031228

1200 - Been fiddling around here all morning writing up my notes and visiting with John and Nell, Cliff and Nell and Chris Gallagher and his wife.

A group of us walked over across the street to the little shop and had coffees and talked more. I learned way too many things to try to record here but it was most interesting. One was, however, that the managed forests I see here are often the Radiata Pine.

Time to get onto the road again. I've gotten some good input one where to go to see the "Real New Zealand".

I headed up to see Castlepoint, which is the next town north of Riversdale Beach. It turned out to be quite a nice place as well and the lighthouse there was very scenic and I shot a lot of photographs.


Beach at Castlepoint	Homes or batchs at Castlepoint	The Castlepoint Store	View towards the lighthouse

Walking towards the lighthouse looking back at the campervan	Rocks to the side of Castlepoint	The path up to the lighthouse	People fishing off a huge rock to the seaward of the lighthouse

A picture of myself at the top with the lighthouse in the background	The lighthouse with the approach and the vehicles down below	The bay behind the lighthouse and the Castlepoint community.	A sign on the side of the lighthouse

Boats with tractor pullers on the beach below the lighthouse.

After Castlepoint, I continued to drive north up the coast and I missed a turn I should have taken and I went on a very scenic road next to the sea that eventually turned inland and after awhile, I came to a locked gate. A check of my map showed me my error. It took me the best part of an hour to backtrack my way out of this mistake though I'm not sorry it happened - I got to see some very interesting country. The last community on the road before it ended was Mataikona.


Beginning of the road to nowhere	Edge on layered rock erosions in the sea	More of the odd rocks which went for a long ways	Looking back at Castlepoint

More coastline	Ditto	And ditto

I think I left Riversdale Beach around 1230. It was 1930 before I pulled into Herbertville where I'm staying tonight. Herbertville is just immediately south of Cape Turnagain which is was a major landmark for Captain Cook when he first explored and mapped New Zealand.

It took a very long time to get here to Herbertville because the roads were slow. There was a long section from Whakataki, when I got back on the road I was suppose to be on until I reached hwy 52 at Alfredton which was gravel and very slow. I thought all through this section that things would be way better once I got onto 52 which looks fairly major on the map. Wrong. Hwy 52 is all paved but it is a small very twisty one or two lane road for a very long ways and there's virtually nothing on it. I saw hills and trees and cattle and sheep in endless amounts and maneuvered around countless mountain curves. I probably saw one or two cars and hour. I was rather stunned at how much countryside seems to be barely occupied. Yes, there were sheep stations scattered along but they were often miles apart and showed very little evidence of people being around. There were a number of places where the road was half washed away and it was single lane. They also have a lot of one-lane bridges here as well.


Many miles of gravel like this	Typical scene - not the sheep on the hill side	A long view from a high point with a washout ahead	Something beside the road that looks suspiciously like Scotch Broom

On the main highways, they have passing lanes and restrooms and rest stops at regular intervals all along them. Hwy 52 doesn't qualify. It had nothing. This area is truly rural New Zealand.

I found myself thinking that I might not find a motor camp and I'd have to park and sleep without an external power hookup. 4 PM came and went, 5 PM, 6 PM and then 7 PM. Still driving and driving through beautiful rural nothingness. I got the impression that if one had to be born as a sheep, this would the heaven-on-earth place to get so incarnated. Green, green, green everywhere. All the hillsides marked with sheep paths as if a giant comb had been dragged along all of their sides.

Finally, I got close to a place named Wimbledon where there was a golf course marked very near to the coast. It seemed to me that this would be a likely place for a small beach community and a motor camp. About 1910, I arrived in Wimbleton and there was nothing there but a pub. I stopped and took my map in.

As always, the folks I met there were nice. It was definitely a rural pub, though. Several of us went over the map and , of course, my whole trip to New Zealand was recounted in the process. There's a pace that works in the country and that's the pace things move at naturally - or they may not move. I didn't mind. I knew I was close - either there was a motor camp or I was stopping anyway. I had a Tui beer ($2.50NZ) while we talked.

It turned out that just down the road four or five kilometers, there was the beach community of Herbertville which is also where the golf course was and there was a motor park there and a public phone as well. Good news.

At the motor park, I met Val and leased a space from her for $7NZ for the night. That's the least I've paid for a powered site so I know I was far into the rural remote.


Val's house at the from of the Herbertville Motor Park	View of Cape Turnagain from just to the south	A small river that flows down to the sea behind the motor camp

I took a walk from the camp trying to get down to the beach but I think I went the wrong way. I found myself crossing the golf course which is littered with sheep poop. There were two fellows playing golf off in the distance ad they didn't seem to mind me being there. After I crossed the course. I found myself up against a small river and there was no place to cross. On the other side there was a dirt road so I suspect somewhere to the north of the camp is a bridge.

After that, I walked back into the camp and then crossed the road to the small pub there. A bar for about six people, a small pool table, and two or three tables and chairs. Fairly noisy and busy with a mix of ages. People out here at or near these motor camps are always dressed country casual. They had a sign advertising various sandwiches so I asked the bar keep about them. He said they'd stopped serving them at 1900. It was now just a bit after 2000. He showed me some heat and eat pies of various types in a freezer but I decided to pass.

I walked outside again and just down the road was a small bridge with six or seven boys on it - some of them trying to fish. I went down to see what they were doing and to chat with them. That was fun. They were all young enough to be below the age of teenage self-consciousness so their questions and curiosity came easily and freely. They were all from New Zealand so they had lots of questions about America and what it was like. Did people fish off of bridges there? Where there lots of limousines? How many people are there? What part do you live in? We discussed accents and they, of course, though it quite amazing that I didn't think I had an accent and that they did. They wanted to know what their accent sounded like to me. But, of course, I couldn't tell them.

Later some older boys came and at least one of them was into the self-consciousness phase. He was curious but kept himself very reserved. At one point, I asked him a question and he stared off for a bit while he played the question and his answer out internally to see if it was OK and then he spoke. It all looked painful to me - but then I remember it well.

I came back to the camp and tried to call Sharon a second time. Still no answer. Then Val came by and said that there was a group in the camp that she'd been talking to and she'd told them there was an American here and they said to send him on down. It sounded like fun so I asked her which way and she walked down with me.

These folks have quite a batch setup - obviously, it has been here for a long time. It is actually a three sided shed, quite large with shelves around the sides and a large solid wooden tables set out in the middle. When I arrived, there were seven people sitting about talking and Val introduced me as The American and immediately a Tui Beer was placed before me and introductions were done all around. Have to say, and I so confessed on the spot, that the names were escaping me as fast as they were delivered. Just too many over recent days.

As an aside, people who come to these camps come year after year and become long time friends with the other folks around them. Holiday friends, I suppose. Families grow up this way, meeting and partying and fishing and playing on the beaches year after year.

I don't know how many families were represented at the table three or four anyway. I stayed for about an hour and a half and the conversation was fast, fun and free-flowing. We discussed politics, Iraq, Democracy, Socialism, problems with media getting more and more outrageous each year and the effect this has on young people. Whether we were as wild when we were young. One fellow, very nice but who's name I've lost, told me his brother was in the US doing weather related research in Colorado and that he'd been there twice and he loved it. He felt that Americans were the most patriotic people he'd ever seen. I leavened this with the differences between American opinions during the Viet-Nam war and post 9-11. It was a lot of fun but around 2230, I took off because I wanted to try to call Sharon one more time.

I did try to call again, but I got no answer which seemed worrisome but there was nothing I could do so I went back to my van and wrote a bit and then turned in.