This slippage in blogging does not look well on a former project manager whose whole reason for her professional being was to get things completed and delivered on time! I am not sure what has happened since I sort of retired; and somehow I don't seem to have been busy, but time gets away on me. It must be something along the lines that the less I have to do, the more it stretches out. And I am getting repetitive as I am sure I have written THAT sentence before too. (Slippery slope, I fear!)
Anyway, where I got to on the blog, days and days before the urgent post about the highly localised whirlwind at Rata St, specifically in David's office, was when we left Tongaporutu. And since then we have travelled a few hundred kilometres in the motorhome.
From Tongaporutu, we drove:
- north on SH3 to Te Kuiti, where we had to do some grocery shopping and find David a sunhat as he'd left his at home
- then south along SH3 back to Eight Mile Junction (known as 8 mile - locally - no mention of junction ...) and down SH4 a few kilometres to a CAP (charges apply property) on a farm with a large garden. We were the only ones there and it was lovely. The wifi was non-existent down in the camp-site, but David was able to go and sit on the porch at the house to use it successfully, while I sat outside the motorhome in the sunshine drinking G&Ts. One of the things we hadn't realised as we wended our way down their long driveway was that we were moving ever closer to SH4. However when we had parked up, it became clear as we could see the road and hear the traffic. Mostly that was fine, except at 4.30am when a truck coming down the hill used its engine brakes for about 500 metres and was SO LOUD. I think I had to listen to a podcast to go back to sleep ...
- to Taumaranui to stay with our friend, David Robinson. Taumaranui is a small to mid-sized town in the centre of the North Island and used to be a rail and farming hub. As an SMS town, its citizens can be involved in a lot of community activities, and David is an example of this. He is involved in the Amateur Dramatics group, in the museum group (currently they are moving out of the old building and into the old railway station building - lots of sorting, discarding, packing and moving stuff occurring at the moment) and a Dept of Conservation Trap-line Group that monitors the line at Owhango Reserve. There's probably more he is involved in - apart from the Friday night fish and chip group that we had the pleasure of attending - but it made me tired to think of someone a bit older than me being so active ...
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| This is David Robinson checking to see if the whio (native blue ducks) are upstream at the Owhango Reserve |
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| They were downstream. It was a real thrill to see them, as they are quite rare and are protected. This year the parents had six ducklings, and when we were there, all 6 had survived! Yay!!! |
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| A better photo - a couple of them were back on another rock. Boaters may have seen two or three narrowboats named Whio on the canals - a sign that the boats were, at some stage, owned by NZers. |
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| I recognise this man - he is looking pensive and content as we are waiting for Dave R to take photos of the whio on our bushwalk by the river. |
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| Mmmm ... |
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| There is a dead rat in that trap. You can see its tail in the left foreground. Rats, stoats, possums are devastating predatory pests here in NZ - most of them were introduced by the British immigrants. Rats probably came on the ships as unwanted passengers and hopped ashore; stoats were introduced to quell the rabbit population (previously introduced as a food source by the British, but with no natural predators and a temperate climate, they bred and bred with devastating effects on farmland), and possums were introduced from Australia to create a fur industry. They eat about 21,000 tonnes of foliage each night, as well as eating birds eggs and chicks, native snails - possums are bastards. That is why NZers say the only good possum is a dead possum, and if you see them on a country road at night (two bright eyes showing up in your headlights) you are duty-bound to run them over! Check out this ad from 1995 when NZ outlawed cigarette advertising: Smokefree rally More info here about the dratted things: whats-the-story-about-possums/ |
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| That is a totara tree we are standing in front of. It is huge and very tall. The timber is very dense and hard. Our original windowframes at Cherswud were made of totara. There is no point in oiling it, because even with a drying agent (terrabin) and diluted with turps, the oil just sits on the surface. By contrast, on rimu that mix soaks in in about 5 minutes. |
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| Crossing the lagoon. Dave R helped build this bridge/walkway. |
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| Lagoon - obviously ... |
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| On the way back to the car down the road, we saw this native pigeon (kereru) sipping on the nectar. He seemed quite happy to stay there as we chatted and took photos. He is quite large - I'd reckon about 38cm from head to end of tail (about 15") and very heavy. When they are flying you can hear the beat of their wings. Actually, I am typing this, there is one flying about over John and Jenny's place - they love the loquats in the tree on our boundary. |
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| The view from Dave R's deck looking down to and across the Whanganui River. |
- to the Waituhi lookout that was up the narrowest, steepest track I have taken the motorhome up - scary! Most scary was thinking about what it was going to be like driving down and hoping I wouldn't meet another vehicle coming up - of course, I did meet another motorhome, but there was room to slither through - and they were on the side with the drop ... I did try out the engine brake control on the downward piece - it works well.
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| The view from Waituhi Scenic lookout across the hills to Mt Ruapehu (with the snow) and Ngaruahoe (the peak to its left). We were already quite high up terrain-wise, and I climbed up the lookout tower. You can park there overnight, but I would have troublke sleeping because of a) I'd be worrying about driving down the hill in the morning, and b) there was anti-1080 graffiti on the carpark (the blue paint on the tarseal). Some anti-1080 protestors are rather extreme. |
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| You can see I was very brave and climbed a long way up ... Yeah, I know - no one needs to be scared of climbing that structure! |
- to Taupo Airport which is an NZMCA camp - $3 per person, an absolute bargain and a very pleasant place to stay.
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| When we got to Taupo, we originally parked up at Five Mile Bay, a DOC site which is free. But as it was at a lakefront beach, and it was a fine sunny hot Saturday afternoon, the place soon became jam-packed and not at all restful or peaceful. The view out the front windscreen was great, but it wasn't enough to tempt us to stay overnight as there was nowhere outside the motorhome that we could sit - there was a campervan parked about a metre away from our passenger door ... So we moved about a kilometre to the NZMCA park. Spacious, relaxed, friendly, and almost free at $3 per person. |
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| The Waipunga Falls are just off the Taupo-Napier highway. Pretty spectacular! |
- to Waimarama to stay with Chris and Willie (Wilhemina) for a couple of nights. The Hawke's Bay has been very dry, but while we were there, they had some very good heavy soaking rain. I know we got some photos there, but they must be on David's phone and he is missing at the moment - doing the lawns, I think. Anyway, readers have seen photos of them when they came to stay with us on the boat this year. They haven't aged or changed ...
- to Tuakau via Waipawa where we were under instruction from Janneke and Nico to stop at the butchers - which we did and then cooked sausages and meat patties on the BBQ, just before there was about 3 hours of drenching rain. Met some lovely people from Wanganui at the camp there which used to be an NZMCA park. Another good place to stay and very reasonable at $20 for a powered site.
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| I sent this photo to Leonie in Westport for Paul who tells me that women never cut bread straight. What BS - this lopsided loaf was all David's own work ... |
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| Mel has been at the cider ... |
- back to Waipawa to buy more meat and sausages - the pork ones were my favourite and David loved the chilli ones, so 2 more kilos of each got jammed into the fridge for the journey
- home - the weather was going to be pants so we decided to head back to Waikanae a day or so early.
One reason we came home was that we had Richard, Jacqui and Alix coming to stay with us. They were sort of neighbours of ours when we lived in Church Enstone back in 2006/7. They lived in Charlbury. Richard's dad is our friend Jack Potter. Alix was 6 when we met her and now she is 18, and still just as lovely and bubbly. We had two lovely nights having them to stay with us here in Rata St.
Back in 2011, they had made the decision to come and live in NZ, and then the Christchurch earthquakes happened and that was the end of that idea, dammit!
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| Jacqui and Alix on the morning they were leaving us for the ferry south, to see Jack and Sarah. |
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| Richard - considering it was only about 6.15am, they were all remarkably chipper. We had made them eat brekkie with us, then I went back to bed after they left ... |
Since the younger Potters left, we have been away again, but that is the subject of the next catch up.
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