Caravan Diaries: Pt II

After buying my caravan, I heard so many stories I was nearly put off, thinking I'd be better off if I bought one of those tiny houses made from a shipping container and put it on the back of a truck (staying home was never an option). The people selling the caravan in Balclutha told me they were on their way to the summer vacation spot when the front window blew in and the back window blew out. Useful if you want a wind tunnel, I guess. Then I saw a news article about a caravan which was caught in the wind, and had its walls blown out, so the roof collapsed on to the floor - a very elaborate, one-time mouse trap? Of course, there were the usual stories of punctures, speed wobbles, angry motorists, bearings collapsing and the like but a bloke I met in Christchurch possibly had the best tale. He set off from new Plymouth, taking his father's pride and joy, a recently acquired caravan to Taihape. He was not the most observant of chaps but did manage to get all the way to Taihape, when he finally noticed that he was no longer towing a caravan: it had gone over a bank somewhere along the line. Not long afterwards, he noticed he had an unamused father. I myself had a mishap before I had even taken delivery of my caravan. I had bought a towbar, which Toll brought down from Christchurch. We're talking a half inch thick steel bar, which gets attached to the Jeep's chassis with the ability to tow 2.5 tons of caravan. Somehow, Toll managed to smash it in transit, so my mechanic had to hurriedly find a replacement.

Still, I couldn't let myself be put off by these stories and a week before Christmas, I set off. Unusually, I was pretty much on top of everything at work and home so there was no mad panic to finish anything first. I had to get my car stereo installed in my Jeep, and that led to me losing my phone necessitating an urgent temporary replacement (one beauty of Windows phones is that they allow you to restore everything from a lost phone to a replacement), but that was it. I had a quiet drink in town and attended an awful Christmas party - knew no-one except the person who took me and was cornered by someone who shared way too much information about herself, punctuated by the statement "but you don't care", then quit town earliesh on the Saturday.

I made my customary stops for coffee - Tees Street in Oamaru and Verde in Geraldine - and although I was going on a caravvaning holiday, spent the first night in the YHA in Springfield, just because I'd seen photos of its library. What the photos didn't make clear was that the books were mainly in Japanese. No matter, I had quite a swag with me. It was a very pleasant, very quiet night.

Another memory of the caravan trip I had with my family when I was a young boy is of the fear we had that whatever car my parents had would not make it over Arthur's Pass. Not sure why, because from the East the pass is very easy - there is barely a climb. Another fear I have developed in the meantime is that the provisions in the cafe there are over-priced nastiness: not so. I was impressed with both the coffee and the chips I bought. Of course, going down the other side through to Otira is a different story - there's quite a gradient (as a bus driver has recently tested, with unfortunate results for his passengers).

At Jacksons, if you turn right you'll wander along a bit through a mixture of scruffy land and developed farms and be at Lake Brunner, a 40 square kilometer lake surrounded on most sides by bush and frequently moodlit with mist. It is one of my favourite lakes - I'm pretty sure my first notice of it was when I came over by train and we stopped briefly at Moana.

I've been back a number of times - for a barbecue on the jetty (where the yacht club guys were very clear about me not having permission to sleep), to visit the formerly well-regarded Stationhouse cafe and to stay in the hotel. This time I'm staying in the caravan park for three nights: on my first night, it was deserted, apart from a number of permanently sited caravans, only one of which was occupied (by a woman baking a delicious smelling cauliflower pie). Moana itself is on the move - a lot of new homes have been built here, as well as a sort of resort, since I last visited. The cafe and pub are still going strong and despite its rationalisation, even the train still stops.

I didn't really do very much here - wandered the lake front, visited the cafe and the pub (way too busy and full of over-friendly drunk people for my taste), assembled my new bicycle in the TV room, and made day visits to Hokitika and Greymouth. In the former, I checked out an excellent photography exhibition in the art gallery - all of local scenes, my favourite was an evening shot of the jetty in Okarito - and went up to the airport (not sure why - there were no flights in the middle of the day and the place was closed). I liked the look of this building up there

and took a particularly lazy shot of the de Havilland Fox Moth which is behind glass there.

This is an important aircraft, as it was used for New Zealand's first licensed passenger airservice (there were earlier unlicensed services), from Hokitika to Haast on 18 December 1934. Naturally, I checked out the library and then went to the 6:00 showing of the Star Wars movie - very impressed with Rey, but the story was hardly new. Nice to see it in a classic cinema.

Near Moana, there's an intriguing sign saying "Miniature Bungalow" which I passed several times before I went up the little side road to explore. Back in 1935, the teacher at the Jack's Mill School thought that kids aged 10-12 should get a practical education, so he had them build a house. A full size one was probably beyond what they could do, so they built a smaller version, still quite a bit bigger than what I expected from a miniature: it is actually 3/4 size. Apparently the teacher tried to get this adopted as a programme throughout New Zealand, but this is the only one built.

I happened to be there when the (I think) grand-daughter of the owner of the mill which provided the timber for the house was there, showing some of her friends around, but didn't learn much more from her than was on the notices onsite.

Back on the main road into Greymouth, there's a wee town called Dobson - the pub looks like it closed fairly recently, but it looks like the mechanic hasn't turned up to work for a while.