Tag Archives: Festival of light

Masterton and New Plymouth

I know I haven’t posted in a while but we have been extremely busy with the festive season as you will soon see.

We arrived at our grounds in Masterton and the site/sight that met our eyes was hideous, unbelievable not to mention preposterous. I mean, we knew it was going to be a gravel pit but not to this extent. All it was was shingle, broken glass and tumble weed!!!! It was something out of a cowboy movie!

We setup on those odious new grounds (our usual grounds had been trashed to mud by a Circus in the rain) then went for a lovely short bike ride around Henley lake, which was so nice I had to do it again with my friend Tiwai, which is unusual for me as biking is not exactly at the top of my favorite things to do list.

The weekend was super-hot. Heat radiated of the shingle and sunlight caught the disturbed dust (which believe me was everywhere).

Poor Daddy soaking up the heat in his black magic costume. Where did all the grass go?

Saturday afternoon we went to the swimming pools with a bunch of rowdy Gypsy kids, we stayed there with almost three hours playing and having a blast!

Sunday night after pack-down we moved on to the Masterton golf course with Simone, Tiwai and Lettie.

The next morning after a quick play with Tiwai and Lettie we said goodbye and headed to the Pukaha / Mt Bruce wildlife sanctuary.

The Mt Bruce sanctuary has New Zealands only white kiwi held in captivity and a number of other rare and endangered species including the amazing Kokako! I thoroughly suggest a visit.

Next stop Waverly beach where we worked on our art projects “Food for thought”.

               Getting into our art project.
Standing on an 80,000 year old Totara tree stump, buried by a volcanic lahar. These had us puzzled for a while until we worked out how they came to be here. They are rooted into rock below the tide line on the beach as well as exposed sticking out of the cliffs.

We then moved on to New Plymouth to have dinner and Movie night at Mums friend Peggys house.

New Plymouth was a hot, fun, successful fair topped off with our traditional boat ride at the festival of light.

                    Beautiful waterfall at festival of light.

Tongaparutu / the three sisters, was our next destination.

 

The arch a year ago, before it collapsed. Such a change!
Glad I wasn’t standing under there when it collapsed!
                           The boys went fishing.

After resting for a few days and enjoying the beach we headed all the way up to Auckland to spend another mini Christmas with my cousins, Auntie Ellie and Uncle Mat.

                        Welcome to Auckland!

We squeezed Mim into their Point Chev driveway and made merry for three days.

                                      Matching nighties…Yay!?

We high-tailed back down to Raglan for set-up on Christmas day. Bring on Christmas number Three.

Bye!