Tahr shoot

For the second year in a row, Greg headed off on his Tahr cull.  This year Dave (Andrea's brother-in-law) flew down from Auckland to join him, and the two of them were joined by Greg's friend and fellow Deer Stalker Andy.  Or should that be fallow deer stalker.  Excuse the pun.

The boys getting into the chopper South West of Christchurch (up the Havelock River):

The accommodation was slightly fancier than last year.  Yes that's a solar panel on the roof of the hut, supplying LED lighting and a mountain radio (the aerial is the long wires at the top).

The countryside was amazingly wide and open - not to mention steep.  You could sit and look at a hill for hours and hours and still not see the animals walking around.  So sit and look for hours they did.

As you can see, the camo clothing the boys wear works well.  This is Andy sitting in a bunch of tussocks with his spotting scope - hard to see at 6 feet away.  You might also notice the boys wearing orange blaze.  Most game animals are colour blind, and the blaze clothing has a camo print so they work equally as well as the traditional green and khaki colours - but obviously a lot safer when there are multiple shooters.

Some more of the fantastic scenery, with a few Mount Cook Lilies in the foreground.  This was one little side valley that the lads walked up off the main valley.  The Mount Cook Lilies aren't so surprising considering they were less than 50km from Mount Cook (as the kea flies)

And of course being so close to Mount Cook, there were numerous glaciers heading down into the valleys the boys were hunting in.  Pretty much every side valley and stream started with a glacier.  Making for yet more spectacular scenery.

And finally, success for Dave.  This is his third hunting trip down to the South Island with Greg and he finally has a trophy animal - something to be really proud of.  And the sausages taste great too - many thanks to the Arrowtown Butcher for the Tahr, sundried tomato and basil sausages.  

Winter?

For the third time in just over 2 weeks, we have snow on the hills.  Yesterday we dropped from about 24 degrees down to 4 in the space of about 4 hours.  A bit of a shock to the system really considering it's supposed to be the height of summer!  We're not exactly complaining though, Queenstown really is very pretty when there's snow on the hills - 15-20 cm of it today.  If it was winter we would have been hitting the slopes for a powder day...

We took all of these photos standing inside our house this morning!

Ben Lomond and Bowen Peak from our dining room

Cecil Peak and Walter Peak

The Remarkables from the spare room

Looking down the lake towards Kingston (also from the spare room)

And the one photo we didn't take from home - Coronet Peak (this photo shamelessly ripped off from the Gondola webcam).  Just like winter... without the snow base of course!

There was so much snow that there's still some on the hills now after a day of sunshine, but it will be gone by tomorrow night.

Happy New Year!

It's been a while since we've blogged and we've been all over the place since then!

At Christmas time we spent 7 days in the North Island and caught up with a lot of family and friends.  It was great catching up with everyone, even if the "summer" weather wasn't really much to write home about.

We got back to Queenstown on New Year's Eve, and had been home for about an hour when we were invited down to the beach for a picnic dinner.  While we were there we were invited into Skippers Canyon camping with 2 families we know the following night.  The weather in at Skippers was spectacular and we all had such a great time we stayed a second night.  Our little camp site was well set up with our 3 tents arranged around a picnic table and the BBQs, tables and cookers we brought with us.

We were then treated to another couple of weeks of the same spectacular weather and began wondering when it was going to rain.  All of the lawns were looking very dry, other than those lucky enough to have been regularly watered - there had been no rain for nearly a month.  We'd left a timer going on our vege garden while we were away and came home to a jungle. We've now harvested and frozen all the leftover spinach (15 bags full in the freezer!) as it was going to seed, the peas have just finished after 3 weeks worth of meals for us and the neighbours and the bean trellis is showing signs of being just as prolific as the peas.  There are so many orange flowers on it now - this photo doesn't show the many many little green beans there already either.

And then overnight one night it finally started raining, and the rain continued off and on for 2 days before we woke up on the third day to this:

No rain for a month.... and then snow in January!

Normal transmission has resumed now though and we're back to scorchers again.  The farmers are all hoping we'll get regular weekly rain now through till Autumn, but NIWA isn't so sure.

And finally, when we moved we wondered whether we would still see the awesome sunsets we used to see at the old house.  With the new angle on the view we thought we might miss out now.  Not so much.

Wakeboarding

Last weekend the forecast was for light winds so we decided to head out for a wakeboard early on Sunday morning.  The lake was absolutely dead flat for the first of each of our runs, although unfortunately we only have photos of Andrea.  We weren't sure which photos to add, so here are all of them!

Glenorchy Deer Hunt

This morning Greg went into a new hunting area out the back of Glenorchy.  It turned out to be one of the most promising places we've been into as far as access, distance from home and sheer stunningness (in Greg's words!) are concerned.  

Greg's truck at 7:30am (sun rises early here at this time of year!)

A waterfall half way up - this one was 100ft high and quite a large volume of water too.  Greg said it reminded him a lot of Hunua Falls (near Auckland).

Something you don't get at Hunua Falls - a big grassy plateau opening up onto snow and ice fields!
Greg busted out on this plateau just in time to see 3 deer disappearing up to the right of the picture (much to his disgust).  Maybe next time!

Cecil Peak DoC Goat Shoot

Last weekend the local DeerStalkers branch was invited by DoC to carry out a bit of pest control for them.  The only catch was that it was over at Cecil Peak Station (on the other side of the lake) and we had to get ourselves there.  Thankfully, it turns out enough people in DeerStalkers had a boat of some description so we signed up.
We arrived at the boat ramp bright and early on Saturday morning and waited for the strange assortment of boats (jet boats, ski boats, little boats, our boat...) and people in hi-visibility gear to turn up.  We thought we'd done pretty well with a hi-vis boat as well!

The country was pretty hard and although as a group we only shot about 25 goats, we also saw chamois and deer (although unfortunately they were off the menu).  The original plan was to stay the night, but with a really bad front arriving late afternoon we all decided to high tail it back to civilisation.  Although unfortunately high tailing it didn't work so well with one of the jet boats breaking down before we even left the far side of the lake.  After attempting to get it started for half an hour and with rapidly deteriorating weather, eventually everyone gave up and decided that our boat was the best one to tow it back with.  All of the other boats left at that stage were better suited for flat water (ski boats and jet boats) so our "deep V" came in handy for the slow trudge back across the lake with a good 2 foot chop.  So yet again our old "dunger" turned out to be a gem!  We only wished it was the alloy jet boat and not the 2 tonne all steel one that had broken down....

Here's a shot of the remaining boats lined up on the beach just before the weather turned.  Hopefully at the next meeting on Thursday night we might be able to get copies of some of the other photos taken - but no promises!

Snow in November

Over the last couple of days we've experienced snow to lake level, cold temperatures and a brisk wind.  There have been a lot of people talking about it being unseasonal, but Greg and I can't remember a November in our last 4 that hasn't had at least one bout of winter in it.  Apparently it almost always coincides with the tour of Southland - like it did yesterday!  But regardless of whether it's unseasonal or not, it's still very pretty to wake up to everything dusted in icing sugar snow.

Taken from the front door, looking towards Cecil Peak (that's a bit of ice on the table and seats)

 The boat, still with some slushy ice/snow remaining

The gondola, with Ben Lomond in behind it - the other direction from the deck by the front door.

Looking back towards our driveway from the road, up at the Remarkables

Top of the drive, looking towards Halfway Bay, where you can see the snow is quite thick right down to lake level

For all we love seeing snow on the hills, we're hoping it warms up quite considerably by the time Ken and Barbara (Greg's Parents) arrive next Friday.  These temperatures might be a bit of a shock to the system for the Aucklanders!  :-)