Moeraki Boulders, wineries, and all the way to Queenstown

Tuesday, April 9, 2019   Oamaru to Queenstown

We started the day heading south to the Moeraki Boulders. They are a group of large spherical “stones” on Koekohe Beach near Moeraki. We then began a long drive west across the country to reach Queenstown. Along the way, we stopped at a winery and a roadside fruit/vegetable market.

In the Brydone Hotel's grand staircase, headed down to breakfast. Janet and Virginia posed for me!

There were lots of tourists out that morning at the Moeraki Boulders. These boulders are actually concretions that have been exposed through shoreline erosion from coastal cliffs. Even today, there are still boulders remaining in the mudstone that will, eventually, fall on to the beach as they come loose due to erosion!

 Here is one that soon will become a "free" boulder as the hillside erodes further.

They originally started forming in ancient sea floor sediments around 60 million years ago, and the largest boulders are estimated to have taken about 4 million years to get to their current size.

 Here's one with the outer layer eroded away. After the concretions formed, large cracks known as septaria formed in them. Brown calcite, yellow calcite, and small amounts of dolomite and quartz progressively filled these cracks, and that's what you can see in my photo.

 Oh, we just took too many photos of the boulders on this bright, sunny morning.

Some cool driftwood too!

We drove a little farther south before reaching Hwy 85, which turned north-westward. We stopped for a break in Ranfurly, which is an old art-deco railroad town. This marker indicates that they've made the old rail line a rails-to-trails route, and as you can see in the background, it's very popular with cyclists.

Interestingly, this rail line is the same one we took on our excursion a few weeks earlier out of Dunedin. That day, we took the Otago Central Railroad north along the Taieri River Gorge as far as Pukerangi, which is about 1/3 of the distance to Ranfurly.The rail line continued to Cromwell, almost to Queenstown, which we would be passing through later on this day. The railway was started in 1879, and opened to Clyde (almost to Cromwell) in 1907, and the remainder of the way in 1921. It served its purpose of opening the central region to commerce and passengers for 80 years.

 One of their art deco buildings, the Milk Bar. 

Behind the train station (now a visitor center) was an old barn that served as a little museum. This old rail car looked cool.

Not sure why this photo is of any interest. lol

This old Fenton Library (1924) looked interesting, so I walked inside, and it was now the local radio station. I didn't see anyone in there; they seemed to have it on automatic pre-recorded playing of music.

 This old stone prison was transferred here from its original location in town.

We continued farther west, to the Black's Hotel in Ophir, which seemed like the middle of nowhere (it's considered Central Otago). It's a 1920s art deco hotel, and their website features their 56-bottle-strong collection of whiskeys. We had a great lunch there.

 Sure enough, the bar was jammed with whiskeys, and they were primarily single-malt scotches. The photo below is a close-up of their shelf that's way back in the hallway behind the bar, where they kept the empty scotch boxes (you can barely see it in the photo above). 

 Here's their empty-carton "paradise". When I asked Rick if he remembered this place, he sure did! He ordered a scotch they had tried when they spent a week in Scotland, because the distillery was just down the road from them. As I recall, it was the Royal Lochnagar, which has several boxes in this photo.

I loved this Scotsman painting on the bar wall.This is from their website: "Sandy, the owner, is commonly known as the Naked Scotsman after his gourmet sauces brand. His strong Scottish background is seen through the hotel's décor and 56-strong whiskey collection in the bar." As I am typing this, I feel "connected" to my story and memories, and went to get a dram of my Macallan single-malt 12-yr, dbl cask. mmmmm

 After lunch, we looked around outside, with their colorful cottages out back. I forget what Greg was telling us.

What a nice, colorful place to stay. We got to peek inside the rooms, each of which was differently furnished.

The property had this tree with the hanging tea cups.

We continued southwestward, through Clyde, and then northwestward along the Clutha River toward Cromwell. Off to the side of our bus was the Cromwell Gorge. On the side of hill up there are terraces as a landslide-preventive measure.

A close-up of the landslide protection area. We'd never seen that sort of thing before.

Once we reached Cromwell, we crossed the Kawarau River to visit the Carrick Winery. You can see the river in the background.

Otago is most famous for its Pinot Noir, but we also had two whites. As I recall, we weren't too impressed with the whites.

We had beautiful days in New Zealand!

Keep the birds out!

After departing the winery, we drove just a short ways out of Cromwell to the Jones Family Fruit Stall.

It began in 1979, when Mrs Jones opened a small fruit stall in a Skyline garage beside the state highway at the start of the Kawarau Gorge heading toward Queenstown. "40 years later, after 3 major expansions, Jones Family Fruit Stall has developed into a bustling enterprise which attracts people from around the globe." Janet and I bought some fabulous peaches.

No more photos from this day. The Kawarau Gorge was a pretty drive into Queenstown, and we passed the bridge where the AJ Hackett Bungy Company built the world's first commercial bungy- jumping site. Bob and Derek Brown jumped from there earlier this year during their bike tour.

We had a confused check-in at our hotel, since they were doing construction and our rooms were slow in being ready. I do not recall what we did for dinner or during the evening.