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Away From Home

Downtown Dunedin

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The day we visited the Otago Museum in Dunedin, we did a lot of walking. We parked the car on a back street, walked to the museum, walked back to the car for lunch, walked to the Railway Station, walked to the Otago Museum again, then walked back to the car to go back to our friends’ house for the night. That was over an hour of walking! The little girls were getting pretty tired by the end, but they enjoyed seeing all the sights. We made a point of going to the Railway Station, even though we were there a number of years ago (see this and this), because Miss Joy badly wanted to go inside the “beautiful building” every time we drove past it. It is the most-photographed building in New Zealand, for good reason.

Here are a couple of other random beautiful buildings we saw while we were walking around the downtown area.

Butterfly House/Museum

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While we were in Dunedin, we went to the Otago Museum. Most of the museum is free, but we paid to go to the science center, which includes a Butterfly House. We got there in time to see the daily release of newly-hatched butterflies. There are three stories, and the temperature rises from comfortable at the bottom to hot and steamy at the top, to mimic a tropical rain forest. We enjoyed seeing so many unusual butterflies! Everyone enjoyed letting butterflies rest on their hand: Little Miss,

Mr. Diligence,

Gayle,

yours truly,

Miss Joy,

and Mr. Sweetie.

A red-eared slider lived in a small pond on the bottom level. This was special to us because my sister in America has a terrarium with eight of these turtles that they accidentally dug up.

Before we went in, we checked out these acoustic disks. They are about 50 feet apart. If you whisper into the center of one, from a few feet away, the whisper is easily heard at the other one, or anywhere in between.

I followed Miss Joy around while the other three children who were with us hung out with Gayle. She enjoyed playing with this exhibit, shaping a river bed and seeing the water flow through it.

Gayle grabbed these two pictures in the Animal Attic section of the museum.

Trip to Dunedin

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We recently made a trip to Dunedin to celebrate with a friend who, after battling an aggressive brain tumor, is now cancer-free. What a special reason to have a party! We enjoyed the drive through the mountains; the rata is blooming the most it has in about 20 years and was spectacular. That’s the red flowers you can see on the mountain sides in the next few pictures. Rata is a vine that climbs up a tree and eventually engulfs the tree, becoming a tree itself and killing its host. The bees love it, and the beekeepers are quite happy with this season; rata honey is apparently something special.

One afternoon while we were in Dunedin, three families went to the Botanical Garden for an hour or so. The children loved playing on the playground and walking the tracks, and I grabbed these pictures of my girls on a giant pinecone. I got a few other pictures, but they have too many children from other families in them to share here.

This was an overview of part of the gardens, as we headed down the hill to the playground.

On our way home, we stopped for a short time at Moeraki Boulders. The last time we stopped there it was raining, so we didn’t see much. It was fun to investigate today, even though the tide was so high.

We saw a couple of boulders that had split open. It was very interesting to see inside them!

This boulder seems to have only recently washed out of the cliff. It was nearly perfectly spherical, and still smooth. For reference, Mr. Sweetie, to the left, is just over five feet tall, and Gayle is just over six feet.

I always love seeing the Rakaia River when we cross the Gorge on our way through. It is so blue!

I’ll be sharing more pictures in the next two weeks from our trip–there were too many for one post!

Boating the Ahaura

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The Sunday afternoon just before Christmas, the boys who were at church decided to boat down the Ahaura River from Jim’s Hut, just at the end of the Ahaura Gorge, to here, near the confluence of the Ahaura and the Grey Rivers. The girls decided to go along to drive the vehicle back, and do some hiking while they were in the area. So, they saw the boys off and then drove up the track a short way. They walked down another track to an old hut, and when they were coming back, some of the boys popped out of the bush! Just after launching the boat and kayaks, the barrel boat got swamped by big waves in the rapids. It sank–and the boys who were in it were glad to have life jackets on! After a brief conference, three boys decided to walk back to catch up with the girls and get a ride out to civilization, while the rest of the party continued down the river with the kayaks. (The boat has never been seen again. It had no flotation devices, and sank in a deep spot. James is unhappy that he lost his water bottle, which he had tied to the boat so he wouldn’t lose it in the river.) About five hours later, the kayakers reached Ahaura and demolished several large homemade pizzas!

Mr. Imagination ready for takeoff.

Little Miss

There is our last glimpse of the barrel boat!

Elijah

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Elijah turned 21 a few months ago, and also completed his floor-laying apprenticeship. We decided to have a party to celebrate, and Saturday night about 60 people gathered in our local park to spend the evening together. Here are the few pictures I took, mostly of where people took refuge during the brief rain. There were a number of little girls crowded into the back of Elijah’s ute, behind Simon and a couple of girls who were sitting on the tailgate.

I put together a slideshow of pictures of Elijah’s life. Enjoy!

Tramp in the Mountains

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The last two days of November and the first of December, Elijah took his two youngest brothers on a tramp in the mountains. I’m not going to add commentary because I don’t know where these pictures were taken, but I’ll add a story that Mr. Imagination wrote a few days later, at the end.

Another picture for Grandma! He thinks of you while he’s out in the wilderness.

OUR TRAMP

Last Saturday, two of my brothers, Elijah and Joe, and I went on a tramp. The first day, we started just on the Bell Hill road by Rotomanu. We tramped to the Jacko Flat hut, following the Crooked River, and then up to the Top Crooked Hut. We saw a lot of 1080 on the way. It was a fairly easy track, although since it was the first day I did get pretty sore. The river was really blue as we walked along. At the Top Crooked Hut, it was about as small as Orwell Creek usually is. We had a swim and then dinner. We had sausages and mashed potatoes. When Elijah cooked the sausages, he had a full pot of water and dropped the whole pack in. The pot was too full and water went all over the floor. We had to wipe it up with Joe’s socks. The meal was very good. Just as we were going to bed an older lady arrived, and spent the night with us there.

The next day, we climbed over the mountains up to Lake Morgan Hut. On the way there we saw a chamois and a lot of grasshoppers. Climbing up some mountain ranges, we got up to 1,400 meters. Since we were up on the tops, there weren’t any trees so the views were very good. There was lots of porcupine scrub and turpentine bush. Elijah looked at the map and decided we should start going down to the lake, but he had seen the map wrong and we accidentally went to the wrong set of valleys. After we figured out that it was the wrong one then we had to walk around to the next mountain range and there, we dropped down to Lake Morgan. After we got to the bottom of the valley by the lake we climbed down we saw a tarn with lots of tadpoles in it. We stopped by the Morgan River for lunch and then went around to Lake Morgan Hut. The hut didn’t have a fireplace, so that was quite annoying. We got there about 1:00 and had a swim. Then the rest of the afternoon we played card games and read magazines that were in the hut. We had some very nice rice risotto for dinner. We slept well that night.

On the third day, we had just walked out of the hut when a kea flew overhead and off into the distance. It was quite misty, but it cleared up pretty well. The mist was cool because we could see it blowing up past us as the wind cleared it. We followed the river and about halfway down the boulders got about as big as our guest cabin. We decided it was easier to bush bash than climb down the big rocks. I managed to destroy my pants falling down one rock, so that helped make the decision, too. When we got to the Cone Creek track we had lunch and then filtered some more water. We found a couple of dead birds going out, probably from 1080. We did not have time to stop and have a soak at the hot pools, so we decided we would do that next time. Where Cone Creek track joins up with Elizabeth Hut track Elijah let a friend know that we would be about two hours out by texting him with the InReach. We got out at 6:00 and were picked up by a friend. We got back to the car and drove home. It was a very fun tramp.

Christmas 2024–Hokitka Gorge

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We had to wait a couple of days this year for our annual family Christmas excursion. Simon had to work on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, and it rained on Christmas Day anyway, so we waited until the 27th. We had decided to visit the Hokitika Gorge, which we had never been to. It was a bad time to go there, since it is the peak of tourist season and there were hundreds of people, but the scenery was amazing. First, here is a glimpse of what we enjoyed on our way to the gorge.

When we arrived, the first order of business was to eat lunch. Elijah grilled burgers and we enjoyed delicious sandwiches.

Then, we walked the gorge track. The water was incredibly blue! That is caused by minute bits of rock ground off the mountains by glaciers, which is suspended in the water and reflects the blue of the sky.

This little girl got carried the entire way by big brothers. She felt like a queen!

James couldn’t resist crawling through this culvert. It was a tight enough squeeze that he had to keep his arms out in front of his head.

Think she likes the service she receives?

After we finished walking around the gorge, we decided to find some water so those who wanted to could go swimming. We checked out a beach along the sea, but it was open to the sun and those of us who didn’t want to swim decided we wanted shade to sit in, so we found a way down to the Taramakau River. The bridge in the background of some of these pictures used to be a rail/road bridge (see this post), but a new bridge was built beside it about six years ago, for cars, so the original bridge is for trains only. Several of the children went swimming…

…while Simon collected logs for firewood and got his caveman fix by teaching Elijah how to break them up into the right size for a bonfire without using a hatchet. It was pretty funny to watch that process! (No one got hurt.)

They made a very satisfying fire that burned down into a nice bed of coals for roasting sausages and marshmallows. While the fire was burning down, James requested that Esther read aloud to us. She hadn’t brought the book she is reading, but found it in an online library and downloaded it so we could read the next chapter.

Our family Christmas outing was very satisfying! Simon said at the end of the day that it had been “epic”–his highest praise!

Mountain Climb

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Once a month, Simon has a three-day weekend off from work. On his weekend in November, he and some friends came up with the idea of climbing a mountain early in the morning to see the sun rise. They left here at 3:30 on the Saturday morning and drove about 20 minutes to a track that goes up into the Paparoa Mountains, a low range between us and the Tasman Sea. They were at the top in time for sunrise, but clouds came up with the sun and they didn’t see much of that. They had great fun, though, and the scenery they did get to enjoy was amazing! This is the town just below the mountain.

One of the boys found this bottle in a tree.

Elijah took this picture for Grandma, for obvious reasons.

Simon in silhouette.

The track goes to this group of cell towers, which are visible from our house if you know where to look.

They found some sort of vine that they could swing on. I enjoyed these video clips, so thought I’d share them.

Snowy Mountains

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We were privileged to see a lot of snow on mountains late this winter. I took these first five pictures as Gayle and I drove to Christchurch one Saturday morning for an appointment. The drive over Arthurs Pass and through the mountains was spectacular!

Mr. Sweetie took these pictures one morning when the Paparoa Range, to the west of us, had a lot of snow on it.

And, to wrap this up, here are a few other pictures I took of mountains as we traveled home from North Canterbury in early September. This is heading toward Lewis Pass.

I was intrigued by this cloud formation and the rain coming down ahead of us.

This was a scene we enjoyed as we neared home that day.

Siblings Day!

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One weekend in September, Gayle and I had to go to Christchurch for an appointment on a Saturday morning. We stayed that night with friends, went to church over there, and came home Sunday afternoon. All eight of our children were at home that weekend, and they went to Hokitika for church on Sunday morning, then spent the rest of the day doing things together. Esther took a lot of pictures, but said she wouldn’t be posting them on her blog, so I decided to share their day here. They started out by walking along the beach for a little way. The “boat” is just poured concrete, a picnic area. (There have been a lot of shipwrecks there; in the early days there was a wreck about every 10 days, many of which were just groundings on the bar at the mouth of the river.)

Then, they went out to eat at an Indian restaurant.

The final activity was to visit the National Kiwi Centre. We were there once before, years ago, but the younger ones either didn’t remember it or weren’t born yet.

There is a large tank of eels, some of which are about 6 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, and around 100 years old.

At feeding time, visitors are allowed to help feed them. Eels grow up in fresh-water creeks and rivers, and when they are ready to mate and lay eggs, they swim out to sea and to tropical islands near the equator. There, they lay eggs, then die. The eggs hatch and make their way back to New Zealand, where they grow to maturity–often a hundred years! The people who run the aquarium know their eels are ready to make their way to the sea when they come in in the morning and find an eel on the floor; at that point they release them into the river to swim to the sea.

The highlight of the day was catching crayfish. There is a clip on the end of a string tied to a pole. To catch a crayfish, they picked up a piece of meat with the clip and dangled it in the water; when a crayfish grabbed it, they would lift it up then catch it in a net. Apparently, our crew spent 45 minutes catching and releasing crayfish! A week later, the older boys took the younger children to catch crayfish in a river near here because they had so much fun at the aquarium.