Time: 2.5 hours
Distance: 5.21 km
Start: Approx 79 Princes Road, Waipara
Finish: Same place (it's there and back)
Date: Friday 24th October 2020
Nestled in the rolling hills of Waipara is a hidden gem: a topographic basin filled with limestone outcrops including a large overhang where the remains of Maori rock art can still be seen.
A 1.5 hour drive from Christchurch, you have the pleasure of navigating through the Waipara vineyards (the skies are always blue here), then Weka Pass, with its' quirky railway (excursions are usually on the first and third Sunday of each month) and finally the aptly named Frog Rock. At Waikari, you take a left turn onto Princes road and after about 500 meters, the start of the walkway is unclearly signposted near the second church (which is hidden in the trees).
It's about 45 minutes across mostly farmland from the start of the walkway to the rock overhang. At the top of the steep hill you get the most awesome views. The Waipara hills and Southern Alps in the distance in one direction, and the limestone outcrops in the other.
At the overhang, behind a fence are the rock art paintings. The area was once forested (1000 years ago) and frequented by Maori until about 500 years ago when fire destroyed much of the forested Canterbury east coast. The depictions look almost alien - some are scribbles but you can make out a shark, dogs and people (bonking??). In 1929 the Dominion Museum director decided that some of the figures should be painted over with red and black house paint. This basically destroyed the original paintings underneath and is now considered an absolute archaeological travesty. The plus side is that we had no trouble seeing those ones!! It was probably lead paint too.
We climbed on top of the overhang for morning tea. My apple bounced over the side but was still edible on retrieval. The sun was beaming down -almost shorts weather. Very pleasant.
On the walk back we began with a slightly off piste route which entailed sidling along the horse tracks in the direction of the stream then climbing almost vertically (or crawling in some cases) between the outcrops and back up to the track. The cows gazed at us thoughtfully without moving to one side as we climbed the fence which was a bit unnerving.
Before we jumped in the car, we took a quick side excursion to the church which I recall had an awesome interior with stained glassed windows but today it was locked. This dilly dallying meant that we just missed a nasty car crash near Frog Rock on our way back to Christchurch. The road was blocked up ahead and so we had to do a U-turn and return to Waikari where the police were setting up a detour. We decided to wait it out in the Waikari Kitchen Cafe (highly recommended) where the coffee and scones and cakes were excellent. Then we went to the quirky second hand store next door and bought designer clothes and an alien sculpture.
With the road still closed there was nothing for it but to make the 80 km detour via Greta Valley back to State Highway 1. We were about an hour late getting to Zhanna's who had spent the morning learning how to fly an aeroplane and had invited us to a birthday wine tasting. Zhanna makes her own wines and has won competitions. We tried lemon, plum, elderberry, celery, gorse, parsley and thyme wine. They were all so yummy. Then we ate gourmet salads and chicken nibbles and birthday cake and drank more wine with fabulous jazz playing in the background. To top it all off, Kevin gave us a tour of the forge and his workshops. It was an awesome afternoon. Thank you Zhanna and Kevin!!
