Hokitika is around 100 miles north of glacier country and a natural stop-off. The town's name means place of return but like Greymouth and Westport further north the glamour days of gold prospecting are long gone and you would not return too often.

Could not resist picture of this labour of love in the local museum which is a working model in Meccano of a dredging machine. Took the guy four years to make in the 1950s which coincides with my youth when Meccano was a big deal. No Playstations then !

On towards mountain terrain tomorrow followed by a day each in Haast and Wanaka then three days in Queenstown which will take in Milford Sound, a genuine eighth wonder. Dave

Tuesday 2nd December 2008

The Rural Landscape

Today’s been grey, cold and drizzly, but that’s no problem. We’ve been really lucky with the weather so far, and a change was bound to happen at some time.
We took a drive out this afternoon and came across some suicidal pukekos who scuttled out in the road just in front of us, but here‘s a photo, so it's proof that at least one of tthem lived to tell the tale! The book describes them as shy birds but these, and also the ones we saw at a small lake in Taupo, seemed to be anything but shy.

Soon afterwards a similar thing happened with a weka suddenly appearing from the grass verge. We’d been wondering for a week or so what this word weka meant as we’d seen signs proclaiming them and had also stayed at a motel in Weka Street in Nelson. Our first and second sightings were yesterday, at a look-out point where we’d stopped to view the coastal scenery and then at Shantytown. The book describes them as inquisitive, and I think we can confirm this.

This whole area must be fairly reliant on the dairy industry. There is a huge processing works here on the outskirts of Hokitika and, whilst out this afternoon, we saw extremely long processions of cows either going in to be milked or returning from the parlour on at least four occasions.

Jean