Day in the Life

Our day at Milford Sound was further enhanced by the comments of many other travelers who said that their day there was nice but hampered by rain and limited vistas. Ours was in glorious sunshine and wonderful waterfalls. While they saw raging waterfalls, the low clouds meant that they couldn’t enjoy the overall beauty of the entire scene. People who work in the area stated that our day was indeed a rare one. In fact, we continue to be blessed with great weather. When it has rained, it has begun just as we arrive at our destination or during the night and has cleared out by the morning when we are starting out again so we haven’t been limited in getting out of the car and exploring or by more difficult driving conditions than we have under “normal” conditions. Our new day was a four hour drive which took nine hours with all the stops and vistas. I love the little hidden treasures that open up totally unexpectedly. And not 10 miles out of Te Anau, we found one. Doubtful Sound and the village of Pearl Harbor. Only found by accident by my propensity to find the smallest paved road and travel it. We thoroughly loved the tranquility and natural beauty of the place. But it is so typical of the hidden treasures that abound in this end of NZ. In this bottom end of NZ the lumber industry abounded and we found a small museum dedicated to that hearty breed of men who worked the forests. Such primitive methods of forestry with the huge two-man cross-cut saws reminded me of the same men who worked the California forestry industry in the early days. It’s difficult to separate my admiration for the difficult work and the ravaging of the land that ensued, but I always try to put myself in the place of these situations and wonder how I would have coped in such harsh conditions. Harriet Tubman used to tell the slaves she was conducting north on the Underground Railway that the moss always grew on the north side of the tree so that they could tell which way to head. Here, too, the North is always indicated by the direction the trees lean and the side of the tree which has foliage. This wind-swept southerly part of NZ has constant and often vicious winds which strip the trees of life in any direction which challenges the gods of the wind. They are an ever present compass. Our local guide map mentioned “Gemstone Beach,” where the tides brought a mixture of rock to the sandy beach and where it said: “One can often find sapphires and other gems lying on the beach. And so just as in Australia where we went “Noodling” for opals in the middle of the Australian heartland, here Carol wanted to comb the beach for her own version of hidden treasures. She’s a rock fiend and if she had enough baggage allowance, the beaches and rivers of the world would be stripped of any rock that caught her eye, and I can attest to the fact that many do. Her bags will be somewhat heavier on the return than they were on the outward leg and it won’t be because of the wool she is bringing back as well. On the beach was a rough-hewn man gold mining, of sorts. He had a portable sluice he set up along a stream running into the ocean. He would travel down the beach to his secret location, and fill several 1x2x3 foot bins with sand and transport them back to the stream on his four-wheeler. There he would shovel the sand into the sluice with the stream water running through it and extract the miniscule flakes of gold that he was finding. The sand ran back into the sea from whence it had come and the world was unchanged. We looked at the reward/effort equation and it seemed to be heavily slanted in the effort part of the algorithm. But he was a happy camper and there’s certainly something to be said about that when trying to figure out why some people do as they do. A stop at a small teashop that served as its own museum of early 20th century kitchens and households was a wonderful break from the road. Staffed by one of the great, happy ladies of the world, we enjoyed tea and a sausage roll and listened to some early Charley Pride on the “radiogram” which played in the background. And here I thought they were record players. This lady, of about 50 years of age and no taller than my 5’0” daughter, had a smile and brightness that would liven even the darkest day. She works for six months and closes shop in the winter when conditions get so nasty on the south coast that only the very hardiest of travelers head there for reasons that have to go beyond tourism. It’s a harsh environment and not one to be trifled with on land or sea. Only Patagonia in South America rivals it for southerly latitudes and nasty seas. This entire area is rife with coves and inlets where penguins, seals, and dolphins abound and short diversions from the pavement along gravel roads where campervans have lined the parking areas. The season is quickly coming to an end and people and businesses are hunkering down for the long winter coming very soon. Therefore, we splurged for our one night of special lodging and chose, naturally, a sheep/deer/cattle farm serving as a B&B. The shower alone was worth the price of admission..water as hot as you could stand it, pressure that could have doused a raging fire, and shower head of exquisite size and scope to cover the body. I could have stayed under it for hours and only emerged when the guilt about my excess overcame the enjoyment of the experience.

This is just an average sized farm for the area. 1,000 acres of lush pasture where Murray and June run “Somewhere about 2,500” sheep. Okay, if everybody is guessing at how many sheep they have, how do they know there are 60 million of them in NZ? Murray is a real meat and potatoes kind of guy…not fancy, not flashy, just down to earth with a connection to the land that is required of a life on the farm. June is bubbly with a wit about her that is required to run an inn. They’ve had a good life, and raised their children in the farm life…the two sons have continued the farming traditions and have taken over the farm. It’s difficult for young people to find financing for operations like this. Raising the necessary $3 million means an indebtedness that is a testimony to the dedication to the lifestyle. Murray talked about the difficulty of dividing assets amongst the three children, one of whom is female. The 300 deer are impregnated by the 10 “or so” bucks. When the fawns are “weaners” and are taken off the does, they are sold to the next step in the process, a finishing farm where they grow to maturity, and then sold at market. Deer farms abound in the area, and it was a real surprise to see what a big business it is here.

Luckily, they were shearing in the morning after our stay, so we got the opportunity to see the real deal - Not the tourist show. A beater, shaking a metal rattle, moves then into confined pens in the shearing shed where they are packed like sardines – easier for catching and bringing then onto the raised platform where the shearing takes place. Long shafts are attached to the ever spinning motors on one end and the shears on the other end. Four shearers can work at a time and it takes just a minute, or two at the most, to take a sheep from unshorn to shorn. They work with incredible speed and skill. Music blares from the loudspeakers to break the hum of motors and clippers, while two girls sweep the shorn wool from the platform to the floor below where they separated it into two piles…one for the trash wool and the other which went into big hoppers which were compressed into large bales of about 180 kgs (400 lbs). Wethers (castrated males) were marked on their forehead with blue dye for later identification and separation from the breeding flock. When each sheep was shorn, it was pushed down an angled chute of about 10 feet in length to ground level which led back to the pasture and their yearly haircut was completed. The entire operation was very organized and efficient, as it needs to be when you are dealing with this enormous number of sheep in a given flock. Each shearer can shear between 200-300 sheep in a given day and at $2.25 per sheep, shearing can be a profitable vocation albeit a back breaking one. It absolutely pained me to see them bent over in perpetual motion one sheep after another. This is not their only vocation, to be sure since it is a short season and the three that we saw on this day were all young men about 25 years of age. But shearers will continue to ply their trade much later in life as well. We have seen back braces which are hung from the ceiling and help support the shearers backs. If I did this work, I’d need to be on total life support, not just for my back. Sign of the day driving into a small town: “SLOW DOWN….no doctor, no hospital, one cemetery