Nick's made it as a firefighter!

Bruce had recently been in contact and recommended we visited Shanty Town when he discovered we are now on the West Coast. It's a replica gold mining town that gives you an insight into the lives of the people who worked and lived in these pop up towns. We set off early from our freedom camping spot and were one of the first ones to arrive to the attraction. As we entered so did a group of young school children all wearing high vis jackets who looked adorable when we saw them later on dressed up in old fashioned clothing. We were quickly ushered through to make it on board the next steam train ride. Because of maintenance work we weren't able to go to the full journey but we felt we didn't really need to. The ride itself was relatively boring but afterwards the driver invited Nick and I to have a look at the engine which was more interesting. Turns out the engine was made around the corner from Temple Meads station back home in Bristol. Only 3 were brought over to New Zealand and they recently spent $200,000 keeping this one going. He was very passionate about it so it was nice to talk to him and have this one on one experience. We walked around all the different buildings learning about the history of the gold mining in this area and seeing items from this time period. We watched a video that showed the darker side to gold mining and told the tale of a band of men who killed people in the bush in hopes of taking their gold. I think Nick's favourite part was getting to be a "real" fire fighter on a model fire truck. They also had a couple of original buildings that have since been moved to the site, this included a beautiful church although we couldn't stay inside it for long because of such a strong smell of airfreshner. Nick's been wanting to try panning for gold so we paid for him to be able to give this a try. It wasn't quite what we expected because the gold had been placed into the dirt to guarantee you'll get some but at least he got to try the technique. We also got to see a demonstration of a dredge gun that was used in the area to blast the bottoms of rivers to lift out the gold and wash it downstream where it was caught in wooden slats. The demos only usually run at 2 times of the day but after talking for a long time to the guy who did the gold panning with us he offered to put it on for us which was very kind of him. It was incredibly powerful but completely destroyed the landscape so you can see why they weren't used for long. They also had a section on timber and explained how New Zealand was seen by early settlers to have a never ending supply of timber. It took them 40 odd years of intense logging to realise even the introduced trees that had been brought into to the country were not growing back at the same rate as they were being cut down at. A shocking fact we read said that the West Coast only makes up 8% of the land mass of New Zealand but after this 40 years of logging by the end of this period it contained over half of the country's native trees and forest. That just blew my mind and really put into perspective how intensely New Zealand's trees were logged. As you drive the West Coast seeing these beautiful rainforests makes you feel quite pleased that they didn't really log this area. After we'd explored everywhere we carried on driving north and arrived in Greymouth where we are staying the night. The wind and rain is so strong tonight and we've had to move the van around twice to make sure we are facing the wind and that the leaky window is mainly out of the rain. It's meant to ease later so hopefully we won't blow away!Read more