After the dramatic landscape of the west coast, entering The Southlands was always going to be a bit of a change for us but it hit me harder than I had anticipated. Suddenly the peaks, forests and snow were gone and in their place was just miles and miles of farm land. And sheep. So many sheep. People always joke about New Zealand being full of sheep but up until then Ollie and I had seen hardly any. Now though after a few days in the Southlands we have seen enough to keep us going for a good while! I’m not saying the landscape wasn’t picturesque, it was. The rugged coastal beaches, the rough seas, the trees bent backwards from the wind and the lolloping green hills were all pleasant enough but they weren’t...well they weren’t the Southern Alps! And as we drove into the evening we were both a little quiet. There can never be disappointment when one is travelling just a silent acknowledgment that after what we’d had the privilege to witness, anything else might not ever seem quite so spectacular again. So we agreed to leave the West in the West and move on to accepting and enjoying our new surroundings. Not forgetting, just packing our memories before they turned into longings. We have far too much still to see of the world before we start to long for particular parts of it again.
That night we stayed next to a gusty beach and fell asleep to the crashing waves. At sunrise we took a walk across the sand and got the smell of salt tangled in our hair. We had planned to visit a nearby lighthouse and find the most southern point of the island so that we would have then travelled the entire length of New Zealand. A pretty cool achievement! The Lighthouse had been erected after a terrible ship wreck on the rocks nearby that had killed over 100 passengers as they were travelling to Melbourne from perhaps Dunedin although I can’t remember exactly. Anyway after the tragedy, locals petitioned to get the lighthouse built so that no more lives would have to be lost. Just down the beach was a huge flock of sea gulls mooching about and as we got closer to see what they were doing (obviously Ollie was the most interested), the horrific smell of rotting fish struck from nowhere and hardly able to breath we had to move away. It was literally the strongest strain of that stink I’ve ever known. It took over every part of us so that I kept ‘re-smelling’ it for ages after. I was so glad we didn’t have a dog with us that would have wanted to go and roll about in it! I liked the Oyster Catchers with their long bright orange beaks that looked very cool with their jet black feathers. I wasn’t too fussed with the sea gulls ‘cos they’re just annoying where ever you are!
We left the smell and continued down to Slope Point. This is where the south tip can be found and there is a signpost to mark the area. Far less of a good looking place than Cape Regina but just as windy! In fact the whole of the south coast is just a massive place of wind! We were blown back across the fields just as fast as we had arrived and were soon back in the van and heading to our next ‘place of interest’!
One of only three accessible in the world, the Petrified Forest (arghhhhhh) along the coast from Invercargill is a great piece of geology. Formed when a forest by the sea was flooded by ash from a nearby erupting volcano, the trees were buried and in only a month, petrified (arghhhh). Petrified Forests (arghhhh) are so rare because to be created, petrification of wood needs to happen in a very short and fast period of no more than around thirty days. Minerals from the ash fill up the trees and replace the wood particles so that although we could see what looked like wooden tree trunks, they were in fact fossils of them. The tide was in but we could see lots of tree stumps and planks lying about the rocks and it was quite an odd place. What looked to be wood would just appear out of a rock face and hollow tree stumps sat up in the sea looking like burst acne.
Although Ollie and I found the Petrified Forest (arghhhh) ever so interesting we did spend most of the time screaming every time one of us said Petrified Forest (arghhhh) and both giggling like idiots constantly. My consoling thought however was that if my Dad had been with us he would have done exactly the same!
Our final visit of the day was to a waterfall called Mclennan Falls. A short walk up a very slippery rock path through the woods brought us to the basin of the pretty falls. It was an unimposing place but worth a look. What struck me was how dirty the water looked. It was so brown and nothing like the glacial rivers and lakes we had been drooling at a few days earlier. Ollie assured me it was algae causing the discoloration and not dirty water but as the browny yellow spilled over the rocks it washed a lot of the beauty away with it.
Driving to find a place to sleep, I noticed ‘Niagara Falls’ written on our map and utterly intrigued we found our way to it. Hilariously we got out the car by a muddy bank to find a sign that read ‘Niagara Falls’ and behind it was the tiniest drop in the river where the water fell about five centimeters off a big smooth rock. According to the information, some guy had thought it would be really funny to name that place ‘Niagara Falls’ back in the late 1800’s. The river had been the main supply route for wool, but to me this seemed the equivalent of transporting goods in the local brook! Yeah. Really funny. So glad we went 20Km out of our way funny. But I suppose it’s the kind of thing I’d do!
1/8/12
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