Autumn in the Park

While staying with Mum & Dad in Napier during Dad's recuperation from heart surgery I was able to pop in a couple of visits to nearby Anderson Park & it's multiple ponds where I had heard that there was a rare white heron ( Maori name- kotuku) in residence. Due to it being duck shooting season the ponds were afloat with great numbers & many species of water fowl.

Black Swans

Resident Geese

 

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears"

 

Some of the hybrid ducks that live on the ponds.

I was lucky enough to find not one but two white herons (kotukus) resting near the ponds & I managed to get some great shots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Laid Schemes o' Mice an' Men

It's been awhile & I know some of you have been regularly checking in to see what we're up to, or not as the case maybe. As mentioned a couple of blogs ago after getting home from the Coromandel & tying up a few lose ends we were hoping to head up north for winter. But 'life' has a way of getting in the way & foiling the best laid plans.

A couple of things have happened that have changed our direction for a few months. Firstly, my Dad had quite an stay in hospital, in Hastings for three weeks & then in Wellington where he was flown to have a double by-pass heart operation. All in all 27 days in hospital while he waited for an infection to clear, then waiting for a place in theatre & on the plane to get him there. Much to the family's relief he has come through the whole ordeal with flying colours and is well on the way to being back to his normal self.



During this time I drove to Napier to support Mum & also to drive her down to Wellington so we could be there for Dad during and after the op. And while most of our time was spent at the hospital Mum & I managed to do a little "tiki-touring" of our own driving around the Wellington harbour. We had lunch at the very popular & quirky Chocolate Fish Café in Shelly Bay before we continued around to the harbour entrance and onto the south facing bays of Wellington.

Chocolate Fish Café

Evans Bay Boat Shed

Scorch-O-Rama Café Paua Wall, Scorching Bay

After just five days & very good care in Wellington, Dad discharged back to home in Napier. I stayed on for a couple of weeks to help out with the patient. Dad was a model patient although we had to lay down the law a couple of times! :)



Autumn in Maize Field- Wairarapa

In amongst travelling to Napier & then onto Wellington I did manage to take a good number of photos including many beautiful churches through Southern Hawkes Bay & the Wairarapa. Mum was quite happy for me to stop every few miles to shoot another church & in fact a journey that should have taken us about four hours in the end took seven! We were in no hurry as Dad was meant to be under the knife but when we finally got to the hospital we found him sitting up in bed wondering where we were. His operation had been delayed by 24hrs.

Hawkes Bay Churches

In the meantime I have also decided to have a foot operation I was putting off hoping it wouldn't get any worse. Without going into the gory details I need to have a foot/toe realignment due to hereditary arthritis in my right foot which makes it very painful to do any type of walking or exercise & wear any shoes with a heel. I had a cortisone injection to help out while we travelled the Coromandel & it worked wonders but as it started to wear off the pain slowly returned.

We plan on doing lots of tramping & bush walks once we are on the road full time & especially in the South Island and as there is only a three month window of opportunity before we leave for the South I decided to have it done now. The worst part is that its also three months recuperation with no weight bearing for six weeks & my lower leg in a plaster cast. I know how inconvenient that is as I broke my ankle six or so years ago & it had the same repair time.

So it's now or never & luckily I managed to get got one of the best surgeons in our area and with a little bit of arm twisting of his senior nurse she manage to allocate me a surgery time that suited and one of the last he had available until October!

And because we'll be waiting out this time here in Tauranga we've also finally come to the conclusion that we really need to sell this house (you will remember that this is the one that came as part trade when we sold our original home) rather than keep it as a base or rent it out while we're away. So it will go on the market two weeks after my operation & hopefully not sell too soon otherwise I'll be laid up in the fifth-wheeler over at the Mount beach again.........hmmm.......actually that doesn't sound too bad. David has promised he'll do all the house work before each Open Home, I like that! :)

So there you are, that is now the plan. Just a small hiccup or two in the scheme of things but we will be on the road soon enough. We're just going to miss out on seeing some of the North Island, that will have to wait until we return in a year or two from down South.

Maraekakaho Woolshed, SH50, Hastings, Hawkes Bay

Beachside at The Mount

There we were settling in for a quiet Saturday night when I saw a short email flash across the laptop screen;

Hello folks, we r in Taupo at the mo but have booked two nights at a camp site we have wanted to stay at for ages. Beach front at the mount, it would be good to catch up. ....... bring that big 5th wheeler onto the camp for a night. C ya Pamela & Gerald

It only took a few minutes to decide & respond;  You're on, beachfront. See you there!! 
I don't think they thought we'd be up for it at such short notice.

Pam is my aunty from Napier but being only 6 years older than me she's more like an older sister. David & I catch up with her & Gerald on a regular basis, they are long time regular campers along with another aunty & her husband and after missing the New Year camping expedition  we were looking forward to this as it would be our first chance to share a campsite since we purchased the 5th-wheeler..

Mt Maunganui is just across the harbour from our house in Tauranga so this was going to be a very short trip, just 8kms to travel, we'll be a tourist in our own town. I'd only just finished repacking the van & giving it a good spring clean so we were ready to go after adding food & our clothes. Another thing learnt, always have the van ready to roll, you never know  when you're going to get a surprise call (or email)

We arrived ahead of Pam & Gerald & were all set up within minutes of pulling onto the site where we were pleased to see we had some big brothers for company. Fifth wheelers are becoming very popular, but after talking to the owners of the other two great looking rigs we decided we still had the best size for our needs. Neither of the other two had been on or wanted to take them on gravel roads. If we had that restriction we would have missed most of the Coromandel.


Baby Bear, Mama Bear & Papa Bear!

Look at the size of that rig!

The holiday park sits at the base of Mt Maunganui, an extinct volcano cone, at the end of a beautiful golden sand beach. Mt Maunganui or Mauao also forms part of the entrance to the huge Tauranga inner harbour & estuaries. It's known colloquially as "the Mount" and is the most popular and one of the most iconic kiwi holiday destinations in New Zealand. For six months of the year and especially over the Christmas & New Year holiday period the beach & camping ground are a mass of people enjoying the sun & surf. The prime camping sites are booked well in advance & usually from year to year by the same families. Thankfully at this time of the year there aren't so many visitors & it's easy to get a beach front site.


Main Beach, Mt Maunganui

Main Beach

Pam & Gerald arrived not long after us & set up their caravan next door. When booking in I had made sure that we got a site beside their booked one & also that we were positioned on the site so that our doors opened towards each other. That way we would have easy access to each others vans & room to sit and enjoy the sun.

During the afternoon the wind steadily increased & there was quite a large rolling surf with plenty of sea spray coating our vehicles (& just after David had given them both a good clean). It was nice and cosy inside the van & I had a great view of the beach and the passing traffic on the boardwalk from the dinette!

Unfortunately the forecast was for a 'significant weather event' happening in Northland, Auckland & the Coromandel with heavy rain, gale force winds & possible tornados predicted. We were located just on the edge of this area and as the afternoon progressed we started to feel the effects. We decided to get in a walk around the base track before the rain started.

The 3.5km track runs around the base of the Mount and is a very popular walkway. Every day hundreds of people, locals & visitors, walk around or up the Mount, a lot using it as part of their daily exercise regime. Over 1 million people use the tracks around & up the Mount every year (there is a counter located near the beginning of the track). It's a tough 40 minute climb to the summit but well worth it for the awesome 360 degree views. We decided we'd just do the base track this visit but here is a photo I prepared earlier :) There are more photos from the summit in my Flickr set here.

At the camp we were sheltered by the Mount a little but once we got around the northern side we could see that the storm was approaching. A ship leaving port was crashing through the waves on the incoming tide. I guess the pilot is used to clambering off ships in rough weather but I'm sure he was going to have a hard time of it today.

The storm approaches

Tauranga Harbour Entrance- a ship leaves port



We had very little sleep Sunday night, the wind was ferocious, the van rolled & shook something terrible. I looked out at one stage to see that Pam & Gerald had dropped their awning, luckily they did because I'm sure it would have been gone by morning. We could hear the wind gusts winding up and I'm certain there were a couple of mini tornedos in there, each one grabbed the van & gave it a huge shake. After two or three of those we decided to pull our side in, not that we expected to be picked up or anything, it just gave us peace of mind & allowed us to sleep a little. I think our row of vans in their decreasing sizes provided quite a bit of shelter. Even the big guys said they were unsettled by the force of the wind.

The next morning, which just happened to be my birthday, dawned calm, cool & overcast. After a restless night & a slow start we headed across the road to our favourite café, Slowfish for my birthday brunch which was, as always, delicious. Later we had a wander along the beachfront & through town then back in time for 'Happy Hour" or in our case, & because it was a special day, 'Happy Two Hours'. And then while we could still manage it, Pam & I cooked a lovely birthday dinner for us all. It was a great night with lots of fun & laughter. I'm sure anybody walking past must have wondered what on earth all the hilarity was about. It was a great way to spend my birthday. And because we were due to leave in the morning we all decided that we'd stay another night & hope our last day would be a sunny one. Which it was.

Mt Maunganui Beachside Holiday Park

Being beachfront it was a great place to people watch, there was a constant stream of people of all shapes & sizes and from all walks of life, walking, running & strolling along the boardwalk. It was rather strange though as I kept seeing people I knew walking past, I wasn't quite as comfortable walking around outside in my dressing gown as I have been on other sites that's for sure.  

Our camping site is hidden behind the bush on the right

I managed to catch this guy doing the splits! He'd just come tumbling down the boardwalk doing cartwheels & backward flips. I imagine he was a dancer of some sort or perhaps a circus performer or just maybe he was a regular guy who like to show off!

Pam & Gerald went off to Tauranga city to check the shops out over there and as I know exactly what they are like I had no interest in joining them. David & I decided to visit the hot salt water pools which are located right in the middle of the holiday park. We had a relaxing soak in the various pools although I found most of them too hot for me on a sunny afternoon.

Afterwards I took a walk up the back of the camp with my camera catching this rabbit along the way. It wasn't hard, there were dozens of rabbits around the camp, out feeding on the grass & hopping in around the cabins and long term caravans. There were far too many for my liking & I'm not sure why they aren't being poisoned or trapped. They are a major pest in NZ and going by the mess & rabbit holes around the sheep paddocks they must be eating just as much as the sheep on the Mount.

  

Sheep & high-rise buildings, not quite the usual scene you'd expect in the middle of a city

After another night of conviviality we retired early enough to get a good nights sleep with nothing but the gentle lapping of the ocean waves reaching our ears. The next morning we were up bright & early & ready to depart well before check-out at 10am. We had a fabulous few days catching up with Pam & Gerald & enjoyed the spontaneity of it all. We did find it rather strange though, being a tourist in our own city.

Lucky Escape

1250kms, 41 days, 12 camping sites & 50,000 photos (not quite but you get the picture, or should that be photo) we are back in Tauranga after our wonderful trip around the Coromandel Peninsula. We’ll be here for a month or so catching up with visiting family & tying up a few more loose ends before we are back on the road again, hopefully in early June.  Our next adventure will be exploring the "Winterless North” during winter(of course) before we finally head, in spring, to the South Island for a year or so.

Our last night at Waihi Beach was very unsettling. The drought has definitely broken in this part of the country.  I had thought the rain at Broken Hill was torrential but it had nothing on the hammering we got at Waihi Beach. The noise was deafening, the rain ran off the van in a solid sheet, the paths & roadway around the site were flooded & poor Maddie thought the world was going to end. With the school holidays starting, I felt sorry for the dozens of campers that had arrived late afternoon & early evening to set up their tents & caravans. I could also hear the stream that flowed just behind  our van roaring through the narrow gap on its way to the beachfront.  I was thinking it was lucky we gave those eels a few feeds because they’ll have surly been swept away or if they did manage to hunker down in the stream bed they wouldn’t be seeing the light of day for a few days.

The stream runs under the bridge just beside our camp site

After a very long night and just before daybreak the rain got even heavier, solid & torrential for a couple of hours & then it just stopped.  After that a steady stream of bedraggled campers & excited kids started making their way to the showers & kitchen but generally their camp sites looked like they had survived the night reasonably well. There was a lot of surface water lying about and that benign stream that was at the most about 6 inches deep yesterday was now a raging torrent. I took the photo below with my cell phone from my bed when I woke. 

Wet & bleak

And I bet most of you reading this are thinking we got caught in the breaking news; the Waihi Stream has broken it banks, there are flash floods, dozens of campers at the Top10 holiday park have been evacuated, firemen are using ropes to help campers across a bridge. Waihi Beach Road is flooded & cars are stuck in flood waters etc. Well that was our “lucky escape”, we left yesterday morning after Friday night’s heavy rain. The latest problems have been caused by Saturday’s downpour. Here’s the stream before & after Friday’s rain, it’s now burst its banks & flooded all the cabins, the bridge that fireman were called to help with evacuations is the one that was beside our campsite.  Maybe we would have floated out of there had we still be on site, David is so relieved we were gone.

That's what it looked like the day before

Before leaving Waihi Beach, we had a reasonably quite last day letting Maddie enjoy the campground facilities & making friends with some of the arriving children. It was lovely for us to have the time with Maddie but we can both honestly say we NEVER want to be in such a popular family orientated campground during school holidays again. The noise & activity went on all day & well into the night. I seriously think that some parents must come for a break themselves, they seem to release their kids into the grounds & say “go for it” just be home for dinner!

Maddie & I went to feed the eels again, there seemed to be lots more & I noticed all the red swirls on a few of the eel photos that I had over-exposed, maybe it's the slime that they're releasing as they slithered about all over each other.

Notice the red swirls, maybe slime?

Maddie also wanted to go shell hunting again, she didn’t think she had enough shells to take home for Mum & she also wanted to find some more of my special ones for me.  I think she felt guilty as while her & Poppa were washing her shells yesterday she tried to help by washing mine too. She threw my delicate shells into the bucket with hers & gave them a good rinse around & broke most of them. She told me Poppa broke them but then later must have thought better of it & said, she & Poppa had broken them but we’d get some more tomorrow.  True to her word she found me lots more.

Shell Pasta

Waihi Beach

We did our last dump station duties at the fairly new & well appointed Waihi Beach dump station, Maddie was intrigued to see what was going on, although quickly took a few steps back when the lever was pulled. She had been curious whenever she  used the toilet as to where it was going, she even took  a look underneath the van to check it out once.  Maddie has also named out water pump Mr Woodpecker, & it does sound like a woodpecker everytime it hammers through the van.

The connected hose is to flush the black tank

And that was that. We drove through to Tauranga yesterday morning in overcast weather, managed to park up the van & unpack a fair bit before the rain hit us as well, solid torrential rain that has flooded parts of Tauranga too. The drought has well & truly broken.

The rain pouring off our slide-out roof back in Tauranga.
I really wanted to get out there & save some of it :)

We have had an amazing six weeks & have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Life on the road is all it’s cracked up to be & more. You do have to have an open mind & be ready to step outside your comfort zone should the need arise, you do have to prepared to compromise on some things that you might usually take for granted but generally it’s a fantastic way of exploring our beautiful country & we're loving it. It’s a thrill to wake each morning to a different view & know that each new day will bring new experiences. We have met some great people & without exception everyone is so friendly & welcoming. We really do live in Paradise.

We threw ourselves in the deep end by tackling the Coromandel as our first major trip but we’ve decided that David will be able to handle anything that comes his way now, nothing could be worse than some of the roads that we have travelled.

I’m working on a map of our travels with links to all the places we’ve visited & links back to the blog which I’ll post here in due course. In the meantime a big thank you too, to the dozens of people who are following my blog, it’s nice to know you’re  “Out There” following along.

See you up north…..

Maddie's Day

Maddie was up with the sparrows this morning, keen for poppa to wake up and take her swimming. Which he did twice during the day. Maddie has been having swimming lessons & is doing really well but we didn't have any floatation devices for her with us. She really wanted to swim in the big pool & then we remembered our life jackets. Turned upside down & with your legs through the arms holes you sit upright & bob about in the water. We have done this in the past ourselves in a hot water swimming hole on the Waikato River while sipping a glass of wine. Maddie was a little hesitant to start with but Poppa soon got her sorted & then he couldn't get her out of there.

We then found the eels to feed in the stream that runs through the campground. There were about 6 or 7  at first just lazing in the shallow water but as soon as we started feeding them they came from everywhere to join in the frenzy. Don't ever think there's no eels about when you have a paddle in a stream, I watched in horror as they came out of holes in rocks you'd hardly think they could fit & from under rocks & the retaining wall with gaps no thicker than your finger. They appeared from everywhere, swimming upstream through the rapids with their backs out of the water, climbing over exposed rocks & up the rocks to take the bread from David's hand. It was fascinating watching them and when the food had gone they all slithered back from whence they'd come until there were only half a dozen left again.

Next we had lunch at a café down the road & then went beachcombing There had been a large surf overnight & at high tide this morning due to the strong wind. There was a lot of debris, seaweed & shells washed up to the high tide line. Maddie collected a lot of colourful shells to take home & I found some familiar delicate "sheep's horn" shells. As kids we used to collect shells & make ornaments with plaster of paris. Sheeps horns were highly sort after by us as they only appeared after a heavy sea, which wasn't often.

Waihi Beach

"Closed for the Season"

It rained on & off all night but by daybreak the worst appeared to be over & the sun was trying to make an appearance. The birds seemed to be very pleased as well, there was an amazing dawn chorus with lots of not so common bush birds we recognised.

We would love to stay on here at Broken Hill, but after looking at the forecast for the next few days and seeing that heavy rain & gale force winds are due back later today & for the next couple of days we decided we really didn’t want to get stuck out here in the wops by a slip or the river bursting it’s banks. Even with the rain, this has been a great campground, we’ve both loved the isolation & the peace & quite although I’m sure, going by the large number of sites dotted around the reserve, it must get very busy during the high season.

The sun came out for a brief couple of hours so before we headed off we decided to do two of the short walks that start near the campsite; the Broken Hills Battery Walk & the Gem of the Boom Creek Loop Walk. This area was once a bustling gold mining settlement & rusting relics from two of the batteries litter the bush alongside the tracks although we only managed to find some old wire rope, a  large scoop of some sort & a round metal sheet that may have been a tank.

Broken Hill Battery

Of more interest to us were the two mining shafts we came across. It's hard to believe that over 200 people lived in this area early last century, along the side of the river & this stream were a hall, post office, shops & houses. By 1914 the two large batteries had ceased production & people had moved on.

 

If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know what I’m going to tell you we found in the mining sharfs aren’t you? Cave wetas! And dozens of them again.  Here’s the link to the other post on the wetas where you'll find some detailed facts - Gold Mine, Wetas & Glowworms

In fact one of these shafts wasn’t a shaft afterall, it’s thought that this was some kind of jail. There was the remains of a steel bar protruding from the roof & the end opened up into a wider space. Someone with a sense of humour has added extras for special effect!

 

The mining shaft was much longer than the other one we visited at White Star Station & of course pitch black, it also turned a couple of times which always un-nerves me as you can’t see the light from the entrance. Did we have our head torches? No, again we forgot them. Thank God for mobile phone apps. I held on tight to the pack on David’s back as we walked through & tried hard not to think of the wetas swaying about just above my head. It didn’t help that I hadn’t realised that they can jump long distances! Duh, of course they can, that’s why they have such bloody long legs!

Back at the campsite we packed up and pulled out, still nobody about & just a small tree down across the road which David was able to skirt around. We did try manhandling it out of the way but it wouldn’t budge. Must remember the chainsaw next time! ;)

The river was still high but was dropping fast

 

Our next stop was not far down the line to another campground near the beach, small, private & with a great recommendation from some people we met at Colville;  Opoutere Coastal Camping. I’d already earmarked the area as there were a few walks & bird watching opportunities on the beach & in the estuary nearby. 

Opoutere Estuary

Down the road we went, all the way to the end only to find a sign up ‘CLOSED FOR THE SEASON’ And there were the owners with their car & trailer packed to the gunwales with kayaks & bikes strapped to the top parked outside their house; obviously off on their own holiday (the guy was quick to disappear inside when he spotted us). So there was nothing for it but to turn around, luckily in a paddock that had the gate conveniently open, & head back to the main road.

But not before rescuing a friendly old, fat, black & white corgi cross dog. We came around a corner & there he was stumbling down the middle of the road looking very tired & hot & bothered. David thought it was a small pig at first. He came straight up to me when we stopped & as there weren’t any houses nearby I decided he needed to be rescued. He had a collar on, no name tag but about 15 years worth of colourful registration tags. He lapped up a little water I offered him & followed me around to the door like he wanted to hop in. David wanted to drive on. I told him there was no way I was leaving him.

There should be a photo right about here of the dog but I figured if I got my camera out at that stage David would have throttled me!

The dog continued to plod along the edge of the road. I ran ahead around the corner until I found a house; an old run down house that I had to fight my way through junk to get to the door. An old guy answered it & told me that he thought the dog might belong to someone quite a way back up the road. He told me this after he told me he wanted to shoot all dogs. They were nothing but trouble.

When I got back out on the road David must have decided if he wanted to continue this journey he had to find a solution. We (as in the royal we) have saved a number of animals over the years, once David was in his suit & tie on his way to a conference when I made him climb a barbed wire fence to haul a sheep out of a very muddy bog(he's done this a couple of times since), in Ireland we had to turn around & travel quite a distance back to a spot where  I was sure I’d seen a sheep with huge horns caught in a fence. I had & it took all his effort to free him plus a seriously squashed finger that got caught in the wire.  Another time he had to run in amongst  morning rush hour traffic along the Tauranga expressway with the cat cage after I saw an injured plover up against the centre concrete barrier (I've been told to insert here the fact that I continued onto golf while he carried out the rescue). So he knew we wouldn’t be going anywhere until I had helped this old dog. My hero.

He had stopped a guy in his ute and after I came out & told them where the dog may have come from David convinced the guy to take him up the road & drop him off. So we bundled him onto the tray of the ute where he promptly collapsed on all fours, tied him with a bit of rope to the deck so he wouldn’t jump (not that he could possibly manage that) and sent him on his way. Job done. I’m sure the guy in the ute thought we were barking mad.

By now we’d decided to head all the way through to Waihi Beach. We had tentatively suggested that Maddie, our grand-daughter, come & stay with us for the last few nights of our Coromandel Odyssey & especially now that her mum & baby brother had chicken pox which she had kindly passed onto them.

And with the weather about to turn to custard & school holidays due to start on Friday we decided we were about done with the Coromandel. So now we are parked up in a tight little spot at the Waihi Beach Top 10 Holiday Park, under a huge pohutukawa tree where we have no TV reception (we keep forgetting to check that option; make sure the satellite reception has a clear view) with the wind gusting & a few showers passing through & one happy excited little girl trying to fall asleep in her very own bed on the sofa.

 

The Waihi Top 10 is an excellent holiday park  for children, there’s a great playground, heated swimming pool & spa, a huge bouncy cushion & you can even feed the eels in the stream that runs through the park behind our van. The beach is just across the road too, along with a couple of great looking cafes.