2018 Destination Warbirds
Af
ter a great night last night, meeting up with friends and new travellers, followed by a lovely dinner, we set off on our first day’s travel, from Blenheim to Hanmer Springs. We all headed off at our own pace to our destination. After leaving Blenheim, we travelled through picturesque vineyard blocks of many of our well known NZ wines, along the winding hills area until we reached a coffee stop at ‘The Store’ Kekerengu which was a pleasant break, then onto drive the Kaikoura Coast.
This whole Kaikoura area suffered through a major 7.8 earthquake in late 2016, with enormous slips closing the coast/railway road. Kaikoura moved to the northeast by nearly one metre, and rose seventy centimetres. The earthquake lifted the seabed out of the water by half a metre - up to six metres in some areas. The earthquake shook loose more than one million cubic metres of earth from the hills, burying the road, destroying bridges and ripping railway lines out into the sea. This road was opened for travel in December last year, with numerous Stop/Go delays with road works. The store owner at Kekerengu told us he had opened again 1 year, 1 month and 1 day after the earthquake. I think that there has been a tremendous amount of repair work done in really, just over a year, but it is a somewhat sobering drive to see just what damage has been done. Nature is POWERFUL!!
Onto Kaikoura township where we had a lunch stop, then following State Highway 1 for 6km until taking the Inland Kaikoura Road (which we had been told ‘DO NOT MISS THIS ROAD TURN OFF’).
On this road we drove along the Amuri Plain – Hurenui area, through lovely farmland of gently winding roads. We followed the very nice 1928 526 tourer of Theo and Michelle De Leeuw, before catching up with a small convoy of Packards…..aahhhh what a lovely sight, meandering through lovely countryside. This was the first time Malcolm and I had been on this road, as I think it was for others of us on the rally.
After about 1.5hrs, we then turned onto State Highway 7 towards Hanmer Springs, which is a small resort with famous hot pools.
Monday dawned beautifully, and our Dodgy Packard departed Heritage Hanmer Springs Hotel just after 9 am. We’d only managed a few metres before Milton asked Leyton to stop the car, very, very gently. Milton hopped out then quickly got back in. Seeing our confused faces, he held up his phone. “On the roof,” he explained. Chuckling, we continued to the town’s only petrol station, for the first of the day’s club gathering at the pumps.
As we left Hanmer Springs behind, excitement set in – the long journey to Greymouth was for me, on roads untravelled and would involve calling at places anew. How lucky to be doing it in style! The Dodge cruised easily on SH7. We started by following the Waiau River, occasionally losing sight of it as we rollercoastered in view of quite barren landscape. That river soon forked into another (we’d see this pattern repeated) and as we drove further along the Lewis Pass, amazing valleys splayed in all directions. Roadworks stopped us momentarily near Engineers Camp, and we laughed as the worker radioed his counterpart at the other end to let him know that “two old cars” (ourselves and the Crombachs in their Chrysler) were coming through. Soon after, we welcomed the contrasting sight of lush, strikingly green Beech trees, but this gave way to more open road and low cloud as we pulled into Springs Junction for morning tea.
Refreshment and loo break over, I managed to snaffle a ride in the Lincoln for the next leg to at least Reefton. With Garth driving and Peter next to him, I had the back to myself - it certainly felt spacious even with a few small pieces of luggage to one side. In true Kiwi no-degrees-of-separation style, I learned that this pair went to high school with my Uncle Bruce. We were busy chatting that before we knew it, we’d crossed Victoria Forest Park and made it to Reefton. By now, the sun was well and truly out so the decision was made to pull over and take the top down. From Reefton, we and all those opting for the long route (most of the cars on the rally), turned onto SH69 for Westport. Those preferring the shorter route stayed on SH7 for Greymouth.
Travelling, err, topless in the Lincoln through the Buller Gorge was something else. Probably not something I’ll ever get to do again, whichever form that could take! Ominous clouds gathered and with a few spits, it looked like we might be in for a shower or two. Thankfully, the rain held off. Getting a bit wind blown was worth it for being able to take in the rural smells, look directly up at the treeline without craning my neck out a window, take unbridled photos, and generally feel as though you could almost reach out and grab hold of the greenery we passed. Before long, we crossed the Buller River into Westport. Time for lunch!
After rendezvousing with the Dodgy Packard, scoffing a toastie and downing a coffee, chatting to some locals with a keen interest in both cars, and pausing for some photos in front of a very Art Deco town hall, we car shared our separate ways. Leyton jumped in the Lincoln, while Maria joined Bob and Steve in their Clipper. That left me in the Dodge as Milton’s navigator. Since we didn’t know when we’d next be in this neck of the woods, we decided to take a small detour to Cape Foulwind before leaving the Westport area. The Crombachs followed suit. Together, we stretched our legs with a walk out to the lighthouse (only erected quite some time after the busy shipping era of the gold rushes; first lit in 1876) and lookout point
Back in our cars, we accidentally overshot the turn-off we needed (if we’d kept going we’d have ended up at the seal colony), signalled to reverse and got overtaken by an impatient driver who middle finger saluted us. Idiot. That behind us, we eventually ended up on SH6. If I didn’t clock it earlier, we were now officially on the wild West Coast! It was a weird feeling driving on a main highway on the west, so close to the Tasman Sea – other than around Taranaki, we can usually only hug the east coast of the islands with views across the Pacific Ocean. I also wasn’t expecting to see Nikau palms galore, so was surprised by just how tropical this stretch of the West Coast to Greymouth was.
Marvelling at how lucky we were with the day’s weather, Milton and I made time for a couple more stop-offs. That’d explain why we were one of the last cars to roll into Greymouth. Irimahuwhero Lookout gave us great coastal views north and of Te Miko Cliff to the southwest, and we learnt how Maori travellers, the early European explorers and gold rush diggers would have scaled and traversed the land. (Predictably with great difficulty.) As we left, we spotted – a little sheepishly – that our Tail End Charlie had caught up to us. They followed us to Punakaiki Rocks and patiently waited while we completed the obligatory (and amazingly still free!) walk around the clifftop, admiring the famous limestone rock stacks. Heading back to the car, we gave them the thumbs up and off they went in front. We figured that being close to our destination now, we’d be fine.
It was probably around 5 pm by the time we arrived at Ashley Hotel – a long, but wonderful day and thankfully one without incident for any of the cars I’d travelled in. Everyone was buzzing at dinner as we shared our experiences of Day 2 with each other, further humoured by Aussie Bob Davis’ conclusion that our esteemed American visitors were from The Land of the Donald (not of the Trump variety).
Once the plates were cleared, it was time to squish two rooms of club members and guests into one for the traditional rally quiz arranged by Theo. A few curly questions and some healthy debate over acceptable answers later, the winners were announced. With 33 points, the Chan team easily led the way – yay us! Thanks Leyton, for almost singlehandedly getting each one right. Proud big sister moment … and a great way to end Day 2!
We left Franz Josef at 6:30am as we knew it was going to be a long final day and wanted to have some extra time up our sleeves in case there were any hiccups with the Packard. While the weather was a little overcast and cool to start, the sun soon burst through the clouds and we enjoyed spectacular scenery for the next 360kms. A little bit of just about everything - subtropical bush, beaches, rivers, bush, farmland and tall mountain tops stretching over head. Fabulous! We where joined by Malcolm and Terry Deans in their 1936 Packard for a good bit of the trip but the 4-43 struggled to keep pace with power of the 120B for the long climbed over Hasst Pass.
With a good many of the cars travelling in convey we made a final push down the edge of Lake Hawea to arrive at Wanaka by mid afternoon. All 48 cars that started the rally (albeit a couple on the back of transporters) made it to the Warbirds Marshalling area with plenty of time to wash and polish their cars before the 5pm curfew!
Everyone excited to finally arrive at our destination and we all enjoyed a fabulous show of old aircraft as they practiced their routines for the coming show. The day finished with a great meal prepared by Lynette Duncan and enjoyed in the ambience of Garth Hogan and Robert Duncan’s Museum. Another round of good natured ribbing and sledging ensued between the Kiwis and Azzie’s and everyone was on the bus early back to our hotel for a well-earned rest!
