We ascended through a dried moss laden bush forest into the long white cloud that shrouded the ridges of Paparoa.  The clouds are what brought me back.  I'd been lost, unaware of the beauty surrounding me for awhile.  But the clouds brought me back.  An evening stroll from the Croesus Hut through the tussock fields above as the day gave way to a descending twilight, reopened my blinded eyes.  The company of two new friends overlooking the valley below was an antidote to an illness I had been temporarily stricken with.  An illness of disillusionment and uninspired times.  But a jaunt into the mountains is always good medicine to an apathetic soul.  Even as we descended I continued to ascend to a higher standing.

The holidays were great, with the cheer of a Kiwi family and plenty of food and drink.  The New year came in peacefully in the town of Karamea with a great group of people who live in a wonderful community at the end of the road on the Northern West Coast of the South Island.  Days have been passing by with lots of swimming, fishing and roving through the perpetually green forests.  I've made it to Nelson and will enjoy the next few weeks of real summer weather in the sunniest place in NZ.

The clouds have been swept away as the sun takes over after the storm has passed.  The hillsides glow, overflowing with trees of the brightest green imaginable.  The Tasman Sea churns incessantly beating down the rocks and sand.  But the tea colored river, swollen with fresh fallen rain flows with grace, beauty and a calm that brings peace to my overactive mind.

 

The above photos are a small selection from the last couple weeks in my world here in New Zealand.  The first is of an early morning sun on the slopes of the Eyre Mountains on my last day of work at Halfway Bay Station, the following two are of a tramp to and from the Welcome Flat Hut on the Copeland Track.  The final photo is my contribution to the rocky landscape, one of many, at Gellespies Beach on the West Coast by the Tasman Sea near Fox Glacier.

It feels good to have finished a couple months of hard work on sheep stations.  The work was much appreciated and a wonderful learning experience, but now I've reestablished my freedom on the road with a little TLC for my van, and a new alternator which was what she really needed.  I've accepted that she often needs love and affection in the form of money costing repairs to  maintain my relationship with her and after giving her a little, I'm on the road again.

I left Halfway Bay on Saturday and headed north to the outdoor recreation mecca of Wanaka.  It was a beautiful town in a wide valley, on a pristine lake surrounded by dramatic snowcapped peaks.  But I was there, not for the recreation, but for a Saturday night on the town after five weeks on a sheep station.  I started with Happy Hour and carried on past the midnight hour.  I met some fun people and woke up with a heavy head on Sunday.  So what better way to clean the body and mind again than to hike ten miles up a river canyon to an alpine cirque and the Welcome Flat Hut.  I walked the Copeland Track after a three hour drive north with a young German hitchhiker I picked up named Paul, who was filled with young energy, awe and inspiration.  The hike was a challenge to start, but as the toxins from the night before flowed out of my pores and I got further up canyon, I fell into a stride all my own.  I covered the distance in just four hours and arrived at dinner time.  There were hot pools waiting for me there beneath magnificent Alpine peaks.  The lush green bush was adorned by bright white waterfalls rushing down the precipitous mountain slopes from the snow melt above.  A hundred such creeks converged in a cacophony of roaring water forming the Copeland River, creating the most magnificent turquoise mother nature could mix on her pallet.

I met a couple possum hunters there trying to catch possums to see if a massive government possum poisoning program had worked, evidently it had because I went to check a trapline with one of the hunters and they were all empty.

Since the rainy walk out the Copeland Track, I've driven casually up the West Coast, stopping to fish occasionally to no avail.  I do hope to get into some Brown Trout in the coming weeks though.  I've now made it to Greymouth where I'll spend a couple weeks helping a family that's building a new house.  Then it will be on the road again to the North part of the Island to perhaps reconvene with Felipe and Patricia, and explore what the blue waters surrounding Abel Tasman National Park behold.

The Herefords and White Charlet in the paddock before me casually graze beneath the cloud veiled peaks of the Southern Alps.  The sun has finally made an appearance and the songs of hundreds of birds and insects float through the afternoon breeze.  I have filled my belly with a hearty tuna sandwich and sit content in a grassy meadow.  Despite the scars on my hands and soreness of my joints, my body is content.  It is my mind that wanders.  Ever wondering what's to come and where I will find what I'm looking for.  All in time I suppose.  Until then I'll have to be satisfied with the call of the Tui & the Wood Pidgeon, and relish in the beauty that surrounds me as the intense NZ sun warms me from the previous day's drenching rain.

In my life it does not go unnoticed that it's the people that have made it so great, not some far off mountain peak or a crystal blue ocean.  I do miss everyone I've left behind and realize what I may be looking for is the community I left in the first place.  I feel a change in my life, and though I most likely still have some wandering to do, I may finally be growing up.

Merry Christmas to all, until the next report.

Life goes on at Halfway Bay Station.  These photos are courtesy of Felipe.  One more week of work, then it's off to the west coast for a mid summer Christmas.  Not much to report, other than a great send off BBQ that we had for Felipe and Patricia.  They had wanted barbequed lamb since the start of docking so Gerry made it happen.  Last Wednesday night we celebrated the last month of work with good food and plenty of cheer.  Gerry broke out three bottles of very nice expensive Scotch and the men, myself, Felipe and Gerry had a Scotch tasting before dinner.  Four very tall glasses and an hour or so later we had made it to dinner.  Everyone was feeling quite loose and the evening was fun.  After dinner my memory was quite foggy, but I do remember fishing on the boat under the moonlight.  The girls were well into the wine and beer too and we all woke up for work with heavy heads the next day, but managed to get through a good day of tailing.  So Felipe and Patricia have departed and I'll remain for one more week to button things up for Gerry and Ginny before Christmas.  I send good cheer and love to all in the upcoming holiday season and will update you all soon as to my next move in this wide wonderful world.

Halfway Bay Station

It is High above Lake Wakatipu in the Eyre Mountains that I bring you this correspondence.  The sun has set over my left shoulder, a cool diurnal breeze is at my back blowing down valley and the shaded slope has begun it's transformation into night.  I can hear the calls of a thousand grazing sheep, some near and others just a faint moan in the distance.  Life here at Halfway Bay Station is grand.  I'm a stones throw from a crystal blue lake, rivers are filled with rainbow trout and salmon, pastures are green, and I have work, to keep my hands busy and maintain my sanity.  I work with Felipe and Patricia from Chile, who are wonderful people, and Tori, a twenty year old shepherd, who is a ball of fire.  She's filled with young energy and has become fun to work with.  Gerry and Ginny manage the farm and have two kids, Paddy and Eve, 4 & 6 years old.  Gerry and Ginny are both nice folks and the kids are a breath of fresh air, constantly playing outside, often running naked, as free an existence as I can imagine.  They have a pet goat named Goatee and are unafraid of anything outside, be it a plant, animal or otherwise.

I've been here nearly ten days now, and it's nice to reflect on all the tasks accomplished.  We've tailed hundreds of sheep and done numerous other projects.  Just now I'm admiring the plethora of wood Felipe and I cut and split.  The massive gum tree had tons of energy laying in it.  I made a butcher block of a huge round as well.  My time in New Zealand has been good, work purifies my mind and fortunately I've kept busy with the sheep farming.

Sandflies bite, but not incessantly, cool breeze keeps them at bay.  The distant sound of a powerboat, calling sheep, singing birds, and a flowing river are the music in the song I hear.  Sentinel snowcapped peaks, alpen glow, shadows in the folds of glacial carvings, green pastures, an ice cold lake, and the story land group of buildings below that make up Halfway Bay Station are the scene in the show I'm watching.

It's been quite some time since my last post, so I'll try to catch you all up.  Since I left Tim and Viv's, I went to Scott and Karyn's farm outside Thames.  It was a gorgeous setting high on a mountain overlooking the Firth of Thames.  Which is essentially a huge bay.  Scott is an American who evidently did well in the printing business in California and Karyn is a Kiwi he met there.  So they moved to Thames when the economy crashed and thought they'd become farmers.  They are working on it and have some great kids of there own to help them out.  So I spent a week there cutting firewood, driving a tractor, building a bridge and feeding animals.  After that I made my way to the city of Hamilton for a night on the town and saw some great music there.  I headed to the coast after that to spend a couple days relaxing and preparing for my sheep docking job.  I stayed at a great hostel in New Plymouth and enjoyed a couple rainy days laying low.

And then it was a few hour drive to Taihape on a windy but sunny afternoon.  I drove through beautiful country of endless green mountains manicured by the thousands of sheep grazing the hillsides.  And then finally made my way to Erewhon Station.  It's one of the biggest sheep stations in the country.  Myself, two Chileans, and two Argentinians made up the docking crew along with four more local hands and four shepherds with about ten dogs each. On the first day we were told we'd be docking about 22,000 lambs.  We are now through about 11,000 lambs already.  It's been a bloody, shitty, squealing, heavy lifting, hot, cold, rainy, beautiful, satisfying, and fascinating adventure so far.  The people are great and we get fed amazing meals made by Robin each day.  It's the real deal.  I have been enjoying the dogs work immensely.  They use Heading dogs which are silent and more or less stalk the sheep, and Huntaways that bark and herd.  It's impressive to watch the dogs get a whole "mob" from a distance and drive them right into the yard.  We've covered over half of the 10,000 acre farm and it is all beautiful country.  We put in 10-12 hour days and work while the sun shines.  I'm usually exhausted by the end of the day, so two "Tui" beers, a wonderful dinner from Robin and it's off to bed for me.  I will post some pictures soon to give you an idea of what it's like in pictures, I think they will explain more.

I've settled into the hills on the Coromandel Peninsula for the last week.  I found a family, Tim and Viv, to take me in, giving me room and board in exchange for half a day of work each day.  They're a great couple whose three kids have all recently moved out.  The property they have has an abundance of "projects" on it.  Tim, an Apple Orchardist by training, and Viv, ran an orchard in Nelson for a number of years before Tim took a job at a steel mill.  And now, after ten years of that, he's putting his full attention on the "Farm" they live on.  It's about 90 acres located on a steep side slope of some spectacularly green mountains.  From the upper pastures you can see almost the entire valley, scattered with dairy farms and green pastures as far as you can see.  Up valley there's a dramatic basalt stone peak, the remnants of a huge volcano from thousands of years ago.  Tim and Viv have four cows, ten chickens, one goat, two cats and a dog.  They recently planted over 1500 young trees and are in the middle of completing the construction of an earthen and timber framed home…(they started six years ago).  Tim has endless projects and I've been helping with the gamut.  I've done gravel drive work, fencing, bike mechanic work, built a low stone wall, and oiled an earth and tile floor, amongst many other things involving heavy lifting and time.  It's been nice feeling productive and I've probably put in an average of eight hours a day.  I enjoy listening to the insight Tim has on native tree species, or the hopes he puts in my head about getting a job on a big sheep, cattle, or trophy station in the high country of the South Island.  The day, in true English fashion, is broken up by a tea time at mid morning, a pleasantly long lunch and tea at about four in the afternoon.  So I've been highly caffeinated and have learned a thing or two by soaking up the many unique aspects of the lifestyle here.  Tim has so many projects, I have to give him pressure to finish one before moving on to three more, but it's been fun.  I've been eating well, a lot of beef that they've raised, and vegetables that they've grow.  It's been fun to partake in tea time talks with random neighbors who periodically stop by, reaffirming to me just how nice the folks here are.  Tomorrow I go to another family's farm about a half hour from here, to spend a week with them.  I think it has more animals than here so it should be another good experience.