OLD WOMAN RANGE: A PLACE OF AMAZING ROCKS
- coupkovasvatava
- Jan 18, 2018
- 2 min read
The Old Woman Hut was named after the mountain range not far from Cromwell. That is maybe 50 kilometres from where I live. I decided to go there even though the weather forecast was not ideal. But one doesn't have a weekend every day, right? The initial plan was the Nicholsons Hut a little bit further (and higher) but I have noticed recently that mum is getting lazy and she opted for the easier option again. The fact that you can drive up to 1300 metres (and 10 kilometres from the closest civilization) even with our "normal" car makes the track to the hut a 5 km easy walk. If we had a 4WD truck like daddy, we could get all the way there and wouldn't have to take a single step. We parked by the sign which said we happened to be using the highest public road in New Zealand and started to walk. It was not raining yet but it was windy and cold. After a while we crossed an artificial stream and mum told me it was a waterway that old miners built to help them get more gold. There was a man with a shovel but before we could have reached him and asked whether he was looking for gold as well, he was gone. The Old Woman hut is small but nice. It was built in 1960's and it is an old musterer´s hut. It even has a fireplace but there are no trees and wood anywhere around. The landscape like that I have never seen before. There were rolling hills and ranges everywhere and huge rocks - both single and in groups - lying around. After lunch we went exploring around and I got to climb quite a few of them which was good fun. Then I spotted a nice plant with a hairy-ball flower. I decided to take it home but mum said these were rare plants and we could only pet them gently (like I used to do with Benson) and leave them where they were. I was looking forward to meeting new friends but no one arrived and we had the hut for ourselves. At least it was all right to get up at 6 in the morning (mum says it was not all right at all but she doesn´t count).
On the way back home we climbed one more rock with a black and white iron pyramid on it and went to have a look to Old Cromwell. It is the old part of the town with buildings saved when the dam was built. No one lives there because it is a museum. There were art galleries as well but I was not allowed to go there because they had a lot of fragile things on sale. Instead I chased paradise ducks on the lakefront and it was at least as good as breaking glass.
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