Away From Home

Helicopter Flight

October 1, 2023 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

Last year, Elijah signed on to Land Search and Rescue. Since then, he has been doing training for searching for people, mostly in the wilderness but occasionally in urban settings. He has only had the opportunity to go on two searches so far, both in the last two months. The second of them turned out to be a false alarm, but he got a helicopter ride over beautiful terrain on a bright, sunny day, and got to spend time in the bush on that same bright, sunny day. I can’t identify the location or give any details about the incident, but I am allowed to share these scenery photos. Suffice it to say, the location is not too far from us, and the helicopter he rode in is one operated by a company based near us, which we see flying over frequently.

This is Elijah all decked out in his searching gear. He had just walked home after the helicopter ride back from the search and hadn’t taken it off yet. He was explaining here how they measure footprints and stride lengths with that stick to make sure they are still following the trail they think they are.

Here is a quick video of a little of what he saw from the helicopter. Wow!

Scenery

September 17, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Elijah has taken several work trips down south to the glacier area lately. He took these two pictures on one of the trips. What amazing views he gets to savor while he drives for work!

But then, I sometimes have amazing views while I work, too! This is the view from the top of the hill across the road, where we pasture our cows at times. They have spent the winter there, and I’ve been milking by hand up there for the past month. I didn’t have my camera along the morning that there was snow on top of that range of mountains, but talk about a spectacular view! Wow. These pictures were taken the morning we had a full moon–that’s a supermoon you can see there. The layer of fog lies over the Grey River; you can often easily see where a river is by looking at the fog in the mornings. Our house, by the way, is just to the left of the picture.

I took this one about 15 minutes later, after the sun was up higher, from a slightly different place on the hilltop. It is looking down to the right of the previous picture, down the hill to the north of our village. We use the paddock across the highway from the road that comes up from the bottom of the picture for our cattle, chickens and turkeys.

Boating Down the Creek

September 17, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

About a month ago, Gayle and most of the boys and the little girls went down the hill to Orwell Creek, which loops around the hill on which our village sits before emptying into the river. They took an assortment of watercraft, and floated down the creek to the mouth. Gayle drove along to pick them up at the end, and took several photos and a few video clips when he was close to the water. These aren’t very good photos or videos, but they’re fun! The first photo is near the beginning of the excursion; the second is near the end.

Simon’s Life

August 6, 2023 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

One day last week, I had an errand to run which took me about halfway to the farm on which Simon is working, so I decided to take the four younger children to visit him at work. He has been living and working on a dairy farm about 45 minutes’ drive from us since he got clearance to go back to work in March, and he seems to really be enjoying it! Several other members of the family had been up there to see where he lives, but I hadn’t been there yet, so I was glad to finally see his house.

He took this Safari up there a few weeks after he moved, so that he would have something to do in the evenings after work. He bought the vehicle a couple of years ago, and he’s been working on restoring it ever since. It had a lot of rust that had to be cut out and new metal welded in, and the whole thing needed to be painted. He’s getting close to ready to put it on the road again and try to sell it; at the moment he is building a new bumper for it.

The view from Simon’s back door. The white roofs are the two barns that farm uses for housing the cows when the weather is nasty. The milking shed is close to them, but not visible behind the other worker’s house beside Simon’s house.

Simon hard at work. He was milking around 2-300 cows that day. There are 800 on the farm, but they haven’t all calved yet. It was interesting to see how a rotary shed works. The boys were quite fascinated, and wanted to go back after we visited the calf shed.

Lots of calves! Two ladies work full time to care for them right now. And look at the view those calves (and the people who care for them) have!

The scenery on the way to Simon’s place was amazing, too. I thoroughly enjoyed the snow on the mountains.

Baptism

June 11, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Another of our sons has chosen to follow Jesus, and last week he showed that to the world through baptism. What a special occasion! It was a cold, rainy day, but a number of people joined us at the creek to witness this major step in his life with us.

Power Line Track

May 14, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, Elijah organized a four wheel drive trip. He bought a souped-up Surf last year, and badly wants to use it, and has been wanting to go on a particular track for several years. It is called the Power Line Track, and goes from the Buller Gorge, over the mountains to Denniston, north of Westport. Five vehicles went on the drive, including Elijah’s Surf and another young man’s Surf, Simon’s L300 Mitsubishi ute, one friend’s Land Cruiser troop carrier, and another friend’s 4WD Mitsubishi van. They took off from here reasonably early one morning and got back late in the afternoon.

They took off from this bridge, the Iron Bridge, over the Buller river between the Upper and Lower Buller Gorges.

Ready to go! Elijah’s Surf is in the lead, and Simon brought up the rear.

Simon driving his ute, with Mr. Imagination in the coveted front middle seat.

They hadn’t gone very far when Elijah’s Surf stalled and smoke came out from under the bonnet. The ground wire had burned through and they had to jerry-rig something. No problem–there were five mechanics on the trip!

They came across a DOC camp, where people were checking on the local kiwi population.

The Surf made it through the deep river crossing!

As they approached the river crossing, the spare tire fell off the van.

This crossing was rather exciting–several people took videos of it! Everyone was worried that the van wouldn’t make it across, or that water would get through the air intake, since the van didn’t have a snorkel. If you watch the video, you’ll see our James leaning out of a window behind the driver’s seat, watching the intake to make sure water didn’t get in, and even putting his hand over it at one point. They had hooked a strap from the Troopie to the van to pull it through, in case the water got too deep and the van had to be shut off suddenly to protect the engine. No problem; it made it through–but as they came out the other side, the strap wound around the front axle and it was a challenge to get off.

Partway through the trip, the group came across this coal bank. There was an old chimney beside it; apparently, the people who lived in the house mined coal from here to heat their house.

At the end of the trip, the group drove up to Denniston, a former coal mine. This was the newest building up there, a bath house, which was vandalized after the mine closed.

Everyone who went on the trip enjoyed it! Esther and I enjoyed staying at home and getting some things done here without being jounced around for hours on a rough track.

Mountain Climb

May 7, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago, when Simon was home for his two days off, he took Mr. Imagination on an excursion. They took along Simon’s deer rifle in case they would see a game animal, but ended up climbing a mountain and not doing any hunting. The only animals they saw were a couple of goat kids. They came home tired, but very happy with the climb they had done. It was a mountain up the road from us maybe a half hour’s drive, overlooking the Ahaura River.

That’s the Ahaura River visible through the trees.

Looking to the northeast from the mountain. Simon was able to make out one of the farms he works on, and Gloriavale is visible, as well.

Mr. Imagination found this katydid.

It was after dark by the time they got home, and both boys were hungry and tired, but they had the time of their lives, and Simon felt rejuvenated and ready to go back to another week of work.

Lake Hanlon and Home

April 9, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our week at Karamea was soon over and we needed to pack up and go home. The lady who, with her husband, runs the campground, stopped by as we were preparing to leave and we asked her about a good place to stop and have one more short walk on our way south. She recommended Lake Hanlon, about a half hour drive from Karamea, so we stopped there and walked the track over and around a hill, and down to a small lake. Such a beautiful spot! Here are a few photos and a video I took.

This enormous rock sits in a paddock near Granity. It doesn’t look so impressive in the picture, but in real life it does. It’s the size of a house!

This is the T Rex tree in the Buller Gorge. Apparently it’s labeled on Google Earth, although I haven’t tried to confirm that.

More About Karamea

April 2, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After I posted the pictures from Box Canyon Cave, I finally had the chance to look at Elijah’s phone. He had more pictures I wanted to use! The first two show one of the spiders the caves in that area are famous for, and one of their egg cases dangling from the ceiling of a cave. The other is a fossilized clam in the wall of a cave. Apparently there were a lot of fossils in areas I didn’t get to.

This is a picture from Esther’s camera, from the Mirror Tarn/Moria Gate Arch walk. It was near the end of the walk. I loved James peeking around the tree, and Miss Joy marching on down the track!

That evening, we went out to the beach for a cookout. With two 4WDs, we could get right out on the sand, which makes it easy to transport everything for a picnic. The only thing we didn’t have was forks and spoons for our potato salad, because I forgot that box!

Miss Joy needed some time to play by herself. She felt secure, because she was surrounded by her family, but she was definitely in her own world here, digging in the sand. She gets overstimulated very easily, and needs downtime like this.

After our cookout, we enjoyed the sunset, and then headed back to our campground. This picture is looking up the Karamea River.

Looking across the estuary.

I took this without being able to see what I was looking at, back over the top of the ute, while we were stopped waiting to pick up a boy who had been swimming up river a bit from our picnic site.

We took a day off the next day and hung around the campground. Some people went fishing in the river. Mr. Imagination caught an eel at some stage, skinned it and cooked it for breakfast the next morning. He decided he won’t be doing that again!

Some of us walked out to the estuary. It was a gorgeous day! This is the Karamea River, next to the campground.

The campground, from the stopbank. Just past the campervan in the foreground is the caravan we borrowed, and you can see Simon’s ute beside it.

The estuary by day. What I didn’t get a picture or video of was someone waterskiing, being pulled by a quad bike running along the edge of the water! I had never heard of such a thing before.

Over the course of three afternoons, we played a marathon game of chicken foot dominoes, all the way from double 15 down to double 0. It was fun–but quite a mission!

While most of the family watched a movie in the camper that evening, I went for a walk with the younger ones who also weren’t interested, and we walked along the stopbank in the sunset light. Someone made a basket with willow bark, and Little Miss was showing it to me.

On our last full day, we drove all the way to the end of the road. There is a DOC campground there, at the beginning of the Heaphy Track. We wanted to find a place to build a fire on a beach and roast some flounder Elijah caught. It rained most of the way up there, and signs at the DOC camp said no fires allowed, so we turned around and went back to where he had caught the fish. This was some of the scenery on the way up. We had already had quite an exciting morning. Part of the family was supposed to clean the fish while Simon and I ran to the little local supermarket for what we needed for cooking the fish. We got there and the heavens opened. We got drenched to the point of dripping just running across the street and into the shop! It was still raining when we were finished, so we raced across again and went into the Information Centre to look around while we waited for the rain to let up. While there, Esther called me and asked me to get something to repair a leak in the camper. When the rain let up slightly, we went to the local hardware to get it. Then, she called again and said to get a tarp–the rain was pouring into the camper! We were all glad she and Mom had been inside it when the rain started, or we would really have had a mess.

This is where Elijah had set the flounder net. It’s another estuary. See the boys in a line? That is where the net was; they were pulling more fish out of it. They pulled the net out, then, and spent the next few hours mending it. We baked seven flounder in foil packets over the coals of our fire, with lemon slices on each side of them. Delicious!

This was a rock someone found at this beach. So pretty!

MIRROR TARN/MORIA GATE ARCH WALK–PART 2

March 26, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The highlight of our walk, for most of us, was the Moria Gate Arch. I would not have recognized the reference, but some in the family who have listened to The Lord of the Rings recognized it, and when we reached the end of the track we saw a sign that confirmed that it was named for that feature of the story.

First, we reached an overlook just off the main track, which looked down the river towards the arch. That was pretty amazing! After admiring it, we kept on walking, and the track took us over the arch! It was rather unnerving, though, because if it hadn’t been for the paving stones embedded in the path, each with a moa track molded into it, I wouldn’t have known we were over the river. The trees were just as dense on each side of us as they had been all the way so far, although if I really looked I could sometimes catch a glimpse of the water off to the side.

Then, we were surprised, when we reached the far side of the arch, to find a hole going down into the ground. We went down it…

And found this!

Parts of the area under the arch were like a cavern, and the boys, of course, had to explore everything.

Elijah took this video for me, so I could show you a 360º view.

After enjoying this beautiful place for awhile, we climbed back out to the bush above and rejoined Mom, who had chosen not to attempt these steps. (Wise move!)