Mackenzie Country is named after a Kiwi folk hero, a Scottish immigrant of uncertain background who was arrested in 1885 for stealing over 1,000 sheep and grazing them in an unknown area of high-country pasture with the assistance of a single dog, Friday.
Sarah Lark’s family saga of settler life in New Zealand beginning with a couple of women making their passage in 1850 to be married to husbands they had not seen has kept me company during our travels and taken me to many of the places we have visited and brought alive how life might have been, and she gives Mackenzie a starring role although no one knows what became of him.
So what to see here … in the spring there would have been green grassland with swathes of flowering lupins, but now the lupins are over and the grass will be golden, lakes turquoise by the fine particles of rock suspended in the glacial meltwater and maybe icebergs if we’re lucky.
We found a fab camping spot right by Lake Pukaki – the turquoise lake we had photographed during our helicopter flight at Franz Josef, although not looking quite so blue on a grey day.
The morning was worse, with very low cloud, and we didn’t think it worth doing the walk we planned as we wouldn’t see anything. The road followed the bank of Lake Pukaki all the way to Mount Cook Village, and after a quick look at the statue to Sir Edmund Hillary, who I didn’t even realise was from New Zealand, oops, we went on a fairly short walk to see the face of the Tasman Glacier where it meets Lake Tasman.
The face was rather blackened with moraine, and the lake rather grey with the amount of sediment in it … but there were icebergs floating in the lake! A small boat whizzed across the lake showing how huge the iceberg was.
Returning to the campervan, we made a picnic and found a spot to eat it watching the mountains, and slowly the cloud lifted. We decided to do the original walk after all, so drove to the DOC White Horse Hill campsite, paid for our pitch, and set off up the Hooker Valley.
There was some cloud, but lots of views too, with Mount Cook peeking out from behind the cloud once or twice.
There were 3 swing bridges to cross over the river and finally we reached the face of the Hooker Glacier, the Hooker Lake and more icebergs, this time only just out of reach!
The morning began bright, and we drove back up the very turquoise Lake Pukaki and took a photo of Mount Cook almost without cloud.
We continued to Lake Tekapo, with the very photographed Church of the Good Shepherd, built in 1935 as a memorial to the local pioneers. There is a window behind the altar framing the lake behind … stunning.
There is also a collie dog monument erected by local sheep farmers to honour the dogs that make it possible to graze this harsh terrain.
Having checked into the campsite overlooking the lake, we walked up to the observatory at the top of Mount John, 30 minute walk, 300m ascent through larch trees … we must be mad … but had our picnic at the top admiring the view!
On the way down we stopped at Tekapo Springs and had a lovely hot pool soak with a choice of three pools each the shape of a local lake! Now what is the chance that we would be sitting in a hot pool in Lake Tekapo, New Zealand, opposite a couple talking about Nirvana Spa near Bracknell … hey ho!
Next stop Rakaia Gorge …
Off Travelling Together 