Late Winter Walks
Posted on Oct 10, 2017 | 0 comments
Not too long ago we had a walk up the Eastern side of Lake Rotoiti to the Lakehead Hut and back. It was a good clear skies late winter’s day with a little snow on the tops but very pleasant walking. Another short walk that we did out to Kaiteriteri and calling down to Split Apple Rock but the clouds hung low that day. There were some interesting sand patterns on the beach.
Beach sand patterns Split Apple Rock.
This was followed some time later with a walk to Akersten Bay along the track in the Abel Tasman National Park. It’s the best time of the year to go along this track so as to dodge all the summer tourist and foot traffic. It’s a good walk along the path – it’s not a bush track all the way so it can be quite hard on the soles especially when it’s hot. Every so often a little track leads down to one of the golden sand beaches. We stop for morning tea at one of them, Appletree Bay, and then had lunch at Akersten Bay and were intrigued with what was lying all along the sandy beach. It appeared that the translucent little forms were some species of fish eggs that had washed up. In a way it could be a good sign that fish were breeding but it seemed a waste to end up like this.
Akersten Bay little fish eggs?
Stone graffiti vandalism?
Along the side of the track were some clumps of mushrooms and returning over the causeway to the car park at Marahau in the mudbanks tourists had been using stones on the mud to layout messages. It might be cute to some but I’d say go back to your own country to do that, certainly not here and to add to the insult, someone had formed a love NZ in the mud. I consider this stone graffiti vandalism in our natural places and we can well do without it.
On the other hand consider the cavemen drawings – maybe in 400 years or so, archaeologists might ponder about the people who made these funny shapes and just what does ZN or NZ mean?
Breaker Bay, Kaiteriteri.
Motueka Reserves Walk
We had another walk sort of around Mot but using the town’s reserves in a zig zag fashion. From the town centre a short street walk to enter Thorp Bush, follow the path through to Goodman Recreation Area, cross the road to the Inlet Walkway, follow the path on the other side of the inlet towards Port Motueka then walk along the seashore, past the rapidly deteriorating wreck of the Janie Seddon and then back to the carpark.
Rabbit Is. lunch break.
Rabbit Is Walk
We lead our walking group along the beach towards Mapua and then around some of the tracks on that end of the island. Along the beach one can fossick among the driftwood happily imagining what one could do with the different shapes and what they suggest. Children had made driftwood houses. It must be instinctive for them to do this. The first thing to do is to make a shelter? We cut through back to the track to the ferry landing and then walked along the track with Rough Island opposite. Past some interesting dead tree forms and then selecting a track that headed back to the main beach again. To finish, we had a BBQ lunch on the beachfront.
Up the Gully
More plantings recently and the total for the year or season, so far is 660 plants quite a number more of grasses too. We built a small retaining wall by the creek crossing and widen the track there too. After the recent rains, it hasn’t been affected by the increased flow of the stream. I tried to do some weed spraying but it has been too windy so went to work with the weedeater instead. The only trouble now is that the weeds seem to have increased their growth rate!
Rainfall for September was 109mm which is exactly this month’s average over 11 days.
