A Helping Hand at Himatangi

Camp Leader had a health worry and feeling a little poorly so the suggestion was made that the good keen men in our club could lend a helping hand.  There was a load of firewood dumped over a couple of campsites which needed shifting.  No problem – many hands will make light work.  And that means one less problem for the camp managers to worry about.

 

OK men, this needs shifting

The newly split “wet” fire wood was loaded into the bucket of the dinky little tractor and Dennis took it all away to a corner of the camp, where it was dumped – no need to stack this wood.  This will be left out in the elements to dry the sap from the wood for several months.

Hard at work

Actually, there were two piles of wood which needed moving – the “dry” pile was loaded on to the trailer and taken to the wood shed.  Three good keen girls then set to and carefully stacked it nice and neatly inside.  They weren’t going to let a few wetas and spiders stop them!  Dennis and Margaret were very appreciative of the help given to shift the fire wood.

Three of the girls took care of this lot

We had some fun and games in the afternoon.  Pentanque – which most of us have played at one time or another, was played with varying degrees of skill.  Then there was an intriguing new game set up to test us, called Klop - a bit like 10 pin bowls except the pins were wooden and all numbered.  The idea was to fling, throw, or roll a baton at the pins to see how many get knocked down, not too hard at the start of the game.

All set for a game of Klop

As the game progressed the pins were set up where they fell, getting further and further apart, making it very difficult to knock any down at all.   By this stage we tended to aim for the pin with the highest number, often with no chance of success at all. 

The numbered pins are very spread out in this stage of the game

In the evening there were a few quizzes to exercise our brains.  Several of our men decided that they were going to join others in the TV room and watch the Rugby instead.

Robin is a keen rugby follower

Our last day at Himatangi started off with a very pretty rosy pink sunrise.  But this didn’t last long at all, and the bad weather arrived as promised.  Down came the rain and we all hurriedly packed up after morning tea and went out separate ways.  Don’t know how it happened but we were the last of our group to leave.  Taking advantage of the on-site dump station, I helped out by holding the umbrella over Robin’s head to shelter him from the heavy down pour while he attended to the business.  How’s that for devotion!

Pink sky in the morning

The heavy rain followed us all the way home and we plodded through the puddles as we made lots of trips to unload the caravan.  After changing our waterlogged clothes, we sat down to lunch and a hot drink.  And blow me down, the rain stopped, the skies cleared, and the sun came out.  Why didn’t we leave our unpacking till later, we wondered.