School's Out Forever: SOME 1980s CLASSICS

An obvious route for our northward journey would have been to follow State Highway 1 from Invercargill across the Clutha River at Balclutha and on to Dunedin. Dunedin is where Mandy grew up and lived until 1980. We had taken the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with the city during our trip last November. We decided instead to find new sights and so we headed up through Central Otago.

Traversing Central Otago would be bring us close to some of the places we visited on our southerly route but there were plenty of other locations to discover. Our chosen stopover was Cromwell on the shores of Lake Dunstan.

Lake Dunstan was created as a result of the dam at Clyde. Part of the old town at Cromwell was flooded by the lake so some of the historic buildings were shifted and painstakingly restored.

Clyde Dam

Old Cromwell Town

Incidentally, we found it interesting that our chosen site, the Top 10 Holiday Park in Cromwell, has quite a different character to most of our previous stays. Instead of the rows of modern rental motorhomes, the huge site is populated with early model caravans, most likely 1980s or earlier, clearly pitched for the season. This is a popular spot for kiwi families who treasure their vans rather than replacing them with the latest model. Clearly Cromwell is not on the bucket list of most overseas visitors so we feel a little conspicuous in our new van.

Cromwell Top 10 Holiday Park

We decided to head up the Kawarau River Gorge. We find this gorge mesmerising; the intense colour of the water and the turbulent patterns as it relentlessly carves away at the rock. But it is also challenging to drive through the gorge so the river is best viewed at opportunities such as Roaring Meg Power Station and at Kawarau Bridge, the home of Bungy.

Roaring Meg Power Station

Kawarau Bridge

Nearer to Queenstown, we came across traffic to a summer concert at Gibbston Valley Winery featuring '80s bands 10cc (I'm Not In Love), Starship (We Built This City) and Lynyrd Sknyrd (Free Bird).

In Queenstown, we took the Skyline Gondola for a panoramic view of the town and then strolled along the waterfront of Lake Wakatipu. Here we viewed the comings and goings of the vintage steamship TSS Earnslaw and the jet boats plying the Shotover and Kawarau Rivers. We later spotted one of these jet boats in full flight as we explored the historic bridge over the Shotover River.

There were no hold ups on the return trip. As we guessed, the gig was well underway and we passed the roadside stage at speed singing "We built this city on rock and roll" in full voice.

Panoramic View of Queenstown