Birthday Dinner

Last night we went out for a birthday dinner at the Upper Hutt Cossie Club to celebrate Robin’s 62nd birthday.  The  restaurant offers club members a free main course if they come in for a meal on their birthday.  The meal was excellent.  We both chose whitebait fritters as a starter, whitebait are a New Zealand delicacy. Slow cooked pork served with red cabbage for my main, and Robin chose herbed sirloin steak; we had plenty of choice with vegetables from the warmer.  As it was a celebration why not have dessert to finish?  Robin is a real ice-cream fan so his choice was banana split with ice-cream, and mine was lemon tart.  All this was washed down with a handle of beer for Robin, and a glass of bubbly for me.

The Upper Hutt Cosmopolitan Club began in February 1961 when a group of people decided to build their own Club to improving local drinking facilities. Leased premises were in use 1971 when the first Club building in Logan Street was opened.  This building was enlarged over the years with the final extension to the building beginning in 2002 with a new $1,500,000 lounge and offices being built. Unfortunately this was completely destroyed by fire on the morning of September 11th 2003.  The fire gave the Club the opportunity to build a new purpose built building, with a floor area of 2751 square metres and the capacity of allowing 1300 people to attend at any one time.  It is a busy club, with many adjuncts to cater for the interests of members.

Happy Birthday Robin

It’s Robin’s birthday today and we started it in style.  I whipped up a batch of corn fritters for breakfast, while Robin cooked the bacon and eggs to go with the fritters.  How about that for a good start to the morning.  After breakfast we travelled down to Lower Hutt to the shopping mall to buy Robin’s birthday present.  He wanted a new digital camera so we went to check out brands and prices.  He was quite clear with his requirements.  The camera had to have an eye-piece and he was looking for 10 plus megapixels and a reasonable sort of zoom facility.  He found what he wanted and came home with an Olympus camera.  A little hard bargaining resulted in a camera bag being included in the deal.  So now it is just a matter of reading the instruction book, checking out all the features, and taking plenty of practice photos!!

Trying out the new camera

We’ve been Certified

And that’s a good thing – we hasten to add.  Our caravan Romany Rambler has been passed for Self Containment certification.  That means that our both our fresh water and waste tanks are sufficient to allow us to Freedom Camp and stay at any Department of Conservation Camps.

Two Self Containment Officers did the check for us.  Armed with a tape measure and calculator they measured the capacity of both tanks.  They checked that the fresh water and waste pipes met the standard and that the vents were in the correct position.  They climbed under the caravan, went inside and poked their heads into the sink cupboard, and the bathroom, taking measurements as they went.   Did we have a fire extinguisher, smoke detector, a rubbish bin with lid and a first aid kit?  Yes we did.  Everything required in the standard was met and they signed us off and issued us with a Self Containment sticker, which is proudly displayed on our back window.    This work is done on a volunteer basis on behalf of the New Zealand Motor Home Association and we appreciated the time taken, thanks very much guys.

Come to the Fair

We joined the throngs of people in the weekend and checked out the Spring Fair.  Main Street was closed off to traffic and it was wall to wall people everywhere.  It was dangerous negotiating all those pushchairs that were well under eye level, more down at  knee level really,  and so hard to see the youngsters in their pushchairs with so many people in the crowds.  And why oh why do people bring their dogs to such crowded conditions – they certainly added to the chaos.  We had never seen so many people in our neighbourhood.

Main Street – packed with people

There were stalls selling all sorts of things.  Crafts, clothing, toys, bric-a-brac, and the tantalising smell of ethnic foods filled the air.  We came across this rather quaint stall set up as a Victorian Kitchen.    The cook was all dressed up in a long dress, apron and a mop cap jauntily placed on her head.  She was hard at work baking scones on a wood stove.  What a hot job that must have been keeping up with the queues of patrons all wanting to buy hot scones with jam and cream.

Hot scones coming up.

There was plenty of music to keep us entertained too.  As we walked up the street we followed the wonderful sound of a band playing Hotel California, with the lead guitar really playing his heart out.  What a wonderful piece of music that is.  Also worth stopping at was an Irish band, and something completely different, a group dressed up as Red Indians.  This colourful group was playing the haunting music of Peruvian Pipes. 

 

The fair had something for everyone.  There was a bouncy castle and various rides for the children, motor bikes and cars on display for the men, and lots of goodies on sale to tempt everyone.  The sun was shining on this lovely Spring Day and the local bobbies were there keeping an eye on things.  The only thing to complain about was our sore feet!!

Spring Fling

It is officially Spring now, and we have just returned home from the Spring Fling Rally organised by the Wellington Region of the Motor Home Association.  These rallies are much bigger than our more usual Caravan Club Rallies, and there were about 70 campervans and caravans parked up in the grounds of Upper Hutt School, all of 4km away from home.  A non power rally weekend with heavy frost both mornings meant very chilly conditions.  We take for granted the heater and electric blanket  but no, not this weekend.  Motor homes have gas heating and Robin is currently researching something similar for our caravan so that we can comfortably go non power in the cooler months.  The committee were cooking up a fund raising sausage sizzle at lunch time and Robin was quick to line up for his share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday evening saw us all gathered in the school hall, waiting to be served our “Cryptic Dinner”.  Just bring a pen and a cup, we were told.  We soon found out what the pen was for when we were given the menu.  This was set out with a numbered list of very strange names, which we had to choose and write against the different courses.  The names represented both food items, beverages and cutlery.  So whatever numbers were chosen were delivered for that particular course. There were certainly some very unusual combinations indeed.  The waiters took great delight in delivering these strange meals to the astounded diners.  Some people had food but no cutlery, others had only a glass of water, and both of us ended up with lettuce for dessert.  It was a lot of fun and everyone was in fits of laughter the whole evening.  A good way to spend four hours!

  A hall full of happy diners waiting for their cryptic meals.

Water Tank Worries

Our fresh water tank was worrying Robin.  On one of his forays underneath the caravan he noticed that the overflow pipe was pointing upwards towards the caravan floor and was not protected from the ingress of foreign matter.  This meant that any overflow could well be squirting water up against the floor and would not be acceptable for self containment.  So the other weekend he  jacked the caravan up, climbed underneath, and unscrewed the bracket holding the water tank in place.  Once this was out, he determined that the tank had been installed upside down!!  In order to fit it back the correct way around some modifications would have to be made to the bracket.  When the welding was done, the bracket received a couple of coats of  galvanised paint, then a top coat.  All this took days, of course. 

Tank and Modified Bracket ready for Fitting

 

 

Re-Fitting the Tank

The bracket was finally refitted, with the tank the correct way around.  The overflow was connected to a length of pipe and fitted to the water filler portal. Then we had to have a test to make sure that everything worked.  Robin filled the water tank and my job was to watch the new plastic pipe inside the cupboard to make sure that the overflow worked correctly and didn't leak at all.  Everything seemed fine, thank goodness.  We should now be able to qualify for self containment.  That’s the next task.

 

Fitting the Overflow Pipe.

Karori Sanctuary - Zealandia

The Karori Sanctuary has been selected as one of the top 25 ecological restoration projects in Australasia by the Global Restoration Network, in partnership with the Ecological Management & Restoration journal and the Ecological Society of Australia. This is a wonderful recognition of the Sanctuary’s achievements to date. Wellington's Zealandia - formerly the Karori Wildlife Sanctuary - is just a stone’s throw from the city. Native flora and fauna have been reintroduced into the sanctuary, including the 'living dinosaur' tuatara and rare NZ birds, and many different forms of native life are now flourishing in this safe natural environment. 'Zealandia' is the name of the lost landmass that broke away from the super-continent Gondwana 80 million years ago. We visited the sanctuary in the weekend, and had a long frustrating climb up along the predator proof fence line before finally discovering our very own sponsored fence post. With over 34km of tracks criss-crossing the area, we only walked a small portion on our quest.