Yes, Its A Second Post Within Two Days!

 Normally, I would wait at least three to four days to allow as many readers as possible to view and comment on my previous post, but given I have a weeks worth of Queenstown travel images to get off my hands, I decided to post again today (and I may do another on Sunday evening too....)

First up, another small nod to wargaming in the form of some images of the Minairons Nationalist Forces. 

The rear of the packs include some basic uniform colour information

Based on these (and the other 4 packs) I have ordered six Vallejos paints from a local online retailor

This useful flag set comes in the command and support pack

About half of the command pack

Most but not all of the infantry pack

Hopefully, I will get to start painting soon, although I will have to wait for the paint to arrive!

Now on to day two, or our first full day, in Queenstown

This is the area we were located in, showing most of the places we visited over our week in Queenstown

And this is where Queenstown is located in the SW corner of the S Island

First stop is the famous AJ Hackett bungee jump site at the historic Kawarau Bridge

Like most things, his idea was not original...

Click on the image and you will see a very young boy we watched jump off (with some assistance from a female staff members knee!) - rather him than me!

A lot of these nice old buildings were relocated when a man made lake was formed as part of a hydro generation dam building project

The lovely church below is now a private home!

This one is still a church!

From Cromwell, we travelled on to Alexandra, where we had a nice Tapas style lunch at this local eatery (below)

About 200m down the road was the local war memorial

And on the way back out of town, I made our friend Brett, who did all the driving, stop so I could take this picture of the local Returned Services Association hall!

From Arrowtown, we headed back on the same road towards the small town of Clyde/Dunston, where there is a significant hydro dam 

Clyde itself (renamed at some point, it was originally Dunstan) has a nice old area, where we stopped and strolled for half an hour in the pleasant autumn sunshine

Normally another bustling tourist town, the effects of virtually no foreign visitors for over two years can be seen in these images

Then it was on to the dam itself 

There was considerable controversy when the dam was planned because it would flood many houses and orchards upstream at Cromwell, as well as the scenic Cromwell Gorge, which was a highlight of the then young but growing New Zealand tourism industry. Construction also required replacement of a stretch of highway and the closure of the Otago Central Railway beyond Clyde, though materials for the dam would provide significant traffic for the rest of the line which was experiencing a drop in freight tonnage. To mitigate these problems, the Kirk Labour government decided a low dam should be built at Clyde. This decision was overturned by the following National government, who preferred a high dam

The dam was constructed between 1982 and 1993. Filling it was done in four controlled stages beginning in April 1992, and completed the following year, creating Lake Dunstan The power station has a capacity of four 120 MVA (116 MW) francis turbines (for a total of 464 MW), but was only allowed to run 432 MW due to resource consent conditions. The dam was built with two additional penstocks, allowing additional turbines to be installed in future. The resource consent was changed in 2005 to allow the full 464 MW to be produced.

Some views of Lake Dunstan on our return trip to Cromwell

Below are a couple of views of the heritage area of Cromwell from the far side of the lake

Next stop on the itinerary was the tourist town of Wanaka, alongside yet another lake!

Google "That Wanaka Tree" for more information on the above!

Another absolute "must visit" in this area is the original Cardrona Hotel, which often features in TV adverts here and is so famous, there is a fake recreation of it in the trendy Auckland suburb of Mt Eden!

After a couple of drinks we headed back over the mountainous route via The Remarkables range to Queenstown

It was a bit late for scenic views (dont worry, we went back again in daylight!) but we did stop for a couple of images of the sun setting over the mountains

Back on Queenstown wharf, the TSS Earnslaw - of which there will be more in my next post.

If you have managed to persevere this far - well done! All you need to do now is leave a comment mentioning the name of the ship above to prove you got here!