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

Bruce Bay, Westland. A Picnic Stop with a Romantic Past.

The Tasman Sea rolls up the dark grey sands of Bruce Bay, relentlessly throwing back on to its beach dismembered remains of the trees that wash out of Westland’s rivers flood after flood. These days turmoil is only from the sea but there was a time when Bruce Bay was a scene of frantic ant-like activity as hundreds of gold-seekers hungrily sought the yellow metal; they were mostly condemned to disappointment.

By 1866 Albert Hunt, a successful West Coast prospector, had developed a ‘bubble reputation’ that made him into a will-o’-the-wisp figure; he was watched carefully and wherever he went an army of gold-seekers followed. Thus it was that when he started to fossick in these areas the local population burgeoned overnight to 2000 leading to the rapid establishment of a flimsy township at Bruce Bay: stores, booze outlets, pubs and the inevitable wild west bordello.

In fact, Hunt had made modest finds, but the miners didn’t believe him, nastiness broke out leading to riots and murderous threats from besieged shopkeepers. Hunt, meanwhile, took to his heels for safety’s sake and in no more than three weeks the Bruce Bay rush had fizzled out.

It’s hard to imagine such a frantic past when you stop at the bay on State Highway 6 south of Fox Glacier. There’s no gold to be picked up but all over the littered beach are beautiful quartz stones, some football-sized, white as bleached bones and smoothly abraded by the action of rivers and sea. Some old guide books suggest that they make good paper weights, and they do, but these days one is conscious of the suggestion that visitors ‘leave only footprints and take only pictures’.

This picture is at the northern end of Bruce Bay with Jacobs Bluff and Makawhio Point in the distance. The bluffs, bays and river mouths would have been familiar to the old gold miners for the beach was their highway. It’s good as a short stop for reflection and picnic but the sandflies will want to join you!

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Canterbury Earthquake: Terrace Station, Hororata

This is my watercolour from ‘New Zealand House and Cottage” of  Terrace Station, Hororata. It has been in the Hall family since 1862 when it was bought by John and Rose Hall. John, later knighted, became prime minister of New Zealand from 1879 to 1852.

His descendent, Godfrey Hall and his wife, Peggy became friends of ours in the 1960s and we often visited them at Terrace Station. It is now occupied by his daughter Kate Foster and her husband Richard.

I telephoned Kate just after the Canterbury earthquake to see if there had been any damage. I was horrified to hear that of the house’s seven chimneys, six had tumbled; there was much more damage but it was too early to assess its full extent and Richard and Kate were clearly in the middle of trying to sort themselves out, so I left her in peace – well, from me, anyway. But not before she’d told me that the church Sir John had founded, St. John’s. Hororata, had lost half its stone tower which had fallen through the west end of the nave.

Terrace Station homestead will survive but it’s a sobering thought that nothing is for certain – the house withstood nearly 160 years before Nature took its price.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Canterbury Earthquake: Heathcote’s Valley Inn Destroyed.

This watercolour of mine accompanied my post (search ‘Valley Inn Heathcote’) when I blog-published my book ‘The Good Old Kiwi Pub’

In 1877 the Valley Inn, with its trapeziform rooms and not a right-angle anywhere, became a licensed hotel. 133 years later, on 4 September 2010, it was so ravaged by the Canterbury Earthquake that it had to be destroyed.

These photographs were sent to me by Paul Corliss, author of ‘In The Shadow of the Rock’, a history of the Heathcote Valley. The ‘rock’ is Castle Rock which stands above the valley (see left of picture below). It was split asunder by the earthquake, sending house-sized boulders tumbling. Miraculously, nobody was hurt.

© DON DONOVAN & PAUL CORLISS

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Mitchells Cottage, Fruitlands, Central Otago

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.

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.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Teviot Woolshed 1870

 At Teviot near Roxburgh in Central Otago these ruins come as a complete surprise because they, unlike just about any other architectural structures in New Zealand, are reminiscent of European castle remains. They look mediaeval but in fact are less than 150 years old. They are the end walls of an enormous woolshed built around 1870 that was destroyed by fire in 1924.

The Teviot run was the first rural spread applied for in Central Otago. It was taken up by John Cargill and Walter Miller. Under a later owner it had the first telephone in New Zealand which connected the farmhouse to Roxburgh post office.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: Bill Blair Craftsman

When the world turns to mass production the craftsman, if he’s left to live another day,  becomes élite, very special and able to command his price. One such astute, happy, genial and highly accomplished craftsman is Bill Blair who has kept alive old skills since 1997.

His workshop is one of the well-known Red Sheds of Oamaru Harbour where, under the name Coppice Crafts, he makes trug baskets, wooden hay rakes and wooden pitch forks using hand tools such as draw knives and side axes.

He gathers his materials, typically willow, for the trugs and tool handles, from the local country and his products are outstandingly well fashioned for it would be beneath his dignity to offer anything less than his best.

As I said, he’s genial. He loves a chat and he’s full of the history of his town (including the story of Scott’s Last Expedition which was the subject of a previous post on this blog).

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Driftwood House Otago Peninsula

Some people build houses out of grass thatch, bottles, recycled plastics, mud brick and even skulls; there's no accounting for eccentricity. I imagine that the owner/s of this house on the inward shores of the Otago Harbour have spent years and years and years combing the shoreline for driftwood that they've laboriously carried home to pleach into these weird frames for garage and house.

'Shiver Me Timbers'. They who live in the house don't have to look at it. If they lived outside it they might realize it's other people's timbers that shiver!

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

 

Oamaru: The Ancestral Home of Lane's Emulsion

When I was  a child growing up in England 'they' used to give me Scott's Emulsion to keep me healthy. God only knows what was in it; it wasn't exactly unpleasant but then it wasn't pleasant either - just something you had to have because 'they' said so. 

Meanwhile, 20 000km away in New Zealand children were having a similar jollop forced down their throats. It was 'Lane's Emulsion', like Scott's, a cream coloured potion of the consistency of melted ice cream containing ghastly stuff like cod liver oil.

The New Zealand product came from a factory in Oamaru in New Zealand's South Island. The factory is still there in the historic precinct of that city and is now a bakery, deli and coffee shop. If you speak very nicely to the proprietor he'll close the doors for you and thus reveal Lane's simple slogan that was known all over the country 'It's Famous Because It's Good'. 

There's a compelling, unarguable logic in that battle cry.

 © DON DONOVAN 
donovan@ihug.co.nz

1913: News from Oamaru of the Failure of Scott’s Antarctic Polar Expedition

In an Internet age when messages flash around the globe in a twinkling of an eye it is almost impossible to appreciate that, in times past, the latest news of an event might follow its happening by weeks, months, even years.

Thus it was that the world heard of the deaths of Robert Falcon Scott and his companions almost a year after it happened.

Scott’s party died within a few miles of safety after having travelled to the South Pole in 1912. Their journey ‘home’ was blighted by the knowledge that they had not been the first to the pole, they had been beaten by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition. A sense of failure pressed upon their dispirited shoulders as, daily, they weighed their food and fuel and realized that it would run out before they could complete their ‘manhaul’ walk to base.

They died in their tent on 29 March 1912. Scott kept his diary up to date to the last and was the last to die. There they lay until they were found eight months later on12 November 1912.

Thereafter the news had to be taken to the outside world (no cell phones, no wireless telegraph). The ship Terra Nova sailed north from the Antarctic and on 10 February 1913 arrived at Oamaru Harbour on the east coast of the South Island of New Zealand. Two officers rowed ashore and walked along the harbour wharf to the nightwatchman’s hut to enquire the whereabouts of the overland Telegraph Office. From there the message was flashed to London that Scott’s Expedition to the South Pole had ended with the deaths of the party almost one year earlier.

The people of Oamaru did not find out the news until they read it in the London newspapers (which would have taken about six weeks to reach New Zealand). That delay was caused by contractual arrangements surrounding the polar expedition which forbade any but its official sources to publish news of related events, achievements and, of course, subsequent

The nightwatchman’s hut still stands at Oamaru Harbour – it’s that red one, the one with the brick chimney and modillions under the eaves.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: The War Memorial

This impressive war memorial stands in Thames Street, Oamaru, an expansive tribute to those from the Oamaru District who died in the Great War. In numbers they would not have been that many but, typically of New Zealand's contribution to the European war, the proportion of population would have been outrageous.

E. Miller designed the soaring obelisk (made for some strange reason of Sicilian Granite - why not Oamaru Stone?); T. J. Clapperton executed the superb bronze and the memorial was unveiled on Anzac Day 1926.

The irony of the bronze is that the 1918 soldier is comforting what was probably a seven year old boy who would have been 28 in 1939. when the next world war began. It seems, in retrospect, that the soldier might be saying, 'There, lad, we've saved you for the next one!'


These war memorials are not only tributes to fallen warriors, they are also sad monuments to human stupidity. 


© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz





 

Oamaru: The Old Post Office

Block out the clocktower with your hand. That’s how this limestone building looked from 1883 to 1903. The crowning and rather superior tower was added by John, the son of Thomas Forrester of Forrester and Lemon, architects.

Why wasn’t it there in the first place? Not intended? Not enough money? Whatever the reason, this ex post office, which is now home to the Waitaki District Council, would have been ordinary, by Oamaru standards, without it.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: North Otago Museum

The legend over the main door reads: ‘Where there are riches there are people; and where there are people stories flow’. It’s typical of those high-headed shibboleths Victorians felt it necessary to promulgate to the citizenry in the days when earnest civic leaders – Ozymandiases of their day – built things to last.

The North Otago Museum began life in 1882 as the Mechanics’ Institute and Oamaru Athenaeum, a subscription library. 

The architects, Forrester and Lemon must have been wildly successful financially because, as with the Athenaeum,  they ‘did’ most the Oamaru stone buildings in this historic precinct. Most of their designs were variations on the Palladian theme – all very classical and quite outstandingly good.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: De Lambert Tea Importers

 

I don't know whether there's such a surfeit of superb buildings in Oamaru that nobody wants to claim this one, or whether, perhaps, Oamaruvians are ashamed of commercialism but this little treasure is worth a mention even if the local literature ignores it. I seem to be the only one who's prepared to give it space.

I don't know who designed or built it but de Lambert Bros., who obviously found the money, were proud enough of it to have paid both an architect and a builder. 

Although it looks older to me, I'm told that the building was finished in 1923 and is on the site of the old gaol which was demolished in 1921. Oamaru stone, of course. Our thanks to Mr de Lambert and his Bros for leaving us something worthwhile. For the present, let's hope that Filadelfio's pizzas are as good as the building in the historic precinct.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: Former Waitaki County Council building

They don’t make as much fuss about this building as some of the others in Oamaru – in fact it’s quite hard to get any information about it. It’s now the Community Centre but started life in 1881 as the Waitaki County Council offices. The council had been formed in 1877 to service the agricultural and pastoral areas of North Otago.

As with many others of the buildings of the historic precinct it was designed by  Forrester and Lemon. As one of the smaller Palladian style edifices it is a limestone jewel.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: The Opera House 1907

They just don’t build stuff like this any more! It’s magnificent and it was built in 1906-7 in the small but prosperous town of Oamaru in North Otago, New Zealand.

As are most of the classic builings of the town’s ‘historic precinct’ its material is Oamaru limestone. Its architect was J. M. Forester, a local identity. Just over a hundred years ago it cost £10 600 (about $NZ22 000); today such a structure would probably cost in the hundreds of thousands – even millions? – rather than thousands; in any case, no modern New Zealand architect or builder would know where to start!

Not just an auditorium for theatre, ballet, concerts and, of course, opera, the Opera House also housed offices both for civic and local body organizations.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru: The Courthouse

It’s just past nine o’clock on a weekday morning and those with business at Oamaru’s district court are already gathering to prosecute, defend, plead and receive judgment. For some: good news, for others bad.

Here lives are changed. It has been so since 1882-3 when this magnificently pompous Palladian classic was opened in a small but prosperous and comfortable town.

The courthouse, built of Oamaru stone, was designed by Forrester and Lemon unashamedly derived from ancient Greco-Roman origins. Long may it last.

©DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Oamaru Railway Station 1900.

Twenty-first century railways in New Zealand are mediocre remnants of a romantic past when triumphs of engineering drove the line north to south, linking the main centres of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill. Those early engineers, armed with none of the earth-moving or computerized technology of today, overcame enormous difficulties: bridging raging river gorges, spiralling prodigious heights, and carving slender paths through rough bush and scrub, moorland and desert.

It was a past when glorious steam engines transported both people and goods, when the road system was rudimentary and neither petrol not diesel engines had been invented.

As if in homage to the achievements of the permanent way the terminals and way stations that served goods and people were architectural monuments as much enriched by their handsomeness as their practicality. All of the major cities had railway stations as important to rail as cathedrals are to religion. Those in Auckland, Wellington and Dunedin survive, the latter being one of the greatest and entirely home designed of all (the others are based on exotic designs).

The man who designed Dunedin station was George Troup. He was also responsible for many minor stations along the way, all uniquely his and New Zealand’s.

One of the best – a wooden building in a town noted for its limestone structures – is at Oamaru north of Dunedin on the main trunk line. Troup’s Oamaru Station was built in 1900 at a time when the station thrived and trains were heavily patronized. An indication of its substance is that its dining room had seating for over 200 people at a time!

In the twenty-first century nobody would design and build such an architectural beauty as Oamaru Station because there is virtually no architecture in New Zealand that looks to the future, only to commerce, practicality and the need to build to the lowest price.

We should be grateful to Oamaru, the New Zealand Historic Places Trust and those who care, that George Troup’s way station lives today.

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz

Altavady: North Otago

Travelling east on state highway 83 between Duntroon and Oamaru, along the south bank of life-giving Waitaki River (the boundary between North Otago and South Canterbury) we’re suddenly confronted by this piece of topiary on a grand scale.

The sheep farm was named ‘Altavady’ by Samuel Wilson, the second owner of the property; I have not been able to find out its meaning – although ‘alta’ suggests ‘high’.

‘A-L-T-A-V-A-D-Y’ was first laid out in giant pine letters by Ted Aubrey in 1931 when the plantation that surrounds it was first planted.

Farther north, across the river near Waimate, a similar example of man’s desire to build monuments exists as a white horse bas-relief set in a hillside. Unlike similar horses in England that are carved into chalk, the Waimate horse is whitened by concrete slabs. They’ll probably last a lot longer than Altavady but Ted Aubrey’s made his mark.

© DON DONOVAN
donovan@ihug.co.nz
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Naseby, Central Otago

Gold gave birth to Naseby in 1863; a big rush, a fast-expanding population, the usual belief that gold fields would last for ever spawning substantial buildings forming a town that’s lasted to this day and whose origins are jealously preserved. The charming County Offices (now a museum) are testament to a colonial Victorian pomposity typical of small town New Zealand in 1878, and the earnestness of worthy shopkeepers is characterized in these two shops of much the same vintage whose origins are re-stated with a lick of paint from time to time.

Naseby lies near the Otago Rail Trail which is now a cycle track. Some cycling tourists – who alternate between easy cycling and riding by coach – find accommodation at Naseby.

Cyclists are fine on the rail trail but they are not only highly vulnerable on roads that were never designed for them but are, paradoxically, quite threatening when some of them ride in groups kitted out in space gear that looks as expensive as anything you might find on the ski slopes of St Moritz. This little lot, at the end of a pedaling day, pushed in front of me as if they owned the place while I had my tripod set up to photograph the old Royal Hotel, no permission, no ‘excuse us’, no apology. I swore at them (but not too loudly as there were more of them than of me).

© DON DONOVAN

donovan@ihug.co.nz
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