by On Thursday – the last day of winter – I woke from a strange dream involving Dad and balls and a geolocation game. Mum had hardly slept; she wasn’t feeling good. Her ongoing neck pain and fatigue don’t help her mood. She really should see the doctor. We left the motel at the sprightly hour of 8:10. Our first stop (with Dad driving, we make lots of stops) was at Bruce Bay – the sea was dead calm and the tide was in. After that we stopped at Knights Point where there was a monument to the Haast–Otago road which Keith Holyoake officially opened in 1965. We soon reached Ship Creek which I’d been up several times before. Whenever we opened the door, we were ambushed by sandflies.
We crossed the Haast River and went over the Gates of Haast Bridge where there were huge rocks in a waterfall. Next came another waterfall – the well-named Fantail Falls – and then we stopped at the Blue Pools and that’s when things got weird. Mum was feeling crabby, so she stayed in the car while Dad and I walked to the pools. They weren’t the azure we hoped for, and in fact the suspension bridge over the shallow river was closed. Back in the car half an hour later, and Mum woke up not knowing what country she was in. She was out of it.
We had lunch at Makarora, at the north end of Lake Wanaka, where there was yet another waterfall. State Highway 6 then split off between Lake Wanaka and Hawea, and we passed numerous vineyards and orchards that had propellers that keep the air circulating and prevent the cold air reaching the ground at night. We then reached the man-made Lake Dunstan, where the weeping willows were already coming out – spring happens early in New Zealand, it seems – and crossed the 45th parallel which I live not too far from, only on the other side of the equator. A bike track followed the shore of Lake Dunstan – it got fair bit of use, and seemed to be taking over from the famous Rail Trail. During the gold rush, Chinese miners lived in huts – caves, really – built into the rocks around the lake. Imagine living there.
Next stop was Cromwell, a beneficiary/victim of a huge amount of recent development. Much of the old town of Cromwell had been flooded after the Clyde Dam was built in the 1980s, creating Lake Dunstan. Some of the old buildings were saved or rebuilt, to create a so-called Heritage Precinct. From Cromwell we drove the short distance to Clyde, which had been tarted up too much for me. You can keep your $6 single-scoop boutique ice creams. Clyde had become a hub for the bike trail, selling plenty of high-end electric bikes.
We made good time in spite of Dad’s propensity to stop every five minutes to find a painterly view, and we soon arrived in Alexandra and motel number three. Thankfully, Mum had perked up by then, but not enough to enter a takeaway restaurant. They seem to give her hives. Dad and I went to the Indian down the road – the price had shot up from the time the menu in the guest information brochure had been printed. We smooshed our lamb madrases and chicken tikka masalas together, and saved half for the following night. There was a separate bedroom from which I gave my lesson – my student spent most of the time despairing over her son Alexandru, near-namesake of where I happened to be.
That night we saw the super blue moon – the second full moon in a calendar month, and larger than normal. Far from the largest I’ve seen, though. When I was twelve my grandparents took us to a Christmas pantomime in Cambridge. Was it Robin Hood? I can’t remember. But I remember the colossal full moon, low on the horizon, that was saw on the way back. If I ask my brother about it, he’ll surely remember it too.
