Away From Home

Castle Hill and Beyond

January 20, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After we left Cave Stream, on the second day of our trip, we went to Castle Hill. We have been there two other times, but the boys have never been able to spend as much time exploring the rocks as they want to, so they wanted to go back.

Mr. Diligence took a few pictures while we drove between Cave Stream and Castle Hill.

There is our van ahead of the one he was in.We quickly separated into groups to walk out to the rocks. Lest you think this photo has been artificially colored, that is the way the sky looked that day! It was so blue I couldn’t stop looking at it!

We almost didn’t stop when we saw how full the carpark was, but then we found space in a second park, to the right here.

The boys, of course, hustled out to the rocks quickly and started climbing.

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Mr. Diligence, Simon, and Mr. Sweetie

This is a tired baby! Esther and I soon decided to take her back to the van and give her a nap on the bed. Though it was quite a hot day, it was very pleasant in that van with all the windows and the side door open. There was a nice breeze, and it has a high roof, which means the heat isn’t trapped down where we sat. She got to sleep for an hour before we left.

Gayle and Little Miss did some exploring on their own, and had fun experimenting with the camera on his new phone.

Mr. Diligence had his camera with him, too, so here are perspectives from high up on the rocks. This is Mr. Imagination and Mr. Sweetie.

Simon and Elijah had to help each other up this section. It was nearly perpendicular to the ground.

Mr. Sweetie pondering life from the top of a rock.

Wild roses The adventurers are coming back! Esther zoomed her camera in to take this from the van. Left to right are Mr. Imagination, Simon, Elijah, Mr. Diligence, and Mr. Sweetie.

Soon after we left Castle Hill, we went over Porter’s Pass, leaving the high basin.

Then, we were suddenly down on the plains! The road drops fast as you come down from the summit of Porter’s.

We spent this night with friends. Their house was too small for any extras, so we happily slept in the vans in their driveway. After a day in the sun, everyone slept soundly, though our faces felt hot!

Cave Stream

January 17, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On the second day of our holiday, we packed up the vans in Arthur’s Pass and headed out about mid-morning. Our first destination for the day was Cave Stream. Gayle and Simon had gone through it four years ago, and now all the boys, as well as Little Miss, wanted to go through. Esther and I did not! We don’t think it’s that fun to wade through waist-deep, cold water, in the dark!

Here is some of the scenery we enjoyed on our way down from the pass, through the high basin. It was such a gorgeous day!

There were a lot of cars at the carpark when we arrived.

It was incredibly beautiful there! Pictures can’t do it justice—you have to actually be there to really get a feel for the beauty. This is only a tiny glimpse. You could turn around in a complete circle and see amazing scenery all the way around. Also, in a photo you can’t capture the feel of the warm breeze, the fresh mountain air and the scent of the flowers, and the sounds of sheep and lambs baaing off in the distance. Such a wonderful experience!

Mr. Imagination

I saw this wild rose bush beside the track.

The entrance to the cave is that hole down at the base of the cliff.

The boys ran on ahead, leaving Gayle and Little Miss to catch up with them at the cave entrance.

After seeing them off, Esther and I walked on up the trail to the exit of the cave, where the stream goes in. She carried Miss Joy; I carried the security blanket.

The stream used to flow here, but when it eroded back enough that it found a way underground, this streambed dried out.

The stream goes underground here, and this is the exit when you go through the cave.

After our crew came out of the cave and put on dry clothing, we laid out our picnic. We cooked the last of the hamburgers we had for supper the night before.

Miss Joy put on her big sister’s gumboots and walked around the carpark.

Devil’s Punchbowl

January 10, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

We arrived home a few days ago from a family road trip. Warning: There will be many posts over the next few weeks with pictures from our trip! I took over 400 pictures on my camera, and am borrowing pictures from three or four other cameras! I just spent a couple of hours sorting and organizing pictures, and have only finished the first day. This may take awhile.

Anyway, on with the story! We left here around 3:00 in the afternoon on Monday, the 28th of December. We had decided to only drive an hour and a half the first day, to allow time to pack and get everything wrapped up here. It’s a massive undertaking to get ten people ready for a 12-day trip, and organize care for all the animals, as well. Everyone worked together well, though, and we were ready earlier than I had originally hoped. We traveled in two vans, ours and Simon’s. Elijah had spent a few days taking the back seats out of both vans and building beds in them. That left four seats in our gray van, and six in Simon’s red van. We packed our luggage and food under the beds, and figured out how to fit the entire family into the two vehicles to sleep at night.

Off we go toward the mountains!

The pohutukawa was in bloom in the mountains. This tree is often called the New Zealand Christmas tree. It is beautiful!

The road up the Otira Gorge to Arthur’s Pass is always stunning.

I don’t necessarily like driving up the 16% grade, but the Otira Viaduct is an incredible feat of engineering.

The old road is up there. Can you see why they built the viaduct?

Since we had extra time, we decided to walk up to the Devil’s Punchbowl. We’ve been wanting to do that for several years. Mom, we thought of you when we went up this track!This is the view from the carpark. See the train? It was the TranzAlpine passenger train, just coming out of the tunnel that goes under the pass. The tunnel is 8.5 kilometers long, with a steep grade.

We soon set off on our tramp. Most of the children ended up way ahead of us. Here they were regrouping in a meadow.

This is the view downriver from the bridge.The waterfall comes through the “V” between the mountains.

Here are some of the 401 steps that make the track a little easier!I had not done very much physically for a month, because of a health problem, and the climb up those 401 steps was quite challenging!

The children went past the viewing platform on a track that took them to the base of the falls. I didn’t go there!

Mr. Diligence got this view looking downstream from the base of the falls.

Esther took a video of the falls. It can’t compare to actually being there, but maybe it will help give an idea of what we saw.

I like this one! Elijah is to the left, and Simon is holding Miss Joy. She was not happy up there—she didn’t like the cold, wet spray, and was calling for “Mama, Mama!”

Miss Joy was quite happy to be reunited with her daddy and I.

She wanted to walk down the steps by herself. They let her walk a little, but a 16-month-old is rather slow! Little Miss enjoyed jumping down several steps at once for a short ways.

See Arthur’s Pass Village at the base of the mountain?

Everyone stopped in the little meadow again when they reached it, and waited for us slow ones to arrive. We all rested in the warm sunshine for awhile, and just enjoyed being together.

Little Miss wanted her picture taken as we were walking back to the vans.

We parked for the night in the driveway of some friends who live in the village. They weren’t home, but had kindly allowed us to use their driveway and the needed facilities in the house. This is the view we saw from the van, across their yard, as the sun was getting low.

We cooked hamburgers on a campstove in the driveway. It was getting rather chilly!

After supper, and getting set up for sleeping for the night, some of us played a game of Ricochet Robots on the bed in the gray van.That was a fun, novel experience!

Gayle and Little Miss walked to a small waterfall behind the house. Mom, this is the one we walked to from the visitor’s center several years ago.Then, as it got dark, we settled in to sleep for the night. One or two people slept under the queen bed on the platform in each van, Miss Joy slept on her cot mattress on the floor in ours, and Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination slept on a mattress on a plywood platform set over the front bench seat in the red van. Everyone was comfortable, and everyone slept well that night.

Quick Trip to Blenheim

December 21, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 3 Comments

A dear friend of ours died the end of November, so a few days later we went to Blenheim for his funeral. It’s a four-hour trip, but because of work and cows, we decided to make it there and back in one day. It meant leaving early in the morning, eating breakfast on the road, and getting home late in the evening, but we did it. It was well worth going. The man who died was the first person we met when we moved to New Zealand 11 years ago (almost to the day of the funeral!), and he and his wife had virtually adopted us. We spent a lot of time with them the first five years we lived in Cheviot, until they moved to be nearer their family. He loved the Lord, and was ready to go, so although we’ll miss him greatly, the day carried an undertone of rejoicing that was wonderful to experience.

I was intrigued by the huge vineyards around Blenheim. While I wish the fruit orchards they replaced were still there, because I like fruit much more than wine, it was fascinating to see the long rows of vines and the enormous wineries.

This view up a riverbed was gorgeous, too.

On our way home, going through the Buller Gorge, we had to stop because someone was carsick. These flowers were beside the road there.

Gayle took a few of the children on a very short walk to the edge of the cliff going down to the river, and when they got back, Mr. Diligence, who was stuck in the van because of his injured knee, took a few pictures. Miss Joy had found a few little rocks, which she clutched in her fist, saying, “Ock! Ock! Ock!”

Mr. Sweetie

Simon took his knee brace off, after having been driving for a couple of hours, when he moved to the back of the van.

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This Week

November 22, 2020 by NZ Filbruns 4 Comments

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!

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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.

Away From Home

Thank you!