Photoprint for Sale: Lake Dunstan and Cromwell, Central Otago, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

Photoprint for Sale: Coronet Peak Skifield In Summer Silhouette, Central Otago, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

Photoprint for Sale: Woman Sitting By Lake Hayes In Autumn, Central Otago, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

Photoprint for Sale: Chimney Of Ruined Stone House, Lindis Pass, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 46cm x 30cm (18" x 12").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz

Photoprint for Sale: The Remarkables Mountain Range From Queenstown, Central Otago, New Zealand

This is an original photoprint from my personal collection

Size of image is 30cm x 46cm (12" x 18").

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. urban p. and p. in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
.

Prints For Sale: Four Square Store, Wanaka in 1990

This print is identical to my original drawing that appeared in my book 'Open 7 Days'.

Size of image is approx. 27 cm x 45 cm .

Price is $NZ 65.00 inc. p and p in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
.

Prints For Sale: Dudley's Cottage, Arrowtown

This print is identical to my original drawing that appeared in my book 'New Zealand House & Cottage'.

Size of image is approx. 27 cm x 36 cm .

Price is $NZ 51.00 inc. p and p in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701.

© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
.

Prints For Sale: Mitchell's Cottage, Fruitlands, Central Otago

This print is identical to my original drawing that appeared in my book 'New Zealand House & Cottage'.

Size of image is approx. 23 cm x 30 cm .

Price is $NZ 50.00 inc. p and p in NZ.

Please contact me at donovan@ihug.co.nz or 09 4159 701


© DON DONOVAN. donovan@ihug.co.nz 
www. don-donovan.blogspot.co.nz
.

Central Otago: Lake Hawea - the Promise

To travel by car from Central Otago to New Zealand's West Coast via the Haast Pass takes less than two hours, but the changes in terrain and climate are remarkable; there are few days when the weather is similar on both sides of the alps. 

This is a view from Lake Hawea, east of the main divide. It promises savage weather through the pass and to the west. On this day it was harsh but grand, the layers of mist and rain dramatically delineating distance from one mountain range to another. And yet, when we reached our goal at Haast Township the sun came out! It's almost impossible to predict what you might find at the end of this winding, wild precipitous road; but it is as much fun to travel hopefully as it is to arrive.


© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Central Otago: The Crown Range

The drive from Arrowtown to Wanaka can be striking but mundane via the safe main roads or even more striking and really exciting (but still safe these days) over this, the Crown Range. From Arrowtown (or Queenstown) you cross the Arrow River bridge and immediately turn left to wind up, via a series of hairpin bends, the steep face that overlooks the Arrowtown basin. Once you get to the top you pause to admire the superb view and then start a gradual descent  to Wanaka, passing the old hotel at Cardrona (now flossied up for the tourists) and the access to the Cardrona ski-field.

The real glory of this trip lies in its wonderful hills which, like those at the Lindis Pass, look as if they're covered in a pilled greeny-yellowy blanket, soft and cuddly. The road (see bottom right of the picture) is an intrusion; one almost feels that the hills should have been left alone.

Imagine all of this greeness changed to pristine white in the ski-ing season. That's what the Crown Range looks like in winter: glorious but often impassable by road.


© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz

‘Distant Ophir’: The Post Office 1886

James Macandrew, superintendent of the Otago Provincial Council in 1872, was surely a classically educated man for when he changed the town’s name from Blacks to Ophir he knew well that gold from ancient Ophir was brought to King Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem.

Ophir, New Zealand, was one of this country’s richest sources of gold.

As evidenced by the Daniel O’Connell bridge (see previous blog), the post office, built in 1886, is another indication that optimistic goldminers thought Ophir would grow and flourish. It didn’t grow, it didn’t flourish, but the bridge, the post office and some of the buildings are sufficiently attractive to ensure that the hamlet survives – even if only to be occupied by weekenders (perhaps from Dunedin) and retired people prepared to take on the savage winters of Central Otago.

Ophir Post Office is active: you may still post letters there through its highly polished box, buy stamps and other NZ Post services. In fact, it’s such a superior building that you’d travel quite a distance just to mail your letters and parcels from ‘distant Ophir’.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

New Zealand’s Diminishing Sheep Flocks

I took this picture in Central Otago, New Zealand, in the early autumn of 2010. They are Merinos and they are on their way to be shorn for their fine fleece. They are what they eat: grass – brown grass. Brown grass = brown sheep! Dun brown is the usual colour of Central Otago.

These Merinos are on the side of a hill. The paths along which they are walking while grazing are contour tracks made by sheep over many years. Sheep hate walking up hills so they walk round them. Much of the soil erosion of these hillsides is caused by sheep contours; rain gets into the terraces, breaks them down and causes landslips.

Thirty years ago there were over seventy million sheep in New Zealand now there are just over thirty million. Thirty years ago, for every one human there were twenty-three sheep; now there are eight. The reason is that farmers haven’t been able to make much money from sheep meat and wool so they’ve switched to dairy cattle farming which is far more rewarding.

If sheep ever get to be more valuable than cattle, farmers will switch back again. Per capita, sheep are becoming more valuable because there are fewer of them but it all takes time.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Open 7 Days 34. Rolston’s General Store, Oturehua

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

ROLSTON’S GENERAL STORE

Main Road, Oturehua, Central Otago.
Proprietors: Grant and Mary Rolston

The first store in Oturehua (then called Rough Ridge) was built in 1899 by James Caldwell, but within three years Thomas Gilchrist had bought him out and the business remained in the Gilchrist family for the next eighty-seven years.

Very close to the site of the original store, the present building was put up in 1929, with a bakery at the back run by Alex Robertson, who married into the Gilchrist family.

It was gold that lured Thomas Gilchrist from Victoria and also sustained the early settlement, although farming became the eventual heart of the economy. Horse-and-cart deliveries were made to St. Bathans and Moa Creek, orders being taken one week and delivered the next, and the offering included everything from timber, petrol (in cases), tyres, fencing materials and stock foods to crockery, tools and clothing.

In 1989, when only Herb and Bruce Gilchrist remained (Herb having been there forty-seven years and Bruce thirty-six), the Rolstons moved in from Norsewood. The shop remains little changed and still sells a wide range of goods. It has the local postal agency and runs the rural delivery of mail, papers and groceries, often through heavy snow.

The community is nowadays composed of transport workers and farmers, supplemented by visitors who summer at their cribs , enjoy winter sports at the Ida Burn Dam or appear in their thousands at the motorcyclists’ Brass Monkey Rally every Queen’s Birthday weekend.

The nearby Hayes Engineering Works is a monument to New Zealand’s capacity for inventiveness.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Open 7 Days 33. Patearoa Community Store

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

PATEAROA COMMUNITY STORE

Patearoa, Central Otago.
Proprietors: Bill and Mal Warren

In 1987 the century-old Patearoa Store and its post office were on the point of closing down. However, the locals wouldn’t hear of it, so they clubbed together (as did the people of Millers Flat) to buy the land and buildings, which they now lease to the Warrens.

Bill, a retired Christchurch policeman, and Mal, an unretired sign-writer, own the Pateroa Hotel across the road. It dates from 1928 and is on the site of one built by Thomas Newton in 1887. It was called the Sowburn Hotel then, and the first store was next door, on land owned by the publican. That hotel, like so many others in New Zealand over the years, burned down in 1927.

In the 1940s the publican, Arthur Keegan, tried to raise the rent and this incensed Mr Robertson, the storekeeper, so much that he bought the abandoned Upper Kyeburn schoolhouse, moved it from near Dansey Pass and set it up on the other side of the hotel. The resultant ill-feeling was sorted out by the parish priest. What now constitutes the Patearoa Store is the old store and the schoolhouse butted together.

Patearoa was part of the Central Otago goldfields, and remains of the nearby Sowburn diggings are evident in buildings and abandoned machinery. Now a farming area, it’s a vibrant community, its residents competing actively around the Maniototo Plain at rugby, cricket, tennis, golf and bowls. The store, besides being a postal agency, supplies general groceries, milk, bread, newspapers and the friendliest of welcomes.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

Open 7 Days 25. Wanaka Store

I wrote and illustrated ‘Open 7 Days’. It was published in 1991. It’s a series of freeze-frames of some historic New Zealand general and convenience stores as they were preserved in the last decade of the 20th century. Bit by bit, on this blog, I re-publish some of the entries from that book.

WANAKA STORE
78 Ardmore Street, Wanaka, Central Otago.
Proprietors: Dave and Iris Gillespie.

Wanaka is the lake: a magnificent glacial aqua-sculpture that thrusts deep into the heart of the Southern Alps and points the way to the grandeur of the Haast Pass and southern Westland beyond.

Wanaka is one of those fortunate resorts that works as well in winter as in summer, with the consequence that there are always visitors as well as residents to make life busy at the store.

It was started in the 1870s by Robert McDougall (a legendary figure who had a kind heart as well as being postmaster, justice of the peace and registrar of birth, deaths and marriages) to supply the diggers at the Cardrona goldfields. It was taken up later and rebuilt by D.W.Jolly.

A storekeeper had to stock everything imaginable then, and Jolly’s carried men’s and women’s clothing, horseshoes, nails, picks, spades, pans, basic foods and patent medicines. They baked bread, too, and delivered to Luggate, Albert Town, Hawea Flat and Makarora. Right up to the 1950s, Wilson Bros., the then owners, were still carrying on in the same way.

The Gillespies bought the store in 1981 and started a self-service and check-out system. But tradition dies hard and the Wanaka Store, whose Four Square paint can’t hide its sturdy lines, still serves as a meeting place and information exchange for the townsfolk.

The tourist launch Ena De is pink by design, and the question I heard a local wit call out is obviously a standing joke: ‘When’re you going to give it its top coat?’

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

N.Z. House & Cottage 27. Mitchell’s Cottage, Fruitlands, Central Otago

I wrote and illustrated ‘New Zealand House and Cottage’. It was published in 1997. It’s a snapshot of some historic New Zealand homes - both grand and modest - as they were preserved at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

MITCHELLS’ COTTAGE, FRUITLANDS

Central Otago is one big builder’s yard, a colossal litter of a remarkable construction material from which every conceivable type of building has been erected since European immigrants moved across the face of the land.

It’s that fine-grained, metamorphic rock called schist, in whose lasagne-layers wink and sparkle promises of Central Otago’s mineral wealth. It’s a stone that will split but not break across its grain, wonderfully suitable, in a variety of lengths and thicknesses, for horizontally-raised cottage walls, door and window lintels, quoins, chimney breasts and stacks, and even the odd roof, it makes walls and fence posts, bridges and cattle troughs, and even in its unquarried state it provided overhangs and cave-like niches for itinerant gold seekers stranded in winter’s fury. Artistically it’s a gemstone, providing texture and form to tempt the pen, and offering to the palette the rich ochres, browns and greys of the lichened landscape from which it springs
.
Completed in 1904, Mitchells’ Cottage at Fruitlands, above the winding highway from Alexandra to Roxburgh, is an outstanding example of the drystone mason’s craft. It was built with painstaking skill, each stone carefully considered and cut so precisely that no mortar was used or needed. It was made by men who knew of no other way to work - no short cuts, no shoddiness - simply the best.

From the Shetland Islands by way of the Australian goldfields Andrew Mitchell arrived in New Zealand in 1866, followed by his brother John in 1872. They worked around the Otago goldfields until, in the 1880s, Andrew discovered a quartz reef on the hills of the Old Man Range above the Clutha Valley. Unlike most gold mining ventures it prospered over a long period and John and Andrew, using skills they’d learned from their father, started to build the cottage below the mine. What is now the foundation was quarried for the building’s schist and as they worked meticulously they yet found time to carve, in situ, a solid sundial platform from rock in the garden.

John and his wife Jessie brought up ten children in Mitchells’ Cottage (while Andrew lived nearby, alternating between a small stone cottage close to the mine shaft and a smaller iron hut next to John and Jessies’) and although the mine was sold in 1890 and John died in 1922, the cottage stayed in Jessie’s ownership until 1929. It is now in the care of the Department of Conservation.

Schist stone fenceposts are a common sight in Central Otago; this one is in the garden of Mitchells’ Cottage.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
.

North Western Hotel, Palmerston

I wrote and illustrated ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’. It was published in 1995 and was a snapshot of some New Zealand pubs as they were at the end of the 20th century. I have decided to share some of the entries from the book from time to time on this blog.

The first coach travellers from Dunedin to the Otago gold rushes in the early 1860s were treated to a terrifying trip over the flood-prone Taieri Plain and across the hostile hills and valleys of the Old Dunstan Road. Despite the legendary skills of determined coachmen it wasn’t a satisfactory route and so, around 1864, a safer, more reliable alternative was developed which saw Cobb & Co’s coaches bustling up the coast road from Dunedin to Palmerston and then following the Shag River valley ‘Pigroot’ into Central Otago. 

The first North Western which was built in 1863, described by E.M. Lovell-Smith in ‘Old Coaching Days’ as a ‘pretentious wooden building’, became the depot for Cobb & Co. But it burned down and was replaced by the hotel that still stands today.

Built of bricks from a local kiln in 1887, it prospered until 1906 when it was hit by local prohibition. The wonder of it is that the building survived for it was variously used as a boarding house, fish and chip shop and a babies’ clothing shop until a tourist licence was granted almost eighty years later.

In 1989, with a new licensing act in place, it obtained a restaurant licence, but only in 1992 did it become fully licensed once more. Today’s North Western is a handsome structure and, being the only survivor out of fourteen original hotels in Palmerston, is an important remnant - as is the town hall (above) - of this historic junction town; especially as the original stables, essential to Cobb & Co coach travel along the ‘Pigroot’ to the gold fields, are still there.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

.