Jan 10, 2026 On to Greymouth
The weather is changing, a storm coming in from the Tasman Sea. Our beautiful sunny weather has fled from the dark clouds moving in from the west.
Our last look from the boat dock at West Bay.
We stopped in Murchison for a short walk around town. Then to Reefton for a lunch break.
The old car and building in Murchison, a town of slightly over 500 people, established during the gold mining era of the late 1860’s. The pile of antlers were in Reefton, a larger gold mining town of over a thousand that became the first place in NZ to get electricity in 1888! Now it is more of an artist enclave.
Near Greymouth we stopped to see this locomotive. When Europeans entered the area in the mid 1800’s the valley of the Grey river was covered in forests of ancient large Rimu and Kahikatea trees, “red and white pine” to the Europeans. With the introduction of mechanical means like this locomotive many sawmills were kept busy into the 1960’s! The cleared land was converted to farmland or replanted in plantations of ‘exotic’ trees like Monterey pine. Only public outrage in the 1970’s stopped the complete annihilation of the native forest, protected now in public lands. Almost all logging of native trees was stopped by 2002.