Away From Home

This Week

November 22, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Some weeks are uneventful and everything happens as normal. Other weeks—we kind of wish we could hit a “redo” button.

Wednesday afternoon Esther, Elijah and Mr. Diligence went up the hill across the road to move the goats’ fence. An hour later, I went into the house for a minute to grab a couple of tools to transplant seedlings. I stopped for a moment to grab a drink before going back out, and the phone rang. It was Esther. She asked me to grab her car and come up the hill to pick Mr. Diligence up because he had cut his leg with a machete. I got up there, took one look at the size of the cut, and made the decision to take him in. It was much too big for us to patch, and right over the center of his knee. I expected to get stitches and bring him back home. However, the cut had gone all the way to the kneecap, and when they did an xray they saw air in the joint, which meant that there was a big risk of infection in the joint—not a good thing. There is no orthopedic surgeon over here, so he had to go to Christchurch. He spent the night in the Greymouth hospital, and then went to Christchurch in the morning in the ambulance that goes over every day. Esther followed him in her car.

He arrived in Christchurch around 2:00 in the afternoon, and waited until midnight to go into surgery to patch his knee up! Esther got this picture of his wound soon after arrival, while they were waiting to go to his ward to wait for surgery. The blessing in this injury is that he missed both tendons and all the major blood vessels around the knee cap.

Esther spent the night with a friend, and then came back to the hospital in the morning. This was the view from his window. The river in the third picture is the Avon.

They played Phase 10 a couple of times.

Mr. Diligence was able to come home Saturday afternoon. He was happy to be out of the hospital, although he has to take it easy for a few weeks. Here he is showing pictures to Mr. Sweetie and Little Miss.

Sunday afternoon: The next act? Soon after some of us came home from church, Elijah called, asking Esther to pick him and the younger boys up. She asked why. “Simon just dislocated his knee!” Gayle was on his way to the hospital with Simon. It turned out to be his kneecap, and it was easily replaced, but he’s wearing a brace for a couple of weeks, and supposed to take two weeks off work—when they are overwhelmed with vehicles to fix! He’s in a lot of pain tonight, though, so I think it’s wise to take time off. Ironically, it was the same knee that Mr. Diligence injured. And how did he do it? Jumping over a low fence that he has jumped over dozens, if not hundreds of times before.

This was when Simon had just gotten home and was on his way into the house. Can you imagine—two boys on crutches at the same time!

Once both boys were settled on the couches again (we now have a shortage of seating in our living room!) their brothers tried out the crutches.

October 2020 Photos

November 9, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Here are the last of the October photos! The first two are actually from the end of September; I’m not sure how I missed including them somewhere. They were taken the day before Mr. Sweetie’s birthday, when we had a cookout down at the river with friends. The boys took their boats down and had a lot of fun with them. Here is Mr. Sweetie in a boat Elijah built for Mr. Imagination, and then Simon and Mr. Diligence with a friend in Elijah’s other boat.

We got the smallest chicken egg I have ever seen! There it is between two normal eggs.

One day, I was able to grab quick pictures of all three of our working men! Here is Elijah, formerly known as Mr. Intellectual. Now that he has turned 17 I’ll use his real name. He was working on the new veranda in front of the workshop Simon works in.

This is Simon walking through the workshop.

This is the mill where Gayle works. He is in about the center of the photo, second from left or third from right. He was writing down what was in a bunk of wood he had just pushed out from under the roof. The boards come off the saw and out a chain through this open-air building. They are marked as to what size and grade they are, and the men who are “working the table” sort them out into bunks.

Mr. Diligence got some pictures of the bridge construction as we crossed the river one day. Here is one of the massive 52-ton beams being put in place.

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This shows the inside of a pipe being dug out so they can drive a pile deep down under the river bed. The place we often picnic is beyond the crane in that green area.

I don’t know what kind of flowers these are, but I noticed them one evening when I was going to milk the cow. Very unique!

Field Trip! Echo Coal Mine

October 26, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We rarely take a field trip, but a local woman who recently began homeschooling her son organized a trip to the Echo Coal Mine, just north of Reefton, this month. The mine manager (her brother) gave us a fascinating peek into the running of an open-cast coal mine. We all very much enjoyed it, and learned a lot!

Because there were so many in our group, we were divided into two tours. Our family waited in Reefton with some friends while the first tour happened. We spent some time in the museum part of the local I-site (information center), and then walked out of town a little way to the swing bridge over the Inangahua River before eating our lunch. You can see from these photos that we had a beautiful, sunny day.

After we ate lunch, we drove up to the road that goes into the mine. We found this shed, and parked beside it to wait for the first tour to return. A truck went past, hauling coal down from the mine to the railroad, and someone who was near the shed heard the driver inform the manager, via radio, that there were people at the red shed. He replied that he knew about it; they were waiting for a tour.

Soon, the first group came back down, and it was our turn. We reorganized a bit so we didn’t have to take so many vehicles up; two of our boys rode with the manager in his ute, and we followed him up the road into the mine.

We noticed these signs along the way, along with several others:

Soon, we reached the top of the road and saw evidence of mining.

When we came to a stop in front of the office, we looked out over the processing area. The coal is brought in here. After it is dumped out of the trucks, it goes through the sorter. The large pieces are used for heating buildings, mainly, or processing milk powder. The dust, which, if I remember right, comprises about 80% of the end product, mainly goes to Japan, where it is made into such items as silicon chips for cell phones and computers, or turned into carbon fibre for bicycles and dialysis machines, among many other uses. He rattled off so many things I couldn’t remember them all!

We went into the office next, for a slideshow of the history of the mine, and photos of scenes from the past 12 years or so. The rock layers they have uncovered are amazing! So is the view from his office…rough life, to have to work in a place with a view like this, isn’t it!

Our next stop was to see what the mine is doing to rehabilitate the area after mining it. All the tailings are dumped in mountains, and reshaped similarly to the natural mountains. Then, the mine has a local helicopter company seed the slopes with lotus grass (actually a legume) that grows in the rocks and fixes nitrogen in what little soil there is. A year later, they plant native trees among the grass. Our guide also pointed out the smoke from a mine that caught fire in the 1960s and has been burning ever since. DOC (the Department of Conservation) now owns it, but won’t do anything about putting out the fire. It burns 20-30,000 tons of coal a year, if we understood correctly.

The area just below Mr. Imagination was seeded this year; the very green area next back was seeded a year ago, and we saw people, just around the hill from there, planting trees.

If you look very closely at this next photo, just below the left of the center, you can make out an orange digger and a yellow bulldozer. We visited those several minutes later, as you’ll see below.

Finally, we got to see the mine itself! These photos don’t come anywhere near showing the magnitude of this pit. It is huge! Can you pick out the digger and dump truck just left of center? The red dot over the middle of the pond at the bottom is a ute (pickup truck), and down a little from that, right of it, is a smaller, blue digger sitting on a coal seam. And look at those layers! We discussed later how they must have formed during the Flood, as sediment washed in on tidal waves, covering mats of trees and other plant material, followed by more layers… and then, while it was still soft and wet, seismic activity folded the layers. So amazing!

Our guide told us why the water in the pond has such a beautiful color. It has a pH of about 3.2. Iron sulfites leach into the water from the mine, creating sulferic acid. They have to neutralize that before letting the water go back into the environment. At first, they treated it with lime, but then discovered that mussel shells work even better, for much less cost! In fact, when Esther took the video below, she caught part of that discussion!We went from the mine to the dumping spot, to watch a load of dirt and rocks be dumped. Little Miss found this quartz rock and wanted me to take a picture of it. In the video you can see the truck being loaded, and then the same truck dumping. The bulldozer is there all day, smoothing off the area, building the “wall” around the edge to keep trucks from going over, and being there in case a truck would back up too far, to pull it out. It didn’t sound like that has happened much, if at all, though.

Here are a few of the big machines we saw around the mine area:

This machine is used for drilling holes to place explosives.

Our last stop was down at the bottom of the area they are rehabilitating right now. This is a close-up of some of the lotus grass. This area has been growing for a number of years, and there are several inches of rich-looking soil there now on top of what used to be bare rocks.

The run-off from the mine is piped into this pond, through a filter of mussel shells. That cleans it so it can go down the river.

A view from the bottom of some of the areas they have replanted.

The middle level in the left part of the picture is where we saw the load of dirt being dumped.

Here, the children got to climb on a digger and a bulldozer. They enjoyed that opportunity! This is a 75-ton dozer; we didn’t catch the size of the digger. It’s enormous, though!After we followed our guide out of the mine, we asked about these fords we noticed beside the bridges. They are for the heaviest machinery to go through—anything over 40 tons or so.

September 2020 Photos

October 11, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

September was a fairly busy month. At least, we took a lot of pictures!

Mr. Imagination found this hedgehog walking around in broad daylight one day. He wanted it for a pet, so tried to fix it a house and feed it. Unfortunately, it died the next day. They are normally nocturnal, so I’m guessing something was wrong with it.

Our heifer had a heifer calf of her own the second of September. This cute little calf has a mind of her own! She’s a challenge to handle. There will be a post coming soon with lots of photos of cute baby animals…don’t miss it! We’re waiting for one more calf to arrive and then I’ll publish that post.

These plover eggs hatched a few days after the calf was born. We never got a photo of the chicks, though. They are good at hiding! After the first day, we couldn’t even see them, and then the parents moved them out of our paddock to a park where they would be safer.

One evening the river was roaring very loudly. The children piled into Esther’s car and went down to take a look at the flooding. We normally walk through this space to get to “our” picnic spot.

This is the area we have our picnics!

We went to Canterbury for a weekend. The mountains were spectacular!

02-IMG_6700 Miss Joy loves to sit in things!

We saw this tui on the neighbor’s tree one day. The photo doesn’t do it justice; in the sun, its feathers were glowing iridescently. So beautiful!

We bought a high chair for Miss Joy at an op shop. She loves feeling like a big person! She has to have a pillow behind her so she can sit right up to the tray. (We now have it in a plastic bag!)

What is Princess doing?

We had a cookout down by the river for Mr. Sweetie’s birthday. Some friends were with us, and it was a lovely afternoon, even though it was cloudy and threatening to rain.

Simon roasted an apple over the fire after having his fill of sausages!

This giant spider was found in the garden when Esther was replanting rhubarb. It was at least 1 1/2 inches long!

Punakaiki Caverns

September 30, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

When we took our visitors to Pancake Rocks a week ago, we also went to Punakaiki Caverns. This is a cave just down the hill from Pancake Rocks. Gayle and all the children have been there many times, but I had never been inside. It was delightful to be able to go into a cave without a guide and just look around!

Esther is headed into the entrance to the cave, at the base of this cliff.

Going in!

There are several levels to the cave. The boys went up to the upper levels. I did not.

This is another opening, but to use it as an exit requires climbing up this cliff, then clambering down one equally steep, on the outside!

I went around this corner, to a lower level. There were a few stalactites here and there, but mostly just damp sandstone.

Here are some of the best stalactites.

Miss Joy thought it was pretty fun to touch the walls and ceiling!

Three of our boys headed much deeper into the cave than anyone else. I got pictures from Mr. Diligence’s memory card.

See Simon’s coat? By the time the three boys emerged, he was completely covered, from head to toe, with that cave-smelling sand. I should have gotten a photo of them when they came out, but I didn’t think of it till after they had scrubbed off in the sea.

While we were at Punakaiki, we stopped at a gift shop, and this giant croc was there. Miss Joy fit into it!

Pancake Rocks

September 21, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

We had visitors over the weekend, and since we noticed last week that there was to be a king tide this weekend, we thought it would be a good time to go to Pancake Rocks again! The extra-high tide, we figured, should make for a decent show at the blowholes. We were not disappointed! It wasn’t as good as a couple of other times we’ve been there, but lots better than several times. I apologize in advance if this is too many photos for you. It was a beautiful day… and three of us were taking pictures… and I only saved the best from each of the three memory cards… but there ended up being so many beautiful photos I couldn’t decide which ones to leave out!

The waves were fairly high. I love watching them roll in past the rocks!

The first blowhole we reach is the Chimney Pot. It is spectacular—just like I would imagine a geyser looks! This time, there was a rainbow formed in the mist, when you stood at the right place.

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Esther carried Miss Joy for a good part of the way.

This is the largest blowhole. We stood here for a long time, watching the water spurting up into a fantastic fountain!

I love watching the water in the Surge Pool, too! It’s so wild.

The waves hitting these rocks are spectacular, too!

See the seagulls nesting on top of the rocks?

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Notice the people on the bridge in the background, just in front of the Chimney Pot blowhole? That might help you get a feel for the scale of this place.

By the time we reached this viewing platform, Miss Joy wanted to get down and walk around by herself.

Simon took her, but she wanted to pick things up.

A bunch of the boys broke off flax stalks and had a mock sword fight with them.

They gave one stick to Miss Joy.

She was delighted with, and ran around brandishing it, until…

…she suddenly spotted some flowers! She recognized them; I often pick a few in our yard and give them to her. The stick was instantly discarded, and she got down to pick them.

Simon picked her up again, and held the stick behind her back. She reached around and got it, then started whacking him on the head with it.

This was a wonderful day to be outside! It’s the rainy time of year here, and in the week before this day, we had had 1 1/2 sunny days. It was great to be outside, enjoying such a beautiful part of God’s creation.

Here is a five minute video I put together from a lot of shorter clips, to give you a little bit of our experience. One clip, which starts at about 3:22, doesn’t have much action, but I loved the happy baby noises that can be heard.

The End of the Road

July 5, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

During lockdown, most of us stayed home the entire time. Because their jobs are deemed essential, Gayle and Simon were able to go back to work after just three weeks, and Esther went to town to do the grocery shopping a couple of times. However, some of us never even got into a vehicle for six entire weeks. By the end of that time, we were quite ready to see something else, so one Sunday afternoon when it was too rainy to go down to the river bed, we decided to take a drive. A road goes out of our town to the southeast, and ever since we moved here we’ve been wanting to drive to the end. We decided that was the perfect time to do so! The road goes through farmland for a short ways, then through dense bush with only logging roads going off to the left side; the Ahaura River parallels the road to the right. After the dense bush section, the road comes out into farming country again, and then dead ends at the river, about 45 minutes’ drive from here. The scenery was amazing! There were several waterfalls in one area. We stopped to take photos of this one, and then stopped a little farther on where a farmer was moving cattle across the road.

At the end of the road, we drove up onto a stopbank and along it to the end where the river goes up against the mountains.

After we turned around, we drove along the stopbank the other direction from the road, until it came to an end in a paddock. Miss Joy woke up then, while we were bumping along over big rocks, and looked at me with the most puzzled look on her face, as if she was asking me what in the world was happening.Here are a couple of views of the river as we drove back.

We saw a flock of Arapawa sheep in a paddock on the way up the road; as we went back, a few of them were on the road. They raced along in front of the van for a good ways until they finally tired and turned off.

We also saw another herd of cattle being moved across the road!

It was really good to get away from home for a short time, and quite fun to see some new places.

Five Thousand Sheep! (includes video)

June 21, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A week ago, we went to visit some friends in North Canterbury. It was a beautiful day for traveling, with clear skies all the way over the mountains. This was about half an hour from home. The mist rising from the river, in front of the mountain, was stunningly beautiful!

The tops of the mountains, around the pass, were covered with snow.

We reached the other side of the divide, and as we left the highway and traveled up to our friends’ farm, we saw more snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Then, we arrived on their road, and saw this mob of sheep coming toward us! They move their 5,000+ sheep from the hills to their flat farm every winter for grazing, and this was the day of the big move. We’ve heard about this move for years, but I never expected to get to see it. What a nice surprise that it happened the day we went to visit! Our three oldest boys joined the ones who were walking behind the sheep, and helped them get the rest of the way to their destination.

The scenery continued to be stunning as we drove on up the road into the hills to their house. What a beautiful country!

I took a video of the mob of sheep as we drove through. Enjoy a tiny bit of our experience!

Back to Waiuta

June 14, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

A couple of years ago, when Gayle was in America for two weeks to visit his mother for the last time, the children and I went to Waiuta for a picnic and to explore the fascinating former gold-mining area. On one of our last lockdown Sundays, we went back there. We had been going down to the riverbed for a picnic every Sunday, but we wanted to do something different after five or six weeks. We cooked some sausages and wrapped them in a towel to keep them warm, and took a few other things for lunch. After lunch, we took off on a walk. The first time, we thought about going down the trail to the Snowy River Battery, but Mr. Intellectual had a twisted ankle so we decided not to walk much. This time, we went down that trail. What a hike!

Before we started down the Snowy River track, we did a little exploring around the site of the village and the mine shaft area. These little holes were in a bank beside an old tunnel that went into the hillside. We were curious what kind of creature made these holes, but we couldn’t figure it out.

Esther carried Miss Joy for awhile. Later, when we went down the Snowy River track, Mr. Intellectual took her. This baby is popular!

This is some of the scenery we enjoyed!

These boys went off on their own exploration, and then ran to catch up with us. Actually, I guess it’s not all boys—I see Little Miss there, too!I took this picture to show Little Miss the cloud I was trying to describe to her.

The trail down to the river goes down very steeply, through a dense forest. It is beautiful! There are trees very thick on both sides of the trail, dripping with moss, and you can hear, though not see, a small creek flowing over rocks off to the left.

After awhile, you come out where you can see a little farther. The river is at the bottom of this canyon.

Finally, we got to where we could see the rest of our party. They were WAY down there! I zoomed in about as far as my camera can go to take this picture. This was the Battery, where they crushed the quartz that the gold was in, and extracted the gold.

Looking down the Snowy River from just above the Battery. The old Powerhouse is down the river somewhere. Two of the boys went down there and back up a different track while we reclimbed the trail we came down—all 222 steps plus much more steep, slippery mountainside.

Some of the lichens I saw along the way.

There is moss everywhere. I loved this soft, fuzzy moss!

It was getting dark as we went up the mountain. When we emerged at the top, though, the sun was still shining.

More moss and ferns. The variety of those plants on this Coast is amazing!

Fox River

June 7, 2020 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Last week, we had a national holiday, and one of the men in the church organized a tramp for anyone who wanted to come. Everyone who normally attends our little house church, except one man who wasn’t feeling good and another who was out of town, came, plus one other man and two tourists who were visiting one family. We had an incredible day!

I had never been on a tramp that long, so wasn’t sure how I would do. The sign said it would take two hours to reach our destination, the Ballroom Overhang up the Fox River, which is a little way up the coast of the Tasman Sea from Pancake Rocks. I’ve never walked that long at a time, let alone up a river. And with all the little children in our group? I knew it would be interesting!

Our group of 36 started out from the carpark at Fox River all together—and were soon strung out along the trail, as we knew we would be. The leader carried a radio, two others in the middle had radios, and so did the one at the end, all set to the same channel, so that we could keep in touch. At least, that was the theory; it didn’t work very well! (No one got lost, though.) Most of the time, Gayle and I were near the end of the line, and some of our boys were at the beginning. Our three older boys all helped to carry the younger children, and all five of our boys carried our family’s lunch. That left me free to focus on walking and taking photos. There were a lot of younger children who needed carrying! Fourteen in the group were under 10 years old. Besides Miss Joy, the youngest member of the expedition, there was a 1 1/2-year-old, a 2-year-old, and two 3-year-olds, who were all carried nearly all the way. We also had three 5-year-olds, plus a few slightly older ones who also needed carried over the river crossings. The older boys did most of the carrying.

This was the sign at the beginning of the track.

For the first half hour or more, we walked through areas like this. I love walking through these green tunnels of tree ferns and other trees, all dripping with moss in this cool rain forest! It feels almost magical.

Little Miss and one of her friends.

The rock formations were stunning!

A friend took this photo of Gayle and I.

This photo of Mr. Diligence and Mr. Sweetie was taken as we were resting and regrouping after the first river crossing, about 45 minutes into the tramp. We walked about another hour before the next crossing—there were six more after this first one, before we reached our destination! No bridges; we waded through on foot.

This tiny creek was one of several that crossed the track in one area. We had to step carefully over them.

The color of the water was amazing!

Because this is a rain forest, there are ferns and moss everywhere! The variety is astounding.

I saw these rocks across the river from the track at one point.

See Mr. Intellectual and his two little sisters in the middle of the photo?

About in the middle of this next photo is a stream of water gushing out of a cave into the river.

I think this is a bush robin. It was very friendly; hopping around only a few feet from me.

This is the Ballroom Overhang, our destination! The photos don’t do it justice at all; it’s enormous. I took the first one looking straight up. We ate our lunch here, and then quickly left to start back to the cars. It had taken us three hours to get there; it took 2 1/2 hours to get back.

Off we go down the river bed!

A creek came into the river from this side canyon, across the river from where I was standing. We had just crossed the river, and another crossing was only a short distance ahead of us.

The last river crossing! If you look closely, you can see several of my boys carrying little people. The one closest to me was Mr. Diligence carrying Miss Joy. I hardly saw her that day! I fed her at this river crossing, going both ways, and at the Ballroom Overhang; otherwise, other people (teenagers) were carrying her.

Almost out to the road again! We left our vehicles at 10:30; it was 4:30 when we returned. We were all rather tired, stiff and sore, but it was a good tired, stiff and sore! That day out in nature was incredible. The scenery—what I got to see in between picking my way over rocks and around mud and through rushing, cold water, barefoot, over slippery stones, was amazing. The company was wonderful, too! To top off the day, we lit a fire on the beach and roasted sausages. It was quite cold by then, but still a great experience. We are blessed!