This is TWTW - Day 5

If you haven't been there and you live in NZ or are planning on visiting, please put Tawhiti Museum on your list of destinations, and make sure you allow at least a day there - and I mean a full day visiting not including travel.

Irene and Ian, David and I didn't have a full day available, but we spent more than 4 hours in the Tawhiti Museum section and are going to have to go back to the Whalers and Traders section at some other time. Ian and Irene are planning on returning too.

The guy who makes the models is amazingly talented and committed and it is his life's work - apparently he doesn't consider the work finished and is continually updating the exhibits, and enhancing them.

The models, both large and tiny, are almost all different - different poses, facial expressions. The physical environment modelling is also so skilfully developed and put together.

Can you tell we were impressed?

And the Tawhiti Museum section is absolutely amazing - it is the best historical museum I have ever been to and provides comprehensive information about different aspects of South Taranaki's past: Maori, early European settlers and soldiery and the Land Wars, as well as a man who must have been the first Chinese business man in South Taranaki. There were displays about early farming in the area, the coal mining, family life. 

I have taken these photos from Irene's post.

When you open the door to this display, the man lowers his paper and looks suitably shocked. Note the newsprint squares for toilet paper ...

Now which one of these is the model?

These photos were in the Brock Rooms - the display uses furniture and artifacts from Joan Brock's family home. These models are life-sized.

An interactive display where the train went through tunnels, cuttings, over bridges, around bluffs, through a timber mill and back to the station. Not only the figures but the buildings, infrastructure, terrain and flora are all beautifully crafted.

Family and farming life - life-sized models

Maori waka (canoes) and a war party - the cliffs look extremely life-like as do the models! Next time I go back I will take more photos - or I will get more photos from Irene to show you - I know she took a couple of hundred in there!

If I remember correctly this is the killing of Von Tempsky. I will check ...

This photo displayed at Tawhiti Museum shows the Tongaporutu coast before the sea washed away the seaward one of the sisters (2003), the front half (trunk) of Elephant Rock,  (2016) and big parts of the cliff. I checked it out on the net and there was an article back in 2016 with the dates.

See what I mean? The third sister is gone, the other two are much diminished, and the cliff has crumbled away leaving other baby sisters  - none of them will last much longer.

Do you see how Tongaporutu is so prevalent in my life and that of Taranaki?

We headed away from Tawhiti mid-afternoon and left Taranaki...

I had to stop and get photos of this

And this, about 300m down the road ...

We made our way down to Foxton where we camped at the Manawatu Caravan Club - drinks with Viv and John Boyd with whom we caught up early this year. Then dinner and a reasonably early night - I had cheese scones to make in the morning for morning tea with Viv and John...

Saturday night vege curry (me), rice (me) and chicken satay (Irene)

David sensibly grated the cheese before he came to bed but I was out to it ...