Tuiwood

It may not have the same pizazz at Hollywood, but Tuiwood is famous in it’s own right.  We stopped for the night at the Mangatainoka Reserve on the banks of the Mangataioka River, across the road from the “world famous in New Zealand” Tui Brewery.  Henry Wagstaff was so impressed by the water quality that he decided to build his brewery here.

Mangatainoka Reserve

Our group of four vans traveled down from Napier and settled in on the riverbank reserve.  It was a lovely sunny afternoon and hardy locals were having great fun jumping down from the bank into the river.

All settled in

With the iconic Tui Brewery (Robin’s beer of choice) just over the road, of course we walked over to indulge in a beverage for Happy Hour.  Even me, a non beer drinker, enjoyed a refreshing shandy on such a hot day.  We spent a very pleasant hour or so sipping on our cold drinks, and putting the world to rights.

This building is obviously the business side of the brewery, full of large tanks containing the various brews

A long line of vats

And of course, I had to take a short walk to get a snap of the famous Tui Tower, which often features in the ads.  Henry Wagstaff sold the business in  1903 to Henry Cowan, who developed the prize-winning East India Pale Ale. As the factory expanded, a seven-storey brew tower was built in 1931, so brewers could use gravity to turn malt into beer. Oddly, the builders forgot to put in a lift and stairs, a problem later rectified.  In 1969 the brewery was sold to Dominion Breweries, which expanded the business outside its traditional Wairarapa–Hawke’s Bay base. Tui’s humorous ‘Yeah right’ marketing campaign, started in the 1990s, has become a huge success. The tower is no longer used, but is a registered historic place.

Tui Tower

This was the last day of Pat and Thelma’s safari trip, and we left Tuiwood to join in with a weekend caravan rally.  So the traveling and fun is not quite over yet, we will return home on Sunday.