Labour Weekend

As far as is possible, we avoid 'labour' of most varieties for the duration of Labour Weekend. An orchestra rehearsal on Friday evening meant that we could not get away until early Saturday morning, but having prepared the caravan and made the bookings in the course of the previous week, we hit the road at 8am and headed for Kaupokanui in tandem with our friends Rudolf and Wilma - (who own a really spectacular motor home.) The campsite is tucked away behind a hill and overlooks the tidal river which runs into the sea. In the picture here, we are on the ridge sort of overlooking the other vans and set a bit apart from the long, flashy caravan in the left of the picture.

 

We expected really bad weather and had installed card games, needlework, sketching equipment, television and reading material in the caravan for days of torrential rain and howling wind. We certainly had a bit of both - (it is after all New Zealand) but there was enough time when the weather was mild enough to take walks on the black sand dunes and go down and watch the folks fishing for whitebait.

As with so many of the beaches and rivers beside the coast, there is an abundance of driftwood. These two chappies have been fishing for whitebait - more about that a bit later - and although they had been there for most of the afternoon, they told me it hadn't been their best day! We didn't see any whitebait in those fine nets, so clearly, it was most probably closer to their worst day if you ask me. Most of the whitebait fishermen have rubber waders so they can stand about in the water and hope to snag a school of these teeny, little squirmy worms with eyes - actually they are newly hatched fish and are a delicacy here - people pay inordinate sums for 'whitebait fritters' which look like potato fritters with eyes! Eeeuw! Jo has in fact sampled the aforementioned fritters and reported that they were absolutely nothing to write home about - he said, "like an egg/potato fritter with a dodgy fishy taste" - so consequently, we will not be investing in the regulation rubber waders and fine whitebait nets any time soon!



The 'sand dunes' really are black, volcanic sand and are amazingly covered with shrubbery which grows happily in what one would think to be pretty inhospitable conditions.

A very pretty part of the West coast of the North Island - not too far from Hawera (for any of you who might feel inclined to look for it on a map) and not too far from home, cutting down on travelling time. The weather has been very un-Spring-like for ages now, so we're hoping the Summer is firmly en-route!

 

Whitebait is a collective term for the immature fry of fish, typically between 25 and 50 millimetres long. Such young fish often travel together in schools along the coast, and move into estuaries and sometimes up rivers where they can be easily caught with fine meshedfishing nets. Whitebaiting is the activity of catching whitebait.

Whitebait are tender and edible, and can be regarded as a delicacy. The entire fish is eaten including head, fins and gut. Some species make better eating than others, and the particular species that are marketed as "whitebait" varies in different parts of the world.

As whitebait consists of immature fry of many important food species (such as herring, sprat, sardines, mackerel, bass and many others) it is not an ecologicially viable foodstuff and in several countries strict controls on harvesting exist.

New Zealand whitebait are the juvenile of certain galaxiids which mature and live as adults in rivers with native forest surrounds. The eggs of these galaxiids are swept down to the ocean where they hatch and the young fry then move back up their home rivers as whitebait. They are much smaller than Chinese or British whitebait.

The most common whitebait species in New Zealand is the common galaxias or inanga, which lays its eggs during spring tides in Autumn on the banks of a river amongst grasses that are flooded by the tide. The next spring tide causes the eggs to hatch into larvae which are then flushed down to the sea with the outgoing tide where they form part of the ocean's plankton mass. After six months the developed juveniles return to rivers and move upstream to live in freshwater. The other galaxiid species identified with whitebait in New Zealand are the climbing galaxias or koaro, and the species group calledkokopu.^[2]

New Zealand whitebait are caught in the lower reaches of the rivers using small open-mouthed hand-held nets although in some parts of the country where whitebait are more plentiful, larger (but not very large) set nets may be used adjacent to river banks. Whitebaiters constantly attend the nets in order to lift them as soon as a shoal enters the net. Otherwise the whitebait quickly swim back out of the net. Typically, the small nets have a long pole attached so that the whitebaiter can stand on the river bank and scoop the net forward and out of the water when whitebait are seen to enter it. The larger nets may be set into a platform extending into the river from the bank and various forms of apparatus used to lift the net.

Whitebaiting in New Zealand is a seasonal activity with a fixed and limited period enforced during the period that the whitebait normally migrate up-river. The strict control over net sizes and rules against blocking the river to channel the fish into the net permit sufficient quantity of whitebait to reach the adult habitat and maintain stock levels. The whitebait themselves are very sensitive to objects in the river and are adept at dodging the nets.

Whitebait is very much a delicacy and commands high prices to the extent that it is the most costly fish on the market, if available. It is normally sold fresh in small quantities, although some is frozen to extend the sale period. Nevertheless, whitebait can normally only be purchased during or close to the netting season. The most popular way of cooking whitebait in New Zealand is the whitebait fritter, which is essentially an omelette containing whitebait. Purists use only the egg white in order to minimise interfering with the taste of the bait.

The combination of the fishing controls, a limited season and the depletion of habitat as a result of forest felling during the era of colonisation results in limited quantities being available on the market. Also, a lack of shade over waterways has been shown to kill the whitebait eggs.^[3]

^{So there you have it.}

^{Dis al!}

 

A few days leave (part three)

A cold and very blustery day saw us heading off to the Southward Car Museum situated just outside Paraparaumu.
The museum was purpose built in the late seventies and contains the largest automobile collection in the southern hemisphere. It currently has over 400 cars so it takes a fair while to amble around and see them all.
This one is the 'original back seat driver' car and since the passenger sits up front, no one can argue about that one!

If it so happens that you are not inclined to own a car of any variety, here is a scooter which can double as a bakkie(tjie) and can also probably transport more than one in the back - although the seating doesn't appear to be all that plush. Health and Safety would have an appopleptic fit about anyone being in the back, given that there are no seatbelts, let alone airbags! Heaven Forbid!

Neither one nor t'other - this little three wheeler we think was of the variety used in one of the Bond movies? Or did we see one in a Peter Sellers classic? We can't quite recall.

Being Volkswagen fans in general and Beetle fans in particular, this chappie, tucked away amoungst other more spectacular Vollas caught our eye and posed happily for a picture.

Our special turquoise Mercedes which we left behind is now safely in the hands of the younger generation - it was quite tough leaving the old girl, but seeing this stunning cousin in shiny, black made us think about all the days of refurbishing and polishing and loading up for the spectacular wedding in Natal - so many lovely memories! And almost as if by magic, there appeared in our online mailbox, a photograph taken just a couple of weeks ago of Her Ladyship (with Boetie Theron holding Baby Grandson Estan also in the picture!) It's really good to know that she is being taken good care of, has passed all her roadworthy tests, can still give a fair amount of speed on the open road and is making lots of hearts happy! Dis al!

 

A few days leave (part two)

Wellington - (for those of our blog followers who don't already know), is situated more or less on the southern end of the North Island and is the capital of New Zealand. This is the place where you would head if you had serious battles to fight with those 'what are in charge' in the country. More often than most of the members of parliament would like to have to endure, there will be groups of unhappy people either picketing or camping (or both), outside the parliament buildings and we, the happy few, get to see them on the six o'clock news - all grubby and smelly and fired up with their particular grievance, raging on about who owns the water in the country or some such nonsense!

We were delighted to be greeted by a glorious Spring day and headed from our campsite at Paekakariki to Wellington for the day. The big museum is in the city, but having already visited there not so long ago, we decided to find the cable tram and do the 'tourist' thing - taking a ride up to the top and enjoying the view of the city while sipping a flat white.

 Our 'older' blog followers will recall that a 'flat white' is an 'ornary' coffee (as opposed to a tall black which has nothing to do with an over six foot zulu)
The tram was clearly marked on the street map - but is positioned in amongst the buildings, so one has to really know where you are going in order to find it. Needless to say, in the city, parking is at an absolute premium, so we parked many, many blocks away and wandered back through the busy lunchtime office folks who were all about, purposefully headed for their favourite coffee shop or back to the grindstone. The long, leather goblin shoes (minus the bells) are still in evidence for the business gentleman, along with a pin-striped suit and it seems that the ladies who care about how they look (not the "bunch of hobbits who don't know how to dress" of Paul Henry fame) are in pencil skirts and business jackets with frilly, white or pastel shade blouses. All rather 'the same' and somewhat boring. Many of the skirts being a tad too tight and the jackets a tad too short for the size of the derriere!

The tram runs every ten minutes and so there is never too long a wait. We noticed quite a few students about and once on the uphill track, realised there is a stop about halfway up, which is convenient for the students to access part of the university - many got off there, books and files in their shoulder bags and I-pod earphones firmly in their ears. Many, fascinated and glued to their mobile phones and most with the regulation labelled clothing - which no doubt costs a fortune but looks like something the dog trailed in!

Wellington is a lovely city on a lovely day, but has a reputation for lots of wind and being New Zealand, plenty of wet, rainy days - great for a visit, with all the attractions that one finds in a city, but none of the little town feeling that we have where we live. So for now, our adventure will continue to be based in Wanganui.

Dis al!

A few days leave - (part one)

Although the weather has been somewhat disorganised and unpredictable, a couple of days leave saw us hitch up the caravan and head off to explore a little corner of the North Island that we hadn't really noticed before! The Kapiti Coast has quite a number of 'off the beaten track' holiday parks and campsites so as it started to get dark, we headed in to one of them and set ourselves up for the night.
Within striking distance of Wellington, the area has loads to see and do and we spent day one ambling over the hills in the car (since the wind was most spectacularly unpleasant).

 

All over New Zealand, you will find 'foreign invaders' in the form of undesirable plants - the most dramatic of these (in my humble opinion) is the  gorse which was brought into the islands by well-meaning folks to use as wind breaks and hedges. Needless to say it has become a serious problem since the density of the bushes is such that they are completely impenetrable and to top it all, they sport the most vicious thorns. None of the livestock, nor any of the wild animals - of which you have to remember, there are only but a miniscule number and which are limited in variety to vermin and possums! - eat any part of the plant and so it has spread like the proverbial wildfire.

We took these pictures in the course of our leisurely drive, having been horrified at the extent of the gorse infestation. The seeds apparently are almost impossible to erradicate and thrive on the ground where a recently burnt/poisoned gorse bush has been removed. Thick gorse with it's 'pretty' yellow blooms, adorn the rolling hills as far as the eye can see.

Some of the most dedicated land owners and farmers are doing their best in many areas to get this under control, but here, as you can see, the gorse has pretty much taken over.

On the side of the mountain road we saw this truck
and having driven past it, we did a U-turn further
down the road to go back and photograph it. If you click on the picture,it will pop up in a bigger frame (and now suddenly, with the advent of  'new and improved' Blogger, this no longer happens - I am finding blogging extremely frustrating - why can't the old adge of "if it aint broke, don't fix it" apply?) and you should see the notice on the van that says,"Baby Grand On Board" Appealed to our sense of 'how the world should work' having just heard about our friends moving in SA and having their grand piano treated like something the dog dragged in. Shame on you Biddulphs!

A marvellous 'all you can eat' salad bar to accompany the fabulous fresh fish we enjoyed at the Fishermans Table restaurant in Paekakariki, had us chatting about the names of the towns in the area.
Paraparaumu, Paekakariki and Waikanae all have names which are similar to other town's names in other parts of the country - living in Wanganui, Whangarei, Whatuwhiwhi, Whakatane, Whananaki, Whangaparaoa,Waiuku, Wairoa and Waipukurau all have similar names - and these are just in the North Island! One has to be very sure of one's facts before one starts disagreeing with anyone about where something is, and perhaps near to which town. The chances are good that one could make a slight error!
Dis al!