This was a VERY busy site - made busier by the fact that the SH1 was still out of action, after the December Kaikora Earthquake. People stopped here on their way from and to Picton ferry and we were no different, just maybe had a more flexible timeframe than some others.
Murchison is what I like to call an 'authentic' New Zealand place. Like places like Opotiki in the North and Otautau in Southland, it has a genuine community-feel of friendly locals, a school, a river, a pub, churches....
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| The Buller River next door to the campsite. |
I put that last word in inverted commas because as a Pom, my definition of a museum is somewhat different from the typical Kiwi version! LOL! Here we have a 'junk-shop' loosely connected artefacts connected with anecdotes from 50-60 years ago - sometimes slightly older. But nonetheless interesting. And photogenic for their rust and flaky paint work:
The campsite was between the Matakitaki and Buller rivers - before they both get loaded with poison. It was heartbreaking to think that from these beautiful rivers, a few hundred kms away towards the West Coast (e.g. at the mouth of the Buller where we stayed) had been turned into inhospitable places for anything living around the poison warning signs - desolate in terms of insect and wild-life. But here, bees and birds surrounded us and the dawn chorus in the morning was amazing.
Thank God for Tripadvisor! We found THE best fresh home-made Pizza place on earth at the Lazy Cow Shed. At the back of an unpretentious backpackers. This was exactly what we needed after a few beers with the interesting bunch of customers at the central and popular Hampden Hotel bar - from truckers to cement workers, tourists to dart-players... it made for fascinating people-watching.
The campsite had water and a dump station again - so we were well prepared for the final leg of our journey towards the ferry. We witnessed some of the worst driving on this stretch though - totally irresponsible overtaking and later we read about the high police presence trying to cut-down on the numbers of crashes in the area.
If only there was mandatory insurance for vehicle drivers - this problem would be halved overnight.
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