Dry weather track

Dry weather track
Originally uploaded by borealnz

This "track" leads to the Fraser Dam, an irrigation dam high in the hills near Alexandra in Central Otago. I haven't been there for years but when I was a child we would go there on occasion fishing. The trout in the dam had the reputation of being sneaky. Instead of putting your worm on the hook letting the fish catch themselves -the lazy method we used in the other dams we visited, with these fish you had to hold your rod waiting for the bite.

One of my earlier childhood memories was visiting this dam with my grandparents in their huge car -a vauxhall or dodge or something, it was curved and green and built like a tank. Probably the reason I remember this particular trip was that excursions like this with my grandparents and especially in their car were relatively rare, or maybe it was the lollies that we were given along the way. It's funny how you remember small snippets of time; in this case I remember grandma reaching from the front seat with a lolly, probably a barley sugar and I even remember unwrapping it and putting the paper in the ashtray in the back of the seat, this all happened somewhere near where I took this photo.

I doubt if my grandfathers' car would have made it to the dam these days, the road was fairly rough in places and I definitely wouldn't have wanted to be there when it was wet. The dam, when we got there was very low, but since it's not fishing season it didn't matter. We did find a walking track to a historic site with the intriguing name of Shek Harn further up the valley above the dam and will go back to explore when we have more time.