Today we travelled from Dunedin to the very foot of Mt Cook. My hotel room Balcony has a magnificent view across the Southern Alps but I can't quite see Mt Cook.
We drove for most of the morning along the Waitaki valley. The Waitaki River is damned in 5 places to provide irrigation for the vast herds of beef and dairy cattle that feed in this area on the lush grass. The fields are irrigated by long booms that pivot in a semicircle and can cover vast swathes of land. The central pivot also measures the ground saturation and adjusts the flow accordingly. The longest boom we saw was 1.1kms in length!!
The countryside is just spectacular. The ground undulates continuously with thousands of trees to act as windbreaks. Some of you will remember the paper route guides that the RAC & AA produced which would describe a stretch of road as 'undulating', well here think of the undulating as on steroids and backed by the Southern Alps!!
When we arrived Mt Cook it was shrouded in cloud and it was raining. Whilst my travel companions were having dinner (I was isolated in my room with Covid), I noticed that the skies had cleared and this is Mt Cook in all its glory. They are going to be so jealous in the morning.
The hotel houses the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre. Sir Edmund was one of my schoolboy heroes. At the age of 7, I listened daily to the radio broadcasts of his ascent of Everest. My parents noticed this and told my Primary School Teacher (Miss Bartholomew) and thereafter, every morning I give a short announcement on his progress and of course, when he reached the summit on 29th May 1953.
What I learnt today is that Sir Edmund who is a New Zealander did all his training for the ascent of Everest on Mount Cook. Moreover he did all his preparatory work with Sir Vivian Fuchs for the crossing of the Antarctic in 1957/58 another boyhood fascination of mine.
Remember Rutherford and Canterbury College Christchurch, well Sir Edmund studied at this College too!
Well that's all for today folks. Back to Christchurch tomorrow and then the Coastal Pacific Train on Thursday.
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