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