Where sorrows fade away

Okari Lake Hideaway near Westport is a good place to enjoy the living.

I had only one CD for hundreds of miles. My mother had just died and each time a great expanse of blue lake or sky appeared in this South Island she'd never seen, Goldenhorse were singing All of your sorrow, maybe tomorrow, will fade away in the end ...

So I kept driving. Hokitika to Greymouth to Punakaiki, through the outskirts of Westport, down Virgin Flat Rd to Okari Lake Hideaway.

There in the gathering gold of the afternoon I pushed off from the wooden dock in a dinghy and rowed out among the chattering ducks, geese and swans, shipped my oars and drifted, reading about the cricket and the Crusaders in the Christchurch Press.

And that's the first time I really stopped.

Marie Dixon and Greg Northover set up the hideaway three years ago on their 240ha farm.

They had friends help to build their three-room chalet. They laid a beech floor, installed a handcrafted kitchen and bathroom, built a solid wooden deck over the water and tied the dinghy to it.

Everything is calm and in the evening the mountains go pink in the fading sun.

Morning. Up and out the door ... and into nowhere. Amble around the marshes, the grassland, a small forest and a gravel road with nothing but the crunch, crunch of gravel underfoot.

Back to breakfast supplied in the fridge - farm eggs, bacon and fresh bread.

The lake is like a bird sanctuary and the water is stocked with brown and rainbow trout, so if you bring a licence you can go fly fishing down the other end. There's also Okari Lagoon for salt-water fishing and whitebait.

When the need for supplies arises Westport is 15 minutes' drive away.

Apart from the strip of motels at the start, the town must have, in Palmerston St, one of the last great main drags in the country. It's as wide as the great Buller River it runs beside.

The corner pubs are sentinels, guardians to all the well-preserved colonial oddities in between.

There is no mirror glass in Westport. It's a living museum.

But there's a revival bubbling away in this part of the world and the museum may not last.

A short drive seawards and you're looking down the long line of salt and sea spray to the cliffs of Cape Foulwind about 12km away.

But closer at hand, in the dust of a reserve, there's a rodeo and woodchopping gala in full swing. It's a travelling show, a circling of modern-day wagons - caravans and coaches - clinging to an era passed.

You can drive out to the cape via Tauranga Bay, where DoC has built extensive walkways and platforms around the cliffs from which you can watch the seal colony. And from there you drive back along the beach, past great surf and wetsuited surfers.

The Bay House cafe is perched on a grassy slope just above the beach, a north-facing sun trap that specialises in seafood and good wines.

Jack's Gasthof is minutes south of the hideaway on the way to Charlestown. It's set off the roadside among tall poplars withering into autumn golds and reds and there you park under curling fruit trees.

You arrive in the late afternoon with a thirst and walk into this great off-beat world: the rogueish Jack Schubert; the Bavarian kitsch of the dining room; Jack's partner Petra who bakes bread for the hungry child in a high chair.

Meal ordered and Jack goes out to the garden and returns with a bundle of fresh vegetables. The curry that follows is incredible, in flavour, in freshness, in how great food can lift your whole being.

Then there's the low-lit shanty bar around the corner with room for just a few locals and a visitor or two.

I met a little bloke they all call The Gnome, a James K. Baxter beard and dark eyes, a low-tone among the accelerating drunkenness and laughter, an architect who left the city and bought land beside State Highway 6 where he's building a castle in the form of a great tower.

It's an unconventional part of the planet - and Greg and Marie's hideaway is a good place to enjoy the living.

Going home I leave the CD in the rental for the next voyager.

CASE NOTES

Getting there

Okari Lake Hideaway is 3km down Virgin Flat Rd off State Highway 6. It's 15 minutes south of Westport and 35 minutes north of Punakaiki. Virgin Flat takes its name from one of five main seams of gold that ran across the area. Remnants of the digging still remain.

Accommodation

It costs $150 per night for a one-bedroom chalet that, including the sofa bed in the living room, sleeps four.

It's fully self-contained, including a dinghy and sails.

Phone 0800 432 929