#dailyat6am, Milton, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

Milton

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… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand

… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand is a delightful jaunt around the backroads and towns of Otago and Southland. Rediscovering and exploring the quirks, charms, curiosities and forgotten points of interest of small-town Otago – Southland.

Daily Photo – Milton

I rolled through the town of Milton just as the clouds turned an ominous shade of grey and threatened rain. The place was quiet, with people hurriedly moving between shops, dashing from vehicle to shop and back again. At the far end of the main street, I could see a long traffic queue had formed due to distant roadworks. With traffic at a standstill, I pulled over and walked a short distance down the street, observing life in a small country town.

Generally speaking, most New Zealand towns are made up of a single long main street, with all the major shops branching off it. The main street also doubles as the highway, so in most cases you’re forced to drive through the centre of town, which is rather clever when you think about it.

There are several things you can guarantee every town has: namely a pub, a grocery store, a disused post office or bank, and a petrol station that is also home to the local mechanic – whose name is probably Barry or Scottie and who will no doubt have a faded Playboy centrefold from the 1980s or 1990s hanging in a not-too-conspicuous position somewhere inside the workshop. There’ll be a store of some description that sells and services large farm machinery, and some other completely random business called Arthur’s Antiques, Helen’s Haberdashery, Katie’s Knitting & Yarn Boutique, or Tim’s Terrific Trades for Trash.

The interesting thing about Milton is the famous dog-leg that runs about halfway along the main street. The funny thing is, nobody is completely sure why it’s there. What it proves is that it is indeed possible to fail at building a straight road on a completely flat piece of land with no immediate obstacles – while surveyors stand at each end to mark out a straight line. Either that, or the person drawing up the plans did so from thousands of kilometres away, had no idea of the surrounding landscape, and mistook a crumb on the map for a land feature that needed to be avoided.

Whatever the reason, it provides the town with an interesting talking point, something I was to discover other towns could well do with.

#dailyat6am, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Waihola, Wild Horses

Wahiola

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… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand

… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand is a delightful jaunt around the backroads and towns of Otago and Southland. Rediscovering and exploring the quirks, charms, curiosities and forgotten points of interest of small-town Otago – Southland.

Daily Photo – Waihola

My next stop was Waihola, a township that lies roughly 40 km south-west of Dunedin and sits on the edge of a lake with the same name. While small in stature, the town has a steady stream of visitors thanks to the State Highway network running direction through the middle of the town, and people stopping off to see the lake or to link up with the Clutha Gold Trail Cycle network – a 135 kilometer cycle path that follows the route once used by gold miners during the 19th-century gold rush, seeking  fame and fortune on the gold fields. I stood and looked out across the lake and over to the start of the cycle network that ran its way to the far off Central Otago towns of Lawrence and Roxburgh. Apart from a nearby truck, the place was empty, the cycle path unused but for the local bird life that had taken up residence on the boardwalk. It was all very picturesque, in a dull, moody sort of way. 


#dailyat6am, Henley, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

Henley

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… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand

… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand is a delightful jaunt around the backroads and towns of Otago and Southland. Rediscovering and exploring the quirks, charms, curiosities and forgotten points of interest of small-town Otago – Southland.

Daily Photo – Henley

On my way out of town I had intended to stop at Mosgiel, a suburb on the outskirts of the city. That was before my departure was delayed. I had carefully picked out a photographic location high on a bridge overlooking the motorway. My intention was to capture a long exposure of vehicle lights disappearing into the distance as the town quietly woke from its slumber in the early morning light.

However, I was now running late. So, I parked these plans to one side, saving the idea for another time, and detoured to the small riverside village of Henley, a place that actually does have more sheep than residents, is prone to flooding, and is a delightful spot for a riverside picnic on a warm and lazy summer’s afternoon.

I paused for a moment beside the river. It was still, sedately ambling its way past the village. I got out and walked across the bridge, disturbing a raft of ducks as I did so. They noisily appeared from the reeds, splashed across the top of the water for a moment, and disappeared into the distance. It was starting to rain, and moments later I was back in my car and had rejoined State Highway One, heading south.

#dailyat6am, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

Travels In Small-Town New Zealand (ii)

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… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand

… from a Small City: Travels In Small-Town New Zealand is a delightful jaunt around the backroads and towns of Otago and Southland. Rediscovering and exploring the quirks, charms, curiosities and forgotten points of interest of small-town Otago – Southland.

Daily Photo – Travels in small-town New Zealand (ii)

My departure the next day was delayed. This was due to a drip in the shower that had started several days earlier. It began as nothing more than something that could happily be ignored. However, over the preceding 24 hours, it had gone from a minor drip to a continuous dribble, and now was a steady trickle.

Here, in the clear light of morning, summoning all my limited plumbing knowledge, I deduced three things. Firstly, that it would need to be fixed. Secondly, that it was beyond my very limited capabilities. And finally, that it would require the services of a plumber. Within the hour, a guy named Phil or Greg or something arrived, inspected the shower, and within minutes was pulling all sorts of fancy tools out of his truck (muttering to himself, ‘This could get gnarly’), taking off the mixer and opening up some of the pipework in the wall.

This pleased me, as it confirmed that this wasn’t something I should be attempting myself. I learned this lesson some years earlier when the ballcock on our header tank, which sits in the roof, seemed to be constantly running. Thinking this would only be a matter of making a small tweak, I went and investigated, making some minor adjustments. I was so pleased with my efforts, I informed my wife that I would show off my handiwork to a plumber. He arrived and was equally impressed, so impressed he looked at it for hours, finally making me promise to both my wife and himself that I would never touch anything involving plumbing or electricity ever again. And I never have.

While all this was going on, I filled the time by making cups of coffee, read the newspaper, studied my map and pretended to understand I knew what he was talking about. 

Eventually, after much muttering, clanking, and rummaging through tools that looked like they belonged in an operating theatre rather than a bathroom, he announced that the job was done. The leak was no more. He packed up his gear, gave me a cheerful nod, and drove off, leaving me standing there feeling oddly triumphant, despite having contributed absolutely nothing to the process. 

I didn’t hang around. Instead of quietly slipping my car out onto the Dunedin streets in the early morning hours as intended, I hurriedly dumped everything on the backseat and made car-tyre screeching sounds as I set off for State Highway One, heading south.

#dailyat6am, Travels in small-town New Zealand, Wild Horses

Travels In Small-Town New Zealand

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Daily at 6am

Join me here on my photoblog, daily at 6am. https://fromasmallcity.nz/

Daily Photo – Travels in small-town New Zealand

Tell people you’re spending the night in Queenstown and you generally get a look of indifference, usually followed by a prolonged state of apathy. There’s no follow-up question or lengthy discussion, you become another person visiting the resort town that calls itself (with more than a touch of self-indulgence) ‘pure inspiration’. On the other hand, tell people you’re spending the night in Winton and people get curious, they ask all sorts of questions, usually starting with – why? 

Recently on a drive along the Otago’s Peninsula it struck me as I wound my way along twisting turning roads, bouncing out potholes and splashing through puddles that I was in need of a change of scenery. I had grown tired of the same familiar surroundings that make up life in a small city, I wanted to see something different, something fresh, something new. Well, maybe not new, but at least something I hadn’t seen on a weekly basis over the last six months! It occurred to me, as it just so happened, I was soon having a few days off – an ideal time to get out and hit the road, to once more see my own backyard as it were. 

Over the next few weeks I began plotting possible itineraries that would both take me around the South Island and yet be manageable within three to four days. What quickly became evident was that I wanted to avoid the major tourist locations and cities. Stopping in places like Queenstown and Wanaka held little to no appeal. Where once they were the goose that laid the golden egg of New Zealand holiday destinations (and let’s be frank here) that egg was well and truly cooked years ago. I didn’t want to stand in long queues for overpriced food and beverages, or sit in endless traffic jams thinking ‘gee, don’t those mountains look lovely’, I wanted to drive along back country roads and through small forgotten towns. I wanted to visit places that had more sheep than residents, where traffic is blocked by farmers moving their flocks and see livestock grazing in a frosty winter paddock of rolling Southland farmland, bathed in the soft light of early morning.  

I wanted to go back to places I’d visited years ago and had long since forgotten about, to Tautuku, Nightcaps and Dipton and see if I could remember them. I wanted to hear the long silence that fills the Ida Valley on a cold and chilly winter morning with the road vanishing into the Hawkdun Ranges far off in the distance. 

I wanted to see quiet country towns with quirky bits of history, to read and listen to stories involving strange, shady, controversial characters from New Zealand’s past. I wanted to drive around and see small towns in-out-of-the-way places. I wanted to get out of cities and tourist hotspots and travel through small-town New Zealand. 

Feeling inspired, one evening, having acquired a map of the South Island which I spread out and studied on the living room floor. I drew a circular itinerary following roads and towns that would take me all over Otago and Southland, writing various notes and scribbles beside selected places for later reference. And so, one July evening, as the fire blazed away beside me in my warm, cozy lounge, I made careful and considered preparations to depart through the quiet Dunedin streets, early the next morning.