Ahaura River

Birthday Cookout

September 28, 2019 by NZ Filbruns 2 Comments

Mr. Sweetie turned 10 yesterday. He wanted to celebrate with a fire down at the river, and roast sausages and marshmallows. We invited some friends to join us, but because of an emergency on their part, we ended up just having our family. We weren’t sure we could even do it, though, until the last minute, because it’s been rainy all week and was threatening this morning. About 11:30, Gayle and the boys decided to give it a try, and went down to the riverbed to start a fire. We’ve just gotten back, at 2:00 pm, and it’s still not raining—we got away with it this time!

I didn’t get any pictures while we were roasting our sausages. Once we were finished with them and the children had started roasting marshmallows, I remembered I had a camera! The marshmallow roasting was the amusing part, anyway. One boy declared that he couldn’t catch his marshmallow on fire. He roasted them slowly and perfectly. The next thing we knew, his marshmallow was on fire! He did do one perfectly for me. Another boy deliberately caught every one of his on fire. He’s too impatient to do them slowly.

Miss Joy seemed to enjoy her first cookout. She looked around, and slept for five minutes, and looked around some more.

Mr. Imagination charred his marshmallow, then worked at picking the charcoal off.

Several people put roasted marshmallows on top of their chocolate cupcakes.

Despite the early-spring chill, Mr. Diligence wanted to go swimming. He put on his togs and leaped into the creek—and came right back out again, shivering!

Several of the boys went up the creek with their sausage sticks to try to spear eels. They didn’t get any.

The last step before leaving was to douse the fire, which these two did, gleefully!

November 2018 Photos Part 1

December 22, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

November was a busy month! I ended up with a lot of photos that don’t really work for their own posts, so I’ll divide them in half.

The strip canoe is coming along nicely. This was early November; by now most of the hull is finished. I’ll have to get another picture soon.

The boys were in a hurry to have a boat and couldn’t wait for the strip canoe to be finished, so they cut open four barrels and welded them into a boat.

After the boat was finished, they attached the motor that was given to Simon, which he fixed so it would work, and asked their dad to take them down to the river one Sunday afternoon. The three oldest boys boated down the Grey River to the next town, 10 km (6 miles) by road but I’m sure farther by river. It took twice as long as we estimated, because they often had to get out and push it over shallow areas, and they sheared a pin once and had to fix it. (They didn’t have a spare, but found an old fence with loose ends of wire hanging off, cut a piece of that and used it for a pin!) They came back soaked, both from pushing the boat through the rapids, and from the rain that fell for awhile, but excited and ready to do it again!

We had quite the rain storm the first week of November. Here, we got 127 mm (5 inches) of rain in two days; up in the mountains there was twice that much or more. The river was raging from bank to bank. The younger boys and I drove across the bridge and back in the van just to see what it looked like. A woman drowned in a tributary of this river the evening of the day we took these pictures, far upstream, when the bank gave way under her as she and her family were looking at the flooding.

We also drove down to the creek below our town. It was flooded, too, of course.

Mr. Sweetie succeeded in opening a mango seed. I had never seen what is inside!

When we were in Christchurch in November, we went to a bulk foods store, and one of the things I was excited to find was corn masa flour! It’s yellow, rather than the white I’m used to using, but to find it at all was special. I made tortillas out of it, and then decided to make them into chips.

Mr. Imagination and Little Miss enjoyed brushing the tortillas with melted coconut oil, and then I cut them into chips. We sprinkled them generously with salt, and baked them for about 15 minutes. They were delicious—but quite hard. I think next time I’ll bake them for a shorter time.

Orwell Creek

December 1, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We are able to walk to a creek in about 5 minutes, and reach the spot where it empties into the river in 10 minutes. The boys found a spot that is deep and calm enough for swimming, so twice in the last several weeks we’ve walked down there on a Sunday afternoon. One of those days, they took Mr. Imagination’s boat along, and Simon floated in it down to the swimming hole. Then, they played with it and swam for awhile. It is a beautiful spot down there!

This time that we went down was two days after a torrential rain (we got 5 inches in two days; some places higher in the mountains got 2-3 times that much). The river obviously ran over this place—see how the grass is laid down!

Notice how the creek was still high. It had gone down about 6 inches since the day before, though.

When it was time to go back, Simon and Mr. Diligence twisted a grass rope with which to pull the boat up around a couple of bends, so they didn’t have to carry it so far.

These pictures were from the second time we walked down. Foxglove is in bloom everywhere now.

We crossed the creek just above its mouth. I liked this scene, with Gayle carrying Little Miss.

Mr. Diligence, Mr. Sweetie, and Mr. Imagination didn’t need help!

Simon gave Little Miss a ride home in his bike trailer, but going up the hill to get back to town was hard work. He stopped and had her push a little ways!

Here’s a video of the boat ride. Somehow, the quality turned out pretty poor; don’t try to full-screen it.

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.

Canoeing

August 25, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Mr. Intellectual has been working for a couple of months on building himself a canoe. He flattened some sheets of roofing iron and riveted them together in the proper shape, then built seats and finished the edges. He completed the job one Saturday evening, so the next afternoon, after we had church here, everyone walked down to the river to watch him try out his creation.

The launch!

The canoe started leaking immediately at every rivet.

Dumping out the water was a task which had to be done frequently.

It was also rather tipsy—and the water was cold!

Little Miss and her friends played safely on the bank!

Esther noticed this wood pigeon in a tree.

Simon soon gave up on the canoe and ran home for the boys’ half barrels. The children all had a lot of fun with them and the canoe. Despite the cold water, they played in it for an hour or so!

This was the view up the river from where we were enjoying the day.

Family Walk

April 7, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

One Sunday afternoon, our entire family walked down to the Ahaura River. We went down a road near us that went straight down the hill to the railroad track, then turned to cross a large creek.

Esther was very much not impressed with this old bridge. She calls it rickety, although many trucks cross it every day!

The creek.

After looking at the creek, we walked a long way to get to the river bed. It’s not the easiest place to push a stroller, but it worked all right with the big boys who enjoy pushing their little sister.

We had to cross the creek to get out to the Grey River.

This is the confluence of the Ahaura and Grey Rivers.

Just below where these boys are, the water rushes extremely fast through a very deep chute. They were at the top of it, keeping each other from washing away.

We passed these calves on the other side of the creek on our way home. We sure enjoyed that walk—this is a very beautiful area!

Mr. Imagination picked these lovely flowers for me.

Ahaura River

March 31, 2018 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We live less than one kilometer from a rather large river, the Ahaura, which flows into the Grey River just downstream from our town. One Sunday evening, a couple of weeks after we moved here, the children and I walked down to the riverbed after Gayle left for the week. We had fun exploring down there. Here is the track that goes down to the boat launch from the main road.

We cross this one-lane bridge nearly every day, taking Simon to work and bringing him home. It looks fine from this perspective, and is sturdy, but it sure looks rough on top. It’s an old wooden bridge, with some asphalt on top. You can see every plank, and one day when I crossed, one of the planks had popped up. It was down again when I came back through, 20 minutes later. That doesn’t really inspire confidence!

The underside of the bridge.

This goat is staked out near the bridge.

Looking upstream from the bridge.

A lot of willow shrubs grow in the higher parts of the riverbed. I was interested in how the foliage had been swept in one direction by a recent flood.

Many stock trucks and other heavy trucks cross this bridge every day!

This is the railroad bridge just downstream from the car bridge.

This was the end of our walk. We decided not to try to cross this spot! The main river is just to the left.

Notice the silt? There were large drifts of it here and there. The boys had fun slipping and sliding in it—and then they had an excuse to dip in the river before we headed home!

Both bridges, from downstream.