More Gardens and Trees and Stuff

With a few days left at Glyn and Gail's, they lent us out to a friend of theirs to help her get some gardening done. She had more of the traditional gardening work that I was expecting, with plenty of weeding. Though it was followed up with more hydrangea pruning. Between Glyn's property and Leslie's, we must have pruned over a hundred plants.

Since the work was for approximately 4 hours a day, we had some time to do a couple visits to town. Took a walk along the coastal boardwalk, admiring some of the sculptures, buildings, and artwork around New Plymouth. Through our discussions with Glyn and Gail, we also learned a lot about the area, including the fact that they have a very good drama group. Glyn and Gail use to live in London and when they first came to New Plymouth, everyone kept asking if they were going to go to the local production of a famous Broadway play. They didn't have much faith in how it would compare to London's performances but were surprised at how it was as good if not better. There is also a relatively local orchestra with multiple Julliard trained musicians. Les Miserable is the current play but unfortunately I won't be around to see it.

Before leaving, we wanted to do something nice for our hosts. We cooked them a nice dinner with baked chicken, potatoes and squash, and a beetroot/apple salad. The next evening was also a dinner party that our hosts hosted. From our talks with Leslie, we learned a bit about Glyn since he loved talking about flowers and their adventures but was humble about his past. He's written multiple gardening books, wrote a couple columns for newspapers, and did a bunch of talks around the worlds. His expertise was on rare and exotic plants, though his main money maker in the nursery was Hydrangeas which he was a supplier for all over the world. We helped them cook and clean their place. The dinner was a lot of fun with a group of interesting foreigners. They've all lead pretty interesting lives.

Once we finished with our HelpX experience, we traveled south towards Wellington. On the way, we stopped at a small street fair that Leslie mentioned to us. It was started by a couple foreigners who missed Christmas during cold temperatures. The fair was full of Christmas decorations and crafts which people made. We continued travelling and stopped for the night in Porirua. We took a small walk up a path to see the sunset and enjoy the evening.

The next day we went to Wellington. We found a nice walk along a ridge in the middle of town. Then we went to the Te Papa Museum. It's a free museum which is world known. There was a lot of Maori exhibits but also some exhibits including a chocolate one, the Pacific Sisters, and a glass based exhibit based on colours and 3D art. 

(each glass ball is filled with a different substance to create a rainbow, the materials used are listed below)

One of the biggest exhibits was created by Weta Workshop (Lord of the rings special effects team) and Peter Jackson. Its based on New Zealand's contribution during World War 1 on the Turkey front, Gallipoli. The exhibit is gorgeous, with giant statues, small scale models for camps and battle fronts, and lots of information. Not my favourite topic, but worth seeing.

The next day, I dropped off my van for some work and we traveled to the actual Weta Studio for a tour. There was a deal to do the Weta Workshop and set of Thunderbirds Are Go. Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures in the workshop but they own all of Thunderbirds and allowed pictures due to the size of our tour. We arrived a little early and spent time in the shop and saw a short movie on the making of some of their movies. It talked about the history of Weta Studio and how it started as a couple (Richard Taylor and Tania Rodgers) that loved making models for movies. How a small time movie director, Peter Jackson, found them and started collaborating until they grew into the company they are now. The tour of the workshop was really cool, showing how they made the molds for mass production, the blacksmithing shop for real swords, multiple 3d printers (though those are mostly used to make the prototypes for their merchandise), and a very cool room for each of the twelve departments with items we could touch and hold. 

The second half of the tour was on the set of Thunderbirds Are Go. Thunderbirds was a show from the 60's that was made for an American audience but became more loved in select regions of Europe. It was made using marionette dolls and stop motion camera work. One person that loved the show was Richard Taylor. It started his love of special effects and model making. He states without this show, Weta Workshop may never have happened. Richard wanted to make it as close to the original as he could, so close they started by making marionette dolls. Unfortunately they terrified the testing group. In the end, they settled for actual scaled sets but completely animated the characters onto the sets in post production. This involves a lot of work making the sets mobile, with moving parts and fire and lights. Luckily the advancements of LCD lights and 3d printing allows for fantastic and realistic sets at a fraction of the size.

After Wellington, we headed towards Napier/Hastings area. We spend a couple nights at a freedom camping site and found some walks and hikes in the area.

We then headed to Gisborne where we visited the Rere Falls and Rockslide. When I first decided to come to New Zealand I saw a video for the Rockslide and decided I wanted to do it. Being winter, it was very empty but so much fun. Cold (feet were completely numb) but so worth it.

After the Rere Falls, we went to small walk that circled a private farm. It was a nice walk through some animal pastures and up the hill for a nice view of Gisborne.

We then traveled up the East Cape towards Hick's Bay. We stayed at a cool backpackers, tried to bribe a cat to love me, and took a walk up to a lighthouse the next day. It was very windy but sunny with a nice view of the bay. After we followed the coastal road around the cape and stopped in Whanakate where we spent the night at a holiday park. The weather took a turn for the worse so we are taking the time off to relax, maybe look into a HelpX and just wait until Annika's family makes it to New Zealand at the end of the week.

Free Labour

We arrived in New Plymouth just as the sun was setting. We were invited to stay at Glyn and Gail's house and they had dinner ready for when we arrived. They are a cute older couple who are now retired. They are old hippies from Britian who moved to New Zealand 35ish years ago. Glyn has done a few things but the latest job was as a nursery owner on their property for over 2 decades. Gail recently retired from teaching at the local catholic school. They live on a ten acre property of land which they  slowly built up from cattle fields into a wooded natural garden.

HelpX is a program where people can advertise jobs they need help with in exchange for accommodations and food. As such, we are helping Glyn with a bunch of the gardening work around the property. They sold about 3 acres to some friends and sold the nursery off but they still have a large property to care for. We agreed to about 4 hours a day but being retired, they aren't in a hurry and so the work may end early, or bad weather ends it early. They are also okay with us working extra so we can take a day off.

For the work, we did a lot of hauling. Logs and sticks and plants that needed to be removed. The one day we ended up working 8 hours to take the next day off. We also worked longer since a family friend came with his chainsaw to removed a bunch of trees that were starting to die. It is a really heavy, hard wood which burns really well. Later we started helping with the pruning of a bunch of hydrangea plants all over the property. With the weather, we kept having to run for cover and find different work but it's been fun.

Glyn and Gail are very interesting people. They've been together for a long time but never had children. They joke that they have all adopted family instead. They travel a lot, and Glyn enjoys talking about plants. His property has a large variety of plants from all over the world. Many government gardens or botanical gardens have a free plant swap where they can give and take seeds from all over the world. He started doing it in New Zealand since no one else was and thus has a bunch of unique and rare plants on his property. Since he also sold plants, he has breed some of his own breeds and they sell world wide also. They are also part of this elite plant club that you can only join if invited in. Members include people like the head of San Francisco's botanical garden and other large organizations. The club will do a 1-2 week trip a year to a different part of the world to drink, meet, talk, and visit local greenery. This includes countries like Iran, Taiwan, Korea, and anywhere else with local members.

With his large access to seeds, though New Zealand is now much stricter on importing plants and animals, he also set up his garden to always have something in bloom. Though the summer will have more, while wandering around the property you can find hidden gems everywhere. 

We plan to stay here until Saturday morning before traveling on and are enjoying the stay very much. Annika has her own room and washroom while I'm located out in their secondary apartment with my own everything. We share all our meals with them, sitting around the dining room table, drinking a glass or two of wine and talking with them. We also went to a family friend's place to watch the next set of world cup games and are going to be rented out there to help them with their gardening work.

After the day we worked 8 hours, the weather cleared up and was much nicer than most of the days lately. We took the opportunity to climb Mt. Taranaki, though due to it being winter, we could not do the summit climb. We followed the Translator Track up to the Taurangi Lodge which is a steep 1.5 km climb. After that, we followed the Maketawa Track back to the North Egmont visitor center. It took us approximately 4.5 hours with stops and it was a gorgeous day for the hike. By the end of it my legs hated me, but it felt good to complete it. A little sad we couldn't do the summit climb, but that is an 8 hour trek in good warm weather, so not an option. The walk down was through what they call the Goblin Forest due to the dark and sinister look of the moss hanging off the trees. 

We also did a  trip to the Tawhiti Museum. It is a very unique museum where the guy that started it made models of historical events throughout New Zealand history. There is a bunch of Maori stories and exhibits but also large exhibits about the early settlers. This includes a very large selection of tractors and farming equipment, toys, and food products. It was very cool but the amount of work he had to do is insane. He had entire armies of miniatures, life size models, and even used different sized models for perspective. One of the coolest pieces of machinery was the hedge trimmers after the war. The hedges grew so fast that they couldn't control them by hand. Their solution, take an old tank and pretty much put a helicopter blade on top to cut the bushes.

We still have a few days here, but our time has been really fun. I'm really happy to do the HelpX work since it's part of the backpacker experience. I have a bit over a month here so hoping for many more fun experiences.