Gold rush meets ice age
In my earlier post "The Beauty & The Beast" I referred to the hardship Richard Katz encountered while travelling in the mid-twenties down "South" the Fiordland, joining a small group of adventurous people "to do" the most beautiful track in the world. I am not sure he made his way back to Wellington along the West Coast. Probably the hazarduos road over the Haast pass wasn't done by that time.
Nevertheless, I imagine where Katz was standing to admire the two glaciers that carved their way down from majestic mountains into the sea. 1935 - a sign board markes along the winding narrow road the point the glacier reached out. And while Katz would have been walking 1925 already on ancient ice, I still had some 15 minutes - or 1037 steps - uphill walk ahead to reach todays ending point of the glacier. 20 years ago I certainly did less than 1000. Not only at this place glaciers are melting faster these days.
Katz also might have witnessed during his journey down South some key developments around working class people and their struggle for a better life. During the gold rush of the 1860s, tens of thousands of miners - mostly from Europe and a few from China - moved to the West Cost to seek their fortune. And though the gold rush was over all to quickly, mining machinery was built in cities like Christchurch, based on patented inventions and speculative investments in registered companies, and shipped to the West Coast. According to an article in a recent tourist guide for the West Coast region, "in 1908 local coalminers went on the longest strike in New Zealand up to that point. In the end the miners got what they wanted - a half-hour lunch break." By the time Katz toured the south island, the small settlement of Blackball "became the headquarters of the Communist Party in 1925 and, subsequently, the birthplace of the New Zealand Labour Party".
ps: I hope "my" emperor didn't feel offended by any of my comments, because when I departed this morning from Monterose Backpacker towards Okarito, my brave car started "sweating" ... a leaking water pump, probably due to the various mountain passes we climbed the last weeks. Oh, off course its Saturday ... the only workshop at Franz Josef Glacier Township is closed till Monday, with the next town some 130 km away. So what: Have a nice weekend with Franz Josef, Christian ... at least in company of "Kaiserwetter" (sunny day with marvelous blue sky and no clouds :)
Link to my pictures from the Westcoast:
hahahaha, hope you are back on the road with the car...about the gold, I also don't know, maybe some are passing by me in Barcelona, when the golden ladies a crossing the robot lights, I see them, some have some gold.Could be it
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