After The Gold Rush*

19 January 2010












Drove a little way up the Coromandel Peninsula today to do a couple of walks – one to Cathedral Cove, a beautiful beach dissected by a huge white cliff that has a rock arch like the nave of a cathedral – hence the name (getting a bit fed up of cliffs with holes – think we’ll skip them in future). We also went to Hot Water Beach – a beach that has hot springs beneath the sand and where people go, dig a hole in the sand and sit in it (can’t see the attraction ourselves as at 11.00 the weather was already very very hot – we got our wish for sunny weather). This custom happens two hours either side of low tide and as we were there at nearly high tide, we just had to believe the guide book – but there were places by the beach that hired out spades.
A stop for morning coffee (still excellent coffee shops in the most remote places – all selling their own version of carrot cake – a NZ institution) before driving on through Waihi, a town that was the scene of a huge goldrush in the 1890s – by 1908 it was the fastest growing town in NZ. Today it’s a sleepy place with one opencast gold mine on the edge of town which is desperately trying to prove it’s ‘green’ credentials – difficult considering the amount of cyanide used to extract gold. However the town has another importance; it was the scene of the Waihi Strike of 1912, a violent clash between the downtrodden miners and the mine owners, which helped to galvanise the labour movement in NZ and led to the formation of the Labour Party.
We reached our destination in the late afternoon: another place we found on the internet, called The Love Shack. It’s a small wooden cottage right on the shore of Lake Rotoiti, we have use of kayaks to go the local store (fantastic place selling organic fruit and veg with a cafe in the front and a beer-garden out the back). We have a deck to sit on and look at the lake – we’ve had visits from numerous birds including two black swans (must get a guide to NZ birds so that we can find out the names of all these birds we keep seeing). The shack is fairly isolated and is surrounded by a huge variety of tree ferns and ferns – including the national emblem the silver fern. It is idyllic. The owner showed us around and gave details on how to use the kayaks and rowing boat and said farewell as he is off to Auckland for the weekend to go to Top Gear Live – Jeremy Clarkson is just a s popular here but we’re quite happy to stay put.