EC-Rider Travels

I was woken by the amazing and rather wonderful sound of the Tui and Bellbird who are abundant here and early risers! We had a leisurely breakfast and despite the wonderful surroundings we find ourselves at Wilderness Lodge, Mum and I decided to have a bit of a R&R day. We barely feel we have stopped since we left Auckland, and found a rather lovely spot to spend our morning sitting outside overlooking the river.

Just outside my room I had found a rather exotic looking feather, a bit like an ostrich feather. I showed it to the sweet girl who was about to clean my room (all staff do everything here) who was puzzled and rather excited and recommended I asked Jerry when he came back. When mum and I went in for lunch the sweet girl, who was now the waitress, came up laughing but slightly embarrassed, as she had discovered the donor of the feather, was in fact her feather duster!

After lunch, Mum and I did a lovely self guided walk along the river to Lake Moeraki, seeing the most phenomenal trees and plants. This is so not my specialist subject but suffice to say they blew us away – the enormous Kahikatea and Rimu trees are just taller and older than anything you have ever seen. The endless different tree ferns were all unfurling and there was just a whole world of mosses and lichen – it was extraordinary and wonderful.

The lodge provides extremely good written notes for you to take with you explaining the incredible bio-diversity of this totally natural rainforest. Anything which dies, is left and provides a whole new biosphere for growth, there is life covering every square centimetre. I then went on to do a longer walk which included ‘the worlds most epiphyte festooned tree’ hosting 101 different species of plants.

I also at last saw my first fantail close up (though missed to photograph) and an adorable tomtit.

I got back in time to go for a guided walk with Gerry which was also interesting. He pointed out the Tmesipteris – the most ancient plant in the world at 390,000,000 years old! He also introduced the group to the blackbird which were apparently brought over by the Brits in cages to remind them of home!

Gerry heads up a major conservation programme to save the Moeraki valley rainforest. It is the West Coasts largest, unmodified forest and only escaped clearance for agriculture as there was no road until 1962. The nearest neighbour is many miles away and there is still no national-grid electricity. Rats, stoats and possums are also a major problem here, eating the birds and their eggs. So they too are doing major pest control to rid the forest of these introduced creatures, though they use less labour intensive, aerially applied baits every 2-3 years alongside a series of traps. This has been shown to be effective and bird numbers are on the rise.

New Zealand had no native mammals (apart from a couple of bats) until the Brits came along and unfortunately introduced rabbits (for fur/sport) and when they bred like ….. and got out of control, they brought in stoats to kill the rabbits. Possums were also introduced for fur and caused untold destruction. The rats unfortunately came off the ships.