Like characters in Bill Pearson’s 1963 novel Coal flat, we came to “the Moeraki River, spuming fierce and grey over boulders… at the other side of the bridge was a bluepainted hut with a sign ‘Blue Hotel’, named after the river locally known as the Blue.”

Just before the river had I picked up some mica – from a stream draining the Kinnaird Range. Kinnaird prospected alone in the 1870s, sometimes with his mate ‘Bob the baker’. An old timer, Kinnaird arrived stark naked at Bruce Bay once – the sole survivor of a party that tried to cross the Blue. read more »