It seems a bit unusual to be travelling on your birthday as it is normally time to sit back, kick your shoes off and be waited on rather than being the chief pilot of the rented Toyota Corolla with a few hundred kilometres of highway and scenery ahead.
One fortunate feature of being independent travellers is that you can choose the time to get up, have breakfast and get on the road rather than being in a group party and have your suitcases out at the prescribed time.
After a short discussion, about our travels so far and where we w ere going, with our hosts at the Air BnB we got the car pointing south and headed for a petrol top up at NPD.
Now the petrol top up each day (in need if we have travelled the previous day) is a deal struck between the main driver and the man with the wallet and credit card at the ready. The deal is that the car petrol tank doesnt start the day under a minimum of half full.
principally South Island petrol retailer, have a great deal for Super Gold Card holders with 15c per litre off on every fill so we hope they have a location in all the places we are likely to need them.
Population spread is going south in Nelson and it was Brightwater before we got into more rural scenery including a number of hop farms alongside the highway. All the work for the last season looked to be over with the hops picked and the structures bare ready for the next season.
We passed Lord Ernest Rutherfords birth place at Spring Grove just south of Brightwater where today there is not a lot to see of where this great New Zealander grew up as the house he was born in was demolished in the 1920s.Oddly enough when his birth was registered his name was misspelt ‘Earnest and that may have had something to do with this son of an immigrant Scottish farmer as he went on to study at Nelson College before winning a scholarship to Canterbury University and then in 1895 was awarded a Research Fellowship to study at the University of Cambridge. His work in science and physics
Wakefield was the next settlement on Highway 6 and we were on the lookout for the best bakery in the province but by the time we reached the open road sign at the south of the town we realised we had somehow missed the bakerys location.
We needed something for lunch so turned around and headed back into the town and spotted the bakery which we decided was best visible if you are approaching from the south.
The bakery had a long queue which indicated its popularity and we purchased our lunch for consuming somewhere down the road to Hokitika.
One other feature in Wakefield on the main road is a dairy with a prominent sign stating it was the last dairy for 100km, adding, on the main road. This reminded us that we had done the right thing in buying lunch already as the highway ahead, for 100km anyway, is a bit desolate of shops.
Up and over a couple of road saddles and we were making good progress down towards Kawatiri Junction where we planned to do a short walk to the
rail tunnel built in 1923 as part of the now defunct Nelson to Gowanbridge rail line. The rail line was started in Nelson in 1873 and was built in stages until money ran out in the depression of the 1930s and eventually the line was ripped up in the mid 1950s and the dream of the people of Nelson to be part of the full rail system in the South Island was abandoned.
There was an abundance of information on the rail line at what is left of the Kawatiri station and reading this gave us a sense of what it was like for the hardy workers who worked in this remote location under trying conditions.
The short walk along the alignment of the rail line to the bridge approach into the tunnel built in 1923 was easy as was the stroll through the short 185 metre tunnel and then back via a trail on the outside of the tunnel through the forest.
The next location on todays drive we were on the lookout for was the site of the 1968 Inangahua Earthquake slip.
