And the rain fell...

We took a few days off to visit the Coromandel Peninsular in the Kombi van. We drove to Thames on the first day and stopped for a tour of one of the gold mines that made this town in the 19th century. A guy who looked almost as ancient as the equipment he was talking about gave us a tour. He demonstrated the noisy stamp battery that crushed the ore, talked about the refining process using mercury and then he took us for a short walk through the mine. We had lunch on the Thames coast before wandering around the small town. We stopped the night at a nearby campsite that included a butterfly park (we gave the butterflies a miss, opting for a cold drink in the evening sunshine).

We heard that the weather was predicted to become wet as a low pressure system swept the north of the island so we decided to reorganise our plans to make sure that we fitted in a visit to our favourite tourist site in the region. In the morning we rang the booking line for the Driving Creek Railway and booked a couple of tickets for the morning train. We then drove up the slow coast road, made slower by road works, arriving just as the train driver rang his bell. New Zealand potter Barry Brickell set up the site and to get the raw materials he needed for his work out of the hills he built the original train. Now 30 odd years later the train ride is a booming tourist attraction and the site is constantly being improved with more things to do and see. The valuable work that was been done to retain and expand the native planting has been secured for future generations as Barry Brickell has arranged for the site to be gifted into trust for the community when he dies. Afterwards we had a walk through the small town of Coromandel before buying some local smoked fish and having lunch besides the sea again.

As promised the weather closed in and rain prevented us from visiting some of the gardens we had hoped to see in the area, so we drove on over the hills towards the east coast. The whole region is sparsely populated and has some dramatic scenery from mountain to coast. We eventually pitched up at Mercury Bay’s main town of Whitianga where we managed to get set up before the heavens opened up. We spent much of the evening in the TV room with other tourists who were sheltering with their dinner and bottles of wine.

In the morning the report was still for unsettled weather, so we broke camp and headed further south, this time to another gold mine, this time at Waihi. The Martha mine is opencast rather than underground and is impressive for the big hole in the middle of the town. We saw an interesting video at the mine information centre that explained the process and how the mine was soon to close and would become a large lake. We had a walk around a nearby art gallery full of interesting pictures, sculptures and the like before we decided to carry on with our journey. The heavens opened again and drove us to seek shelter off the road, where we ate our lunch from the shelter of the van next to a river as the rain pounded down. When it let up we continued through Karangahake gorge and turned north head towards Thames again. We passed through farmland as we entered the Hauraki Plains, stopping briefly at a cheese farm shop to sample their wares. We continued on towards the Miranda Holiday Park that was adjacent to the hot pools. It is situated out in the middle of nowhere but it was one of the nicest appointed sites that we had visited, and it did have its own private 38-degree thermal hot pool.

The next day we travelled home up the other coast of the Firth of Thames, opposite the Coromandel and the weather improved as we drove becoming sunny and warm as we arrived home again.