Sheep farming and sausages
Trip Start
Jul 24, 2007
1
38
50
Trip End
Nov 11, 2007
Te Anau,
New Zealand
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Our first stop was a place called Riverton which along with being a pretty groovy fishing village (they fish white bait which fetches silly prices over here) Its also famous for Paua - or at least the jewellery they make from the shell. Paua is a pretty ugly shell fish - its like black rubbery stuff and it has a hard shell. It sticks itself to rocks and thats how its eats - Its a huge delicacy over here and especially valuable for export to Japan. They are restrictions on the fishing or diving to collect Paua because of its value and because it has been over fished but anyway they farm it on Stewart Island (Which is New Zealand's third inhabited island) and they ship the shells to Riverton where they make mainly Jewellery from the shells which can be pretty nice - the idea was that we would be able to make our own piece in the studio but there was no one there today to help us so we couldn't but they did give us a free necklace anyway - they had an amazing guitar made from Paua shell which looked great but sounded awful as shell isn't the best thing to make guitars from!!!
The coastal drive through the Catlins is really picturesque and we stopped for some pictures along the way - you'll see the pictures of the pine trees which has been blown so much by the wind (which is really strong and really cold down here) so that they bend away from the sea!! We also stopped at McCraken's rest which is one of the most photographed places in New Zealand apparently its a "kiwi experience" tradition to be photographed naked sitting on the sign from behind, according to Kim......we all said we would if he went first - funnily enough there are no naked photographs!!
We went to a working sheep farm today as well which was really good - an old guy called Les who's been working on the farm for 55 years took us down into the farm on a quad bike and showed us the sheep dogs and how they work and why they use different dogs for different things - they have 5000 sheep and one of the dogs a collie bitch called Nell could separate one sheep which had been marked from the rest - cool dog and amazing how well they can hear cos she was along way off and Les was only using voice commands instead of a whistle.
Giant Paua Shell
Then he sheared a sheep so we could watch how that was done - he did it so quick I think I missed most of it! Then we got to bottle feed two orphaned lambs - it was great and I had a really good time doing it - they say simple things please simple minds and that is obviously quite true.We stopped at a place called Tuatapere for lunch which claims that it has the best sausages in New Zealand - I quite like sausages and so far can't actually understand how these things that have appeared on my plate here can be called sausages but as these were supposedly the best that New Zealand had to offer I thought that maybe I should give them a go - I us admit they were the best sausages I've had in New Zealand but they were still rank - they taste like the really cheap sausages that you buy in England that are probably 50% fat, 45% brains and other body parts and 5% actual meat so I won't be eating anymore sausages in New Zealand!
