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Moonlight Track

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The first week of May, we spent a Sunday afternoon with friends, exploring the Moonlight Track in the Paparoa Range. This track is almost directly across the Grey River from our house, but a 30-minute drive because of the location of the bridges. It was a gorgeous, quiet spot to spend a few hours. I quickly found myself alone at the end of the line. I had forgotten to bring my walking shoes, so had to make do with my dress shoes. I enjoyed taking my time and soaking in the quiet of the forest after everyone else ran on ahead.

The views along the Moonlight River were amazing!

After awhile, I caught up with Gayle, Esther and Miss Joy who were sitting on rocks along the river and enjoying the water and the scenery.

We think of Grandma every time we see fungi!

I’m not sure what this was, but it was intriguing.

A couple of us took photos of a friendly bush robin. It actually got as close as about three inches from my feet, but moved so fast that I didn’t get a picture of it there.

I took a few side tracks that looked interesting. One of them came out on this clearing, with a sign that says, ” Moonlight Township 1860.” There was a bustling town here at that time, full of gold miners.

This enormous hole in the ground is at the far side of the town site.

The main track next goes between these piles of rocks. It looks as though the rocks which were dug out in the process of searching for gold were stacked very carefully in various places.

Up a hill on another side track, overlooking the river, I found this roofing iron–all that’s left of a house?

Beside it, Joe and I found this fireplace.

This bit of stone wall was just off to the side.

This pile of stones goes out over the river.

There were a number of caves, where gold was dug out long ago.

Another picture for Grandma–Elijah thinks this may have been slime mold.

I didn’t go as far as the swing bridge. Apparently, it wasn’t too scary!

April 2026 Photos

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This month’s photos are a little more varied than last! First are some mushrooms. These first three are pictures Elijah took while he was on a search. He has a new phone and loves the good camera built in to it.

The girls found these mushrooms growing in the garden and took the pictures for Grandma (the ones above were taken with Grandma in mind, too!).

The next one is mushrooms growing on rotten balage!

Elijah loves taking night pictures with his new phone. This was the moon over the Tasman Sea one night when he was in Hokitika for a birthday party.

The same night; this is the boat playground at the mouth of the Hokitika River.

Little Miss is determined to get 1,000 hours of outside time this year, so even when it rains, she’s outside. And when she’s outside, chances are that Miss Joy is, too. One rainy day, this is what I saw!

The girls harvested the first half of the pumpkins by themselves.

When it’s cold, we do school like this. Miss Joy got the coveted position directly in front of the fire this time. The cat makes sure she gets her spot close to it, too.

After being in milk since September 2024, Bluebell isn’t giving much anymore, but there sure is a lot of cream! See the cream line? I’ve been able to freeze great quantities of butter for the winter shortage. Some days, there is even more cream than this. Sadly, after 15-20 years of service for us, this 5-liter jar got cracked a few days ago. I’ll have to buy another stainless steel one.

One morning, I was hanging laundry. I noticed something fuzzy in the basket of wet clothes. My eyes aren’t quite as good as they used to be, and I didn’t look closely, either. I thought, “That’s an odd bit of black yarn; it almost looks like a spider.” I kept picking things up and shaking them out and hanging them. As I got down through the basket, the bit of yarn fell to the bottom… and then the legs moved. It WAS a giant, fuzzy spider! It had gone through a wash cycle and was still slightly alive. Mr. Imagination took it to the greenhouse, but it didn’t live much longer. I think he still has it, though, to bring out when he wants to shock someone.

Mr. Imagination is majorly into weaponry. His latest craze is slingshots. He has created many, many slingshots in the last while, and built this target to practice shooting. The towel is to stop the balls, and they can be recovered in the barrel so he can reuse them.

The day we traveled to Timaru for Easter Conference, the sky was absolutely clear, and the view as we came over a hill and could see Lake Coleridge in the distance was stunning. The photo doesn’t come anywhere near doing it justice.

The view as we came down into the Rakaia Gorge was stunning, too.

Miss Joy with her domino string.

The ultimate pick up sticks game–arrows!

This was part of Joe’s engineering course; he had to design a suspension bridge and then weight it down.

She’s protecting the chicks that are hatching! (Or maybe coveting….)

March 2026 Photos

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Cats and garden and truck… that covers most of the photos I liked from March! This first one, though, is of the lunar eclipse that month. What a spectacular sight! Elijah had a pair of image-stabilizing binoculars here at the time that he was testing out for his Land Search and Rescue group, and they made the moon amazingly clear. We also got to see the four biggest moons of Jupiter through them. What a thrill! The last time I saw those was with my dad, probably in the 1980s when he was given a telescope.

My girls love books and cats! Little Miss has been reading to Miss Joy a lot.

Mr. Imagination and Elijah with their stack.

The garden was gorgeous at that point. (It’s mostly dead now.) Esther took this picture one day while she was harvesting chamomile. The smell of this area… wonderful!

Sometime in March, Simon bought another Land Rover. This one started out life in 1963 with a different body; this one was put on in the 1980s. It isn’t running, and he plans to junk most of it, but he got it for certain parts that are especially good in that model. Anyway, the price was so low he couldn’t not get it!

And, cats! Goofy cats that rest in odd places and positions.

Boxes are the best.

Even if the box is so small it’s difficult to fit all four feet in!

This picture requires some explanation. One morning, around 11:00, someone saw Grizzly sitting like this in the yard, looking quite unhappy. It had started to rain an hour or so before this; she had been sitting there since 8:30 or so. She was very wet, but didn’t wake up enough to move until I nudged her as I went past, shortly after the picture was taken. Then, she got up, leaving a dry spot on the grass where she had been, and went under cover.

Recovery

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After he broke his hip, Joe (formerly called Mr. Sweetie) spent six weeks in a wheelchair. That was a challenge, in a house the size of ours with this many people living in it! We managed, though.

First, here are a couple of pictures Esther took while they were in the hospital

As soon as he was allowed to sit up in a wheelchair, Esther took him outside to a park across the street for some fresh air. This furniture is concrete with mosaic decorations!

I purchased an engineering course for Joe to do, since when he got hurt he had only a week’s worth of school left. That kept him busy for the entire time he was in a wheelchair, and he thoroughly enjoyed it! Here are a few of the projects he did. The first assignment was to hold a stack of books an inch off the floor, using only one sheet of printer paper and a foot of masking tape. He accomplished it!

This assignment was to create a free-standing tower with a given amount of paper and tape.

When we went back for his six-week check, to receive permission to start walking again, they took an x-ray to check his healing. Quite an impressive screw! About half of it is inside the bone.

February 2026 Photos

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February was a very eventful month! My last eight posts of family adventures have been of things we did away from home with Mom and my brother. Here are the rest of the pictures I have from the month, showing a few things that happened at home and the big trauma that Joe endured.

There was time for the children to play a few games with their uncle, and for him to enjoy the budgies.

On the way to church one Sunday morning, we had to stop for some cattle that were being moved down the road. What fun–we don’t see that very often anymore.

Mom did a few more puzzles, with occasional help from the rest of us. She started another puzzle the day before she left, but I don’t think it’s been touched since then!

I spent a lot of time harvesting. That was when the garden was still beautiful, before the late-summer diseases hit. I loved all the colors here in the pea/bean trellis!

Goofball came along to get some attention one day when I went to pick a few beans for dinner. She sat in the tub for a few minutes, then got out and walked away.

We hatched some more chicks. That never gets old!

One of the girls caught Grizzly in a box.

The day we went to Jim’s Hut, while he was walking along the road, Joe thought he pulled a muscle. For several days, he limped. I asked him about it several times, and he just said it hurt a little, but not bad. Then, on Monday morning, his brother startled him and he jumped. Suddenly he screamed in pain and couldn’t walk anymore. I came into the house just in time to see Elijah carrying him to the couch. An hour or so later, I took him to the hospital. The x-ray showed that the growth plate on his left femur had slipped apart, as you can see here. He was flown to Chrischurch in the helicopter within a couple of hours, and the next day he had surgery. They realigned the bone and put in a screw to hold it in place. He was in hospital for three days. Esther drove over there to care for him and bring him home when he was released.

We were all very thankful to have Joe back at home on Thursday evening! He spent the next 6 1/2 weeks in a wheelchair.

Right after Mom left, I found another slime mold in the greenhouse. That must be a perfect environment for them!

One evening, Gayle took pictures of what was happening outside. Two boys were practicing archery.

I was reading to the girls.

Kiwi Chick, Blackball, Brunner Mine

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We packed a lot into the last Saturday of my brother’s visit. All the males from our house went four wheel driving that day. I haven’t gotten any pictures from that trip, so I can’t share anything, but we ladies had a fun day. That morning a friend texted me that there was an open day at the Kiwi Creche across the river from us at Atarau. The people in charge of kiwis on the Coast collect eggs from wild birds, take them to Christchurch to be incubated, and then bring them back here when the chicks are a month or two old. They have a large area carefully fenced so that predators cannot get in, and they keep the young kiwis safely there so that they can learn to care for themselves and grow enough that stoats and weasels can’t harm them. One was to be released into that area that day, so we rearranged our plans quickly and went.

Before we got to see the baby kiwi, we listened to a talk about what the group does, and got to hold a real kiwi egg that had failed to hatch.

We watched the woman in charge weighing and measuring the baby, and then she carried it around the circle so that everyone could have a close-up look at it. After that, she tucked it into a hollow stump and covered the opening with ferns; kiwis are nocturnal.

We enjoyed seeing these water lilies. The kiwi creche is accessed through the grounds of a lodge, and it is gorgeous!

After leaving the Kiwi Creche, we had a picnic at a roadside table, and then drove to Blackball to have a look around. I had never been there before, so it was interesting to see a new area. On the far side of Blackball, we stumbled across the Blackball Mine, where coal was mined for a number of years before and after 1900. There were a lot of ruins there, and what looked like a great track to hike. We didn’t have time for that, though; Esther had started bread and needed to get home to get it out of the fridge and baked.

On Tuesday, I took the three youngest children, Mom and my brother to Greymouth. It was their last day, and with Esther and Joe in the Christchurch hospital, I wanted a distraction for everyone. We did a little fun shopping (fun for the ladies; the men went along with us). Then, we had lunch at the breakwall and watched a fishing boat go out.

Then, we went to the Brunner Mine at Stillwater and enjoyed the river and the ruins there. The paths and signs have been greatly improved since I was last there in 2018. We all enjoyed this one last fun thing before Mom and my brother left.

Pancake Rocks

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On the last Sunday my mom and brother were here, near the end of February, we took them to Pancake Rocks. Of course, Mom has been there before, but my brother hadn’t. We stopped at a picnic spot in the Buller Gorge for a picnic lunch, and after they ate, most of the group went down to the river for a few minutes.

Simon took a plate with him, to try his hand at panning gold. Are those flecks gold… or mica?

The weather was perfect for walking the track around Dolomite Point to see the blowholes.

And, there was a pretty good show! We were grateful that we could share that spectacle with my brother.

When we finished there, most of the family went to Punakaiki Caverns. Three of us were not interested in getting muddy, so we drove to the mouth of the Punakaiki River, instead, and walked on the beach.

Notice the gathering of seagulls?

It was a wonderful day–and as it turned out, the last day that Joe could walk for a long, long time. More about that in a later post.

Jim’s Hut

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Near the end of Mom and my brother’s time here, we took them to Jim’s Hut, a spot in the bush up the river, about half an hour’s drive from us. We took two four wheel drive trucks (this was before diesel prices went through the roof!), and packed a picnic lunch.

We ate lunch on the porch of the hut, overlooking the Ahaura River. What a lovely, peaceful spot!

The boys took their uncle across the river in the cage.

After lunch, we drove back the track to where we could walk to Hamer’s Flat. I had never been down that track, so I enjoyed seeing the trees and ferns–even though it started raining and we got quite wet!

Simon stayed behind the others to keep me in sight, and stopped every time he got to a sheltered spot, to wait for me.

Mom stayed at the vehicles, so I took pictures and brought back samples of a lot of the ferns I found, to show her.

Hamer’s Flat. This was used for cattle grazing until the late 1990s.

The hut was where people slept and ate when they were caring for their cattle. It is in pretty rough shape now. Apparently, the track used to be drivable! It has slipped away a lot by now, and there is no way to drive it at this point.

Heading back up the track from the flat. I didn’t stay in that position in the line for very long! All the younger people move much faster than I do.

This picture is near the head of the track, where it is still in good shape.

After we got home, Mom tried to identify the fern specimens I brought her.

Franz Josef

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While my brother was here, my children took him and Mom to the Glaciers, a few hour’s drive south of us. Fox Glacier is now inaccessible because roads washed out, but they walked as close as they could to Franz Josef, and explored some other places around there, too. On the way down there, they stopped at a historical site in Ross, where Joe found himself in the pillary.

They also stopped in Hari Hari to explore the mosaic garden, which is full of memorials for various people.

They walked to where they could see the glacier.

A rescue was in progress; someone had slipped and gotten hurt in the river bed.

They had rented a small cabin for the night. It had a kitchen, so meals were eaten there, and five people slept in it. The others pitched a tent.

At dark, several of them went to look at glowworms. For obvious reasons, it was difficult to take pictures of the worms!

In the morning, they did some more walking before heading for home. I’m not sure where this is, but somewhere near Franz Josef.

The last stop on the way home was at a beach near Greymouth.

Church Picnic and Coal Mine

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The first Sunday my brother was here, in mid-February, we were finally able to have the church picnic that had been proposed about a month earlier. We gathered at the Inangahua Swing Bridge for the picnic. The children had great fun playing at the edge of the river and on the bridge. Several hardy folks, including two of my boys, jumped from the bridge into the deep water underneath. I walked across, braving the swinging and swaying that is inevitable when several children are on it, and was amused at the warning sign at the far end.

Later in the afternoon, one of the church men took us to tour the coal mine that is up in the mountains above his dairy farm. We toured that mine several years ago, but Gayle had never been there, and we knew Mom and my brother would be interested. Because it was a weekend and the mine was not in operation, we got to drive all the way to the bottom of the pit.