Day 12: The Bluff to Te Anau

Drove north to Invercargill and strolled around the Queens Park gardens there. The gardens are nicely laid out with rose gardend, an aviary and a kind of petting zoo with specimens of odd pig breeds, deer, sheep and wallabies—which seem to be very exciting animals here for some reason. I don't think I have mentioned that most of the trails through bushland have traps set beside them for possums and stoats, which are wreaking havoc on the native life; but though there are feral wallabies, they haven't penetrated very far yet.
Too cold and windy to be out very long, so I drove out to the Richardson Auto World, just out of town, where they have a massive collection of old cars, trucks and other vehicles. Invercargill seems to be a revhead sort of town, and of course many of the bikers were visiting, but the collection is vast enough for many more people than that to get lost in.
I spent a couple of hours there viewing the vehicles and the other small collections of costumery and Richardson family memorabilia. Richardson was a transport magnate, who began to collect vehicles – particularly trucks – when he was quite young. It seems to have become an obsession, particularly after his son was killed at age 29 in an auto crash. Most of the vehicles are not only restored but brightly painted in their original corporate colours and livery..
Then to the north, through Winton, where I had lunch. I stopped originally at something calling itself a 'bakery', but the selection of food was so poor I ended up at a Subway instead.
Then basically driving until I reached Te Anau at about four pm. My room is in a caravan park just out of town. It's spacious and warm by comparison, but the toilets are still a 20-metre walk away, and they haven't supplied me with a towel. And the wi-fi is dodgy. But I will survive.
The trip I had booked for tomorrow is cancelled due to floods, so I'll have to find other things to do. But the scenery here is fantastic.
Relaxed, had dinner, went to bed.

--
Jon Jermey
Indexer and database consultant
042 535 0422
webindexing.com.au

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