After breakfast, with eggs from unidentified chickens and bacon from pig No.1, we set out for a 4WD land rover ride followed by a short guided native bush walk to the Flames in the Forest (an hour each way). The Dutch couple came too. Our host had informed us the walk was mostly flat but with some tree stumps to negotiate so that sounded just up our street. We travelled along the main road, then a gravel road, then a farm track and finally a field before jumping out for the hike.
Eric announces that he'd re-discovered the extinct Moa, and has photographic evidence to prove it. We didn't like to disillusion him by telling him it was an Emu, remnants of when they used to farm them here.
The track is muddy with clay, pools of water with bits of tree to step on in them. Our guide (Shelly) stops to show us a native Black Beech tree. The bark looks like it has been ravaged by a fire, but is in fact covered in a black fungus.
The fungus is home to a scale insect that lives beneath it, feeding on the sap of the tree and excreting a sugary 'honeydew' droplet from a fine tube. Local farmers 'employ' bees to collect this, processing it into Beech Dew Honey.
The fungus also absorbs a lot of water sometimes making the tree branches so heavy that they break off.
The honeydew is also a food source for both the Bellbird and the Tui. This is when it is not being raided by wasps, which can get so numerous that when they take the droplets it negatively affects the bird population. So they control the wasps.
We have to cross a stream with some stepping stones.
Some are covered by water after the recent rainfall has swollen the watercourse. Does disaster await? Our guide strides into the water and holds out a walking pole to aid people across. Amazingly no one fell in, not even me!
We see a variety of Coprosma bushes, they are known locally as Wigi Wigi trees, or sometimes as Mingi Mingi. The leaves growing the wrong way giving the tree a twisted tangled appearance is called divarication. There is also a Weeping Coprosma bush or Weeping Mapou, with heart shaped leaves that seem to be attached the wrong way.
Am I sitting in a Wigi Wigi or a Mingi Mingi tree?
Further on she (who's she, the cat's mother?) points out some Red Beech (on the RHS) and Silver Beech (on the LHS) - the latter is the only species of beech not to have the black fungus on the trunk.
The Lancewood tree seen at Doubtful sound also grows here, and there are good examples of all three stages in it's development - a young one with the serrated leaves pointing up, a slightly older one with theses leaves drooping down
and then the mature plant that has the different type of leaf completely. Having these distinct juvenile and adult stages is termed heteroblasty. It's the one in the middle.
On Stewart Island at the bottom of the South Island this tree only has the one type of leaf - there were no Moa there and so no mechanism for preventing browsing of the leaves by them was required.
Shelly points out a Bush Lawyer, a form of Rubus, same family as the Blackberry. It is a vine and has backward pointed spines on its leaves that can trap animals if they venture into it.
There are a whole load of different mosses, ferns and lichens.
Eric meets another new friend, once again we hate to disillusion him but, surprise surprise, it's not a real Kiwi.
A Pepper Tree - the leaves are edible ( and very peppery!). People are starting to harvest these as a commercial product, selling them to be used as an antiseptic amongst other things.
This fern's common name is 'Prince of Wales', and it only one cell thick (therefore a filmy fern?). It is very beautiful.
Lots of undulations, slippery clay, puddles and some steps later we reach The Flames. You may have wondered what on earth The Flames in the Forest might relate to, was it a big forest fire or what? Well here's the answer...
Natural gas is seeping out through the rocks here and was first lit in 1922 when two hunters discovered it as they threw a lit match, and 'Bingo' the gas ignited. It has been burning almost continually ever since, although sometimes the position of the flames alters.
That's not the best bit - Shelly put a billy can of tea in the flames and a griddle pan, pulled out a pancake mix and some Beech Dew Honey for us to have a delicious snack. Yummy.
Eric is waiting for his pancake.
Note the guide's attire. Apparently it is the Kiwi way when tramping in the bush to wear shorts, or if it's a bit cold, shorts with thermal leggings underneath.
There was a Robin as cheeky as the ones at home as he was waiting for some food scraps, but very different colouring.
Having fully satisfied our hunger pangs after all our hard work we return along the same path, spotting some new things as we go.
A Club Moss
A Bird's Nest Fungus on a twig.
A stoat trap, with a dead rat in it. Our guide has to clean this out and re-set the trap.
Back at the farm we eventually spot the deer he farms.
And his dogs
On the way back in the land rover Shelly tells us a bit about Murchison history, including about the earthquake in the 1950s (15 people died); and the first person to try to blow himself up with sticks of dynamite as a protest in 1905 outside the local courtroom, which allegedly moved two feet off its foundations. The sun makes a brief appearance.
Back to the B&B to collect the car and drive to our next destination, Karamea, on the top of the West coast you can see the weather is not being quite so kind to us today.
With only 26 miles to go and a balmy 14deg C with a bit of a haze Flossie tells us it will take us over one and a half hours to get there. This is an indication of the bendiness of the road as we go over Karamea Bluff.
The estuary.
Back to the estate to do some housekeeping (washing and a meal) and to prepare for our next guided walk to the Oparara Basin tomorrow.