Gum boots on guys - we're going digging for all that glisters

It was meant to be a nice surprise, but when I tell Bea I've hired us a guide to go gold digging she immediately looks alarmed. "Hey, you know we're getting short of cash. How much is this going to cost?". "Ahm, she didn't say", I reply. In a lengthy telephone call with Yulia, a local geologist, we'd discussed everything to do with gold, and the chances of finding some here in Golden Bay. But, ironically, we'd not talked about money at all. "Ooh", says Bea, her face brightening up a bit, "perhaps we can pay her in nuggets".

Slipping into gum boots and other waterproof gear – we’re heading for a gold-rich spot on the Takaka River – Matilda starts counting on her fingers. “I need eight pieces of gold”, she announces “Ha?” I retort, fascinated to know what sort of entrepreneurial arithmetic might be going on in the mind of my six-year old daughter. “One for each of my friends”, she replies.

Bang on the arranged time of 10 AM Yulia arrives in a smart SUV. “Jump in”, she calls chirpily. We’re glad she’s offering us a lift as the gold-search area is quite some way down the river, at the end of an unsealed road. We already have one stone chip on our windscreen, and are worried that a further chip might cause it to shatter completely. It’s a bit of a squash though – the vehicle is jampacked with enormous drum-size buckets. “Are they for all the gold we find?”, I ask, immediately recognising what a silly question. “No”, she replies, “they’re for you to put your bags in”.   



Yulia digs underneath bed-rock for suitable panning material, while Tim studiously updates his diary.

Half an hour later we’re squatting on our knees around boulders at a bend on the river – the site of a former goldmine. Yulia shows us how to pan stones and shingle: "Get water on, shake pan, remove dust", she says, as if reading from a get-rich-quick instruction manual. Seeing our excitement at the prospect of striking rich at any moment, Yulia brings us down to earth with a jolt. "There is no guarantee we'll actually find any gold", she says.  Still, we feel we've got a pretty good chance, since this Russian-born geologist is an alluvial platinum gold specialist. Her precious metal research takes her on jet-setting missions all around the world. She's just come back from lecturing at an international platinum group metal conference in the USA. 
 



Yulia makes it all look incredibly easy. You simply wash off the lighter pebbles, and the heavier sediment remains in the pan. If there's any gold that's where it will be. Bea already has some suspiciously gold-looking sediment in her pan, but our geologist is sceptical. Testing it with a magnetic pen, she shakes her head apologetically: "Nothing so far, sorry". She encourages us to carry on though, saying we've found a lot of magnetite, which is a good sign, since that's a heavy metal too. Gold is heavier than magnetite, so any gold would naturally stick to it.
 

                                 

 

Tildy, meanwhile, seems to be having more success than either Bea or I. "Yeah, yeah, yeah", encourages Yulia,"you're already professional, Matilda. You can have a job with me as a field assistant".

There's no job offer for me, sadly. But when I tell Yulia that one of my greatest hobbies is reading, her eyes immediately lighten up. "If you want a really awesome story read The Illuminaries", she suggests. "It's about the early gold miners". Yulia goes on to describe how there was absolutely nothing glamourous about early gold prospectors' lives: "They had to save up three weeks' wages just to buy a bag of flour. "So", I reply, making a note to put this in my blog, "they were sold a dream and ended up with a nightmare". Visibly impressed by my commentary, Yulia nods. Matilda, in the meantime, has lost interest in gold prospecting and gone off to skim stones across the river.

 

If it was tough for early pioneers it's not proving easy for us either. The odds are heavily stacked against us. "For every ton you dig up you get one gram of gold", says Yulia, "and that's a good result".  Normally you need to search 80 pans of pebbles a day. We've managed just four. Yulia adds that to stand any good chance at all we also need to dig five to seven metres. We've probably not been digging much deeper than just a couple inches. 

                             

Still, we've had good fun, and the morning's prospecting really gives us a feeling of early pioneering life, warts and all. Comfortingly though, even the experts don't always strike lucky. Yulia is wearing a lovely three-gram gold charm around her neck. When I ask her if she found the gold locally, she grins and says "Actually no, I got it in a store in Sydney".

 All that glisters is not gold
  William Shakespeare

  

Selfie snappers and blowholes

There's one major sight on the Coromandel coast which we didn't see on our first visit to the region just after Christmas. Some 7 to 8 million years ago, volcanic activity led to caves being created. Enlarging through erosion, they formed an archway near the little resort of Hahei. Cathedral Cove is undoubtedly the number one crowdpuller in this most northeast part of North Island, and particularly popular with Germans and Japanese.

On the day we go in March we're under heavy competition from these nationalities for the few remaining parking spaces on the hill above the cove. Motorists are parked all along the double yellow lines leading up to the small carpark. If this had been Germany traffic wardens would be having a field day.  We're actually 60 km from the nearest town, and there's not a single warden in sight. Come to think of it, I've not seen a single traffic warden anywhere so far on this trip round NZ. It makes you wonder why they're not tapping such an obvious source of revenue.

As we set off on the 30-minute walk down to the beach we pass large numbers of walkers huffing and puffing their way back up the hill. It sounds like they're doing this more out of a sense of duty, as if they're simply ticking off another box on the to-do list.

                                  

Cathedral Cove - so named because it looks like the nave of cathedral - is needless to say, teeming with tourists. We've been so used to having beaches almost to ourselves in this country that the sight of all these crowds comes as something of a shock. The archway looks totally different from how it's portrayed on postcards - water flowing through, sun shining, and not one single tourist to be seen. Today it's overcast, the tide's going out, and the archway's full of trippers literally tripping over themselves to snap selfies.

A little further down the beach another attraction awaits. An enormous piece of rock stands sticking up out of the water. It looks like the hind leg of a horse. This too, we learn, is the result of cave formation. Only this time the caves collapsed to form an off-shore stack.

                                  

As we sit on the sand eating our picnic and admiring the stack, about a dozen kayaks suddenly appear in the cove. They queue patiently in a long line, as if lying in wait to ambush the enemy. We watch as they start paddling beach wards, landing one by one. On shore a leader goes around and high fives everyone. He looks like a sports teacher, so I go up and ask if this is a school trip. No, he replies, explaining that his kayaking company runs trips every day round the bay, and these are mostly backpackers. "We let them run around a bit and give them a hot drink, then take them back to Hahei". They're certainly running around, but only ankle deep in the water - just enough for a facebook selfie and to snap shots of each other posing in front of the archway. No one seems interested in swimming.

The New Zealand tourist board has done a great job of marketing Cathedral Cove. Sometimes though large numbers of tourists can spoil the very attraction of the attraction they're visiting. Just as we're leaving this tourist trap we notice a Japanese couple. Actually you can't help notice them. The husband has an enormous selfie stick and is shouting orders at his wife. It sounds a bit like "Oyoyoy!". He's obviously looking for the perfect pose in front of the perfect backdrop. She evidently dislikes being bossed around, because she's replying "Wawawawawa!". That's what it sounds like, at least. We hear them repeating this hostile exchange until we're finally out of earshot halfway up the hill.

The best antidote to somewhere with too many tourists is to go somewhere where there are no tourists at all. The following day we head for Pokohino, accessible only by a 6-km dust track and a half-hour downhill trail. We have this gloriously remote beach all to ourselves the whole afternoon, except for one short moment when an elderly man appears and asks if we've seen a blowhole. We have, but quite by accident, while looking for shells in the rocks along one side of the beach. The archway entrance to the hole is actually quite similar to the one in Cathedral Cove, only much smaller of course - you have to almost bend over double to enter. Grateful that this geological wonder hasn't yet made its way into the guide books, we decide to call it "the no-name blowhole".

 

      Hidden beauty on one of New Zealand's loveliest beaches.
          - thank goodness Lonely Planet knows nothing about it.

Birds, birds, birds

One of our most enjoyable and memorable experiences Down Under to date was a trip the other day to see the largest mainland gannet colony in the world.  

We're staying in Napier, a sweet little art-deco town half way down the West coast of North Island, and for the first time this holiday I haven't been able to do what I love most - go swimming. The waves are almost as high as doubledecker buses and are guaranteed to grab you, whirl you around and thrust down you down on the shore with a thud. Safe no, but fun to watch, yes. They whisk up a cappuccino-like froth better than the best italiano barister, spreading foam up the beach before being sucked up by the next great wave.

Tim proudly up front with driver, Clive

This is the backdrop as twenty of us jump onto a trailer and are pulled by a vintage 1940s US farm tractor to the bird colony at Cape Kidnappers. On the other side of the shore rise skyscraper-high cliffs, some over 4 million years old. Now and again Clive our driver stops to explain the geology, and at one point even gets off to chip away fossils engrained in the massive cliff face. At the start of the trip he jokes that he'll happily stop for anyone whose hat blows off. "Husbands, I'll even stop for your wife if she falls off. But only if you want, of course!" Now, however, he's spinning the tractor round and dragging us back already. Not to retrieve a hat or fallen persons but because he's seen a different type of fossil - half a motorbike sticking out of deep sand. "Poor rider got a bit stuck", he jokes, adding that the bike's been there about 10 years. Sometimes it's visible but mostly sand washes back over and submerges it.

Shake, rattle and roll -  rough ride, great fun

After about an hour's ride over sand and stone - Clive calls it "rock 'n' roll" - we reach drop-off point for hiking uphill to the gannet colony. We can't hear or see anything of the birds till we round the final bend of the steep path, which exits at an enormous plateau - home to over 20 000 nesting gannets. These birds can live for up to 25 years, and they sure can make a noise too. We take loads of pictures of the birds, which are so tame they'll even let you stand right close and eyeball them.

For me the greatest, most wonderful and lasting impression is staying for a while after everyone else has left. I enjoy simply being on my own with all these beautiful creatures, watching them circle overhead, flying over so close that you can almost touch them, before stretching out their wings to come into landing - not easy when the "runway" is blocked by thousands of other feathered friends......

I enjoy it so much that I totally lose track of time. Racing back down the hill, I reach the tractor to find everyone waiting and wondering whether or not to report me lost. All told though, a telling off for lateness is a small price to pay for a private audience with these fascinating creatures at the other end of the world - a memory which will stay with me long after the holiday tan fades.

Top cliff, top sight and sound!