of bad weather with accompanying high rainfall which filled Lake Wanaka to the brim, and also made our survey river crossings much more difficult. It would also have swept away many chics and nests, and this has given me much to think about re. the dynamic nature of survival! However we noted decreases and increases, another of the latter being the ethereal and beautiful Pied Stilt [I've yet to capture on the camera]