Lakes and mountains

Although a very interesting city, we were glad to move on from Christchurch after the tremor, but our bad luck followed us on the road. (There may have been other good reasons for leaving too!!)

We had barely gone 20 miles when we realised that the car we had was crook, there was a terrible whine coming from the engine at 60+kph. So we had to turn round and return it, where it was exchanged for a better one, albeit the same model. It is not easy to go back to a car after driving a four wheel drive for so long!
But the day improved as we travelled into the mountains, the scenery was lovely. The roads here are a little better than the surfaces in Oz, so the driving is comfortable, and despite the distances we can make good time

The South Island is very mountainous, which affects the climate. In the east, where we are, it is mainly dry and reasonably warm, while in the west, where the weather comes from, it is much wetter and a bit cooler generally. And the latitude here is considerably south of even Hobart, our southern most travel on Oz.
An overnight near Lake Tekapo and we travelled on. In the distance we could see Mount Cook,  the highest in Australasia at 3755m (about 11,000ft), which is snow covered all the year round. We were lucky to see it without cloud cover, although a bit hazy at that distance across the lake.

Yesterday there was a very big avalanche on the mountain, fortunately without casualties.



They seem to enjoy redeeming their rogues in the antipodes, viz Ned Kelly. This is a guy called McKenzie, who gave his name to this region, but who was also a notorious sheep stealer. He took 1000 sheep from a big land owner and attempted todrive them through the mountains to a hidden valley. Unfortunately (for him) he was caught, and sentenced to seven years hard labour.

So now we are down at the coast again, in Dunedin, a lovely city only spoiled by it's one was system, which took us a bit of sorting out! (Nuff said!) David and I visited Rotary tonight, Dunedin East club, which has about 50 members. There we enjoyed a talk by a chap who is in charge of security at a brand new stadium here, and would like Rotary to provide some volunteer stewarding at major events. Looks like a good fundraiser!