The Marlborough Sounds and Totaranui

I arrived in Picton on Friday, the 24th. It’s a quiet little seaport town with a nice downtown area and harbour. This is where the Interislander ferry docks when bringing people from the North Island to the South. I spent three nights at Sequoia Lodge Backpackers just on the very edge of town. It was about a 10 minute walk to the harbour. The hostel was really nice…huge kitchen with everything you could possibly need, lounge area with a log burner, TV room, internet and a cedar spa. I never got around to using that. AND they baked and served chocolate pudding (bread style pudding) every night. I puttered around town seeing the sights. I visited the Edwin Fox…the 9th oldest ship in the world! They have a small museum for it and you are actually able to walk around inside of it.



That Saturday I decided to hike part of the Queen Charlotte Track from the very top, at Ship Cove to Furneaux Lodge. It took around 3.5 hours. Ship Cove is where Captain Cook landed and spent some time when first exploring New Zealand. The hike was beautiful. We couldn’t have had more gorgeous weather. The Queen Charlotte Track can only be hiked one way, and you have to access the starting point by boat. The boat left the harbour around 9AM. There were probably 30 people total. The forest was beautiful with all kinds of palms and vines I’d never seen before. Towards the end of the hike there are some beautiful beaches with aqua blue water. I ventured down to one of them and started snapping pictures. I noticed two bikes on the beach (with no one around) but thought nothing of it as there was a big group of mountain bikers doing the track that day. I heard a strange noise….was that…moaning??? I turned to my left and saw the naked ass of a woman partially hidden by bushes! I immediately turned and walked really fast back up to the trail, with my hand over my mouth, trying not to laugh. They must have thought the hikers were well behind them! The track is unique in that there are little cottages and small lodges/resorts that are connected to the track via side trails. Usually they are down near the water. So if you are hiking along and decide you want to stop for the night (for those that do the whole 4 day hike) you can stay at these places. As usual, I took lots of pics so I will try to post those soon.





Upon returning to the hostel, I decided to look for another farm to work at. I came across a place in the Marlborough Sounds nearby. Adrian Harvey and Adi Watson are my new hosts and they are wonderful …very friendly and have lots of interesting stories about the area. The farm is in Clova Bay. Clova Bay is on a peninsula above the Queen Charlotte Track. It’s a 2 hour drive from Picton or an hour drive if you take the water taxi to Torea Bay (which is what I did). Adi picked me up there. She was a nurse for 30 years but mostly she works on the farm now. Her partner Adrian grew up on the farm. It’s been in his family for 5 generations and they have quite a bit of info about it. They also have an earthmoving business. It’s very, very remote. 2 hours to any stores, gas stations…pretty much anything. They only have a handful of neighbors spread out over several miles. If you are injured, most likely they need to send in a helicopter to bring you to Blenheim or Havelock perhaps. The house is nestled at the foot of a mountain with streams running through the property. In fact, there are mountains on three sides with fields and the bay about a 15 minute walk away. There are beautiful pastures, trails, and old house sites. The house itself is filled with charm. It was built in the late 1800s and has lots of neat little cupboards and contraptions that I’m constantly trying to figure out what they are. There are old hearths and a neat old iron safe, where they used to put hot irons that had been heated by the stove. The original wallpaper is still up in the living room! They have sheep, Angus cattle, chooks, two dogs-Beetle and Belle, a handful of cats, and a pet lamb named Betsy. I’ve been calling her Bitsy because that’s what it sounds like when they say her name. She’s adorable and follows us around everywhere. We also have to bottle feed her which is so much fun! You know when it’s feeding time because she baaas at the kitchen door. She’s even started scratching at it! The cattle are calving right now and so far there are around 12 new calves…just days old. Adi names them and records all the births in a log book. She named one after me… it’s very cute being all black with a grey ear, and just the other day she named one Kayde after my sister.



My accommodation is in a cozy little caravan. I have a fridge and stove and running water…I just have to shower and use the toilet in a separate outhouse.



So far I’ve helped with their veggie gardens and some other clean-up, wall repair, painting, cooking, baking etc…I’m learning a lot about traditional kiwi food here. I dug up an old strawberry bed and separated out the plants because we are putting them in a different garden. You’d never think that such an ordinary task could be such a beautiful thing but it really was. The sun was shining, I was mucking around in the dirt, Betsy was grazing just outside the fence and then snoozed in the shade next to me…all in the setting of these beautiful mountains and pastures. The cherry trees are in blossom too and smell wonderful. This Friday Adrian and I got in the truck and drove around the property to look for Peaches, a cow that had just given birth, but we couldn’t find her. He showed me some of the paddocks and where the old sawmill used to be. We stopped and I picked daffodils and snowdrops that are growing wild where an old house used to be. On our way back, we were driving across streams and rocky pastures, cattle and sheep with their lambs stood in our path and took their sweet time getting out of the way.



The other day I drove the tractor pictured below back from the cattle paddocks. I only stalled it once. You’d be proud Marmy, it’s a manual. Haha Today we had to rescue a ewe and her newborn twins because a southwesterly blew in with cold wind and rain. The lambs would have died from the cold. So Adi and I scooped them up and placed them in a box with some wool while Adrian captured the ewe and loaded her into the back of the truck. They will stay in the woolshed until the lambs are stronger.



Tomorrow Adi and I are going to a mosaic class. She is also going to teach me how to spin wool and to knit!