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Away From Home

Mirror Tarn/Moria Gate Arch Walk–Part 1

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When we were in Karamea for our family holiday, we spent one day exploring the Oparara Basin. First, we checked out Box Canyon Cave, as I described last week, and then we went back along the road a few kilometers to another carpark. After we ate our lunch, we went on a loop walk that took us to Mirror Tarn and the Moria Gate Arch. This track was supposed to take about an hour and a half to walk, but I think it took us more like two hours. We took our time and enjoyed the walk. It was so peaceful and beautiful, there in the rainforest!

This is the Oparara River, from the bridge we crossed on the way from the carpark to the beginning of the track. Some of the boys walked through it!

Rainforest!

This little bush robin came very close to us. They are totally unafraid of humans. Such a cute little thing!

I took this picture of a spider web to show Mom–and then forgot to show her. Well, Mom, you can see it now! I just thought it was quite interesting.

Mirror Tarn–a beautiful place!

Another bush robin showed up here.

Can you see two bush robins checking James out? He sat quite still for longer than I’ve seen him very many times.

As I approached this bridge, James laid down on the rail where you see him and said, “They ought to put the rails closer together so people can’t fall through and get hurt!”

I’ll share pictures of the rest of this walk next time. It was so beautiful! We took a lot of pictures.

Box Canyon Cave

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Though we didn’t want to go exploring every day, we decided to do some walking our first day in Karamea. We drove to the Opararo Basin, about a half hour’s drive north and then east of Karamea, and went all the way to the end of the one-lane dirt road. What a beautiful drive! I didn’t get many pictures of it because the road was rough enough that I was being bounced up and down so much that most of the ones I tried for ended up being blurry. Trust me, the terrain and the plant life were both amazing! The first two pictures give you just a tiny glimpse of what we were enjoying.

These fruits were ripe everywhere, and Simon was curious to know what they were, so he wanted me to take a picture. We’re still not quite sure what they are!

This was the entrance to the two caves. We were very disappointed not to be able to go into Crazy Paving Cave, since the entrance was locked up by DOC, but we walked on through here to Box Canyon Cave.

This is the entrance to Box Canyon Cave. No tour guides–just go in by yourself!

Yes, that’s Simon, with one usable arm, exploring the cave!

Miss Joy “read” the sign about the cave’s closure to her daddy, after I explained it to her.

On the Way to Karamea

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We had a short holiday this year! We went to Karamea, the town nearly at the end of the road going north along the West Coast, and camped there for four nights. It’s a lot of work to get away like that, but it was sure nice to have a break. Most of our holidays have been road trips, sleeping a different place nearly every night, so this time was different and we all very much enjoyed staying in one place for the whole time.

This is a view of the mountains as we drove along the Buller River, towards the Lower Buller Gorge.

This piece of sculpture is in front of one of the few buildings along the road that parallels the Buller. Can you see what the mosquito is holding?

I’m always amazed at the engineering that went into this bit of the road. It’s one lane there, for obvious reasons!

We had a bicycle rack on the back of the ute we were traveling in, and it hadn’t been fastened on quite right (inexperienced person putting it on!). We stopped a couple of times to tighten it down, and during one of those stops Little Miss posed for me on top of this rock, near the end of the Lower Buller Gorge.

A view down the river at the same point.

The Karamea Bluff was astounding! We had never been up there before, so even though we were warned that there was quite a hill to get over before reaching our destination, it still took us somewhat by surprise. We stopped near the top to admire the view. This is looking south-southwest from the road.

Of course, the young people in our vehicle had to walk on the guard rail! James drove us; Mom, Esther, Mr. Sweetie, Little Miss and I were the passengers. Elijah drove his vehicle, too, with the rest of the family in it, and pulling the camper we borrowed.

See the cut in the hill? That’s where the road goes next, from where I took the two pictures above.

This was the scenery we found as we neared Karamea. It is in a flat area, surrounded on three sides by mountains and the fourth side by the sea.

I had looked online to find accommodation for us, and found the Karamea Memorial Domain Campground. The rates were actually affordable for us, and they gave us this nice, private corner between some of their gardens. We parked the camper in front, and pitched three tents back near the flax, and had ourselves a very nice place to stay.

This building was nearby. It housed everything else we needed–kitchen, lounge, toilets and showers.

The boys found the pool table first thing. Simon was overjoyed to find something he could do, after laying on the couch for two weeks! He used the rest to steady his cue stick, and was the undisputed champion of the family, with his legendary hand-eye coordination. They spent a lot of time playing there.

They even roped me into playing one evening!

We had the use of this lovely lounge whenever we wanted to relax and read or play games together.

They had a large, clean, well-equipped kitchen.

The dining room was perfect, too. We spent several afternoons playing a long, continuous game of dominoes here.

We took a portable grill with us, and cooked meals over it at least twice.

Hangi

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We decided to spend Waitangi Day this year with friends on the other side of the island. Waitangi Day is a celebration of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi between the English and the Maori, and is on February 6 each year. When we first talked about visiting these friends that weekend, I mentioned that Esther wanted to come home in time to go to the hangi in Greymouth. This is a big community picnic; a hangi is a traditional Maori way of cooking food by digging a hole and lighting a fire in it to heat up rocks (or large pieces of metal). The food is placed on the hot rocks, the hole is filled in with dirt and left for several hours, and then the food is dug up to be eaten. Our friends decided to have a hangi themselves, so that we could all experience it together, and as it turned out, the one in Greymouth was canceled due to heavy rain, so it worked out very well to stay there.

The children went swimming, and then warmed up by the fire. Notice James’s seat?

They tossed some old freezer baskets into the fire and burned off the plastic coating, and then we lined them with foil.

We put the meat in the foil-lined baskets, topped with pumpkin chunks and potatoes.

When the fire had burned down enough, the big embers were raked out. James was still supervising from his wheelbarrow!

After covering the baskets with cabbage leaves, they were lowered into the hole on top of the coals.

Next, wet sheets and wool blankets were put on top of the baskets.

After covering the blankets with wet burlap bags, the dirt was shoveled over everything, and we left it for about three hours.

Is it ready? Only one way to find out! They started digging the dirt out again.

All that wet cloth kept the food baskets clean.

We opened the baskets to check. What a delicious smell! The meat was cooked, but the vegetables weren’t quite done. We should have left it another half an hour and it would have been perfect. We finished the cooking in the house.

Everyone enjoyed the feast! Notice that Simon’s arm is in a sling. He came off his bicycle in January and broke his collar bone. This picture was taken two weeks after the accident.

We finished the evening with a round of singing children’s Sunday school songs. Everyone enjoyed that very much!

Waiuta

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I have already written about Waiuta in at least two other posts, so I won’t go into a lot of detail. We took my mom there on New Year’s Day. We went to a small Baptist church that day in Reefton, and then had a picnic at the old mining village and walked around for awhile. It was a beautiful day! One interesting thing from the day was figuring out what area of the village our house came from. We ate lunch in the lawn of one of the few remaining houses, and Esther noticed that the original paint color was the same as ours, and the roof is the same color. Then, I saw a photo of the entire village, and that section of houses are the only ones near the size of ours. Fun!

We got Grandma to take a picture of our family. It wasn’t as good as the one we had gotten the week before, at Punakaiki, though, so we’ll get that other one printed.

The little girls wanted their picture taken. They are rather photogenic!

My love and I!

Little Miss on top of an old wine cellar.

Simon, James, Mr. Sweetie and Mr. Imagination off on an adventure.

While Mom and Gayle checked out the foundations of an old building, Esther found a patch of self heal and harvested the flowers.

We went up to the Prohibition mine, at the top of the mountain. What a view!

One would think that James was tired that day!

On the way down the mountain, we had to move over to let another vehicle past on the narrow road. We got a little too far over, and the wheels got sucked into the soft ground at the edge. We were very thankful to be on this side and not the other, where the cliff drops away sharply! It didn’t take the men long to get the van out, once everyone was out of it. Those of us who were not helping with the rescue walked down the road just a bit and stood at a bend, so we could stop anyone who happened to come along up the road–thankfully no one did. That’s an old watering trough from the horse-and-wagon days beside us where we were waiting.

Christmas Day, 2022

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As we often do, we went to the beach for Christmas Day. Since Christmas was on Sunday this year, we went to church in the morning, and then left soon after the meeting. We headed north along the coast from Greymouth towards Punakaiki, and stopped at the Strongman Mine Memorial to eat our picnic lunch. Of course, Elijah being Elijah, he had to climb the memorial while we were reading it.

After lunch, we drove on north. Because the sea was so calm, we decided not to bother stopping at Pancake Rocks, so we went to the Truman Track, just north of Punakaiki, instead. I took this video of the walk down to the sea, and the fun we had there.

I wanted a new family photo, so we stopped along the trail, before everyone got spread out, to take one. I got this picture while we were trying to figure out where the best lighting would be.

I took this one on the way down, too, since I wanted individual photos. This one didn’t make the cut; we ended up getting all the good ones with Esther’s camera.

It’s kind of a tradition to bury someone at the beach. James had great fun building a dike around himself, but was disgusted when the sea came around the ends!

After we played at the sea here for awhile, we got back into the vehicles and went farther north yet, to Charleston. There, the boys all went swimming and kayaking in Constant Bay, while the rest of us explored the sandy beach.

Use your imagination here! The beach was full of sparkles, as if someone had dumped glitter all over. I tried to get a picture of it, and almost succeeded. There is a drift of glitter through the center of this picture. The water was full of it, too. I think it’s mica.

This bluebottle jellyfish (actually, not a jellyfish but a siphonophore, but often called a jelly) washed up while we were there. The boys had seen it floating in the water just before we found it. We wanted to see the tentacles hanging down, and knew it would die anyway, so we brought it home in a container of seawater. That’s Esther’s hand for scale.

We stayed at that beach for an hour or more, and then went a little farther north, past the mouth of the Nile River, and explored a section of beach with lots of life in the cracks between rocks. There were a lot of these crabs, watching us and trying to get farther back in their safe hiding spots.

There were bluebottles everywhere. Most were washed up and drying out on the sand, but this one was still floating.

When we got home, we put the bluebottle in a preserving jar, and sure enough, the tentacles stretched out. It started feeding, moving its tentacles up and down–see the video at the bottom. It also turned its float up and down, and pulled itself into a horseshoe shape, and then stretched out again. Fascinating! By morning, the tentacles had died and by Monday evening they had completely disintegrated, turning the water blue.

Cross Country

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One day last week, a friend of ours organized a cross-country race for the local homeschool children. It was very low-key; no prizes for the winners. It was just a time to have fun together! We held it at the Nelson Creek campground. The littlest children ran a 250-meter course, the older ones could choose to go 2 or 3 km, and the middle-age ones ran 1 km.

This is Mr. Sweetie about 2/3 of the way through his 3 km run. Mr. Imagination was right behind him.

Both my school boys nearing the finish line!

After the races and our picnic lunch, we took Grandma on a walk around the loop through the bush. A friend’s three children wanted to stay and spend more time, so we took them home with us later; their 4-year-old is leading Esther and Miss Joy in this picture.

Tramping!

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A few weeks ago, Simon and Elijah decided to take a three-day tramp in the mountains. Simon was between jobs, and Elijah had cut his hand and had a week off work, so they took off. Elijah took a lot of pictures with his phone, and shared them with me. Here is Simon, taking off up a river valley.

This picture needs a bit of explanation! The two of them had a thing going where they left their fingerprints on each trail marker. They figured that, if they got lost, someone could come along and dust all the trail markers to see where they had been!

That is the Top Trent Hut ahead. It was their goal for the first night; they had lunch at Elizabeth Hut.

This was the lunch stop on the second day.

Their second night out was spent at this hut, the Tutaekuri Hut. A French fly-fisherman joined them there for the night. They walked out from this point and arrived home early in the afternoon.

Here are some video clips Elijah took. They’ll give you a better idea of the terrain.

Fly-Out

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Simon has started a new job, since his time at the dairy farm came to an end. He is now picking moss. I don’t know where else in the world sphagnum moss is harvested, but the West Coast of New Zealand supplies a large share of the world’s supply. This moss grows wild in the swamps here, and harvesting it is a big business. Simon is going along with a man who has been doing it most of his life and loves the work, learning from him. He came home from work one day last week and told me they would be doing a “fly-out” the next day, and we should come to watch. I had planned to stay home and get some work done here, and do some school, but I decided we would have a field trip, instead. Sadly, we arrived just too late to see the bags flown out, but we learned a lot about the rest of the process! Another time maybe we’ll get to see that part.

This is a patch of moss in front of Simon’s boot. This is a thin spot, not worth harvesting, but because it was raining we didn’t want to go much farther. Anyway, he said that the mud gets pretty deep the farther you go into the swamp, and we didn’t want to get that dirty! They have to cut the gorse out, and then they use pitchforks to pick up the moss, cleaning mud and sticks out of each forkful before putting it into the bag.

These wool bags are filled with 200 kg of moss. Two are filled side by side, and when they have enough to fill a truck with 72 bags, they call in a helicopter to lift them out. The helicopter can lift two at once. Simon said that at first it was a 40-second turnaround between dropping off one set of bags and the next, and by the end it was 50 seconds, since the helicopter had to go a little farther.

Close-up of some of the moss.

The moss is trucked to the sheds. These are long, low buildings with clear roofs and lots of ventilation. The moss is spread out on these tables, made of bird netting fastened to frames, to dry.

After it has dried some, the moss is put through the kiln. This used to be a tobacco kiln, but is now used solely for moss. After the moss has dried enough here, it is sorted again to get out any more stuff you don’t want in your hanging baskets, and baled in an old wool press. The original 200 kg now weighs 11 kg.

Simon took a video with his phone of part of the fly-out. He told me that a lot of static electricity builds up in the cable. He unhooked the bags that were loaded onto a smaller truck, and said that he got shocked with every set of bags!

Orana Park, Again!

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We went to Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch twice in the past, but it has been a long time. We needed to go to Christchurch to pick my mom up at the airport, so Gayle and I decided to take our younger family (we have four older children and four younger, separated by four years) to the zoo. We spent about five hours walking around enjoying the animals. What makes Orana Park really stand out, though there aren’t very many animals compared to most zoos, is that we got to watch many of the animals being fed. We followed the schedule and saw every feeding for that day.

The meerkats were given eggs for this feeding.

Though the African porcupines normally sleep during the day, they came out eagerly for their dog biscuits!

Baby emus are cute!

When we arrived at the otter enclosure, they were standing up, begging in high-pitched squeaks and whistles for their fish!

All four children watching the ducks on one pond.

I’m not sure what type of birds these were, but they had a nest in the moat around the rhino enclosure.

Everyone’s favorite part of the zoo visit was feeding the giraffe! We were given olive branches, which we held up so the giraffe could strip off the leaves.

This is the baby giraffe–he’s about a year old.

They had fun feeding the turkey and chickens!

The lion feeding is always fun, too. This was the first day since Covid started that the truck was used to feed them. Only staff were on the truck for the trial run, but they plan to start selling tickets to the public again soon. Two of the three lions in the enclosure remembered this, but one didn’t seem to.

Tasmanian devil

We were very close to the rhinos while they ate their special treat: lucerne (alfalfa) hay.

I was talking to one of the zoo volunteers at the rhino enclosure, and happened to notice this nest right above his head. Not sure that was a good place to stand!

The children loved feeding the trout–and the ducks love the trout food! I tried to get a picture of the trout, but my battery ran out right there.