Meyricke Serjeantson

Day 3 Jan 29
Westport to Hokitika

I stopped and took loads of photos, including some of the small houses which are perched on the opposite side of the main road. Their location is wonderful – provided that the owners don’t require shops, doctors, public transport etc etc. It was interesting to note that, later on in the trip, I met friends who had rented one of these houses for a holiday.

The nikau palms which I had pursued at Karamea are also abundant down here and I stopped to photograph a particularly healthy looking group.

Punakaiki is the busiest tourist spot on the West Coast, this being proven by the bulging car parks.

Last time I came here, the weather rapidly deteriorated into a torrential downpour including hail and sleet. The famous blow holes function best at high tide – not much help when that is six hours after your arrival – so I contented myself with a tour of the extensive walkways and took lots of photos of the of the strange shapes etched in the rocks by the waves.

I also treated myself to a coffee at one of the cafes which have opened up along the main road. Slightly further to the south there are a couple of new motel blocks and signs that several more will soon be under construction.

Like the UK, New Zealand has had its share of mining disasters and, with the gradual decline in the coal mining industry on the West Coast, more attention is being paid to commemorating the lives of those killed in accidents. The Strongman Mine finally closed last year and a memorial has just been built to the 19 men who died in its greatest disaster in 1967.

The remainder of the road in Greymouth passes through a number of small mining villages, most of which have their own rugby league clubs. There is a striking similarity to South Yorkshire. I resisted the temptation to take a 40 k detour to the Blackball Butchers, New Zealand’s most celebrated manufacturer of sausages and salamis, and drove straight into Greymouth, the largest town on the coast. It isn’t a pretty place, being mainly a coal town, with the wharf still being used, but is has a good range of shops, including a butchers, where I was able to buy some Blackball salami. The best of the buildings is Revingtons Hotel. This accommodated the Queen in 1953 but I wouldn’t take the dog in there now in case she got dirty.

New houses at Te Kinga	Lake Brunner at Te Kinga

There is a lot of construction work going on around the lake and there are several new subdivisions and some very smart new houses at Te Kinga. I understand that the wealthy from Christchurch are building weekend homes over here.

Eventually, I returned to a sealed road and thence back on to the main highway. On the outskirts of Hokitika is the Arahura road/rail bridge, which I negotiated without incident and turned into my friend Barrie’s pottery studio alongside the railway line. While we were sat in the house having a cup of tea, a train roared past. Had I been 40 minutes later, I would have encountered it on the bridge. Barrie regaled me with stories of the panic that such encounters cause with idiot tourists (like me). He also told me that the future of the railway was uncertain. In the summer months, the milk factory ships out a train load of milk powder every day, with a small amount of additional freight from the sphagnum moss factory. As the future of the milk factory isn’t guaranteed and the line is in a poor state of repair, it may well close in the not too distant future. Everything will then have to travel by road.

I arrived in Hokitika in the rain, checked into my motel, drove into town and promptly met Barrie, who was doing the evening shift behind the counter at the craft centre. We exchanged more pleasantries & I set off into the town to find more things upon which to spend my money. Unfortunately, all of the things that I would have liked - such as greenstone carvings or possum & merino sweaters - cost in excess of $350, so I didn’t buy anything. I reserved a table at my favourite restaurant and went onto the beach to search for interesting stones to take back to Wellington.

I had a brief stop at the motel, during which time I discovered that I appeared to have lost my diary, and then headed into town on foot for a fine dinner at the Café de Paris - warm lamb salad followed by seafood rigatoni, accompanied by a bottle of Framingham Pinot Blanc. The restaurant is good and I always visit it when in Hokitika. I walked the mile back to the motel, had a run-in with a small ginger doggie followed by a chat with its daddy, who assured me that it always issued severe warnings to people walking back to the motel, and settled in to write my travel book and continue the, so far, fruitless search for my diary.