I was mostly packed from yesterday still so it was a small matter of getting clean, getting dressed and heading out. Before checking out I shot to the 4-Square to get an Up-&-Go and some toothpaste. Porridge, Up-&-Go and a tooth brushing later I handed in my key and set off along the highway to the turn off to Fisher's Track. I had my poles out as although the day would start as a road walk I wasn't sure what the track would be like once I was on it. I passed an old guy out walking who looked me up and down as I strode toward him with my poles clacking along the pavement; he asked if I intended to ski down the street. I smiled and laughed thinking 'Nope, just saving my joints for when I'm your age buddy'.
There really isn't much to National Park apart from numerous accommodation options, a cafe, the service station/4-Square and a bunch of small and often run down houses. At the end of a side street and across the railway line Fisher Track branches off up a gravel road. It's part of the Sea to Summit mountain bike track as well as TA. The track starts off as a well graded gravel track through scrub and low forest, climbing slowly to the top of a ridge before a long slow decent down one side of a valley. I was overtaken by a couple of guys in a Downer service vehicle but other than that there was no one around. Just past a large gate supposedly under video surveillance I sat and had a break on the grass verge overlooking the green valley below. It's mostly grassy-scrubby farmland on this side with forested hills rising from the valley floor opposite.
Not far along from my break I came upon the Downer guys who stopped to chat. From them I learned that there was another hiker, a young man, not far behind me. With a laugh I asked if it was a tall, skinny American and they said yes, although they couldn't be sure of him being American as they had not stopped to talk to him. I bet it was Taylor. If so it wouldn't be long before he caught me up since I'd just had a good break and his normal pace is a bit faster than mine. Sure enough, further down the valley, a few turns after the gravel road had become grassy track I looked back up the visible sections of track looping around the undulations in the hillside to see Taylor loping down toward me. Coming to corner where there were some handy rocks to sit on I decided to stop and wait, especially once I noticed the rocks were limestone and chocker-block full of fossils. In the ten minutes or so it took Taylor to catch up I fossicked around the fallen rocks and inspected the low cliff face on the uphill side of the track where a prominent approximately half-meter thick, gently dipping shellbed was clearly visible a couple of meters up. I tried in vain to prise a complete shell from the rocks that was small and sturdy enough to souvenir. In the end I contented myself with doing a rough paleo-environmental reconstruction, just for old times' sake and left the rocks where they lay.
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| Fossils! (and a moth) |
Near the end of the track we startled a pair of red deer does who quickly scarpered off into the scrub. Before long the track became a gravel road once again and became flanked by more frequently tended farmland.
Swapping stories about various family and life experiences and after few stops for lunch, afternoon tea, a snack and to scratch the nose of a very friendly young sheep that came over to the fence to say hello and had obviously been hand-reared, saw Taylor and I reach the ANZAC monument at the junction with Oio Rd just on 5:30pm. We were surprised to find that out here in the middle of nowhere is a nice vault loo. There was also a river nearby for water and we were soon eyeing up the flat grass around the monument as a likely camping spot, though unsure if camping would be allowed. It's certainly not a secluded spot, right at the junction of two roads. Shortly after we arrived a 4WD towing a ride-on lawn mower pulled up and the husband and wife team that climbed out introduced themselves as the Wheelers. We helped them unload the lawnmower and soon he was off mowing the lawn around the monument while she went to clean the loo. It turns out that the large sculpture of a horse, affectionately known as "Rusty" due to its being made entirely from old horseshoes welded together, is brand new. It was commissioned by the community and the Wheeler's to commemorate the part horses played in bother World Wars as well as the development of farming in the area. The Wheeler's had come down this evening to tidy the place up a bit in time for the official unveiling of the sculpture that is to take place two days from now.
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| Super cute and friendly sheep |
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| Rusty the Warhorse |
Over dinner Taylor and I discussed the differences between the USA and NZ. He's quite upset that NZ doesn't have it's own version of Hollywood and is adamant that we should have our own celebrities on our magazines, not American ones. I assured him we do, but that America is such a powerhouse of frivolous distractions that it's celebrities can be found gracing the pages of magazines across the English speaking world (and probably beyond). Taylor has never traveled outside the States before and I got the impression that he doesn't really realise the huge influence the US exerts over other countries around the world, both culturally and politically (and economically...the list goes on). At one point we talked about popular stereotypes of our different cultures. I joked that Americans seem to have a well developed sense of entitlement and later fell about laughing when, after the conversation topic had moved on, Taylor all but stated that he felt entitled to something (I can't remember what), caught himself, and then with a rueful grin said it anyway. Stereotypes after all are based on at least an element of truth!
We ate, chatted and washed up as the light faded. Taylor has some yummy choco-malt drink that tastes good even without having to add milk powder (a must for most varieties of hot chocolate). In between bursts of conversation I was content to sit and watch the changing light on the hills around us as the sun set. It was a nice sunset, not spectacular, but with enough clouds and colour to make it pretty. The surrounding hillsides were dotted with sheep looking at first like scattered grains of rice, but which over time wriggled along as they grazed and so I briefly had the impression that they looked a bit like maggots. Not well pleased with this comparison I quickly decided that unlike maggots they didn't move chaotically in all directions but instead seemed to graze the hillside almost in an orderly fashion from one side to another as the sun sank down one side (but as I write this now I'm making a conscious effort to forget the maggot tendency for negative phototaxis!). So in the end I decided they did not look like maggots, or even like rice, but instead looked just like what they were: a large flock of contented sheep grazing a nice green hillside.
Explorations of suitable similes aside, before it got too dark we adjourned to our tents and to bed. Despite the clouds I get the feeling it's going to be dewy tonight which means wet tent in the morning. Oh well. Nice to have flat ground to sleep on, not to mention a table, seats and a sit-down loo. So unexpectedly civilized!
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