Change In Plans

Greetings from Mt. Nicholas sheep station, on Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand. We are spending the next three days here, getting a wee taste of authentic sheep-station life. The scenery is so drop-dead beautiful as to defy easy description.

This morning we boarded the TSS Earnslaw for our 40-minute trip up Lake Wakatipu to the sheep station. “TSS” stands for “twin-screw steamship,” which is exactly what the Earnslaw is. It was launched in 1912, and was state of the art at the time. With a full head of steam, and a long, mounful toot on the whistle, we cruised away from wonderful Queenstown, and out into the lake.

When the boat made its first stop, Chris, our host, picked us up dockside. He drove us 12 kilometers to Mt. Nicholas sheep station, where he and his wife, Adrienne, have built a small bed & breakfast.

The sheep station is huge: over 100.000 acres. The owners run 27,000 sheep and 3,000 cattle in beautiful free-range conditions that must populate the dreams of factory-farm livestock the world over. Plenty of food and clean water, perfect temperature, no predators. It isn’t clear whether the sheep appreciate the stunning views.

Bruce and Adrienne showed us around the house, and then took us down to the garden, Adrienne’s “great passion”. We picked apples and pears from the trees, and ate them as Adrienne gave us a tour. The garden was orderly and almost surreally productive, bursting with enormous vegetables and berries. We stood in the bright mid-day sunshine, eating marble-sized peas directly from the pods. The kids dug up carrots, washed them, and ate them on the spot.

Bruce and Adrienne are striving, in a very low key way, to make their operation as self-sufficient as possible. The organic garden provides nearly all of the vegetables and fruits. Their hens lay nearly two dozen eggs per day. The sheep and cows provide an almost limitless supply of fresh meat (don’t tell Tallulah).

They have even built their own small hydropower station, damming a small river, and channeling the outflow through a turbine. The lights flicker a little from time to time, but they almost never need their back-up diesel generators.

After lunch, Bruce took Zola, India and me on a hike. Tallulah was thrilled to stay with Adrienne, feeding the chickens, gathering eggs, and picking and poaching fruit for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Bruce drove us up a narrow dirt track into the mountains for nearly 20 minutes. Zola leapt to the task of opening and closing all of the gates so that Bruce could drive through. We parked in a high alpine meadow, and tramped off into the hills.

The hike was just beautiful. We went down into a little valley, crossed a glacial stream, inspected a musterers’ bunkhouse built in about 1918, and climbed out onto an open ridge, above the tree line. On one side, we looked down on Lake Wakatipu, dark and still enough to reflect the mountains on the far shore in its waters. On our other side, rugged, snow-capped mountains as far as the eye could see. With binoculars, we could make out dozens of sheep, grazing peacefully in a grassy meadow at our same altitude. They were three kilometers away, across a deep, green valley.

Zola was very good on the hike, not even complaining about the totally inadequate Crocs he had insisted on wearing. He doesn’t seem to need his emotional warm-up (ie, vociferous complaining) period if there is someone outside of the family on a hike.

When we got back, Adrienne offered to watch both kids, and India and I took two kayaks out onto the lake. The water looked still from up on the mountain, but we were both intimidated by how rough (and cold) it was once we were on it. Bruce’s assurance that “the kayaks are actually quite stable, once you are used to them,” did not make us more comfortable. Even though we did not end up needing them, we were both pretty happy to have life jackets on.

At the risk of sounding like a one-note, “Wow, New Zealand!” piano, the kayak tour was spectacularly beautiful. We came around a bend in the lake (hugging the shore), and found ourselves in front of the massive Mt. Earnslaw, jutting impressively out of the lake. I really can’t get over how beautiful the scenery is (Plink! Plink! Plink!).

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Back at the house, we played a variety of lawn games, familiar from India’s and my childhoods, until dinner. For Zola and Tallulah (in particular), it was exciting to be introduced to frisbee, and badminton, and Nerf football, and that funny wiffle-ball game with plastic jai alai frontons. All we needed was Jarts and Toss-Across to round out the experience.

Adrienne told us that the vegetable garden is her passion, but that her roses are her abiding love. The lawn, overlooking the lake and mountains, is surrounded by spectacularly flowering rosebushes of all varieties. Plink! Plink! Plink!

Over dinner, Bruce told us about his experiences as a jet boat racer, and as a haberdasher down in Invercargill. He can hem a pair of men’s trousers in less than three minutes, and he blames a lot of society’s problems on the advent of weekend shopping. He and Adrienne have well informed, thoughtful views on U.S. politics, on global issues, and on the financial crisis. They have each run lots of marathons, including the famous 60-kilometer mountaintop Kepler’s Track race.

India let the kids eat by themselves in the kitchen, so it was great for us to have a lingering, adult conversation over a delicious dinner. Except for the scallops, everything we ate came from this farm.

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Tomorrow should be another day full of outdoor activity. India is still working off the energy she stored up while captive on the boat for four days in Doubtful Sound.

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New Zealand is pretty awesome.