Our mornings in Hanmer Springs so far had all started with cloud and a threat of rain but this morning the story was different with broken cloud and blue sky apparent. This bodes well for our drive over Lewis Pass and onto Lake Rotoiti when we expect the mountain scenery should be spectacular.
Gretchen had washed off much of the visible dust on the car that we had picked up in Molesworth Station but there was still plenty in the sills in the door and other places where the hose water didnt reach and it was hard to avoid dusting ones clothes when climbing into a seat.
We avoided the bakery we had been to for the last 3 days this morning for food for lunch on the road somewhere and decided that a break in Reefton around the time lunchtime was due. We did however purchase a couple of pies for our dinner tonight from a small stall in the main street and at $7 each they had better be good. By all accounts from people who look happy munching on a pie around the stall they should be good.
came back to reality passing trucks frequently as we made our way west following firstly the Waiau River and then the Hope River, both wide and free flowing. The summit of the Lewis Pass at 907 metres is the middle highest/ lowest of the three mountain passes over the Southern Alps. In fact you would hardly have noticed that the road had risen to 907metres and taken us over the peak and heading down the other side.
We had two options to take to Tophouse, Lake Rotoiti SH 65 via Maruia or continue on SH7,the latter taking us via Reefton,an iconic West Coast town we had driven by before but never through and there was a lot of history to soak up as lunchtime arrived.
We parked at the top end of the main street which still has a certain look of the late 1800s about it with almost all of the building being constructed of timber and many still having the appearance of yesteryear. The one blot on the main street was the more ‘modern Mobil service station which stood out saying ‘I dont belong here amongst all this old world charm.
the locals at The Future Dough Co caf which had been standing on the same spot for over 130years, serving miners and their families all that time.
We had noticed over the past few weeks that Reefton had been enjoying temperatures into the mid to high 20s and today was no exception. So we took the last small table on the footpath outside the caf so we could watch the citizens of Reefton do about their business in the warm sun while we had our coffees and warm, freshly baked multi fruit muffins.
A stroll down one side of the main street and back up the other reading many of the plaques in the shop windows gave us a deeper insight to this old gold and coal mining town.
Heading out of town the rail line to Westport ran alongside the highway to Inangahua the location of an earthquake in 1968 which measured 7.1 locally on the Richter scale causing considerable damage to the houses and school in the small town that many were damaged beyond repair and people shifted away to other centres to restart their lives. Today there a couple of houses remaining but the
We then entered the Upper Buller Gorge and were on the lookout for the AA sign that pointed across the Buller River to the very large landslip that came down in the 1968 earthquake and blocked the river to such an extent that authorities were worried that when the ‘dam ‘gave way that Westport ,downstream, might be badly flooded. Eventually the ‘dam didnt prove to be such a problem and the built up water gradually drained away.
This was the third time we had been through this part of the Buller Gorge in the last 2 years on holidays and both of the earlier occasions we had past the sign before we could stop in steady traffic and there was nowhere nearby where you could turn around easily and go back.
