Lots of Helpers

Our family's life in New Zealand

Tauranga Bay and Gold Mine

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This is a good way to rest after working in the garden! We only have seven weeks to go before we meet our next little one, and I’m really starting to feel that way. With the help of James, and a little help from a couple of the others, I just got our tomato plants set out. It’s supposed to storm this afternoon, so I wanted them in the ground; we’ve had high winds all week since we got home from our trip so I didn’t want to set them out. Today is still quite windy, but with the hope of rain this afternoon we’re taking the chance. Anyway, now I’m tired and ready for a break, so this is a good time to sit down and work on this!

When we left the Coaltown Museum in Westport, it was lunchtime, so we headed out to Cape Foulwind for a picnic. Just south of the cape, at a little bay called Tauranga Bay, we found a lovely spot. We were pretty close to the beach, with New Zealand Flax and other vegetation all around. Several red-billed gulls and a weka or two entertained us with their begging. After lunch, we let the boys go down to the beach for a little while—and of course they immediately started digging a hole!

Wall Island, where a number of species of seabirds nest.

As we started driving again, we enjoyed seeing the clouds caught on the tops of the mountains. Our weather here often comes from the Tasman Sea, between New Zealand and Australia. When the clouds hit the West Coast, they have to rise to get over the mountains, which causes a lot of rainfall on that side of the mountains! By the time the weather gets over the mountains to our side, it’s pretty dry and we end up with hot, dry winds. Since they come from the north-west, they are called nor-westers! So, on a day like today, when we have a hot, dry nor-wester blowing, the West Coast is most likely getting a downpour. Anyway, it was interesting to see it for ourselves, with sunshine down on the coast and clouds in the tops of the mountains immediately inland, as the next picture shows.

Our next stop, after driving half an hour or so, was a historic gold mine near Charleston, which was a boom town at the peak of the gold rush. After the gold rush ended, people moved away, and moved the buildings away, so there was nothing left of the settlement. It is now being rebuilt; we saw several motels. The gold mine was pretty interesting, especially for the boys. They had made sure they had their headlamps and flashlights along this time; when we were there 4 1/2 years ago, we couldn’t explore any of the tunnels, since we didn’t have any lights. This time, they went way in to some of them!

This cute play house is next to the parking lot for the gold mine!

The gold here is in the form of sand. It’s pretty much just dust. The miners would dig out the rocks that contained the ore, and crush them with an apparatus powered by a water wheel. When they had the ore crushed back into sand, they would put it in a sluice and run it over copper plates coated with mercury. The gold dust would combine with the mercury, and then they would heat it in a retort. The mercury would evaporate, then condense again away from the gold and they could reuse the mercury. The gold extracted this way, the man in the office said, was about 99.9% pure!

These two pictures show just a tiny glimpse of the incredible scenery we enjoyed on our way from Westport to Pancake Rocks. We thoroughly enjoyed a sunny day, one of only two on this trip.

Coming next…Pancake Rocks! Check back in another day or two and see if I got the videos up here of the incredible show we were privileged to see!

Westport = Coal

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The first town we stopped in on our West Coast trip was Westport. Westport is a historical coal-mining town, and there is still a lot of coal shipped out of there! It is interesting to look at the cuts along the road; most of them have a coal seam in them. We learned a lot about coal mining. And, an interesting side note—the motel/campground where we spent the night heats their water with coal! My second boy saw the owner, in the morning, loading coal into a large hopper in a building next to the kitchen/toilet block. He asked if the man buys coal by the truckload. No; he digs it out of his own private mine by the truckload!

The first place we went sight-seeing in Westport was an accidental find. We were trying to get out of town to the north to go to the Denniston Incline, and ended up at Tip End, which turned out to be a breakwall we could drive out on, way out to the end of the Buller River. There is a breakwall on each side of the river mouth, forming a harbor for shipping coal. We enjoyed watching the enormous waves roll past and break on the bar at the river mouth. The end of the breakwall doubles as a memorial to sailors lost at sea, from Westport, and some drowned right there at the sandbar.

Mom and Esther

This is  Nathan,  James,  and  Simon.

After spending a little while enjoying the waves out there, we finally did find our way out of town to the Denniston Incline. For about 88 years, until it closed down in 1967, the Denniston Incline was used to transport coal from mines on top of a very high plateau down to sea level, to be shipped to Westport by train and then on ships. It was only one of at least a half dozen inclines, all of which seem to have operated similarly. This one is in the process of being restored. The basic idea was that coal was transported to the edge of the plateau, either in huge “buckets” on aerial tracks or, later, by truck, then put into Q wagons, which are train cars. These Q wagons were run down a very steep track, by gravity, falling 510 meters in 1.7 kilometers! There were two sections of the track, with a brake at the top of each. Once at the bottom, the Q wagons were unhooked, then hooked up to a train for the trip to Westport. Each full wagon, as it went down, pulled an empty one back up to the top. That must have taken some coordination; a lot of places, there was only room for a single track! They obviously had it timed so that the full and empty wagons passed in the places where there was room for two tracks. We really enjoyed walking around the site, although it would have been much better if the weather was better. It was raining and sleeting and cold during this visit! That is not uncommon weather there, though.

A view on the way up to the top. The road is not for the faint of heart! Very steep, and a lot of winding back and forth. I noticed a sign at the bottom warning that this road is used seven days a week by mining trucks.

The top of the incline, and looking down it. Not too good a picture, but remember what I said about the weather?!

After the incline was shut down, the buildings burned, and these ruins are what is left. The tracks in the upper center lead to the top of the incline; you can see it start to go down.

Gayle and the boys did more exploring than we females. I’m not sure what this was; James has his own camera and he took this picture. Edited to add: I have now been told that this was a track that led up to the mouth of a mine. It had rails on it that trolleys of coal were pushed along to take them to the top of the incline, and there are apparently even trolleys left there!

The next day, the weather was great—and we toured the Coaltown Museum in Westport! We should have done that the first day, and gone up to Denniston the second day. Ah, hindsight. It was quite interesting to see the exhibits, though, after having toured Denniston already.

This is what we saw from where we parked to visit the museum!Not sure who took this picture, but I thought it was cute. Daddy carried the youngest from the van to the museum.A few pictures from the museum: Top is a Q wagon at the actual slope at the steepest part of the incline. Third is the brake drum used to stop the wagons, and bottom is our youngest in front of one of the small wagons they used to pull coal out of the mines.

All in all, it was a very educational time we spent in Westport! The museum is very well done, and economical for even a large family. We would love to spend more time at the Denniston Incline, and I look forward to seeing further restoration there. A lot has been done since we were there four and a half years ago.

More about the trip to follow!

Off on a Holiday!

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We don’t get to take very many trips, which is fine with me, being a homebody, but ever since May we’ve been planning to go to the West Coast while Mom is here. Gayle has a very hard time getting permission to take time off from work, even though he is legally entitled to it, so we were excited a couple of months ago when his request for a week right now was finally approved—after waiting three or four months for his boss to make the decision! We borrowed a neighbor’s pop-top camper again, and Wednesday morning last week packed it and the van with all we thought we’d need for a week of camping, and then took off!

We made it across the range of hills directly to the west of us, and passed through the little village of Waiau, then crossed the Waiau River on this long one-lane bridge. It’s a good thing it has a passing bay in the middle, as someone was coming toward us and had to pull off for us to pass! Then, we went up through wilder and wilder hills towards Lewis Pass.

We saw snow on the high peaks as we drove toward the mountains, and then as we got closer could see that it was snowing at that moment, up high! When we reached the top of the pass, there was actually snow on the ground! We haven’t seen snow up close for over two years, so we stopped a few minutes to let the boys check it out. Our youngest had never touched snow, and he was thrilled. His biggest brother was very happy to help him investigate this new stuff.

The terrain changed as we went down the west side of the pass.

We had to laugh at the snowplow we saw—rather a contrast to the ones in Michigan! It had come over the pass behind us.

When we reached Reefton, we could tell something was different from home—we smelled coal smoke in the air! Apparently, that’s what people heat with there. We saw a coal mine near the township (village), and a train of coal cars on a siding.

Soon, we were driving along the Buller River. There is a pretty wild gorge that the river, and the road, go through. One place, a road had to be carved out of the cliff. As you can see, there is only one lane! Quite the engineering feat.

To Kaikoura With Grandma!

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We are really enjoying having my mother with us for the month. All our adventures are more fun with a visitor! The first Sunday she was here, we went to Kaikoura for church, as usual.

The hills between here and Kaikoura are covered with broom, and it is in bloom right now.

We got to see a train when we were along the coast. Not much time to take that kind of picture—that’s why you see the reflection on the window!

After church we went to the Kaikoura Peninsula—lots to see there

Gayle turned over some rocks to find critters. Here were two starfish together—see the dark one?

The crab was hard to photograph, as it scuttled away quickly.

The sea was a gorgeous blue that day. The big plants are bull kelp; it grows in enormous beds all along our coastline.

After we left the Peninsula, we drove up the coast and stopped near the Oaro River. You can walk along the railroad tracks and enjoy a beautiful stretch of coastline. The big attraction for our boys is the wrecked train cars that were dumped along the sea at one point to prevent erosion! We ladies didn’t walk that far, though.

James, posing behind sweet peas with yellow lupines around.

 

Dead Boring Concert

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Our annual homeschool group concert was this past Saturday evening. The group is called Dead Boring—but it’s anything but what its name sounds like! There was a wide variety of musical talent displayed; quite a number of piano pieces were played, but also several recorder and flute presentations, as well as violin and even accordian! A few people sang; Esther helped another family do a shadow play about a little boy whose mother said he didn’t even have the common sense he was born with—but she ended by saying she loved him anyway and always would! Several families collaborated to present a play from Winnie-the-Pooh of the story of Pooh-sticks. Our children recited a poem and sang a song. I hope you’ll be able to hear the poem. They didn’t use the microphone this time, as everyone in the hall was able to hear, but the camera didn’t pick it up very loudly.


If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

After the poem, they sang a song called “Grumblers”.

GRUMBLERS

In country, town or city some people can be found
Who spend their lives in grumbling at ev-‘ry-thing around;
O yes, they always grumble, no matter what we say,
For these are chronic grumblers and they grumble night and day.

CHORUS:
O they grumble on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,
Grumble on Thursday too,
Grumble on Friday, Saturday, Sunday,
Grumble the whole week thru.
                        (Repeat)

If you don’t quit your grumbling and stop it now and here,
You’ll never get to heaven, no grumblers enter there.
Repent and be converted, be saved from all your sin;
You know that grumbling Christians find it hard a crown to win.

And one more picture: Our youngest was enthralled with the accordion music that was played! A young man and his teacher played a duet on their accordions, and it was very beautiful.

Early October pictures

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One of the smallest praying mantises I’ve ever seen (that’s Esther’s hand). It was incredibly hard to get the picture because the camera didn’t want to focus there, and it kept moving (jumped onto the lens once!).

And this is something I was glad to have not known about until I found the pictures on the memory card later! This is my daredevil second boy, way up high in a gum tree. He hauled the ladder up after him to bridge the gap between branches. He did make it back down safely!

The second and fourth boys have been diligently working at lining their sleepout walls with cardboard, and then painting it.

This little boy (our youngest) is so cute! I love the way he walks so purposefully across the yard. His favorite place in the kitchen is up on the countertop, where he can see what’s going on.

One evening our silly boys had a contest to see who could put the most different items on their bread. It started when one put plum jam, grapefruit marmalade, and pumpkin butter on his bread, in separate stripes—that one was actually sensible, in Mom’s opinion. This boy, #2, was the ultimate winner (in his opinion)—he found 15 things to put on his bread! Yes, I made him eat it.

Ryan Craig, from Twizel, is walking the length of New Zealand for the fourth time pulling a cross, carrying the message of forgiveness. He stayed with us for a night, and our boys really enjoyed him. To learn more about him, visit https://www.facebook.com/RyanCraigsWalk2014/timeline

Last Sunday on our way home from church we stopped for a little while along the coast, which we haven’t done in a long time. The boys sure enjoyed climbing around on the rocks! Top picture is James, our 4th boy; next is Joseph, the 5th. Beyond them was a huge flock of birds on the water. Next picture is James, then Elijah, then Simon. The next two include Seth and Joseph with us.

A beautiful spiderweb I noticed while milking one morning.

The calf we were given a few weeks ago. She was born in the yards where Gayle works, just before her mother was butchered. She was initially given to a friend of ours who works there also, who got her started eating but then decided she couldn’t afford to keep her cattle and gave her to us! This calf is very healthy and frisky, and absolutely loves her foster “mother”—Seth, our first boy!

We got our potatoes planted last week, and then I assigned the boys to mulch them with a bale of straw we had. They did a great job!

Birthday Party!

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We had a birthday party a couple of weeks ago for two of the boys—the third and fifth boys, whose birthdays are just a week apart the end of September and beginning of October. It had to be postponed for several days from the original date selected, because the older boy was sick, and only one friend ended up being able to come. That was disappointing, but we made the best of it. The weather was horrid—cold, rainy and windy, so they had to play in the house. They played Elephant Stop for awhile. In that game, one person is blindfolded, and counts to, maybe, 30, while everyone else moves around. Then, the blindfolded person calls out, “Elephant Stop!” and the others must stop wherever they are. They are allowed to move any part of their body besides their feet. Some boys climbed up on the bunkbeds!

After that game, we moved out to the garage to  break a pinata that the older birthday boy made. It was supposed to look like a sheep. It was great fun, as usual, to watch the participants trying to break the swinging pinata!

 

September Pictures

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Esther took these pictures around her little house soon after we moved. The chickens were left here when the owners moved out; they’ve now been locked up. Our cat, Ginger, loves her house. He has a comfortable bed on the front porch!

The littlest boy loves the little picnic table close to the kitchen door! He wants to take his lunch out there to eat it, and sometimes asks to take his breakfast out. The other boys sometimes join him. Apparently, this time, the youngest had gone elsewhere, because the ones in the picture are Simon and Joseph, the second and fifth boys.

I’m horrible about getting before-and-after photos, but we put two shelves up in the kitchen to make more space. Simon bought himself a cordless drill, and was thrilled to use it to put up the shelves. That’s James helping him.

Time to work up the garden—but the tiller (rotary hoe here) broke. They’re busy fixing it. That’s Seth,  James  and  Simon.

Nathan is enjoying this swing, and James likes to swing him!

Moving

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I know this is rather overdue—but here are a few pictures we got of the moving process.

The first thing we did was to pack as much household stuff as possible into the shipping container. My husband is the world’s most efficient packer, and he taught his boys some of his tricks. We fit approximately 6 tons into that 20-foot container!

The two little boys couldn’t do much to help, but they oversaw the operation! Our truck, and a friend’s trailer, were used to ferry things from the house to the container, which was out by the road.

Firewood had to be moved, too—that was taken directly to the new house, after the container was full.

The company we hired to move the container made a mistake and sent too small a truck the first time. It couldn’t lift the container.

A few days later, we got them to send out their big truck, and that one had no trouble moving the container. The man tried to turn around, but the road was too narrow, and he had to back all the way out to the end of the road (about 360 meters).

Because we loaded everything we could do without for a week into the container, we sat on the floor a lot that last week. The boys laid on their tummies for bedtime prayers; this is Daddy blessing them.

I spent a lot of time the last week cleaning. The little boys helped me wash the kitchen fridge! And that is all the pictures we got of our last week in the Fosters Road house, and of the move!

Hard-Working Boys!

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After Gayle got home this afternoon, he suggested that Seth start mowing lawn. He also told me he wanted to clean his truck. The next thing I knew, when I looked outside, this is what I saw!

Three boys mowing lawn (one mower no longer has the self-propelled feature, so two boys push it)….

Elijah was weed-whacking….

And these two were vacuuming! I love it when they are all working like this. Big sister is at work, too, cleaning at the place her daddy works. I need to get busy now; I’m the only lazy one at the moment! Time to fix supper.