Thursday 10th January

Thursday 10th January

Back Home

We got up, had a coffee and breakfast and then packed up our stuff.

At about 9:30 am we were on our way. We stopped at the BP staion in Devon Street on the way home to "dump" our toilet cassette and buy some petrol.

We all met up again at Mokau at the other cafe for lunch.

From there we just made our way home. Got there about 3:00 pm feeling pretty tired. Unpacked the car and the caravan had tea and crashed!

Wednesday 9th January

Wednesday 9th January

Govett Brewster Art Gallery

In the morning we pottered round in the camp ground and then decided to have lunch before we did anything else.

After lunch we drove down to the Govett Brewster Art gallery to see the current Len Lye exhibition.



In the first gallery there were three "Wands" under the title "Group Therapy".

1. Zebra

2. Rotating Harmonic

3. Watusi

(Don't have an image for this)

These all rotated slightly of centre and created solid visual images that changed as you watched - fascinating!

Wand Dance

The next gallery had Five Wands with four on the outside and one in the centre. They all rotated, but not necessarily in sync with each other. It was like aliens interacting with each other - each wand had a pair of eyes at the top. The only thing I didn't like about it was the sound created as they interacted - it hurt my ears.

The next gallery had an exhibition "Triple Vita Nesting" by a South Korean artist - Haegue Yang

It was all about the disconnect that she felt as a South Korean artist living in Berlin.

The work that we liked best was "Umbra Creatures by Rockhole 2017-2018

and 

and 

After we got back to the camp Roy Watini came down to pick us up and take us back to his and his wife Jenny's place for dinner.

They lived at .... and had a beautiful view off the back of their property

We had a great dinner and good conversation until about 10:00 pm when Roy took us home.

Tuesday 8th January

Tuesday 8th January

Hawera
and
Pukekura Park

After breakfast, at about 9:00 am we set off for Hawera and the Tawhiti Museum. We found SH3 and went down through Inglewood, Stratford, Ngaere, Normanton and so on until we had to duck off to the left to get to the museum.

 It is the brainchild of its owner Nigel Ogle who used to be an art teacher. He retired in 1988 to set up and run the museum full time. He has an an artistic ability to create models that border on genius. Its main focuses are the Taranaki Musket Wars and the Taranaki Land Wars. You could get lost in there. A day is not enough time to explore and read all the information.

When we had explored that, and had lunch in the neat little café with its attendant local,

We then went to the Traders and Whalers exhibition which was a whole new experience built inside a huge old warehouse.

This involved an entrance through a winding cave and then onto a boat with a helmsman that conducted us through  the main part of the exhibition all about traders, whalers, and Maori interactions with them – amazing!

Beside that was a huge shed with a mind boggling collection of farm machinery.

We drove back along the coast road through Opunake. Mount Taranaki watched us all the way displaying  all his different moods.

We got back about 5:00pm, just in time to cook dinner.

After dinner at about 8:00 pm we went down to the Light Show in the Pukekura Gardens  

It was a beautiful still evening and the gardens looked their best. I liked the digital bells and the Light Bridge the best.

Here is the waterfall.

and the Poet's Bridge in day time

Got back to the camp ground at 10:00 pm

Monday 7th January

Monday 7th January

We're Off!

Huatoki Domain

We got up early and got the final packing done for the caravan and were ready to leave at 9:00 am. Tom and Patty rang to say that they would meet us at Viands at 9:30 am – which we did.

The first stop was “The Fat Pigeon Café” in Piopio where we had coffee and tea – all very nice.

 We bought petrol at the Gas staion before we carried on.

We then progressed to Mokau for a whitebait fritter lunch – a bit expensive at $18.50, but very nice.

As we drove from there to New Plymouth the weather turned hazy and then began to drizzle quite steadily. However, by the time we got to New Plymouth the drizzle stopped and the sky became blue!

The campground was in the Huatoki Domain and had enough room for 25 NZMCA campers. Took us a while to set up – the water pump refused to function – broken I think – but everything else worked fine – gas stove and gas frig.

Friends of Patty & Tom, Roy and Jenny came to visit. When they left we all had tea. Our portable barbecue was great!

At the end of the evening we played Patty and Tom’s new board game called “Sequence” and had a lot of fun!