We’ve had some rainy, cold weather but we finally got out of the cabin and walked around the tiny town of about 270 people.

The main structures of ‘town’ appear to be an old church and related buildings. The Waiau river flows into Lake Manapouri and the dock is where tourists catch the lake ferry to travel across the lake, board a bus to travel over a pass, then board their boat for a trip of a lifetime on Doubtful Sound! The mural is on the wall of the library and displays a Tui with the white feather tufts on the throat, and a colorful Takahe. Takahe were considered extinct as of 1898 until a small population was found in the mountains nearby in 1948. They have been protected since and have recovered to about 500 birds currently.

The old church building houses ‘The Church Bar and Eatery’, built about 115 years ago and beautifully restored! We enjoyed a couple of beers at the pulpit!

We arrived at our next weeks’ destination, Manapouri, gateway to Doubtful Sound and western most municipality in NZ (although there’s a lot more land further west, there are no other settlements in the Fiordlands)!

On the shore of huge Lake Manapouri, where the mists obscured the many mountains of Fiordland.

The lush vegetation across from our cabin showcases some iconic NZ plants. Tree ferns are dwarfed by huge cabbage trees, looking like multi-headed palms. Underneath is a stand of mountain flax, the bright green and white grassy-looking plant, a staple used by Maori for weaving baskets, mats, sandals and even rain-shedding capes.

Continuing our travel over the Crown Range towards Queenstown we stopped in the tourist center of Arrowtown, an 1860’s gold mining town. Surrounded by mountains it is a picturesque village preserving it’s gold-mining era buildings and identity (mining tourists now!).

Some of the notable structures in town. The bank of New Zealand, one wooden building from the police camp, tourists ‘panning for gold’, An iconic NZ 1860’s style building housing the library and a block of simple miner’s shacks.

By the 1870’s the easy pickings were gone and the European miners moved on to new strikes elsewhere. The town shrank and resorted to inviting Chinese miners from the played-out gold fields of Australia to work the claims in Arrowtown. Invited, but not welcome, the Chinese were relegated to the fringes of the community. There they created their own space, erecting shacks utilizing discarded or natural materials. They even terraced the hillside and grew gardens, selling their extra produce to their white neighbors. The “Chinatown” has been preserved as well and plenty of signage describes life for the bachelor miners.

Two of the miners’ huts, one with a tin roof, the other with a thatch roof, look similar to farmers’ huts in Ireland. Ah Lum’s Store was the ‘heart of the community’.

I couldn’t help but notice the similarities to the Chinese experience in Oregon around the same timeframe. Preserved and interpreted in John Day Oregon is the Kam Wah Chung & Company Museum. Active from the late 1860’s until 1952 with the death of it’s last proprietor, Ing Hay (or ‘Doc’ Hay as he was known, being an herbalist and practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine), serving the Chinese miners who flocked to the gold fields around Canyon City, Oregon. The Chinese workers in both NZ and Central Oregon were generally from the Guangdong Province in China, and their communities were centered around stores that could provide them with familiar Chinese goods as well as social camaraderie.

On our way between Wanaka and Queenstown, we took the ‘shortcut’ over the Crown range, passing through the tiny hamlet of Cardrona. A lonely area of relatively high elevation, populated by more sheep than people, it has a rich history of sheep and cattle herding, gold rush boom and bust, and development into one of the largest ski areas of NZ! We stopped at the only commercial center along the road, the remnants of the town of Cardrona consisting mostly of the Cardrona Hotel. Sheep and cattle were driven into the area in 1860, but the town was established in 1863 after gold was discovered in the area in 1862.

It’s amazing how advanced this gas station was! It had an electric car charger back in the day!

By 1867 most of the miners had left for more prosperous strikes elsewhere, but Chinese miners moved in and some lucrative strikes were found. In 1878 a flood of the Cardrona river filled most mining claims, leading to most residents moving elsewhere. It took almost 100 years of modest sheep-herding before Cardrona recovered, and due to the work of a local farmer/rancher couple who saw the potential of the snowy winter slopes as a ski area, developed their holdings into an alpine and cross-country ski mecca, the Cardrona Ski Resort.

We decided NOT to zoom down the slopes in tricycles!

Continuing along the Crown range pass, we were mesmerized by the lupines blooming along the roadside!

Another wonderful fragrant experience in New Zealand!

We stayed closer to home today, looking for waterfalls and scenery closer to the north end of Lake Wanaka. We didn’t find any photogenic waterfalls, but we had great views!

A view of Mt. Aeolus in the Southern Alps. Often mistaken for Mt. Aspiring further south and west, not visible from this valley.

A painting in our B&B, very similar!

Views of the north end of Lake Wanaka. The top picture is of the brushy area where the Makarora river enters the lake, from the vantage point of a picnic table at a little boat ramp into the lake. The bottom picture is from a vantage point above the lake, looking down at the closed Boundary Creek Campground on the rocky peninsula created by Boundary Creek depositing debris into the lake.

A real fixer-upper near Lake Wanaka!