/ South Island, Southland / By George
We headed north from Invercargill via Winton to stay at ‘The Swamp’ in Nightcaps. Our brief stopover in Winton gave us the opportunity to peruse some notable historical buildings there.
I’d never heard of Nightcaps, but it was named some time in the distant past allegedly from the mist that used to linger around the town’s twin hills “(the hills) have their night caps on”. Colin runs ‘The Swamp’, where we got a $10/night powered site on hardstand. The cost includes use of outside toilets, drinking water, and access to the dump station. Other than us the only other customers there on this Queen’s Birthday weekend were a woman and her nephew(?) in an old bus and a 4WD SUV. Colin admitted he doesn’t get too many visitors even though ‘The Swamp’ is a bona fide NZMCA park-over-property included in the accredited list in the NZMCA book and on the App. He said that he sees motorhomes and caravans drive up, somewhat struggling to find the place, drive past and then continue on their way. We actually witnessed this during our visit. For a start it’s not hard to find if you have Google Maps or similar, by simply putting in the actual address. He has “The Swamp’ signage on his shed along with the NZMCA wings logo. However the presentation of the parking area and the possibility that the galvanised pipe and chain-link gate is shut may deter many. It may also be the sudden revelation for many of “What am I doing in this remote, desolate and uninviting little town with no apparent redeeming features or points of interest”. We certainly asked ourselves that since it was raining cats and dogs when we arrived, but we just wanted to get out of Invercargill for the weekend. If nothing else these places give you a lot of time to talk to people and Colin was open to friendly banter without appearing to be starving for company.
I suppose some would say Colin was a bit eccentric, a collector, builder, creator and one of those ‘do anything’ guys. After moving from Gisborne back in 1998 he bought the redundant bowling green in Nightcaps for a meagre sum, and this included the clubroom building. To give you some perspective he admitted he probably could have bought the entire town at that time. He explained that he now lives alone after an amicable separation from his partner some four years ago when she could no longer tolerate living in this tiny town. I’m amazed it took her twenty years to realise that! He was a great host, showing us his memorabilia museum, which occupies both his garage, outbuildings and many rooms in (what we thought was) his house. He has added a number of ‘structures’ to the property over the years including a glass house; a resited portal framed building with translucent cladding, which houses his ‘bedroom’, as well as gardens, raised planters and a ‘swimming pool compound’. The ‘swimming pool compound’ is now the home of Rambo the guard dog, as he built the compound before the pool was installed and then struggled to fit the pool in! He eventually punctured the pool, so decided to remove it! Biggest dog house I’ve ever seen!
Colin’s memorabilia collection is extremely well organised and presented, which is much more than can be said for some of those chaotic ‘antique’ shops we had visited. The old bowling clubroom is Colin’s kitchen, but is more employed for the immaculate display of copious amounts of historical kitchenware and numerous other collectibles. In a row of small outbuildings there are open sheds containing an array of hand tools through the ages and historical laundry appliances, including an old ringer washing machine, coal range and concrete washing tubs. Whilst I say ‘historical’ this equipment was commonplace when I was growing up, which is somewhat disturbing looking at the archaic operation of it against today’s technology.
Colin’s collection is extremely varied, having amassed redundant equipment from diverse sources including undertakers, dentists, hospitals, photographers, together with collectibles and photos acknowledging his years of truck driving. Yes there are many stories here.
The facilities were very adequate for our purposes, but the more discerning might find the outside toilets of corrugated iron, with the urinal trough and hand basins completely exposed to the elements, unpalatable in the subzero overnight temperatures. Still these big city folk survived, although I have to admit during the morning constitutional I suffered from ‘brass monkey ass!’
How did we fill our time? We walked most of the town, which was not a lengthy trek but allowed us to discover some history. The local history centres around the coal mining industry, with commercialisation of this commencing around 1880. The necessary infrastructure of shops and essential services grew around this industry. It was interesting to note that in 1901 there were two tiny banks here, BNZ and the National Bank and they only opened once a week. Ironically there is the BNZ bank left in town now, which also only opens once a week! It shares premises in the Municipal Chambers building (Town Hall), built in classic art deco style. We stopped at the circa 1905 miner’s cottage and although it was not open for viewing we could get photos through the window. This town was typically small requiring various related businesses to multitask – the local builder/joiner was a good example! The town, like many others in Otago and Southland, became overwhelmed with the smoke from the open fires, which ran night and day given the near freezing overnight conditions. The smell of burning coal and firewood was pleasantly permeating here in a historic sort of way. Casting my mind back to open fires fueled by coke and coal; collecting firewood and kindling off beaches; splitting logs with big steel wedges and sledgehammers then hand-cutting them with a crosscut saw; and Dad cleaning the chimney with a lead weighted sack on a rope with soot spewing out onto the hearth. Environmentally these sort of fires are destined to become extinct, but here for the moment the evening fog signifies the level of pollution being exhausted from chimneys as it settles like a blanket in the still night air. Maybe this is the town’s ‘night cap’.
We saw the coal mining operation on the hillside just north of Nightcaps, which is still operational, and took a drive to Ohai, which is about 7 kms further northwest. I would have to say we drove the main street (SH96) of Ohai and found this experience unremarkable from a tourist’s point of view. It was a beautiful day, but I can only recall a derelict general store and a house using their front fence to dry numerous towels (or was this a local identity feature?).
We stayed two night at Night Caps, spending one night pouring over Colin’s photo albums covering the development of this property from 1998 to today, which he happily loaned to us. This was probably in lieu of a lengthy and tedious diatribe, which I’m sure he recognized could be tedious to guests. He did mention that the timber mill come museum up the road was owned by an extremely garrulous character and suggested unless we had a lot of time and a real interest in the timber industry to give it a miss. This was proved very accurate as other campers we spoke to subsequently said they visited this mill and they had great difficulty extracting themselves from the extremely lengthy clutches of his commentary.
Colin was nonetheless proud of his achievements at the “Swamp” and justifiably so. Us ‘townies’ survived here thanks to his hospitality and had to admire the life, times and memorabilia of a hardy and likeable kiwi stalwart. He did say he was not the most popular person in town, with may locals still not accepting his ‘foreigner’ integration into the community, despite his 23 years here. A hint of NZ small town parochialism. Could I live here? Yes most definitely if I had a need to go to ground! I would probably die of some respiratory disease from the pollution if I spent a whole winter here, which may sound strange for someone who lives in the country’s biggest city. From Colin’s musings I think his long term future may not lie in this town though. We were thankful to have met this colourful individual and spent our weekend here quietly, but we had to return to Invercargill.
On the way back from Nightcaps to the Makarewa Country Club night stopover, we visited the Alex McKenzie Memorial Arboretum just south of Otautau. This botanical collection was started in 1952 by the NZ Forest Service and contains over 100 different species. It was a pleasant walk across the open grassed areas and beneath huge Redwoods, exotic pines, oaks and totara. With the advent of winter the dramatic colours of autumn now lay upon the forest floor, but nonetheless made an impressive scene. The Council has made the park available to freedom campers (although donations are gratefully received) for a maximum four night stay in a 30 day calendar period. The park seemed like a safe enough layover, with a number of people visiting the park, many with their dogs during our visit. Otautau just up the road appeared to have all the essential retail offerings, so all in all a good option for a layback stopover.
We had already chosen to stay at the Makarewa CC as we needed to be closer to Invercargill for Tuesday morning. The Country Club has a very large sealed carpark adjoining farm land. The carpark was totally devoid of any other campers, but we had a relaxed evening here (the Club wasn’t open) and the $5.00 charge was minimal, bearing in mind there are no facilities.
