Shantys and pancakes.

Further up the west coast lies Greymouth, a smallish town with a heritage museum much like Beamish in the north east of England.
Some of it has been moved there from other areas, and some is original, including the old gold mine buildings, which were primitive indeed.
An eight stamp mill, which crushes the gold bearing quartz to extract the gold itself, is still partly operational. Powered by a water wheel, it batters the minerals almost into dust before it is run into the separator, which washes the gold out of the grit.

A small steam train runs through the park, following an original  line through native bush land, past a sawmill and a sluice demonstration where we were shown how to pan for gold.
A general store, an old time photographers, a theatre and a post and telegraph office were just some of the old buildings in "Shantytown", where we had a couple of very enjoyable hours.






While there we spotted a Weka, the other but lesser known flightless bird in New Zealand. It is just as endangered as the kiwi, predator cats and stoats are taking their toll on these birds, which before Europeans arrived had no predators except man.

Further north in Punakaiki we saw the "Pancake Rocks", stratified rocks which theory has were laid down at the bottom of the ocean over millennia alternately a layer of limestone and a layer of mudstone, the latter of which has been washed away like old mortar, leaving the effect that we see today. I say theory because no one really knows how they were formed, and of many earlier theories this is the one which they say won't go away.

The town of Westport has a couple of interesting Art Nouveau buildings, both municipal, and both in excellent condition. This one, a county council meeting chamber, was built in 1940, which we thought peculiar considering New Zealand was very much at war then, and money would be tight.

Anne and I spent a pleasant night in a little village called Kaiteriteri, some way up the coast from Nelson. The room that we had looked over the sandy bay, fromm high up on the hill. We walked down to the village, around a mile, and by the time we got back to the top of the hill we were pretty much b******d.
But we did manage a swim in the pool, which was just the right temperature, and the jacuzzi, which was a bit hot!







While in Nelson we visited the local Rotary club, where one of the members told us about the work he and others had been doing to build a school in earthquake ravaged Haiti. He and his family have adopted an orphan girl, she was the only survivor of her family.



He was awarded a well deserved Paul Harris Fellowship, and we were pleased to congratulate him for this and his humanitarian work.

Tonight we are in Picton, awaiting the ferry to the north island tomorrow.  We took our time travelling over from Nelson to take in the scenery of another lovely area with many mountains and sea inlets, and islands just off the coast. The main industry here seems to be timber and tourism, there's just one ferry between the islands so everyone has to come here to travel across.

So it's three hours on the water tomorrow to Wellington, looking forward to it!