all sorted

I was incredibly productive today…at least from 1:30 – 4:30 pm! First thing on the list was buying laundry detergent, because I couldn’t even think of starting off in Australia with half a backpack full of dirty clothes. Got the detergent, and was carrying the box into the hostel when the guy at reception stopped me and asked me if I realized that the washing machines automatically dispensed detergent. Awesome. I did two loads of laundry, and then dried my clothes for over an hour, 20 minutes at a time, because 1) there isn’t a line and 2) they kept taking longer than I thought so I had to keep checking and feeding it dollar coins. At least they have coins bigger than a quarter here (10, 20, and 50 cent = silver-colored, and $1 and $2, gold-colored, just in case you were wondering. 1 and 5 cents coins no longer exist, which is pretty awesome).

I washed all my warm-ish clothes, so I couldn’t go out til they were dry, which is why I got a late afternoon start. First stop: library, to return the books I finished last night. Second: post office to mail collected items home. Third: bank to exchange NZD for Australian dollars (they’re super colorful!! very Monopoly-ish, except made from plastic, so they’ll survive laundry adventures). Fourth: AA (Automobile Association, the NZ branch of AAA) to get some free maps before my year-long membership runs out on Friday. Fifth: Kathmandu camping store to get my Summit Club membership, which came with my hostel membership. I probably won’t really use it, but I like having cards from places because it makes me look and feel legit/non-backpackery.

Back at the hostel, I booked my airport shuttle (4:25 am…ouch…), a hostel in Brisbane, and packed my backpacks. Jamie finished work early, so he came into town for an Indian dinner, and then we had a strange but entertaining conversation with a French Canadian pro skier & second-generation hippie who honed in on my ‘Alberta twang’ from a couple tables over in the hostel lounge. Interestingly enough, this was the second time today that I was told I [speak with a? have a? I do not know the correct phrasing here, because I don’t think I have ever used the word before] a ‘twang.’ The comment earlier in the day came from an Irish roommate who was convinced I’m from Texas.

Time for bed soon, since I have to be up before dawn. Internet’s not too good here, so I’ll upload the rest of the road trip blog entries/pics in Australia.

back to welly

...coming soon...

wairarapa

...coming soon...

lake ferry

...coming soon...

o possum world.

I introduced Jamie to the touristy side of Napier this morning, with a stop at Opossum World. Interestingly enough, the possums here don’t officially have an O at the front, but this store just dares to be different in a lot of ways.

In New Zealand, 70 million non-native possums consume 21,000 metric tons of vegetation each night. I know this because I have had this fact pounded into my head at every single conservation-oriented attraction in New Zealand, and there are many of these. Possums also eat the eggs of endangered native birds like kiwi. Therefore, it’s a good thing to kill them, and the government does all it can with poisons, traps, etc., and it’s considered very patriotic for individuals to go possum-hunting by whatever means necessary. I did my part for the good of the country by running over three of them in my car on the West Coast of the South Island last time I was here. It was partly out of concern for the national mascot, and partly because the roads there are pretty bad and I didn’t want to swerve at night and possibly end up wrapped around a [native] tree [and then feel guilty for maiming/killing something native].

Anyway, Opossum World is this terrifically tacky tourist shop selling possum tails, possum pelts, 8-foot-tall emus made of possum pelts (everyone needs at least one), mini kiwis made of possum fur, possum-merino sweaters and scarves, and Daniel Boone-style possum hats. More importantly, they have interactive displays such as a band of possums sitting on top of half of a car that sing a static-y version of ‘On the Road Again’ when you push a red button on the wall, a walk-through ‘forest’ with trapped (stuffed) possums and buttons to hear native bird calls, and jars of preserved fetuses/possum kittens in various stages of development. It’s definitely the must-see attraction in town – and best of all, it’s free!

After finally exhausting the entertainment possibilities at Opossum World, we drove up to a look-out point with a great view, and eye-hurtingly bright flowers. We also tried to drive to the gannet farm, but found out half-way that four-wheel drive/all-terrain vehicles are preferable over lowered cars.

Back in Hastings, we stopped at a hunting and fishing store that looked like the only thing open in the area. Turns out they were just about to close (1 pm), as it was some sort of regional public holiday and they’d discovered they were the only store still open in the town, but they welcomed us in, asking if we each wanted a ‘beer’ (we politely declined, which was especially good as it turned out to be Jim Beam & Cola premixed. The two guys in the shop seemed like they may have been a few into the day already). Anyway, we were originally looking for some bait for saltwater fishing down at Lake Ferry (today’s destination), but they didn’t have what we wanted so I wandered over to the fly-fishing section and…45 minutes later, we left the shop having seen the owner’s most recent fly-fishing digital photo album in its entirety, gotten hand-drawn maps to recommended spots on nearby rivers, added 4 flies to our collection, and heard plenty of fish stories from our two hosts.

We stopped at one of the spots for a while, but the water seemed pretty rough and we certainly couldn’t see anything in it, so we just played around with casting practice for a little while and then picked up pizza for dinner halfway to our destination, Lake Ferry.

hawkes bay a&p

We made it to Hastings in time to visit the A&P show this afternoon – we thought we might do it tomorrow instead, but this’ll give us some extra time at the next destination, wherever that might be. Nobody seems to know what A&P stands for, though I think the A must be for agriculture.

Right inside the ticket gates, we caught the tail end of the sheep-herding trials. The border collies over here aren’t nearly as cute as Tucker, or, actually, nearly as cute as most of the ones in the States and the UK, based on the trials I’ve seen at home or on TV. They’re all really wiry and short-haired, maybe from mixing with another breed, or else they just all descended from a couple of wiry/short-haired border collies way back when, there’s a ton of within-breed variation. Anyway, they seemed to herd the sheep well, so that’s what matters here.

There were a ton of commercial exhibitors – AWD vehicle dealers, animal breeders, mobile vets, mobile butchers, as-seen-on-TV gadget peddlers, tractor salesmen, etc. We saw sheep-shearing demonstrations by an off-color Australian in the children’s section (and hoped the jokes were going right over the kids’ heads), wood-chopping competitions, winning fleece and alpaca wool, and champion poultry.

I’d seen in the paper that there would be miniature cattle there, and was very excited to see those – they were mini Highlands, furry things that stood maybe 2.5-3 feet at their shoulders, at most. I still have no idea what the purpose of miniature cattle could be, the brochure was no help in figuring that out and I thought it might be kind of rude to ask the breeder, but they seem even less useful than miniature horses, and I don’t think those guys have a purpose other than standing around looking cute.

My absolute favorite part of the whole thing was the petting zoo/kids animal exhibit section (no big surprise, right??). I learned by observation that ostriches are NOT to be petted (this could probably have been inferred by the completely enclosed cage without a ‘come on in’ or ‘pet me’ sign like all the other, but some people near us did not figure it out in time). There were ‘ginger fleeces’ from Iceland – oddly orangey-red lambs with cute little pink charm-collars (the fleece color was natural, but I’m pretty sure the collars weren’t). There were also several miniature horses and ponies, a super-furry donkey, goats and kids, ‘regular’ sheep, a pile of ducklings, and tons of colored chicks. One pen had a big sow and lots of piglets (too active to count), these were lots of fun. Half of the times I stuck my camera up to the fence to get an eye-level picture without having the chain-links visible I’d get a perfect little dirty snout-print on it from a curious piggie. The merino ram was also entertaining, though not overly friendly when we tried to hold it by its horns to search for its eyes, which were well-buried beneath all the wool. There were llamas and alpacas, and another favorite of mine – the Captain Cook pig and piglet. These guys were really furry, and had amusing facial expressions especially when something (a child’s hand stuck through the fence, for example) appeared to confuse them.

I have lots more A&P pictures that I don’t have room to post here, and will make a Picasa album with them at some point later on.

the longest wharf

We drove down the coast from Tokomaru Bay to Gisborne, stopping near Tolaga Bay on our way down. The longest wharf in New Zealand is in Tolaga Bay, and Jamie’s dad said he’d heard there’s good fishing there, so we bought a surfcasting rod when we got to Gisborne and made plans to head back up there for some night fishing.

Rather than messing with real bait without a refrigerator, we got a package of softbait and some flasher rigs. Softbait, realistically-shaped plastic bait infused with scent-chemicals, is supposed to outfish real bait in many circumstances, but we didn’t have that luck tonight. There were a bunch of other people fishing on the wharf, though, and no one else even got any bites – according to the locals, we later found out it’s a feast-or-famine spot there – so we didn’t feel too bad. Also, we can now say We Have Walked The Entire Length Of The Longest Wharf In New Zealand, which has to be good for something. It was reeeeaaally long; it’d be interesting to see it on Google Earth when I have a decent internet connection sometime. The sunset was gorgeous, too, and the cliffs on one side had a ton of caves, which looked pretty cool.