Moving house...
I packed the workshop etc into one container which was railed to the new house then the packers came and packed the household stuff etc into another leaving us to move our two vehicles and whatever we would need for our first week in the new house and a few items like welding bottles they would not accept for the containers.
The first leg was a very familiar few hours on a ferry boat but this time having a trailer I got loaded early along with the semi trucks etc when there was still room to do a u-turn on the vehicle decks.
Our one night in a motel at Blenheim then up early yesterday morning to get on the road for the six hours or so of driving.
I took a look at the sky and saw lenticular clouds which I knew were a bad sign. Most of the route was on the leeward side of the Southern Alps and the lenticular clouds indicated a foehn wind, and this looked a strong one.
Motor vehicles have a cooling system that is adequate for most circumstances plus a bit of a safety margin but my ute is ten years old with over 200K Kms on the clock, the trailer was a little overweight (for the ute) plus we had about 400Kgs in the ute itself. In theory that should have been OK but the wind was a concern.
No more than a few minutes out of Blenheim brought us to the first challenge, a series of quite steep climbs and the wind was right behind. A slow vehicle with a strong tail wind does not get much air in the front and immediately the temperature gauge began to climb. Fortunately just as it hit the top of the 'normal' range we arrived at the summit and began the downward side, an easy run through dry arid looking tussock sheep country and an apparently ever increasing number of vineyards.
The first little town (village really) we came to was Seddon, famous for many years as the place where the railway bridge was shared with a single lane for road traffic on a lower deck. It was traditional on the annual school outing for the kids to run through the coaches flushing all toilets hoping to hit an unfortunate motorist on the lower deck!
A few more little hills but no reasons for concern just a constant need for care among the traffic on the narrow road where only a white painted line seperates the wing mirror to wing mirror traffic. Cars, camper vans (there are a lot on this road), triple deck sheep transporters, car transporters, tanker trucks and the occasional older couple (i.e. even older than us) in their oldish cars towing their holiday caravan towards the ferry.
The last little down grade and we were running along the coast line, a rail track between us and miles of deserted sandy beaches, this would be a real tourist mecca if it were not for the cold water. But not too cold as the coast is dotted with small holiday cabins and caravan parks of those hardy kiwis who enjoy the fishing and diving for crayfish (aka rock lobsters).
After a while the road crosses the rail and becomes squeezed between rocky slopes and the sea, a bit more up and down, twists and turns past the miles of seal colonies. Ohau Stream is a well kept secret among those who enjoy viewing nature. The adult seals spend all day at sea fishing while the young seal pups make they way about half a mile up a very rocky little stream that flows through dense native NZ bush until they come to a small pool fed by a little water fall. Apparently adults never make their way up there, maybe they cant or maybe they dont want to but the pups spend all day playing in the fresh water pool before going down to the cost for their evening meal. It is a magical place to visit.
The town of Kaikoura is known for crayfishing and more recently all manner of marine attractions for tourists, whale watching flights in light aircraft, swimming with dolphins, tours of seal colonies, etc etc. It is a very popular little town with standing room only over the summer months. We never stop there!
A few more miles along the coast including a distance where the rail tracks are adjacent to the road and the train wheels rumble by but an arms length from the car window. This trip was lucky in that I managed to be alongside a passenger train which provided some entertainment for the people in to open observation cars. I could hear them yelling out something but the noise of the train was so great and I had to shut the windows against the dust and grit blown up by the train. Just a few minutes like that then the train entered a short tunnel while the road went around yet another headland and by the time the road rejoined the rails the train was in the distance.
All the while the wind blew, blazing hot and dusty, sometimes from the side, sometimes from the rear but never in front where I really wanted it.
At about the third hour the road leaves the coast and climbs over a pass known as The Hundalee, this is normally no concern to a modern light vehicle but heavy trucks find it a grind and my old ute was overloaded.
The wind was rising and small branches were being ripped off trees while the occasional pine cone bounced off the road. The engine temperature began to rise almost immediately we began to climb so I shut off the air-con, that would have helped a little but not enough and the most careful use of throttle and transmission was not enough to stop the gauge from climbing closer to the red zone. I could see the summit in the distance with just a couple of switchbacks to go and I was about to stop but instead turned on the heater full blast which raised the cabin temperature to 37 degrees C in no time at all but the engine gauge held steady and maybe even dropped a little.
A hundred yards from the summit I noticed a fresh wet rusty greenish slick on the road and half a mile further on I came to the source of it. An old Holden with the bonnet (hood) up coupled to a 20' caravan. The elderly driver (presumably) was sitting on un upturned plastic bucket while a woman of the same age group poured him a drink from a vacuum flask.
If I had had a manual transmission I would have been watching the temperature gauge fall on the down hill sections but one of things I have noticed with a torque converter transmission is that down hill grades seem to heat the motor almost as much as up hill sections which caused me to use the brakes in preference to engine braking, something I have always considered to be very poor practice but with no option I trod the brake pedal until my knee was numb!
The down grade took us into Canterbury and a different landscape, first a few large acreage dry land sheep farms with signs that many are trying to diversify into vineyards and beef raising, after a while the arid looking sheep farms gave way to increasing numbers of smaller, greener farms with all manner of livestock including llamas, alpacas, deer and of course a few sheep.
The wind was really, really strong by that time but fortunately from the side and with no steep grades the only concern was avoiding the various curtain sider trucks and high sided vans that were struggling to keep a straight line in the other line.
The farms became even smaller, down to a few acres of 'lifestylers', people who have an acreage for the enjoyment and lifestyle and usually supported by a job in the city of Christchurch which was 15 or so miles ahead.
We know a diversion which allows us to avoid the worst of the city traffic and when I was at traffic lights the driver of a camper van asked us the way to Timaru, I shouted for him to follow us and he stuck like glue to the rear bumper of the trailer as I led them around the back of the airport and what seems like the totally wrong direction. All the while Microsoft Lee, the voice of my GPS navigator kept up a running instruction to regain the 'official' route, but he is a patient sort of chap and never once sounded frustrated by my wilful disregard of his advice. Eventually we remade State Highway 1 at Rolleston and I noticed the camper van ceased their tenacous hold and dropped behind, I hope they had a good visit to New Zealand.
Christchurch to Ashburton (well, Rolleston to Ashburton in this case) is almost a drive in the park. Green irrigated dairy farms on each side of the road which is arrow straight and flat as a billiard table edged by mown grass verges and one or two rows of semio-ornamental trees.
Six hours after leaving Blenheim we passed through the area that was once our family farms, different now, the sheep and cereal crops are gone replaced by more dairy cattle and irrigation machines.
Six and a half hours after setting out we pulled up outside our newly built house with the builder and his father there to greet us and hand over the keys.
I say 'we' but I drove alone, my wife was in her car that was not at all fazed by the driving conditions and for most of the way she was a mile or so in front of me.
