Gold panning is hard work - I want to say that right up front. Seriously, it's not a simple matter of swishing a little water around in a pan and pulling out three kilogram lumps of gold. It's hard work. Faith and I went anyway though...But we didn't get any gold...Or did we? You'll never know.
We travelled to New Zealand a little while ago and as always had planned a few things, really cool things, but also a little down time in case something popped up that we wanted to do - It did.
We had the opportunity to do a little four wheel driving and some gold panning with a twist...It sounded good so we signed up for the day trip.
We planned to go to Skippers Canyon, Arrowtown, a historic gold mining town, and to do a little four wheel driving also. As it turns out we also had a chance to indulge in a little Lord of the Rings filming-location-fun too. It was a great day.
Taken from the entrance to the Skippers Canyon road, a single lane track of reasonable condition that snakes it's way ever downward to Skippers Canyon. This looks back on down the valley to the lush cattle and sheep pastures.
The road is reasonably well-graded but narrow in places, especially if there's a vehicle coming the other way, and at one point it twists through solid rock with the road having been carved directly through it - It's a tight 'S' shape one can't see through...It's kind of a cool road, but not for the faint-hearted. Skippers Road heads downward to the Shotover River and the canyon itself. They do jetboat rides and rafting down there but we had a date with some gold!
Faith standing by the side of the road looking down into the canyon. You can see the road way below to the left. I can't recall what they call that massive stone pillar in the shot, but the photo doesn't really show how massive it is...It's massive, trust me.
From here we headed to Arrowtown, a small, but very popular little town founded on the rich gold deposits in the area. It's like a museum, the whole town, and it's easy to spend a few hours poking around in the shops and learning about some of the rich mining history. We did that another day though, ate ate some tasty food; This day was about gold, so we headed to the Ford of Bruinen.
Here's us making our way through the Arrow River. Yes, that's us driving through the water. You can see the track directly ahead of us. We were in a Landrover set up for just this sort of thing so it was safe and also a lot of fun of course! We drove along, through and in the river to get to our location and finally made it to the Ford of Bruinen.
Just a word on the Ford of Bruinen...It's a place in Middle Earth, the world created by J.R.R Tolkien, author of Lord of the Rings. Bruinen Ford was the crossing where Frodo Baggins was carried over on horseback by the sexy elf girl Arwen, played by Liv Tyler in the movie. They were being chased by the nine ring-wraiths, the Nazgul, but they were thwarted by elf magic and a water sprite, but not killed, at the Ford of Bruinen.
So, where we were panning for gold was where that movie sequence was filmed.
If you haven't seen the movie and are keen to see the scene you can see the Bruinen Ford film sequence here in only goes for a few minutes. They used CGI of course, but filmed the horses splashing through the water right here, and added the mountains and the water sprite later on. The image below shows the exact spot including the road in and out of it. Skip to the 2:00 mark of the video above for the moment they cross as the creek.
They used local riders and mounts to film the sequence, and interestingly, Liv Tyler had a no horse riding clause in her contract so when you see her riding a horse in the film it's not her, or is a mechanical horse, not a real one.
The Ford of Bruinen - There were no Nazgul there fortunately.
We were here to get rich on gold though, and after a cup of tea and some cake we got down to work panning for the shiny stuff.
Above you can see Faith on the left...Yeah, she's looking happy...She just panned out a two kilogram nugget! Ok, no she didn't...Or did she? You'll never know. The tour lady had a go too and you can see the measly little bit she panned. Loser.
OK, I'll be honest, we didn't actually get any gold, except that speck in the pan above...Or maybe we did. But honestly, we didn't...😉 Not a nugget...Maybe.
We had a great day, a fairly long one, but well worth it. We'd seen some pretty cool scenery, done some off-roading which I love, and panned out nine kilograms of gold...Not really. Maybe we did though.
Arrowtown is a great place to visit. I may write about it some other time. There's loads to do, and a few nice walks around the place. There's also a ghost town called Macetown accessible by four wheel drive only not too far away. It's a great place to spend a day and I think you'd be a fussy bugger if you didn't enjoy it.
That's about it right now...I have some gold to count...Nah not really...or maybe I do. 😁
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