Still buzzing from our helicopter flight and glacier landing, we pointed our diminuitively-sized “microcamper” (read: small estate car) towards the thermal baths at Hanmer Springs. The water at Fox and Franz Josef is a curious, yellowish colour and so with the childhood phrase “don’t eat yellow snow” ringing in our minds, instead of filling our flask we agreed to stop for a coffee at lunchtime.

Us being us, we couldn’t just stop at an everyman cafe an sup our way through a foamy cappuccino though, could we? Oh no; Squiffy spotted a “quaint” place called The Miners’ Hut in Reefton and pulled over, citing this as being our coffee-break venue for the day. Without writing a complete chapter, it’s going to be quite difficult for me to describe the venue, nor the resident staff.

The old, decaying wooden miners’ hut sat to the side of the open-air corner lot, in which seating benches encircled a charcoal stove, which was keeping water in the handful of blackened pots hot. To one side, a bearded gold prospector, complete with battered leather hat, talked me through some of his most prized nuggets, panned from the nearby riverbeds. I couldn’t stop looking at how dirty his fingernails, beard, clothes, his all, were. His partner in grime, poured Squiffy and I a cup of coffee-sludge and insisted that we have a nibble on his home-cooked scones, which were cooked on the central stove — on a griddle, of which the chef was most proud.

We supped our coffee as one of the blokes read out the current gold price from the newspaper, whilst the older shared with us the possible fact that some people hang anvils off their body parts; “because they can”. Stranger still, it wasn’t absolutely clear how this place generated any income. Or whether income generation was even a goal. Rather, it almost seemed like a council-created space to home the now out of work gold prospectors of old to share their stories and quirky ways with the constant passing trade of tourists. (The gents later informed us that there was a coin donation box, should we feel that way inclined. But “no worries” if we don’t.)

Curious for the numbers, as always, I asked how many tourists came through their gates. “Only about twenty thousand”, said the beard sarcastically, “in the eight years we’ve been here.” With puffed lips, I nodded back in admiration for the big-digit thoroughfare that they had hosted. It was only after getting back into the car that I worked out that twenty thousand visitors over eight years worked out to less than seven a day!

Still, there’s one coffee break that I shall not forget in a hurry and I say “good luck and keep doing what you’re doing” to the entertaining bearded fellows running the joint.

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