Mt Nic NewsSeptember 2010 It’s hard to believe that we are at the end of 2010, the last 9+ months have absolutely flown by with guests from all around the world sharing with us the “ Mt Nic Experience.” Both Adrienne & I often comment that we are very lucky to enjoy the company of so many friendly & sincere people. As well as international guests, we have also had the pleasure of being involved with a group of locals from Queenstown, who under the guidance of Tom Pryde, undertook a circumnavigation of Lake Wakatipu on foot. This journey was completed in stages & had up to 50+ people involved with close to 20 having completed the entire circuit. Adrienne accompanied one of the groups on the Mt Nic to Glenorchy leg & had the misfortune to be captured on camera, taking a spill in a stream crossing. The big news of the year was the arrival of Jack & Kate’s daughter, Jessica (Robert & Linda’s first grandchild). She decided to arrive about 5 weeks early which meant a very quick trip to the nearest maternity hospital but since then all has gone well & both mother & daughter are fully engaged in farm life. We have also had a few changes in staff, Ben is still with us & has been joined by our new shepherd, Edward, who comes from the Te Anau area and we have a new handyman & cook, Cory & Toni, who are also from the southern region. The weather over winter has been very mild with very few heavy dumps of snow but we have had the occasional days of high rainfall with the lake rising to dangerous flood levels in April. It was just lapping into the shearing shed & started to lift timbers of the smaller jetty which has since been rebuilt & modified. It is incredible to think that in the last big flood in 1998, the lake level was almost 1 metre higher than this. This heavy rain also played havoc with the Fall Muster, which had to be postponed until the weather cleared up and washed away about 200 metres of the road out to Te Anau. Other recent projects completed on the station include, a revamp & upgrade of the kitchen facilities in the shearers quarters, an office extension for Jack & Kate & a reconfiguration of our water supply. The kitchen upgrade will enable us to cater for larger groups & take advantage of new tourism opportunities. Ewe shearing is just finished & the next period will start last week in September with the final group being done in mid October. Adrienne has been busy in the garden getting ready for a new growing season, the strawberry beds have all been replanted & a new tunnel house has been put in which should help with ensuring an endless supply of fresh vegetables over the coming months. Forward bookings for the lodge are very good which include two weddings, one in September & the other in January. We have also had several visits from Icebreaker over the last few months, they bring many of their overseas staff & associated retailers to the station to enable them to get a good insight into the origins of an Icebreaker Garment. Another recent addition to the station is “Maddie” a 2 year old Highland Cow who is supposedly in calf so the next few weeks will be interesting to see what eventuates. Adrienne is currently endeavouring to gain Maddies confidence & while progress is a bit slow, she is getting closer to being able to be touched. Having just said the weather has been very mild with no heavy snow, how wrong was I, we have just driven back from Invercargill & Adrienne took these couple of photo’s, just had a very severe weather front come through with heaps of snow.
I guess that’s part of life in the high country & is one of the reasons we love it so much!
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