Geraldine to Queenstown 12th Dec.

Well it has been a wonderful journey and I have decided to describe it as it appeared to me both through sensation and visually.

I awoke to a beautiful day in Geraldine and after back up and storing everything away (there's a lot of work to this 'Glamping' - glamourous camping!)
I headed into the village/town as it was described as being an interesting place to visit.  I walked around and had the most overpowering feeling that I had visited its sister town in northern Sweden for the midnight sun about 4 years ago.  It was cute but again very quiet, everyone is so polite and friendly in a calm way, different.  En route out of town to add to my earlier feeling I saw and they were the only herd I've seen young reindeer so what do you think of that?

Then I headed into the hills the 'Bluestacks' to be precise and was surrounded by whins - the soft kind - foxgloves and similar terrain and guess where it ended - in 'Frosses' Burkes Pass to be exact!  I then drove through landscapre that resembled the Jura in France, really beautiful.  Next the terrain changed again and I will try to describe the impact this had on me.  You know the Pettigo hills in a profusion of colour either with Rhodedendron and whins or gorse and the spectacular effect this has, well I came upon, quite suddenly, a spectacular profusion of colour, first of all along the road sides about twenty feet in width but afterwards further into the fields so that it looked like colourful carpets.  This wonderful spectacle was a combination of various coloured lupins, purple, aubergine, salmon, pink, cream of all hues and I hope that the photos I took will do this sight justice.  This continued for miles.

I was becoming bewitched with all of this when I saw what I thought was a herd of mousey coloured calves but were in fact sheep, I presume merino but much bigger than any others I had seen.  Then I saw this giant bale of silage coming off the back of a machine, now I mean huge about 50 feet long in one plastic cover so of course I thought of my 'estate manager' and how he would cope with this and next thing I see is a sign on the side of the road 'Irishman Creek' and it would suit him well as there wasn't a drop of liquid in it!

Now this all took place over about 2/3 hours but the scenery was so varied and just as suddenly as I saw the carpet of lupins I arrived in mountains which brought me back to Iran.  Beautiful, majestic with beautiful lakes but bare and bald on the surface.  I continued onto the last quarter of my journey which was very tiring and was a bit like rallying around Mont Blanc except in a Motorhome and difficult with strong crosswinds so I was glad when that 150 kilomtres came to an end.

I arrived to the outskirts of Queenstown in the evening sun and was definitely here before.  It bears an uncanny resemblance to Annecy, magnificent mountains, incredible lake that goes on for ever and just incredibly beautiful. Similarities end there, it is smaller, less pretentious and the people are so friendly.  I called my man and after a few wrong turns, parked and waited until I saw this unmistakeable swagger in the distance and got out for my big hug.  Well the cool dude stayed very calm and didn't brake into a trot but the hug was good.  Mammy did mammy and said a few things but he put me in my place!  It was strange for him and he went round introducing me as 'this is my wee mammy' and I had to follow on with the Evanna bit.  He is in great form, looking good and loves it here and we are having a great time together going around the place, so I'll leave it at that and save some for another day.