Away From Home

More Pictures From October 2018!

November 17, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Well, I should have looked at my memory card again before publishing last week’s post of pictures. There were several more good ones.

Mr. Diligence made the lions for the skit they performed at the concert. I found him a picture of a lion online, and Esther enlarged it. He glued them together, cut them out, and painted them. Then, he glued them to cardboard and made them stand up.

Simon learned to ride a backwards bike when someone loaned them one many years ago. He has wished for one ever since, so when he had a couple of days off work on a recent long weekend, he built one. When you turn the handlebars right, the wheel turns left, and when you turn the handlebars left, the wheel turns right. So far, all three of the older boys have learned to ride it.

I looked in the living room recently and saw Mr. Imagination telling Goofball to hold still. He wanted her to pose for him to draw a picture of her, but she wouldn’t cooperate. I suggested he hold her still while I took a picture, and then he could draw from that.

Here is the picture he drew and cut out.

Some of our friends from Dead Boring came to see us a few weeks ago. We met in Moana, and had a picnic together beside Lake Brunner. They had two 9-year-old girls along, and Little Miss, once she warmed up to them, had great fun helping them build a “hut.” It was basically an outline of grass, with flowers arranged artistically in it.

I wished I had taken a picture of this scene earlier. When we first arrived, the lake was calm and the mountains were mirrored in it, but then a wind came up. It was still beautiful!

This coal train came along, and stopped on the side track. Soon, we saw the passenger train come from the other direction and pass it, and then the coal train started moving again.

Dead Boring Concert 2018

November 14, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Even though we have moved away from Canterbury, we were still able to participate in this year’s Dead Boring Concert with our old homeschool group. The children wanted to perform a skit this year, so they enlisted the help of friends from here so they would have enough people to fill all the roles. Here are videos of all the numbers our family did.

Jet Boat Race

November 3, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Thursday morning, a friend called to tell us that there was a jet boat race happening on the Grey River, and the boats would finish at the bridge over the Ahaura River just down the hill from us. She gave us the times they would be taking off on each of their three trips up and down the river, and sure enough, we soon heard the first round arriving. The second round started arriving shortly before lunch, so we took off down to the river to watch. We were a couple hundred meters past the finish line, so they were slowing down, but we enjoyed watching them shoot under the bridges and stop just upstream from us.

After all the boats had arrived here, we walked down stream to wait for them to take off again. When we reached the finish/start line, we learned that it would be another 20 minutes, so we went farther and found a good spot to settle down right at the water’s edge. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the river bottom was so lovely, with bright yellow gorse and broom flowers all over. Yes, those shrubs are a terrible nuisance, but this time of year they are gorgeous!

Once the race started again, we enjoyed watching 19 boats go past. They left about a minute apart, and we could see the spray going up behind them for about 30-45 seconds, for maybe a mile around a couple of bends in the Grey River.

I tried to get a video to show the speed, and did get a few seconds—but then the batteries in my camera died.

Here are the few seconds of video I got.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYM_GUcf28
And there you have it–our impromptu field trip this week!

Chautona Havig’s free Kindle book this week is 31 Kisses. I enjoyed it, but didn’t write a review; it’s kind of a “fluffy” book—not a lot to it. It’s just clean, fun romance.

River and Tadpoles

October 27, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A couple of weeks ago, we spent a Sunday with friends who were camping beside a river about 30-40 minutes drive from us. It was a beautiful, sunny warm day, just perfect for being outside—although a couple of us got pretty sunburned, because we aren’t used to being in the sun!

The children discovered tadpoles in a boggy spot close to the campsite, so they spent the afternoon hunting. At first, they were finding tiny ones, and then they started finding very large tadpoles. We brought some home, and they took home a large number.

The glimpses we got of the snow-capped Southern Alps were gorgeous!

This is the Haupiri River. If you’ve ever heard of Gloriavale, it is directly between where we were standing here, and the mountain in the background.

My big boys tired of hunting tadpoles and wanted something more exciting to do. They borrowed a rope and used it to lower themselves to a pier of the bridge.

Then, they tied a rock to the rope and used it to measure the depth of the river—till the rock fell off!

Little Miss loves having girls her own size to play with!

The gorse is in bloom everywhere. It’s so pretty—wish it wasn’t such a horrible nuisance!

Here is one of our tadpoles. They are living, quite happily as far as we can see, in a tank of rain water with a log floating in it for when they need to climb out. We’re hoping they live long enough to develop into frogs so we can release them!

Waiuta

October 13, 2018 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Last Sunday, because several people had colds, we didn’t go anywhere for church. Instead, we had a meeting at home (minus Gayle, because he’s in America spending a little time with his mother), and then packed a picnic lunch and headed off on an adventure that turned into a field trip! You know, that’s a disadvantage of being homeschooled. You never get a day off. Or, maybe it’s an advantage—depends on your perspective!

We decided to go explore Waiuta, where there use to be a gold mine. Gold-bearing quartz was discovered on this site in 1905, and at the peak there were 500 people living in the village that grew up around the Blackwater Shaft. In 1951, however, the shaft collapsed, according to a sign at the historical site, and within three months only 20 people were left. A year later, practically all the houses were gone, dismantled to be rebuilt elsewhere. We found it quite fascinating to wander around, studying the various posters that have been put up around the area, and the ruins that are left, trying to imagine the place in its heyday.

This is the road that goes out to Waiuta. First, you travel through open farmland in a valley.

You pass the old Blackwater School, in use from 1913 to 1949, according to the sign above the door.

Then, you drive through thick bush for awhile. A lot of places, it was thicker than this photo shows, with the trees meeting overhead.

We wondered if this trough was for watering horses back in the day?

At last, you come out in the open, and you have reached Waiuta. The building here was the carpenter’s shop for the mine; the smokestack had something to do with running the mine. Possibly steam power for raising and lowering men and rocks from the shaft, which was just to the right of this picture?

There are a lot of non-native plants around, left to go wild from the gardens the miners and their families had. This flowering currant was loaded with blossoms and humming with bees. Simon wants to go back in December and see if there is any fruit on it!

We followed this trail to the old swimming pool.

The swimming pool was about 36 meters long, according to my boys who stepped it off. The other end was quite deep.

Back to the mine site. This machine was used to crush the quartz so the gold could be extracted.

Part of the foundations of the building.

The old mine shaft.

Inside the chimney. Simon noticed that the bricks are stamped Brunner. One of our next field trips will be to the Brunner Mine site, between us and Greymouth. They also had brick kilns there, besides the coal mine.

I think this was the boiler room.

These bushes were in bloom. I don’t know what they were, but the scent was amazing!

Walking back up to the mine from the area where many of the miner’s houses were. The piles of rocks are tailings from the mine. The area on top has been smoothed and planted in grass. We ate lunch at the edge of the bowling green. It is amazingly flat, with very lush grass.

I took this picture to help us find our way around.

After we had explored the main area, we drove up the mountain to the Prohibition Mine. This was connected with the mine in the first area we explored, deep underground. From up here, it was 879.5 meters, or about half a mile, to the lowest level of the mine. The sign said that was below sea level! Men were lowered in a cage, and the quartz was brought back up the same way. It took four minutes to raise or lower the men, but the quartz was moved in half that time.

This was the mine office. Someone has cut a hole in the door of the strong room, and my little ones crawled in.

The view across the Grey Valley from the Prohibition Mine was incredible!

This is what is left of the building in which they extracted the gold. It was built between 1937-39, and I presume it was only in operation until 1951, when the mine closed.

This turned out to be a great way to spend an afternoon when we couldn’t be with other people! It was a beautiful day, and a very interesting site. And, I didn’t know she was doing it, but Esther published a post today about this trip, as well. You can see her pictures here.

Skits for Grandma

September 29, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

A year ago, when we were in America, we helped celebrate my mom’s birthday. One of the things our children did was to perform four skits for the family. Their acting was not very polished, and at first they were pretty nervous, but some of the skits turned out fairly well. I had almost forgotten them, and then someone ran across the video we took of them on a memory card. So, I decided to share them here in case anyone is interested.

The first one is based on a story my dad used to tell. I told this story on my blog a few years ago, here.

The second is based on what one of the children thought he heard once, a number of years ago.

The third happened about a year and a half ago–and I still laugh to the point of tears when I watch this video.

And the last one needs a bit of explanation! My dad had a phobia of dentists, especially of getting a shot. He would say the needle they used was so big it took three nurses to carry it in.

Stamping Mill Video

April 24, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

When I wrote a post, about a month ago, about the day that we explored Reefton, I mentioned that I wanted to upload a video of the stamping mill we saw in action. I finally got it finished, so you can see and hear it working. I have added explanatory text, since it was too noisy to narrate.

Reefton

March 25, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We did something different today. We didn’t have the usual people to worship with this morning, since they are away for the weekend, so we decided to check out a group we heard of in Reefton, a town about 31 minutes drive from us. Because Gayle drives through there on his way back to the other coast for the week for work, we decided to spend the whole day in Reefton and explore some places we were curious about. That way, he didn’t have to drive back here and then go that way again. We figured out a menu for both lunch and tea, and packed everything we needed for a couple of picnics, including a birthday cake for Mr. Imagination, who turned six today. We had to drive the old van, because our in-house mechanic is in the process of fixing a few things on the new van and, due to difficulty obtaining one part, it was undriveable today. We just took it slow and allowed plenty of time, and enjoyed the scenery!

We enjoyed an inspiring service at the little church there, with the eight people who were present, and then brought food inside to add to their shared lunch. We had a delightful hour of fellowship as we got to know them, and then started out to see what Reefton had of interest.

Our first stop was The Bearded Miners, where you can watch a gold-panning demonstration. This man showed us, and a bus-load of tourists, how to tell the difference between fools gold and real gold, and how to find the alluvial gold in river sediments.

Next, we drove a couple of kilometers out of town to Black’s Point, where there is a small historical museum. Mr. Sweetie enjoyed these dredge buckets outside.

I didn’t take any pictures inside, but the man who was volunteering in there today made the eclectic collection of old stuff very interesting. One little tidbit that we gleaned was that, among other gold miners, were a lot of people from the Southern States of the United States. They had lost everything in the Civil War and came here to try to recoup their fortunes—gold was discovered in this area in 1865. We also saw a cash register that was used in this area in the 1800s, which was made in Dayton, Ohio, near where Gayle grew up.

When a tour group arrived at the museum, we went to the end of the road where an old stamping mill is set up. This was the method used to extract gold from quartz rock. I took a video of the machine working; I’ll try to get it up soon. The rock was fed from a hopper into this machine, where a waterwheel turned cogs that made the hammers go up and down. The rock was crushed to a fine sand and when it was fine enough it washed through a screen. The sheet of copper sloping gradually away from the hammers was coated with mercury, and the specks of gold chemically bonded with the mercury, while everything else washed away. Some bits of gold were still bonded to the quartz, however, so there was a mat in the trough just after the copper sheet. Heavy particles got caught there, and every so often that mat would be rinsed off and the stuff caught in it was put in the large metal pot in the next picture. There was mercury in the bottom of that, too. As that pot turned around, a grinder of some sort pulverized the particles that were put in there, and eventually the mercury at the bottom would bond with the gold particles. After several days, they would run water through that until it ran clear, and then harvest the mercury/gold alloy from the bottom, and also scrape the copper sheet clear. Then, they would pack that alloy, which was the consistency of putty, into a cast iron retort and heat it to vaporize and then distill the mercury, so they could reuse it. The gold would be left behind in the retort. This process was used until 1942, when they switched to a system totally different. He said he wouldn’t even try to explain, because it was so complicated.

When we left the stamping mill, we walked around the building and up a trail along this pipe, which used to be used to bring the enormous amounts of water needed to run the mill. Today, they have a plastic pipe buried underneath this one, which is rusted through in many places.

This is one of the largest toadstools I’ve ever seen! That’s a six-year-old’s feet beside it.

The water to run the stamping mill and generate electricity for the lights in the building comes from this creek.

The moss on the trees is unbelievable!

After we walked around a track in Black’s Point, we went back to Reefton. Our birthday boy was quite intrigued by the flowers on this banana tree. There were tiny green bananas, too.

We walked on a track along both sides of the Inangahua River beside Reefton. This town was the first in New Zealand to be lit with electric lights. The track goes past the original power station.

As you can see, it was a rainy afternoon. It was just a drizzle, not a downpour, so we kept going. I took the first of these last two pictures looking downstream from a swingbridge across the Inangahua, then walked on. As I neared the end of the bridge, the sun broke through the clouds and there was a snippet of a rainbow in the river on the upstream side, but it was gone before I got my camera up to take the second picture.

<p>I heard a few good-natured complaints that we don’t get a day off from school, even on Sundays! Everyone enjoyed the day, though, and Mr. Imagination said it was a very good birthday.

Nelson Creek

March 10, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One thing the boys are loving about living here is that there is a good swimming spot just 15 minutes from home, within 10 minutes from Simon’s work. Several times, we have gone to Nelson Creek to go swimming after picking Simon up from work. The family he works for, with whom he lived for six months before we moved here, has gone each time, too, so there are lots of children having lots of fun in the water each time!

The first time we went, there were a lot of people already using the favorite swimming hole, so we went to a bend downstream. Here, Simon is trying to get up into a cave. As you can see in the second picture, he got there, and then Mr. Intellectual and Mr. Diligence got there, too, although it was difficult.

Looking downstream from where I was sitting.

The boys found a long log, and pulled it upstream so they could float down on it.

The other times we went we were able to be at the other spot. It’s still in the sun in the evening, so it’s warmer. There are also steps dug into the cliff face, so they climb up and then jump into the deep water at the base. The splash when they hit the water is tremendous!

Between the two families there are four inner tubes—or were, until Mr. Diligence overinflated one of ours and then it hit a nail! The boys love tubing from the walking bridge just upstream, down past where we sit watching to the bend just below us.

Christmas Day

January 26, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On Christmas Day, we went to the same beach we’ve gone to the past two years, and had a picnic in our favorite grove of pine trees. The trees make a lovely shady spot, and their needles make a soft, springy floor to sit on.

After lunch, we headed down to the beach. Some of us sat on the shore and watched, and some spent the whole hour or two in the water! We laughed a lot at the boys at times, as the large waves picked up the inner tubes and dumped the boys upside down on the beach, sometimes piling all three of them together! Unfortunately, I didn’t think about taking pictures until just as the tide went low enough that the really funny antics weren’t happening anymore.

I told Simon he had grown a beard, so then Mr. Imagination tried to make one, too. Is it any wonder that I was scooping gravel out of the washing machine the next day?

Here is a video clip showing the fun the boys were having. It was a wonderful day!