Pinedale Camp Wakamarina River Valley

My World for this week. Do check out some of the other wonderful posts from around the world, on this Meme.
We had a few days spare so we decided to hook the caravan on behind us and head away for those lovely 4 days. We first had to drop Porsche cat off at her Cattery, she is looked after well there but she would rather not be going anywhere in the car, so it is quite traumatic for her.
Then we stopped off at buy some supplies as we only decided to go last night, just spur of the moment, the best way to go for a short break we think.


Then we headed up to Canvastown where there had been devastating floods only a few weeks ago, we were hardly prepared for the mess there was left by the river flooding - right through the local Pub and many houses along the river, most is cleared and repaired now but we could see how bad it had been as we drove past up to the Pinedale Camp. he road had been washed out in some places, but was drivable now fortunately. There been a lot of hard work getting the road usable again.
We settled in under a nice shady tree in a good place that gets the morning sun and the afternoon shade, as it is the hottest part of the year for us afternoon shade is vital in temperatures of around 30 degrees Celsius and higher.


There is a huge Totara tree in front of the amenities block that the birds all like, in the morning the dawn chorus was quite deafening, but lovely and melodic with the Bellbirds and Tuis singing to us.
We spent a lot of time down by the river, panning for gold now and again, not at all successfully I am afraid, but we tried. Many others did quite well and showed us all the gold they had managed to pan from the river bank, some had quite big chunks of gold worth quite a bit..Still it was fun messing around trying to find some.


Erle took my photo standing up on the bank of the peaceful stream that turned into a raging torrent not so long ago, where I was standing the flood waters were 6 feet deep over my head as shown by all the debris stuck up in trees! Amazing. The camp is on higher ground and was not flooded. We recon the water must of been about 50 feet deep as it roared down the river.


The whole area was alive with big Bumble bees, flying everywhere and buzzing around us as we did anything, I got bitten or stung under my arm in a very tender spot while I was doing a crossword in the shade of the Birch trees, then later I was got again my another Bumble bee on my forearm, same arm so I had 2 patches of itchiness! There were Sandflies too but we had repelent for them and were not bothered by them much.
We didn't swim as the river was very cold but we did paddle around in it. We took some nice bush strolls too, I saw this pretty native plant covered in bright blue berries, the berries are not attractive to the birds so are probably a bit poisonous.


We enjoyed a lovely relaxing few days and didn't want to return to civilization very much. The people in the camp were very freindly mostly foreign, like Danish, German, English, Dutch, but a few Kiwis too.
Porsche was pleased to see us back.