Making Plans

We took a trip to Wainuiomata to visit our friends Geoff and Pauline. The name of the town is made up of the words WAI – water, NUI – big, O – of, and MATA – which could refer to a woman’s name. The origins of the word are disputed, but one commonly accepted translation refers to the women who came over the Wainuiomata Hill to evade marauding tribes from the north, and who sat wailing by the stream after the slaughter of their men folk.

There are three chickens in residence and they clucked happily to themselves as they pecked around the garden.  The pretty black and white chicken is a Houdan, a French breed of chicken, and lays little white eggs.  I love chickens, it is very homely watching them as they go about their chooky business.  

Houdan chicken

The other two brown chooks are the Hyline breed, and are excellent layers.  “What are the chickens called?”, I wanted to know.  “They don’t have names”, was the incredulous reply, “they are just chickens!”

Hyline chickens

Geoff had to do a little “chicken wrangling” to get them all safely back inside their run for the evening.  Two went in happily and the other one ran the other way, and had to be bribed with a handful of wheat before she relented to be caged for the night.

Come on chooks, it’s your bedtime

The reason for our visit was to make some further travel plans for our upcoming “South Island Safari Trip” early next year. We discussed the pros and cons of the two Interisland Ferries which cross Cook Strait.  After deciding on which company will give us the best deal the next question was the exact date we plan to travel down.  Another decision finally made!  Now all we have to do is make a phone booking when the Ferry office opens for business on Monday morning.  We have lots of plans for our trip, with a great many places of interest to visit, so we just hope we can fit them all in.  Other friends will be joining us too for some of the time, so we are looking forward to a great trip.  We then drove up to the Wainuiomata  RSA Club (Returned Servicemen’s Association) for a meal out.  How about this interesting sign on the front doors?

Husband Creche

The meals were tasty and quite reasonably priced.  Three of us had sweet and sour pork, and Robin ate his way through two huge pork chops.  Our dessert choices were divided between the banana fritters  and crème brulee, and both were declared delicious. 

Artillery gun outside the RSA

After an after dinner cup of coffee it was time to head home.We stopped at the top of the Wainuiomata Hill and looked down at the lights of Petone and Lower Hutt.  Large petrol holding tanks in the industrial area of Gracefield can be seen in the bottom left of the photo.  It was a lovely clear evening with perhaps the hint of a frost promised for the next morning.

View from the top of Wainuiomata Hill