Think blue: Blue sky, blue lake and even the mountains surrounding Hawea are pale smoky blue. Those mountains, bare of forest, show their structure in patterns of the jagged rocky escarpments and patches of pasture. They have snow on top, white and bright. This is high country station territory: Hunter Valley, Dingleburn, Lake Hawea Station, each with thousands of hectares of scrappy pasture ideal for leggy, lean merino sheep.
We drive up the east side of Lake Hawea towards Dingleburn Station. The gravel road, skinny rutted, dusty sometimes edging around a cliff above the lake, is the perfect thing to put the Testla Model 3 through its paces. Sadly its not mine and we borrwed it.
The Timaru River joins the lake, breaking into tendrils like frayed rope. I wander around, paddle in the icy water and wonder what it would be like to live here between the lake, mountains and sky. Under the trees the camp is being setup anb people arive in dusty utes, dogs on the back and the night on the campfire. This is what it must be like to live here. Work done for the week, you camp out with your mates and tell yarns.
Back in Hawea, in Sails Bar, the lake the spread before us, an old codger talks to anyone who will listen. An early hunting expedition is like the reason for the gathering of men and dogs.
It's a glorious drive along the west side of lake Hawea, with wow views of pasture, lake and mountains following each other almost as far as the fence posts flick past by. Highway 6 swings left at the The Neck, a narrow low isthmus between Lake Hawea and Wanaka and in just one kilometer we are in a different world. Mountains yes, but they are topped with clouds. In there its cooler, there's forest instead of farmland, manuka and kanuka flower instead of briar roses.
The Makaroka township, in a valley by the river of the same name, has a pub, an airstrip, a few deer farms, a lot of forest and the Makaroka Tourist Center where we stay in one of a dozen cottages. In here no alarm clock is needed because the dawn chorus is a loud combination of tweeting, chiming and trilling. Kereru, fantails, tomtits, tui and bellbirds are all easy to spot on a short forest walk.
The road from Makarora, over the Haast Pass and beyond to the coast, is through virgin forest. In theory this 80km drive can be done in just an hour but we take all day and visit every waterfall within walking distance. And there are plenty!