Lumsden - Day One

A drive halfway down the Nevis Road and a day in Te Anau

Lumsden is a small town with about 600 inhabitants near the Oreti River in Southland, on the road between Invercargill and Queenstown, just below a turn off to Te Anau. It has two nice cafés, one functioning pub, a couple of smallish grocery stores, a liquor store, library and a fish and chip shop, the quality of which is to be determined. It’s also important as a railway town, with a few significant historical exhibits near its disused railway station, and has put a real effort into attracting travellers, by making the area around the railway station a free campervan site. For me, it looks like the ideal base from which to explore the local area, so book into the camping ground for four nights.

Once again, I make the trek to Cromwell to collect my caravan. One objective is to drive the 4WD only Nevis road, which runs between Bannockburn and Garston, down the eastern side of the Remarkables mountain range. Since driving the whole road means either driving all the way back or a big round trip, I decide to do it in two pieces, going in from the north to check things out before I pick up the caravan. It can’t be too hard: I watched a TV show about a house being carried in on the back of a truck!

As it happens, I drive in about 30 km from Bannockburn, until the first closed gate. The first bit of the drive is a sealed road, but then it turns to gravel and runs up to the Duffer Saddle - the highest point on any public road in New Zealand. It provides a great view back the way I have come - Cromwell and Lake Dunstan.

Here’s the way forward:

The Nevis Bridge is at the bottom of the hill - one of very few bridges on the road, with most stream and river crossings being fords (over 20 of them): this helps to make this an interesting road, one to approach with caution.

This is looking back the way I have come

Across the bridge, the land flattens out, running through a wide valley, containing a couple of stations.

Time is getting on, so when I get to the first gate, I decide I should head back. After collecting the caravan, I have about 150 km to drive, but it’s not a speedy road - through the Kawarau Gorge to Queenstown then down past the eastern side of Lake Wakitipu over a section of road called the Devil’s Staircase. It takes nearly three hours, so I drop the caravan off and pop down the road to try the fish and chips. The fellow in the shop is very friendly, so I’m a bit sad to report that his food is a bit sad. Unusually, the camping ground has no wifi at all, so I spend my evenings there reading and watching Murder One.

In the morning, rather than go to the café I have developed a habit of going to when in Lumsden, I go across the street to Roasted x Toasted by ROAR COFFEE. They roast their own coffee and specialise in toasted sandwiches (I shared one of their delicious pineapple and cheese toasties with my brother back in January), and sell a few lines of locally made boutique food items. After a bit of time in the library, I drive to Te Anau for lunch. When I see Olive Tree has a Malaysian Chicken Curry, I can’t resist, as it’s one of my favourite things to eat. This version is tasty, but not like any I have eaten before.

Te Anau is not a big town, and it’s only a month or so since I was last here, so there’s not a whole lot to occupy me - I can’t go home to Lumsden, as I see something to do here later on. I try out the Te Anau library, then go to a pub for a drink with my book. Dinner proves to be a bit awkward: it is Valentines Day and the nice places are packed. I’d need to wait more than an hour to get a table in my pub of choice. There’s a near empty Japanese fusion restaurant, but their food is so fused, nothing on the menu is very Japanese or appetising. I look into the Chinese restaurant that’s probably served me the worst meal I’ve ever bought: every table is empty but covered in the wreckage of former diners. They must have had a bus tour in. So, once again, I have fish and chips for tea - they’re actually quite good.

I still have some time to kill, so go to the bar attached to the Fiordland cinema and work my way very slowly through a locally made IPA before going in to the cinema itself. It’s opening night here for Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. The movie is certainly worth staying in town for and the late night return to Lumsden. Bridget is much less ditzy than in the earlier movies, hit with the sadness of Mr Darcy’s death. Rather than being caught up in a dizzying confusion between two men at once, she deals with them consecutively. Still funny, but.

Cheers!