Oamaru & Lower Waitaki Golf Club

The blue cod & chips with salad in the Hampden Tavern were delicious and afterwards we settled in for a quiet night in the carpark being the only motorhomers. No Internet coverage for us here but we were able to use the Tavern's Wifi whilst dining.

Saturday morning, before heading north, we drove down the road to Hampden Beach just to look - a nice sunny day but we weren't  at all tempted to have a swim with it only being 10°! Hampden is a tiny town but has a 4 Square, church, a merino shop and maybe a couple of other shops. Oamaru isn't too far away and when we arrived there were lots of vintage cars in the car park for a short time as well as a lot of motorhomes. Oamaru, known for being the Steampunk Capital of the World, and which we spent some time in on our last trip, is a cool town.  It is seemingly large with magnificent old buildings made of Oamaru stone, especially in the Victoria precinct, and a very very wide main street boasting 4 lanes but the population, surprisingly, is only around 14,000.
Steampunk is a term that was coined in the 1980's and is based on imagining inventions the Victorians might have created for the modern world.

T and big P!

Always up for a challenge!

The main tourist attraction is the little blue penguin colony around the harbour and the yellow eyed penguins at Bushy Creek, just south of the town. We walked from the town carpark by the Victorian area through the excellent playground, where I had a play, along the edge of the harbour to the penguin colony which we didn't go into as we have seen them before but there were some big fur seals basking on the rocks beyond to view. 

A real seal.

A fake penguin!

Not many people about which seemed strange. After a wander around the old buildings and through the wide main street which seems to stretch forever we managed to get back to the bus just before the showers started. Rain and gales are predicted for the next couple of days.

We had planned to stay at the A&P showgrounds but it happened to be the weekend of their annual show so instead we drove out to the Lower Waitaki Golf Club where you can play and stay or just pay a fee to stay. We were thinking we would just hunker down because of the bad weather coming in and it was already 4.30pm by the time we arrived, the Saturday competition players just finishing. However the sky didn't yet look too black so we made a quick decision to play before the gales started knowing that the weather would be worse the next day.

Some tiny light showers came soon after we started but they soon eased and it was a nice flat course to play. 

Get in the hole!

We were the only ones on it by that time and felt pleased that we managed to avoid all the bunkers and ponds. By the time we finished the only other motorhome in the carpark had been joined by a second one making 3 of us overnighting but we didn't meet up with the others having parked our bus on the grass at the far end of the carpark. They both moved even further away to snuggle into the hedge for protection from the wind.

As predicted it was very windy overnight but fortunately we must have parked facing into it and so weren't bothered by any shaking. Being a southerly it was very cold making it hard to get out of bed in the morning! And then we had to pile on the layers before slowly moving on to the Waitaki river mouth where the wild sea was sweeping up the coast from the south and at 90° to the land, the beach itself being covered with large grey pebbles as is typical of the beaches in this area. The fishing is meant to be great here but not today!!

Coming up State Highway 1 however we did stop again at the rest area by the bridge going over the Waitaki river and, although it was still blowing a hooley, Len tried spinning under the bridge for a short time, unsuccessfully sad to say, before continuing on to Waimate.