I think this place could be renamed ‘Sandfly Haven.’ We had been warned, and also have been here on a couple of other occasions, so we should have known. It is such a lovely spot, in the Upper Buller Gorge, to camp but it is ruined by the hoards of sandflies that just swarm you unless you are moving. Even opening the door of the bus makes them think it is an invitation to join us inside. One weapon in our artillery against them is to burn mosquito coils in the doorway. It seems to keep them mostly at bay so we could at least sit inside with the door open. Any chance of sitting outside to enjoy a beer at the end of a lovely sunny day was well out of the question.
The spot we had chosen in this DOC camp gave us a good view of all the other campers as they arrived and set up their camp sites. The ‘sandfly dance’ was what I called it. Everyone was doing it!! One sensible woman had a net over her entire head and face as she attempted to break camp on Saturday morning.
In moaning about the sandflies we mustn’t lose sight of the fact this place is full of history. The camp has several interpretation boards. Here you can see old photos and maps of the area. At one point 2000 people lived on the site of the camp. Hard to imagine now and what terrible conditions it must have been. Gold mining was what initially attracted people to the area.
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| Walking along the dray road. |
There is a very good walking track up into the hills to the site of the mine and it follows the journey the miners would have made every day. It takes you up past the old cemetery, high up onto the hills behind and passes through beech forest, over rivers and up onto the original old dray road. The remains of the stamping battery are still there to be looked down on from a viewing platform. The complete loop track took us an hour and a half and was well worth it.
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| Looking down on the stamping battery. |
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| Stephen on the viewing platform. |
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| Interpretation board at the mine site. |
Part of this track now forms one of the many new cycle trails popping up all over NZ. This one is ‘The Ghost Trail’ and is listed as Grade 3. It takes you on well beyond where we walked and if you kept going would be back over to the Charming Creek Track near Seddonville that we visited.
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