The cross­ing from Wel­ling­ton was for us a blessed relief as the, albeit grand, city had been a drain­ing exper­i­ence.  We had spent 5 hours in a hos­pital wait­ing room for my knee to be seen and Cesca to have her toe looked at.  They say that you should really try and get off the beaten track in the coun­tries you visit, but I say there is no way bet­ter of under­stand­ing a people than by being caught in the gears of their bur­eau­cracy.  Noth­ing I said to the lady in the hos­pital helped speed any­thing up.  Of course we were hardly bleed­ing to death on the floor but when I gently inquired – after 2 hours of wait­ing – what the sus­pec­ted total wait would be she informed me that she had not even put us in the sys­tem yet.  Any­way, when the doc­tor did arrive she was mag­ni­fi­cent and I got my knee X-Rayed within 10 minutes. 

Not sur­pris­ingly then we wanted a break from city life and boy did we find it.

We left the North Island on the mighty Inter­is­lander ferry that rolls its way between the land­masses that make up New Zea­l­and.  It is a titan of a ferry, which glee­fully swal­lows trains, cars and pas­sen­gers aplenty without burping. 

 

Inside it has all the mod cons such as food, drink and even that most vital of oceanic equip­ment: a full size cinema.  Com­ing into the South Island is to pass through a maze of broken up coast­lines called sounds. 

     

Sounds are where a tec­tonic plate has been pushed down and has flooded leav­ing only the tops of the local moun­tains pok­ing out of the sea filled val­leys.  They are very sim­ilar in effect to fiords only without gla­cial involve­ment.  They com­prise a heady form­a­tion of pas­sages which are long and have formed into large inlets.  In these are mul­ti­tudes of houses and hotels all bur­ied amongst the short beach lines and masses of trees. 

One part is known as the Queen Char­lotte Track and involves a 4 day hike around the points and campsites.

Hid­den within this maze lays Pic­ton and the port of call for the ferry.  Pic­ton is a small town built up around its status as a transit hub and while it has a quite pleas­ant har­bour you can tell that this is a work­ing port. 

 

Its main use is the fer­ry­ing not of goods but of people in the form of mul­ti­tudes of water taxi’s and small fer­ries out to the Sounds vari­ous accom­mod­a­tions.  For trans­port fur­ther into the South Island then Pic­ton is the final stop on the train line (yes an actual train! in NZ!) that leads down the coast via Kikura and into Christ­ch­urch.  It also is the hub for the hire car com­pan­ies and the bus com­pan­ies.  Not sur­pris­ingly then, it is chock full of Back­packer choices in terms of accommodation.

We used the web to book what seemed like the best choice.  The Tomb­stone Back­pack­ers is right oppos­ite the cemetery, which is some­thing that most people would not harp on about.  Tomb­stone uses the loc­a­tion to be its USP and hav­ing stayed at some of the other hos­tels I can see why.  It is slightly fur­ther out of town (still walk­able) and its com­pet­it­ors all give away free Apple Pie and Ice Cream.

Every night.

That’s right, I stayed (weeks later) at the Lodge in town and the staff at the counter booked me in and then handed me my pass­port back, my change from the money I gave, the keys to the room and a bowl of apple pie and ice cream.  Just like that.  As if it was the most nor­mal thing in the world.

Any­way, any visual images of Tomb­stone back­pack­ers were melted away once we arrived and found that it is one of the every best hos­tels we have ever stayed at.  It is all brand new for a start.   A large kit­chen, two TV sets (one massive LCD), two quiet rooms of sofas, a pool table and a hot tub.  The room was frankly a rev­el­a­tion.  I wondered if we had wandered into a top hotel my acci­dent as this was a stonk­ingly good room.  Ensuite.  For NZ$60! 

Also the land­lady was very help­ful.  She quickly chat­ted to us and probed our some­what haphaz­ard plan about walk­ing some of the track and within a jiffy had a pleth­ora of good sug­ges­tions.  And when she heard that we were look­ing for WWOOF­ing… jack­pot!  One of the lodges, on the Queen Char­lotte Track, was look­ing for work­ers in the gar­dens for a few days.  How about we get the water taxi to drop our stuff there and we then go to the next stop and walk back along the track?  The taxi will be cheaper if we are staff at the lodge and they will provide food as well.  Sounds good,

“What was the name of this place?” I asked.

“Fur­neaux Lodge.”

The next day we boarded the Cou­gar Line water taxi at 9am and watched as our stuff was stowed prop­erly.  We had tagged all the bags to go dir­ectly to the lodge and, of course, had con­cerns about leav­ing our most pre­cious gear in someone else’s hands – a clas­sic no no for back­pack­ers.  The ferry got under­way and soon we were stream­ing through the sounds on our way.  I checked my go-bag had all the pro­vi­sions I needed for the walk and then relaxed and enjoyed the view.  The water was calm this day and we both were happy as the trees zipped by.

The walk from his­tor­ical Ships cove to Fur­neaux was worth every step and a won­der­ful way to spend an after­noon.  How­ever, it was a hot walk and a sig­ni­fic­ant 3 hours trek up and down the hills.  By the time we came around the head­land and could see the bor­ders of Furneaux’s land I was in dire need of refreshment. 

Hap­pily it has a bar.

The main house of Fur­neaux is an old man­sion that has been con­ver­ted into the busi­ness it is today.  It has that pala­tial feel of large white pan­el­ling and clas­sic style deck­ing all around the front.  Its large bulk sits amid a col­lec­tion of chalets and huts inside tree lined gar­dens and a stream run­ning right through it.  The build­ing is split roughly into two.  One side is the lounge bar, which is nicely appoin­ted and fully ser­viced with both food and drink of all types.  The other side is the main res­taur­ant, which – on our first visit – was closed for the sea­son.  Behind these are the kit­chens and above the kit­chens is the staff accom­mod­a­tion.  Out the rear of the build­ing, across the stream, lay the higher-end chalets in a grace­ful arc look­ing towards the moun­tains.  Walk­ing in like we did we missed the most impress­ive sight of the grounds from the sea.  On approach, this way, the build­ings rise up out of the forest and very nice jetty wel­comed you through the grounds and gar­dens up to the house.

We quickly intro­duced ourselves to the staff and even quicker downed a pint of beer that had been well earned from the walk.  There was about 8 per­man­ent staff spread over a vari­ety of jobs from bar works to grounds, kit­chen to clean­ers.  The more senior staff, like the head chef John, had their own rooms and every­one else either shared of bunked in a dorm room.  As a kind ges­ture, mainly due to us being mar­ried and it being off-season, we were housed away from the house in the “Pos­sums”, which were small but fun rooms 100 meters from the house.

Work was set to start the next day with some other WOOFer’s who had already got going.  As it was 3pm, and work had fin­ished at 1:30pm, we were told to settle in and relax until the morn­ing.  Bliss.  Sit­ting out on the boards and look­ing out to the sounds (with a second beer in hand) was won­der­ful.  Either side of the sounds the high hills frame the back­drop nicely and the eye is drawn down gently to the crys­tal clear waters lap­ping the shore.

Work star­ted the next morn­ing at 9.  All food was provided by the host here and so we got dressed by 8 and selec­ted suit­able work clothes for the day, which was look­ing to be very sunny.  We then joined in with the other morn­ing work­ers and made ourselves some toast and cer­eal from the kit­chens.  Here we met the other WOOFer’s — three girls who were from Ger­many and Den­mark.  After hello’s and hi’s we presen­ted ourselves to the staff for instruction.

The task for the next “few days” was to weed out the back chalets that had grown over and had not been dis­turbed over the winter.  We were given dir­ec­tions to the tool shed and told to make a start.  Lunch was to be at 11:30 to mid­day and then work again until 1:30pm.  We went around to start and were presen­ted with a mon­ster weed infest­a­tion.  The sheer size and volume of the weeds here was amaz­ing.  Some were so big that they could lit­er­ally be con­fused with trees and all the earth was sown with a low lay­ing creeper that made a lat­tice of green across all of the gardens.

I went and got a big­ger fork.

Weed­ing is a lost art really.  It is not quite the most unpleas­ant of jobs, for while it is hideously mono­ton­ous you do get a lot of time to think.  I think a lot already, so I turned on the iPod to the longest audiobook I could find (The hob­bit – 35 hours!) and just zoned out.  Here the task was either very picky and required the weeder to pull out thou­sands of tiny weeds grow­ing between gravel or very labour­ing and required that you dig over every square inch of earth pulling up the lattice-weed on the way.  I chose the lat­ter and the girls all clustered into a gaggle of broken Eng­lish and good humour and got stuck into the little stuff.

After a pleas­ant morn­ing we broke for lunch.  I wasn’t expect­ing much, a sarnie per­haps, but was incred­ibly impressed with a large cooked break­fast buf­fet style.  Even with all the staff tuck­ing in we all had plenty.  With a slightly full stom­ach we cracked back on and soon the sun was tak­ing its toll.  I made a men­tal note to stock up on water for the next day. 

The other thing tak­ing its toll was the sandflies.

Sand­flies are the only men­ace worth men­tion­ing in New Zea­l­and.  The coun­try was blessedly free of snakes, had only rare dan­ger­ous spiders and not a large pred­ator in sight.  What it does have is a spe­cies of black­fly about the size of a matchead that requires blood to breed.  And its favour­ite type of blood is human blood.  Sand­flies are talked either down or up by Kiwis.  They don’t want to spook vis­it­ors with tall tales of being hit by thou­sands at once, but at the same time the little bas­tards are abso­lutely every­where and an unholy ter­ror.  A sand­fly bite matches and chal­lenges a mos­quito bite for itch­ing and they take ages to heal.  They can swarm about someone in bat­talion strength num­bers and almost drain the poor sod dry of blood.  Thank­fully, they don’t like DEET and hate Mosiguard.  How­ever, be out near a stream or shore line and not slathered in the afore­men­tioned and you can ser­i­ously be made to regret it.  The worst I saw in my time in NZ was 200 hun­dred on Ces­cas back (in the Nel­son lakes).

The num­bers in Fur­neaux were thank­fully less than in other places, but bites were exceed­ingly com­mon on that first day.  The stream ran right by the gar­dens of the chalets and we were exposed to mul­tiple attacks.  Every­one made plans to com­bat that the next day.  We fin­ished up at 1:30pm and relaxed for the even­ing.  The other girls went for a trip in the com­pany kayaks and there was much talk about fish­ing over the next few days.  How­ever, I was happy to relax that first night with another well earned beer.  Got to love staff prices at the bar.  Any illu­sions about being under fed after the large lunch were ban­ished when din­ner turned up for staff at 5:30pm.  Another massive and greatly high qual­ity meal was dished up and all the staff got stuck in.

There exists a well cul­tiv­ated and friendly atmo­sphere at Fur­neaux between the staff mem­bers.  The lodge is very isol­ated in terms of geo­graphy and it is greatly to the man­age­ments credit that they have recog­nised this and run a gamut of staff perks to pre­vent high turnover or reg­u­lar burnouts.  Basic perks like good food – more import­ant than you’d think – and cheap drinks are just the start.  Staff can bor­row the lodges equip­ment on their day’s off and go kayak­ing or fish­ing.  There is free WIFI, some­thing that costs the earth via satel­lite con­nec­tion but is vital to staff moral, and Sky TV with all the trim­mings.   A comfy staff room brings the staff together and free pool when the bar is empty keeps the com­pet­it­ive spirit going.  How­ever, by far the greatest innov­a­tion is called “Thirsty Thursday” where the man­age­ment puts a wedge of cash behind the bar and buys every mem­ber of staff free drinks for as long as it lasts.

Such a fine bal­an­cing act explained why we were put in “the pos­sums” as this pre­ven­ted any­one from hav­ing to move around rooms and per­haps upset people.

The greatest facet was of course that this all extends to WOOF­ers as well as full time staff.  So many places treat WOOF­ers as “lesser” to full time staff, but here they are treated very well indeed.  This method of man­age­ment reminded me of my own – a happy staff works hard and plays hard – and I was not sur­prised to find out that the owner had worked in a city job before buy­ing Fur­neaux.  The owner’s name was Geoff and he arrived back from Nel­son the next day.  Like many Kiwi’s he exhib­ited the relaxed but hard­work­ing bon­homie that we have come to greatly like about this coun­try.  Very relaxed in his king­dom home he made all the WOOF­ers feel wel­come, but checked up on us a few times a day as we worked. 

And worked we did.

 

After-work high­lights included fish­ing off the wharf and kayak­ing into the inlet.  Dur­ing the kayak exped­i­tion 30 dol­phins swam up to the kayak and Cesca leapt into the freez­ing waters to swim amongst them. 

5 Days later the weed­ing was almost done (and I had run out of Aud­ible down­loads to listen to),

 

and sadly we had to leave Fur­neaux for the jour­ney down to Christ­ch­urch and a meet up with Ara­bella.  We prom­ised to come back…

 

…and four weeks later we did.

Our second trip to Fur­neaux was dur­ing a windy day and the cross­ing to the inlet was incred­ibly rough.  Waves crashed over the small Cou­gar Ferry and the entire jour­ney was like being in a wash­ing machine.  It was great fun, but more than a little scary!

Work the second time around was a little dif­fer­ent but still not too tax­ing, we spent a day sand­ing down the deck­ing ready­ing it for painting.

 

I spent a day cut­ting wood (which was a lot of fun – little destruct­ive bug­ger that I am)

A Day mov­ing logs

A day edging all the gar­dens (this was hard work and left me with blisters on my hands)

 

…and a day fix­ing the boss’s laptop!

Finally after 5 more days we left Fur­neaux for the last time (until next time!).  The exper­i­ence here had been about as good as WWOOF­ing can get and had more than made up for the gig in Kangaroo Island. My faith in the whole enter­prise had been renewed com­pletely and my love for New Zea­l­and increased permanently.

If you are in the Sounds, look­ing for work, I def­in­itely recom­mend check­ing them, and the Sounds, out.

Regards,

 

 

Basho

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