Molesworth Station

By Jen.

Easter found us at Molesworth Station. This was recommended to us early on, as an off-the-beaten track place to take the van, especially since some of the roads are 4WD roads. Molesworth Station is owned by the government here, but is also the largest working cattle farm with about 10,000 head of cattle. It is known for its varied terrain, so we were eager to go see it, especially since it closes for the season on April 8 this year. We had considered going several times before, but we had either chosen to go someplace else or we had a flat tire or two. So, we decided to head up the rougher western road first.

Lake Tennyson.

Continuing on past Lake Tennyson is a 4WD road, though it really wasn’t bad at all. Turns out, it also heads up to Island Saddle, which makes it the highest public road (unsealed, of course) in NZ.

The road in front of us.

The scree fields on the mountains here are pretty large.

Lake Sedgemere has a unique fish that only lives here.

We continued on that road until the toll gate (enters private land),  and then turned back.

On the way back to the main road that passes north-south through the station, we were hearing louder than normal thumps while going over bumps. I told Jonathan that it wasn’t normal, so he stopped and investigated. We discovered that we had crack in our bracket that holds the Fox shocks (added on for comfort in addition to the original front shocks).

The left bracket. You can see the small crack on the edge that goes from the top of the picture to the right side.

Upon tightening the other bracket to prevent the same issue, we found that it was rocking awkwardly every time it was tightened (something it shouldn’t do). So we removed that bracket there and planned on getting the other at the campsite. Turns out the upper bolts (1 of 3 for the bracket) on each bracket had fallen out (probably somewhere in Australia). The resulting strain made one of the brackets crack and the other broke a hole in the frame where the bottom bolt was supposed to be tightened. The looseness of these brackets also explains why we recently started experiencing squeaking when the wheel areas got wet.

The hole in the frame where the bottom bolt was on the right side.

As a plus, that evening when we were took off one of the shocks, we were able to greatly entertain about 6 children ranging 3-5 years old. First, when we set out the awning, they were awestruck. They had been running about like chickens with their heads cut off, but as our awning started rolling out with no one visible to do it, they were amazed! Even the parents were pretty absorbed in watching. We only set it out partway to make sure that the window was in shade, so when Jonathan went out to get his tools, they wanted him to extend it further. I extended it to max length and then they started following him around like ducklings as he set to the task of removing the last shock and bracket. So, I came out to see if I could distract them a bit.

By mid morning on Easter Monday we were already out of the station and left with a decision on where to go next. We decided to head to Kaikoura and try and see some sperm whales.