Four Seasons In One Day . . . Crowed House

We left the Danseys Pass Hotel promptly after another cooked breakfast and drove to Ranfurly to meet our leader. He had spent the night at his home.
To be continued a drink and dinner is calling.
Once everyone had topped up with fuel the convoy headed across the Maniototo Basin west of Ranfurly and somehow got to St Bathans which is always an attractive stop. From there we traveled on Thompsons Track and came out to civilisation and tarseal road and traffic.  The main blip was taken at Lake Dunstan. The wild roses are everywhere showing their red rosehips.  Once through Cromwell we turned south to Bannockburn which is a name I only know from wine labels. 
Soon we left the highway and were back onto dirt road winding up to Ben Nevis Station. The valley was part of the gold rush from 1863. At the high point, Duffers Saddle, the rain turned to wet snow and was settling on the plants.  The spikey plants are spaniard grass.  Not very grass like.  As quickly as it came the snow flurries stopped and we had lunch in sunshine beside the remains of the Nevis township. On the hillsides we could see the lines of  water-races used by the miners.
We retraced our route and stopped at the Nevis cemetery where most of the graves are no longer marked. A surprise was the grave of a young man who served in the Otago Mounted Rifles.  There was a full description of his service record.  At Gallipoli he contracted typhoid. He finally came home with Tuberculosis in 1917 and came to live in this high valley where the air was good for his lungs. He died aged 33. In the extra is Pete who served in the British army and was interested in the story. I think the mountain with a good covering of snow is Ben Nevis. The first station owner named it for his mountain in Scotland.  There are a lot of names with burn in them in the areas we have passed through because the first surveyor was from Scotland.  There were also more rock tors today standing tall above the tussock.
We ended the day in Cardrona at another historic hotel.  More about that tomorrow.  288 kms