Posted by William Dashfield on September 09, 1998 at 13:36:18:
In Reply to: Where are the lakes of yesteryear? posted by Spencer Hines on September 05, 1998 at 07:00:38:
A favourite area of ours is the Rotorua Lakes District in New Zealand.
There are 12 lakes of varing sizes and characters, from the very 'civilised' to the very wild.
Beautiful forests around the lakes, birdlife, volcanoes, boiling mud, hot pools in the bush (and on the lake beach), buried villages, islands, Maori war trails all add to the interest.
A great place for camping - either in camp sites or on the lake side - walking and sailing.
Closer to the Lake District in geographic nature is the Nelson Lakes National Park. Heavily glaciated, with flat valley bottoms and mountains up to 2300m, its a great walking area. There are only 2 lakes, no islands and it has few permanent inhabitants outside the small holiday towns.
There's probably some gold there for Dick to find - there's lots of little gold areas in NZ. One of the first long walks we did in NZ (20 years ago) was the Wangapeka track. 5 days in we met Cecil King, at King's Creek. He'd been spending the summers there, panning and sluicing gold, for many years (I think since the depression years).
He always found enough gold (and possums) to live on, but not enough to get rich!