Lake Paringa Heritage Lodge, 23rd November 1996
Picked up a car, a Mitsubishi Lancer (RU 2318) at Queenstown and headed out north east through Arrowtown (looking like a gold rush theme park with incongruous red double decker buses). At Arrow Junction I took the Crown Range Road heading for Wanaka. It turned from tarmac to an unsealed surface and snaked up into empty hills as little more than a strip of gravel dropping away steeply into valleys on one side then the other. It’s the highest main road in New Zealand, reaching 1121 m at the summit. Oncoming cars passed in clouds of dust and spitting stone; cyclists with bulging thighs toiled along in pale coats of coagulated grime and sweat. After about 10 miles I slowed to pass an enigmatic apparition: a wagon hauled by four horses straining up the incline, the driver and four passengers dressed in a cross between cowboys and prospectors.
It was a relief to reach a sealed road again at Cardrona, little more than a hamlet and named after a Scottish village. A mile beyond the settlement the answer to the enigma was revealed: the Cardrona Cavalcade, a horse and western themed local fete. An announcer, whose old voice over the Tannoy belied a middle aged face, set up a jokey line in patter, bantering with the contestants and entertaining the crowd with double entendres aimed at self-regarding local people. Big men and sturdy women strode about in stock handler’s coats and broad brimmed hats. Children trotted ponies; drovers showed their working horses; wagons wove round an obstacle course; primped horses pulled painted drays round a parade ring. Families tossed horseshoes with more hope than success. A gold panning competition paid homage to the Otago gold rush of the 1860s. A band of old men, ‘the oldest group in New Zealand’ played country tunes and music hall songs. Young women in scarlet blouses and black cancan skirts kicked their legs and flashed their garters amid a rainbow flurry of red, blue and yellow undershirts.
I thought momentarily and nostalgically of village fetes back home. But this was no village green looked over benevolently by church and pub. I was high in the hills on a wide open range dropping down to the Cardrona River with Mount Cardrona to the west and Mt Pisa to the east.
On through Wanaka and Haast to Paringa for the night – 160 miles.