Came across this gem by the road. Shows what you can do with steel plate and timber. There is no welding here – all the parts are cast or cut steel fitted together in symbiosis with the timber to perform a single purpose: moving something very heavt. We don’t see this sort of engineering anymore, timber no longer being used in this way. But it’s nice to see what could be done, and to appreciate a design that worked.

It was made as a low loader trailer to haul parts of the heavy machinery up to build the power station at the lake head. Entirely constructed out of timber and steel, it could carry 25 tons. Note how the wood grain is oriented in the blocks in the steel wheels; the braking system operated by a worm drive; and the massive steerable front axle.

After it had done its job it was used as a bridge for about 20 years before being put out to pasture for the admiration of people like me.

Apparently it is still in good working order.

Useful in this rough country, still a way of life

In this rare piece we see indigenous artists from Whaketalup offer us an installation of cultural significance.

Placing the treated remnants of a sacred hunting animal reverently on a plain timber support they emphasise the division between the modern and the past. The ethnobiological trope speaks to the link between culture and place, clearly informing the arrangement of objects and contrasting with the simple shape of the support which guides us on our way.

The sensitive use seen here of found objects makes a profound statement about the way in which the departed soul of the animal calls to travellers passing through the natural landscape of their forefathers. The creative form gives pause to, and refreshes, the modern journeyman through this ancient land.

Reminds me of the west coast of Tasmania, or Indian reservations in the US.

The road through to the sourth was billed as a difficult one.  In fact it was a winding dirt road, big drops sometimes, but very spectacular. Wouldn’t like to do it in midsummer when full of tourist vans like ours though.

And that night camped next to this lovely waterfall in a quiet site.

Detoured off the road to do a 11km walk in the forest to Whirinaki waterfall – beautiful, sunny day, sunlight filtering through the trees.  Plenty to see from the tiny to the large:

Murupara is the last stop on the supposedly rugged road through the mountains to Lake Waikaremoana.  Nice campsite. Everything clean, the lady in charge made fresh bread for breakfast and provided free vegie gardens for the visitors.

I’m somewhat taken with gliding, and managed to squeeze in another go at ‘club rates’ this time – 1/3 of the original fee.  The afternoon looked good, but actually there wasn’t that much thermals and we spent a long time going round in circles. Then we had to land.

The instructor let me do most of that, but it didn’t work too well since I discovered that gliders are made for right handed flyers, the wind spoiler lever being on the left.  So just as we came in I had to transfer my left hand to the flap, take the stick in my right hand (naturally I’d taken off the bandages for the flight), and coax it down.  Not surprisingly he took over round about then.

So there I was springing back down the steep bit like a young mountain goat when I slipped back, put out my hand to save myself and it hurt. A young whippersnapper jumped forward to help up the old dude (bah!), grabbed the offending hand and that hurt too.

By the time I got to the bottom the wrist was swollen and painful and I thought I’d broken something.  When I don’t have the benefit of Xrays in the bush, my rule of thumb in these situations is to treat the offending limb as if broken, and, if it’s still painful after 48 hrs then there’s a fair chance it is.

Since we were heading south away from civilisation and we didn’t want to hang around hospitals, Sally made a splint in the traditional fashion using a pair of underpants and a cardboard box, which worked well for a couple of days till we found some decent quality tourist brochures to replace the cardboard and a clean hanky instead of underpants.

Now fast-forward to Gisborne, where I’m doing these posts at the next available wifi, and after 5 days it still hurts.  Which injury has meant Sally has had to do all the driving and the washing up.

I’ve just had the required xray, and sure enough there was a small avulsion fracture of the triquetral.  Happily the triquetral, one of the 9 wrist bones and the second commonest to be broken by my classic outstretched-hand fall, heals pretty well with a simple immobilisation.  I’ve swapped the tourist brochure splint for an official one (which actually doesn’t work any better, but looks good), and will no doubt get better in about 4 weeks.

It’s hard to convey the size of the landscape, but these pictures show something of it:

This is a series of panoramas from various parts of the crater complex, showing the immense size of the volcanic landscape

In the main South Crater area, which is quite old, there are grasses slowly establishing themselves on the lava, with the very occasional flower bringing life to a barren landscape – it reminded me of Antarctica, where there is just rock, ice and snow.

But one of the interesting things was the different types of rock on the ground – some lava, some dense and heavy, some shiny and flat – all showing a record of the activity this area has been subject to.

The main flat area is of sand, but to emphasise the activity beneath it, clouds of steam come off at intervals.

Off to one side is a lake – nearly dry now but filling in winter – whose colour comes from dissolved minerals. In other parts of the crater complex is a blue and a green lake, again their colours are from the minerals in the water.

I find people interesting, and there was plenty of interest on this trip.  Many nationalities on the same path – naturally the Swedes were thin, fit, and coming down as we went up, probably having started at dawn after a bowl of muesli.  The Brits, Poles, French, Indians and Asians, a tranche of Israeli girls, Yanks in the biggest brightest gear, and harassed teachers looking worried and tired.  And us of course:

This guy ran all the way…..why?These two took their kid up with teddy firmly tied on – reminded us of when we did this with our kids in the Kimberley for up to 2 weeks, lovely time,
And the lady in the middle, just next to the pole, went all the way down the steep hill on her bottom, which impressed me.  Took quite a while though.
But the guy who impressed me most, and for obvious reasons I didn’t take a picture of him, was a small chap with a partial right hemiplegia who, dressed in an ordinary coat and trousers and with a stick, hobbled at the same speed as the rest of us along the track.  He didn’t seem to be with anyone, but just went on by himself.  How very much harder it must have been for him than for us.

There had been a few days of bad weather, which makes the crossing pointless and dangerous, so the first good day was crowded with about 300 people.  Despite this we enjoyed it – the mountain is too big for the little ants to spoil it.

The mountain is still active, and has erupted 3 times in the last 100 years. The last lava flow was in 1975 and is seen here as a darker stain on the side of the mountain. We tend to think of these things as happening in the distant past, but that’s not the case here.

This is a cutaway bit of the track about 1200mm high at the top of the mountain.  Note the different layers of deposition from the various eruptions.  The bottom layer was warm and steaming, and remarkably, sandflies were  prolific up there.

The Tongario crossing is a 19km walk going between the two mountains of Tongariro and Ngauruhoe, then dropping off the N side of Tongariro down to the road at Ketetahi. It’s billed at the thing to do in the Tongariro park, and, naturally enough has considerable support in terms of bus shuttles from one end to the other. It’s quite a high walk, going up to 1,900 metres and the conditions can get fairly nasty if the weather turns.

Mt Ngaurahoe:

We had a look at the route and decided that doing the whole thing wasn’t such a good idea, since the second half was basically a long walk down a steep mountain. Accordingly we decided to do the first half, which involved walking up to the crater area and coming back the same way. That meant we could go at our own pace, had more time in the craters, and weren’t dependent on picking up a bus.

This picture shows the track up to Mt Ngaurahoe, from the carpark at the base of the cinder cone in the L middle of the picture

Turned out this was the right thing to do. Since this was the first day in a week or so that the weather was good, there were hundreds (literally) of people doing the walk. The track was pretty good, well maintained as you might expect but it needed to be, since for most of the way up we were walking in bunches of people – queueing to get up the steps, standing aside for the fast ones (and I have to admit we were doing a quite a bit of standing aside).

At the very top we had lunch while the crowd kept going, and on the way back we pretty well had the place to ourselves, which was good. Despite the crowds the mountains were vast and impressive, and we could forget about the people around us and marvel at the scenery.

I found that the immense size of everything put the meaning of volcanic activity into perspective and gave it the scale I hadn’t hitherto appreciated. Reading about volcanoes is all very well, and they are easy enough to understand, but seeing them is something else. To see huge mountains simply blown apart by the forces of the earth brings home the reality of vulcanism.  And seeing the mountains giving off smoke – as this view of the back of Tongariro shows – emphasises that it could all still happen: