Day 14: 14/1/13
This morning we had a walking tour of Blackball. A local woman gave the tour. She showed us some rattle stones first which have a little ball of clay inside them that rattle, caused by years of erosion.
She walked us round the town then and explained where some of the mining things were. There used to be a massive rope through the town carrying carts of coal. They aren't there anymore. There was some gold mined here first and then coal. They still mine coal. They've been mining since the late 1800's. In 1908 they went on strike as they wanted a half hour lunch break, rather than 15minutes. Eventually they won. There was another strike in 1931- not sure what that one was about. They argued about communism and capitalism too and had to bring in lots of police to regulate the behaviour. We saw the old mining baths which was just a concrete ruin now but you could see the space for the toilets and showers. We saw the entrance to the mine which has lots of chimneys and things. We walked then to the community centre which was the mining engineers house originally. It is rumoured that it is haunted but the lady said it wasn't true. She was telling different stories about festivals hey have where everyone dresses up and the have a pub crawl race where they have to crawl from one pub to the next and complete different challenges. They have a washing line challenge where men have to dress up as women and hang up a line of washing. It all sounds like madness but great craic!! They tried to close the local school a while back and when the minister came to speak somewhere nearby they all want and sang songs from the strike in 1908 while he was talking. Crazy people!!! But it was effective- the school stayed open!
We got on the bus again then. At the moment we have an awful lot of driving days. We had a lot of stops today too in various towns. There was no real reason for going to most of them apart from getting us to spend money there! We crossed a bridge which is used by trains also and there's no lights or anything so it's quite dangerous! It was really narrow too, the bus barely fitted! We stopped at a town which had lots of jewellery shops and I got a charm with a silver fern on it for my pandora. It wasn't an official pandora charm so it was cheaper and they told us it woul definitely fit! Fingers crossed!! We stopped at a lake too to take some photos. It was nice but nothing spectacular! We passed a town which still mines gold- there's only one gold mine left on the South Island and one in the north. Mostly today was just driving again which is getting a bit repetitive! There's about 15 of us that have all been on the bus since the beginning and were getting to know each other pretty well so we can have a bit of craic laughing about things that have happened the night before and stuff!
We passed over a bridge that had been washed away a few weeks ago in bad weather and they were rebuilding it. There were lots of windy roads up and down the sides of mountains yesterday and today and lots and lots of trees.
The bus driver always has music on and it's always a bit of a mix ranging from Red hot Chilli peppers to five to Neil diamond to God knows what!! A country song came on today and I was thinking I knew it. It was Kiss an Angel Good Morning- is that Charlie Pride Dad??? The song before that was Jar of Hearts and I knew more words of Kiss an Angel Good Morning- I don't know what that says about me but it can't be good!!
We finally got to Franz Josef anyway and spent ages checking in again!! We finally got everything in and sorted and got wifi. It's slow enough and for some reason the blogs won't upload even though I can get on the messages no problem.
We all had noodles and snacks in the hostel today rather than eat out as the cash is flying out!! I checked my bank balance today though and got a pleasant surprise, so that's good! After dinner, we went to a cafe as one of the girls was celebrating her birthday. Her friend had a card and presents for her and the cafe put candles on her cake which was really cute.
When we came back we got ready to go out and all went to the lads room for a few drinks. About 20 of us were trying to fit into a tiny room full of bunk beds- sweaty! We didn't stay there long. There was a bar on site that we went to then. It was absolutely roasting!! We just had a dance and a bit of craic! We were the last to be kicked out of course as we were singing along to the dj! Man in the Mirror is a group favourite. It was about half two when I went to bed and I have to be up to look at a glacier in the morning- not good!!