Thursday 1st December

Checked out and had a leisurely drive to Dargaville via the Kauri Forest and ferry. The Kauris are only a small part of the forest but tend to dwarf everything else. The main tree is about 2,000 years old and going strong.
Because our drive was so leisurely we only had 40 minutes for the museum in Dargaville, we did the best we could but I strongly recommend at least an hour and a half. It is a fabulous museum and seems to be mostly people’s collections donated to the museum. One room contains a small portion of someone’s accordian collection, he has around 300 of them and this room had maybe 40 or 50. There was a Scouting Display which was worth a longer browse, it had a couple of blankets covered with badges. I could have stayed much longer looking at the handful of old typewriters they had. One room was dedicated to maritime while another large room had some fabulous information about the gum diggers. This is Kauri gum, it’s very big business in this area as are souvenirs made of Kauri wood.

Kauri Tree, 2,000 years old.

One exhibit we were able to leave to last is the masts from the Rainbow Warrior, they are erected outside and you can see them for miles. Some lovely person has donated lighting for them and they should be visible for quite some distance. It’s string lighting in the shape of the sails.

Masts from the Rainbow Warrior

There’s a lot of information on the web about the Rainbow Warrior so I won’t give you too many details.  Basically it was the first ship in the Greenpeace fleet and it was sunk in a New Zealand harbour by the French Intelligence Service killing one of the activists.

Dargaville is known as the Kumara (sweet potato) capital and we couldn’t leave the area without eating some. I did consider buying the cookbook at the I-site but was talked out of as I would have to massage every single recipe to be able to eat them. The lady at the I-site tried to talk me into buying some Kumara but with only one night in town and not knowing what the cooking facilities would be like I had to decline. In the end we went to a restaurant in town and bought desert, it was interesting and I’m glad we did as it was interesting but not something I want to repeat. Kumara and Macadamia Cheesecake with Kumara Gelato is not really my cup of tea. It was served with a tiny drizzle of berry coulis which was delicious and improved things, the Kumara Gelato improved with time but I’m not sure about the cheesecake.

We stayed the night at a very interesting  place, the rooms are made of old railway carriages. Ours has an ensuite, a table, two chairs, queensize bed and a miniature kitchen with a fridge, toaster and kettle. There is also a communal toilet block, kitchen and lounge room. We bought some supplies at the local supermarket two minutes away and made use of the kitchen facilities, walking back to our railway carriage we heard the unmistakable sounds of bagpipes so we followed. It turned out it was a group who rehearse once a week and get together to play on different occasions, today they were practicing their Christmas Carols and when they were altogether they marched around town playing very nicely, I wanted to applaud but they hadn’t finished when they went out of sight.

Railway Carriage in Dargaville

This is my last post dedicated to my holiday in NZ. There is still plenty more I could have said but I’m going back to the topic of this website next week, it’s books, if you hadn’t guessed. I may come back with one more as I have mentioned witch’s hats or traffic cones a couple of times.

Monday 28th November

Checked out of the motel in good time and drove towards Paihia where we’re booked in for two nights.  The trip was pleasant as the temperature was warming up. We stopped to do a walk and look at the Kauri trees and a waterfall, the walk would have been rather nice if it hadn’t been for the hilly bits, the scenery was lovely and the trees were amazing.

We stopped in Wellsford for a coffee, I had the interesting experience of being faced with some lovely gluten free choices in cakes, they were actually better looking than the regular cakes, I had a lovely lemon tart. The shop was the Caffe Cozy on the corner.

We arrived in the beautiful Paihia, found our motel and then checked out the details of our cruise and the possibilities for dinner. One of the places is a Kebabs place and he was very understanding about allergies and intolerances as his wife is celiac, we plan to eat there tomorrow night, tonight’s dinner was venison upon a kumara frittata with a blueberry “chutney” (really just warmed through blueberries, went very nicely with the venison).

Tuesday 29th November

The big thing today was the cruise. It was leaving Paihia at 9:30am and we didn’t want to miss it so we ended up being there very early. It was fantabulous, we visited a large number of the islands, from just offshore and received a potted history while waiting in the cove. At one stage they received notice there really was a pod of dolphins in a good area for viewing so off we went.  They also asked for volunteers who wanted to possibly go swimming with them. We were told that only strong swimmers would be allowed to swim, they have various regulations they have to abide by to have a license and so were fairly strict about it telling us we needed to be able to swim overarm and be able to swim two lengths of the public pool, if we couldn’t do those then we were not strong enough swimmers. Six people jumped into the net, they were loaned snorkels, flippers and wetsuits, if they wanted them. Everyone else watched for the dolphins and yelled instructions, we did take lots of videos and photos of our own but it was much easier for us to see the dolphins and see them we did. Some of them were enjoying themselves playing in the wake of the boat so we had plenty of time to watch them. Apparently the boat crew name some of the dolphins, one of them was called Badjelly the Witch after the children’s book of the same name by Spike Milligan and her children were also named after the children of this character.

Here is a short video I took of the dolphins.

We stopped for lunch at one of the islands, we had the choice to eat on the island or on the boat, we ate on the boat and the went ashore to have a look around see the sights. We managed to take photos of a bird nesting. The wharf on this island had Zane Grey’s name on it apparently he spent some time living on that island so he could be up and out early in the morning before anyone else. He holds the unbeatable record for marlin fishing as there’s a limit on the number of fish you can catch in one day.

The day was over far too fast but as I stop typing to look at my sunburnt arms I feel it maybe finished just about on time. It’s always best to follow the instructions on the pack and put sunblock on every two hours, also, don’t use one that’s too far out of date it just doesn’t work well.

I didn’t end up having kebabs. The guy behind the counter had a whole day to think about it and to look at the ingredients, seeing as his wife had been diagnosed with celiacs only a few months ago he was very aware of the problems. Everything he looked at had issues and then he thought about the oil things had been cooked in and decided it wasn’t worth it. He’d gone to the trouble of pulling out a clean pair of tongs specially for me.