Geraldine

We took the road to Geraldine and the first place we came across was Burkes Pass (no, Bruce is not passed out yet). This was a completely unexpected place – very quaint and focussed on Americana.

The first view we had was of an old church which the sign posts say is New Zealand’s oldest Union church still on its original site. Just like the church at Tekapo, it was very small and doubles as the town’s I-Site during the week.

A few metres down the road was a large selection of hand crafted, timber outdoor furniture that looked really lovely. Some of it was quite conservative, but other peices were quite quirky, such as the table pictured below which has a car front as one end of it.

The site had old cars scattered around, and they all needed a lot of care. They included an old Airstream Motorhome which was gutted inside and who knows what the motor was like, but the exterior bodywork still looked eye-catching.

They even had an old car in my colour  – mauve, but it didn’t look like it could go anywhere under motor power. Yes, it was older than me!

The shops around this site all held Americana memorabilia, as well as some antiques. There were a lot of the sort of signs that Mike was looking at in America for his basement and a large assortment of old American number plates.

We travelled on towards Geraldine. Once through the pass, which was very short, the landscape started to change again from the barren brown hills to land more like we would expect to see in the Waikato. Saying that, there was also extensive irrigation, and the sight of dairy herds as well as sheep. In addition to this, the houses became more numerous and the colour green began to replace the colour brown.

We decided to park over at a NZMCA POP stop at the Geraldine Valley Brewery just before Geraldine. What a delightful place to stay – a large gravel carpark with extensive planting and various livestock around the place. They also had a dog called Oscar, and he was beautiful too.

In addition, bruce was able to purchase a large bottle of black beer which he believed was the best he had ever tasted. We found out the next day it was 1 point off a gold medal!.

Geraldine itself was quite a big centre that clearly serviced the rural community around it. Aside from the brewery we didn’t find anything particularly fascinating about it, so the next day we headed on to Timaru after stocking up on dark beer.