There’s a tall tale they tell here-abouts. It concerns the rare giant sandfly “Pterodactyl Legpullus”, a survivor from the days of the dinosaurs, and these huge blood suckers lived well and prosperously while their giant prey was still around. These days, they come down from the hills looking for fresh blood, and chanced upon two young hunters from Pukekura. Fighting for their lives, the intrepid team overcome their attacker, and carried him back home. Stuffed and mounted, the Pterodactyl Legpullus is occasionally put on show to shock and awe visitors at the Bushmans Museum.
We sat in the rustic theatre in the museum and watched a film telling of “How the West Coast was Tamed”. Early English settlers introduced many species from their homeland for sport and these ran riot in a new country without any natural predators. This film related how deer were first culled by teams living in the bush off their wits for weeks on end while they shot their tallies. Author Barry Crump worked as a government sponsored deer culler at a young age and excelled at the bush craft, which gave him plenty to write about in his well loved New Zealand novels. Deer culling progressed to hunting from helicopters. Pilot Tim Wallace came up with the idea of the live capture of deer for farming, with net guns being invented for this task.
Daintily cropping away on grass are a family of thar – yet another species which were introduced into New Zealand. These ones can’t damage the environment as they are safely contained in the museum grounds.
The people have very strong views here about all sorts of things, politicians and CEOs of large companies included. Standing on the side of the road is a large white guillotine ready to deal with anyone who upsets the locals.
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