11:43, 257779kms. Off to Kane Road, between Luggate and Hawea Flat, to park beside the Clutha River. I
t’s an area Mike heard about from the guys at work, land owned by Contact Energy – so no hassles with land owners or anything. Weather forecast for odd shower this afternoon, maybe thunder, but we’re off! Filled diesel (42.93L, 257804kms) and gas at BP Cromwell, did shopping at New World and called in to say hi to Kirsty. The odd quite heavy shower coming through, but also blue sky in distance – fingers crossed! 12:55 Leaving Cromwell. 15:03 – parked up where we’d planned, but it took a lot of effort to get here – the tomahawk was put to good use scrub clearing to make track wide 
enough for Maggie – and still we scratched the side of her quite badly! Mike buggered, a little tomahawk on some fairly decent pine tree branches took a bit of energy! Set up camp and spent rest of afternoon relaxing, although Mike did continue with the tomahawk (must have got the lumberjack bug) as he proceeded to cut down a small poplar and a big willowtree branch that were stopping the sun from getting through! Mad!!! Had tea (mini chicken roast, broccoli and special fried rice) and then did the dishes – as w
e always do – and then wondered what the awful, awful smell was. Poor old JD got blamed for letting one rip, but it was worse than that. Then it dawned – we hadn’t emptied the grey tank from last trip ‘til this morning, and it did smell a bit when we emptied it. But, as soon as I pulled the plug from the sink, the smell from the tank came up through the shower plug hole – and boy did it pong – honestly smelt like something had died. So dissolved a bio-pak toilet chemical sachet in sink and let it go into grey. Lesson for future - empty the grey on the last day!! Both tired – Mike knackered – and in bed at 21:00. Oh, we had one heavy shower just after we set up camp, and thought “here we go!” but it only lasted about 10 minutes, sun came out again and beautiful afternoon, apart from stiff NW wind. 3 December 2008
Up at 07:00 – sunny out, 13⁰ but still blowing. Oh yeah, we gave up on worming – only thing we caught was heaps of didymo. Very deceptive, as unlike other places there is no
sign of it on surface, but obvi
ously in the depths it’s there – in bucket loads! Yuck. Now 08:50, have had breakfast (muesli and yoghurt) and now contemplating what to do for rest of morning – fish, read, go back to bed??? Oh, life’s tough! 13:03 – Have pretty much done all of the above, now moving to another spot a bit further upstream because the fishing is no good here, and because the forecast is for showers tonight and we want to get past the boghole before that happens. And a change of scenery never goes amiss! 13:21 – parked up in new spot, after doing some more scrub cutting to get here. Nice and sunny, and sheltered from the ever present howling NW. Mike reading, Marielle went for
a fish and caught a big one – for about 2 seconds – it literally jumped 3 feet out of the water the moment it struck, and jumped straight off the hook! Met another fisherman, who had seen Maggie parked up and thought we 
were mad, bringing a campervan down this track! Mike also had a fish, and same thing happened to him – caught one minute, off the next! Spent rest of afternoon reading and fishing, and eating way too many chips – so many, neither of us felt like tea! Had a few drinks, and obviously a few too many, because Mike turned the motor on to charge up the batteries, and also turned the heating on - to the point where it got all of a sudden got awfully hot inside, and Marielle felt very unwell and went to bed before it even remotely got dark!4 December 2008
Marielle awake before sunrise, thanks to it starting to rain. Then woke up several more times as the rain got progressively heavier and heavier, and at 6am woke Mike up because it was really pee-ing down to the point where we thought we should move to higher, and harder ground. A couple of wee slips getting up the track, and almost got stuck in a boghole because Marielle sent Mike the wrong way (OOPS!) but Maggie got us out safely. Left camp at 6:31, home just after 7:30. Still raining heavily and when we turned on the TV we discovered there are heavy rain warnings out – so much for the weather forecasts on Classic Hits – they told us yesterday there would be a few showers! So glad we left. Will wait to see what happens with weather during rest of today before we decide what we are going to do – stay at home for the day and try again tomorrow, or maybe move somewhere tonight?
