The morning started shortly after the night had finished. We rose early but still managed to get on the road a little too late. We had a little under two hours until our boat left Milford Sound and the drive was meant to take 2 hours. We also needed fuel for Starbuck and Ronnie. A trip to the bakery sorted Ronnie out whereas a trip to the BP station would later cause us a headache. When we pulled in a little old lady came out and started operating the pump, like in the old days. Now Ed’s not to keen on that type of thing. He compares it to someone pouring his beer bottle for him in a restaurant. It’s a great idea but more often than not they balls it up. We asked her to fill it up, then went in to pay. It was only 10 minutes into the drive and after passing a sign warning us about the lack of petrol stations ahead that we realised she had put less than half a tank in. We were in a rush so there was no way we were turning back. Getting there would be fine but getting back wasn’t looking so assured. After some rather hasty driving and the possibility of a speeding ticket (the police were out in force today, typical. 100kph is not a speed limit it’s an infringement of your human rights). We made it to the boat just as they were boarding. Again the weather was hit and miss, mostly the latter. The scenery was even more impressive here than at Doubtful Sound. We would strongly recommend that if you were only going to do a day trip, make it to Milford not Doubtful. The drive was a lot prettier too. Of course we would still have rather done the overnight on Doubtful but if you are restricted to a day, go to Milford. When we got back to Starbuck and our nearly empty fuel tank, we were relieved to find that we could buy petrol at Milford. Could being the keyword. It was a self service establishment that required a chip and pin credit card. Thanks to the forward thinking and proactiveness of Australian banks to keep up with the rest of the world, we were stuffed! We decided to try and make the 120km back to the nearest petrol station on the little fuel that we had. This required a distinct change in the style of driving. Heavy right foot was banned as was braking, we even held other people up from time to time. It was a real low point, a negative and right then we needed a positive, ideally two. Ducklings on Mirror Lakes helped but the outlook was still grim. With the fuel light on for nearly an hour we eventually crawled back in to Te Anau. This time we went to the Mobil and Ed filled it up proper like. Full of fuel we hauled ass back to Queenstown where our fist stop was back to the same old campsite where we had left our sandwiches, wine and some other stuff in the fridge the day before. We were going to stay there again but they were rude so we opted for the out of town Top 10 site instead. It’s much nicer here!!!!!
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