Still celebrating our Birthday

The weekend weather continued fine and sunny, although the evenings and early mornings were getting rather chilly.  But with the first day of winter falling on the 1st June, we are doing very well to have beautiful sunshine and no wind over our club’s 40th birthday weekend celebrations.  We were invited to bring along any caravan club memorabilia and put it on the display board for all to see.  Most related to National Rallies from years gone by, when it was not uncommon to have 500 plus caravans on site.  (Sadly, numbers are not so high these days).  Also on display were various goody bag items which had been collected over the years.

Board of memories

Presentation coffee mugs

A group of us took a walk through the adjacent Carnival Park Scenic Reserve.  Believe it or not, this reserve will be celebrating it’s centenary on Boxing Day this year.  The area is full of mature native trees and is teeming with birds and is a very pleasant walk.  Quite different to how the park started out when it was opened back in 1914.  

Plenty of native trees Inside the reserve

We came across a shallow concrete lined structure which turns out to have been an ornamental pond back it the early days.  The  bush walk was much more formal and manicured in those early days, it seems.

Photo courtesy of Taraua I-Site showing visitors at the pond inside the reserve

Current day visitors at Carnival Park

Our group were booked into Purple Haze Cafe for a celebratory meal on Sunday evening, and the owner certainly did a great job.  We all tucked in to a tasty roast beef meal, followed by home made pavlovas and a couple of whopper chocolate logs.  Just delicious, and very good value too, we thought. 

With a final morning tea today, our three day weekend came to a close.  As we were busy packing up the caravan prior to hitching up, I noticed an intruder looking very much at home in the back of our 4WD.  It was one of the camp cats, and she was most reluctant to move from her comfy spot.  But move she did, with a bit of arm waving on my part.  After all, what would our Muffy think if we took a strange cat home with us?

I like it here, she’s thinking