Post by morrigan on Jan 9, 2011 8:29:46 GMT 1
Lovely surprise when we went for our christmas holidays at our lake side holiday bach (kiwi for holiday cottage - pronounced batch!) to find a new resident on the lake, paddleboat Otunui, New Zealand's oldest operating paddler (sadly no longer a steamer, she's been fitted with a Hilux diesel engine to keep maintenance & running costs reasonable, good coal costs many a pretty penny here).
Otunui was assembled from a UK kit supplied by Yarrow & Co in 1905 and she was launched 1907 serving on the Wanganui river.
She's had a bit of rough life, sinking in 1949 at her moorings during a storm and slowly breaking up until 1969 when she was dug out of a shingle bank, re-floated and restored to working condition in 1973 and did the rounds on various North Island waterways before a suspicious fire in 2003 near Taupo burnt her to the waterline, she was restored yet again over a three year period by the same chap who restored her first time round! She's carried all sorts of cargo and passengers , everything from sheep to the Queen!
She can access a river that joins the lake that has a natural flotsam and jetsam barrier a short way upstream stretching about 20m made of duckweed, pumice and assorted debris that makes outboard motors make very expensive noises once some of it gets into the cooling system so only foolhardy power-boaters try to go through. Mostly it just kayaks and rowboats and of course now Otunui on the river so it's a blissfully quiet area to explore.
The 'pumice island' :
Pretty thick stuff!!!!
What you get to see up river past the barrier, a slice of heaven (and teeming with some lovely trout!!) after dark its equally spectacular as there is masses of glow worms :
Otunui was assembled from a UK kit supplied by Yarrow & Co in 1905 and she was launched 1907 serving on the Wanganui river.
She's had a bit of rough life, sinking in 1949 at her moorings during a storm and slowly breaking up until 1969 when she was dug out of a shingle bank, re-floated and restored to working condition in 1973 and did the rounds on various North Island waterways before a suspicious fire in 2003 near Taupo burnt her to the waterline, she was restored yet again over a three year period by the same chap who restored her first time round! She's carried all sorts of cargo and passengers , everything from sheep to the Queen!
She can access a river that joins the lake that has a natural flotsam and jetsam barrier a short way upstream stretching about 20m made of duckweed, pumice and assorted debris that makes outboard motors make very expensive noises once some of it gets into the cooling system so only foolhardy power-boaters try to go through. Mostly it just kayaks and rowboats and of course now Otunui on the river so it's a blissfully quiet area to explore.
The 'pumice island' :
Pretty thick stuff!!!!
What you get to see up river past the barrier, a slice of heaven (and teeming with some lovely trout!!) after dark its equally spectacular as there is masses of glow worms :