7. Waitaki Valley - Lakes and Rocks

I am sat here typing this post with my just my left hand because my right hand is pretty tender after collecting the full force of a nasty kick from an angry heifer during milking. The inexperienced milkers can get a bit difficult and the odd beating is inevitable, especially at half 5 in the morning when the reactions aren't as sharp as usual!

Anyway this post will be about my trip up the Waitaki Valley from Oamaru to Omarama, two confusingly similar names, especially when glanced at whilst speeding past a road-sign. It is a few days since I went but the twenty calves per day rate at the moment means it is currently pretty hectic on the farm.

This is a map of the Waitaki Valley showing the route I took (up State Highway 83):

I left the bungalow mid morning with a bag of edible supplies and my camera and drove to Oamaru, where I filled up the tank. Petrol prices here in NZ are nearly half of the UK equivalent, which is great, and it makes driving around the countryside a reasonably cheap form of travel.

Getting onto SH83 I put the peddle to the metal and tried to outrun the clouds that were hanging ominously around. It didn't take long to get to Duntroon which is about 40km from Oamaru. Duntroon is a small village that reminded me a bit of a deserted town from a cowboy film, I imagine the tumbleweed would be blowing about the streets if it hadn't been fed to dairy cattle.

Just before Duntroon is a limestone cliff upon which is some pre-European Maori rock art. Painted in charcoal and ochre, the drawings are just about visible behind security fences. Unfortunately some the fence was either put up too late or were very ineffective. There were lot of initials and such scratched into the rock which really brassed me off. If people felt that the surface was important enough to warrant a 'CW 2009', surely it is wrong to deface it. Here are a few photos of the historic art, which looked a bit like they were drawn with Crayola crayons.

In Duntroon outside I assume its only hotel, was a hitchhiker who was managing to look both very miserable and optimistic at the same time. She raised a thumb as I went past. I would have picked her up, but by the time I had decided that I would, I was about half a mile down the road.

I drove on to Kurow, a similar wild west town with not much going on except a cafe, a bar and a shop, where I stopped to get a drink. Leaving the town I drove past the hitchhiker again, it was turning into a bit of a race.

After Kurow the views got pretty spectacular, I was glad that the roads were both wide and quiet as I spent most of the time looking out of the window at the river and then the lakes. The natural scenery is pretty much unspoiled apart from of a series of huge dams that break up the natural flow of water to create power.

Here are some pictures of a dam and the river below the lakes.

And here is a selection from the millions of photos I took of Lake Waitaki, Lake Aviemore and what I think is the South-West corner of Lake Benmore.

It took me about twice as long as it should have to reach Omarama because I stopped at every opportunity to get out of the car to see how good the view was.

When I got to Omarama I was gutted to see that the hitchhiker was there with her thumb out. I'm pretty sure she recognised me as the person who drove past her three times. I had a look in my NZ guide book to see what was worth seeing in Omarama. It told me that the Clay Cliffs were good. They are cliffs made of deposits of gravel and silt, put there a couple of million years ago by glaciers. The elements have eroded them into strange shapes that look like they are on the moon or in a cave. After driving 10 km down the worlds bumpiest road I got there and was pretty impressed. There was no-one else there and it felt a bit strange to be on my own looking at some rocks. I stayed long enough to take a few photos.

I headed back home, at a much faster pace than the journey out, but I did take a detour to see some more rocks. Specifically the Elephant Rocks.

The Elephant Rocks are located down a very quiet road in a very quiet sheep grazed paddock. Not much of a tourist attraction in the sense that there was just a wider bit of road to park on, and a metal tube with a slot for donations. The rocks are famous though, they were used as the set in a Narnia film.

I took a few more photos.

I think they do actually look a bit like elephants too.

I did search on Google for a picture of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe film set, but none of the photos were of sufficient quality to feature on this blog! You will have to watch the film yourselves. While I am out here in NZ, I do plan on finding a few Lord of the Rings film sets. I know it is a bit geeky but I would love to visit the Shire! Already I can see why film makers use the incredible scenery as the settings for fantasy films.

Righto, that is enough typing for today. I am going to carry my camera around with me for the next few days whilst I work, and will try and photograph a bit of calving in action.

Thanks for reading, I hope you are not just looking at the pictures because its the typing that takes up my valuable eating/sleeping time!