Monday
With the perfect weather about to change and us kinda needing to head North at some stage, we packed up, said goodbye to everyone and hit the road last.
We did manage to keep Keith and Fiona in sight as far as Geraldine and then saw the two-wheeled mob just getting ready to leave a cafe at the Northern end of Geraldine. Being brave four-wheeled conveyance users, we carried on without extra caffeine or pastry products.
Cruise control and air-conditioning set at appropriate levels we carried on up the island wondering when the bikes would catch us. One of us even had a snore off - I won't say who it was but at least they weren't driving...
Eventually the bikes did go past us (behaving very well I thought) and we assumed that was the last we'd see of Karen, Chris, Rowan and Jeff. But, arriving in Oxford and stopping to sort out our caffeine and pastry deficiencies, we managed to beat the bikers to the counter at the cafe...
Leaving Oxford it was the last we saw of the two-wheeled tribe and we carried on North, missed a turn-off to SH1 and then eventually rejoined the main road just North of Amberley. Waikari was our next stop for the most expensive diesel of the trip (damn missing the Mobil in Amberley) and then were off on our way across the Lewis.
Having ridden through quite a few times, it was a different experience to drive it but the ute managed just fine and I don't think anyone passed us.
Our stop for the night was in Reefton when we arrived it was very warm. Colin managed to find a pool over the fence where we went to test the waterproofedness of my Chinese watch...
Later on the weather caught up with us...
Tuesday
In the morning we got up to pouring rain and some decisions. We had planned to ride out to Big River Mine before loading up and driving to Murchison for an attack on the Denniston Plateau on Wednesday. But it was damn wet!
All of the rain was going to mean that the Mackley river crossing would be hairy at best. We'd also get back from Big River wet and need to get packed up out in the rain. We scratched the Denniston idea and went and paid for another night in Reefton.
We lazed around a bit before finally working up the courage to head out and get wet. And yes, we got wet...
The ride up to Big River starts just out of town and initially is on a nice wide gravel road before disappearing into the bush and deteriorating to a narrower, rougher track. There were also lots of other tracks heading off to who knows where...
Note the pictures below (taken later in the morning) quite clearly point the way to Big River. We failed to see them and took the right fork...to be fair, it was very wet...
The track we took quickly got a lot worse. It was rutted and rocky with some really deep holes to paddle through, but worst of all was the overgrown scrub (particularly the gorse) whacking us across the face and trying to pull the handle-bars out of our hands. Gorse flicking in your eyes gets old really quick...
We actually worked out we were lost fairly early on as we were definitely off the purple line on my GPS. But, we weren't the only one lost - we ran into another lunatic out playing in the rain - he was even staying at the same motel...
Eventually we ran out of road at a decent sized clearing - maybe a clearing for the loggers to work out of or perhaps a place for choppers to land to collect the carcasses of lost trail riders...
After an about turn and some more bush-bashing we got back to the junction in that second photo and started in towards the mine. Oh, and we were pretty damp by this stage. At the least the track was slightly better...
 |
| Damp |
15kms later, two drowned rats splashed through a creek and got to clearing where a lot of the old mine infrastructure is quietly rotting away.
Just up the hill was the shed containing the old steam powered winch for raising and lower the miners down into the mine.
Sight-seeing down and sufficiently soaked, we decided not to hang around and hammered it back to Reefton - definitely quicker going out than coming in.
Back at the motel, the priority was to get out of wet gear, sorting out a way to dry it out and a hot shower followed by a late lunch...
Later on we wandered around in the drizzle to find some dinner before calling it a night...
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