More Celebrations this week

On Sunday we had brunch with Sharon, Mike and Aaron before taking Mike to the airport.  We bought a cabbage tree for our lounge - okay I know they grow real big but it is a little one and it might just be happy in a pot for a year or so - it was too pretty to ignore with those long yellow and green leaves.  We then went back to the airport to pick up Anne in the evening.  We've had two earthquakes this week - well four actually but we only felt two.  One when we were in the dining room and the other at work.  Christchurch has certainly made people react faster and we were all in doorways or under desks within seconds.  I can understand why our fellow Cantabrians feel nervous. It was also birthday week and so we had a birthday dinner on Tuesday night - I am getting a bit carried away with trying new recipes - canelloni and thai veges go better together than one would think.  Chocolate overdose was ok as well.

During the week we also took Gina to Karori - we saw the house she lived in for the first two years of her life and our little house just down the road which is painted a dark grey which doesn't really suit an older style villa.  We reminisced over stories like Jonathan wandering up to our place when he had got into trouble and stopped by to say hello to Jill, Graham, Clare and Mya on the way back.

It was also Christmas lunch at work - and after the meal we completed a scavenger hunt in the botanical gardens.  The fun or embarrassing part depending on how you look at it was dressing up as zoo animals - my team went as giraffes.  Tail, mask and ears were the order of the day and with a cruise ship in town and a tourist bus at the rose gardens we got lots of weird looks and questions with many taking photos and videos of the Wellingtonian wildlife!! Not sure if the Minister of Tourism would consider this a good sign or not.

On Friday we drove up to Rotorua.  The third birthday to celebrate this week - Wayne was turning a big 'O'. The trip went well and dinner was a picnic at the view point on the Desert Road.  The hills were a mass of yellow lupin and broom - very pretty with the mountains and power pylons in the background.  I don't think we've travelled this road much during summer but it certainly is the time to do it if you aren't looking to ski.

We arrived in Rotorua and found our little motel without any trouble.  It was a bit run down and with two others for sale on the street we could see there isn't much money in the city to do accommodation up.  They had painted the rooms but not to our standard - no hot points or light switches taken off so paint was on them, peeling paint had been glossed over, and the hot pool which we enjoyed (a mere 40 degrees) was also in need of renovation.  But it was quiet and clean and cheap.  Why was there a hot point and switch on the ceiling - we wondered if it was to charge your cell phone so if it rang in the night it would be beside your ear!!  Others have more boring suggestions like a wall mounted tv, fan, air conditioning unit - and there were other suggestions I just won't repeat in a family blog.  In the morning while standing in a bakery wondering why there were no vegetarian rolls we had a text from Sharon and Aaron inviting us to breakfast at their hotel where they were celebrating another special persons birthday (I won't say how old he is but he is inching closer to another big 'O'!!). So, we left the bakery without buying anything and settled for rather a yummy breakfast in Holdens Bay (little side tour to see the motor camp where I used to take Michael and Sharon for our holidays - its been subdivided now which makes it look quite different).  We were going to drive straight to Tauranga - but then thought better of it and spent an hour being a tourist in the wonderful grounds of the museum.  So, here's some pictures and history of the very special place - the area called Tawharakurupeti - the site of a huge battle a couple of centuries ago.  It has a few famous places and buildings like the:

The carvings at the beginning of the paths - were given by the people of Ngati Whakaue to commemorate their original gift of the land in 1880.
Blue Baths  - built in Spanish Mission-style - but to us look like art deco (about the same era).  This is one of the first places where families could bathe together for fun - at other spas there had to be a therapeutic reason.  The building was closed in 1982 but reopened 17 years later after restoration.  We wandered into the tea rooms, but like last time the pool was closed for a private function.
Then there is the Rachel Pool - which had a lovely name Whangapipiro until it was renamed - get this - after Madame Rachel who was a British con artist in in the mid 1800's. She ran a beauty salon which had a personal guarantee of everlasting youth to those who used creations eg a magnetic rock water dew from the Sahara Desert (discovered later to be made of water and bran). She married three times, sold clothes, was jailed, and sold cosmetics advertised in a pamphlet entitled "Beautiful for Ever". The shop was a front for blackmailing wealthy clients - where she offered up to sixty preparations of make up including face powder. She was involved in prostitution, fraud and blackmail, arrested numerous several times and jailed in 1878 for five years where she died. Just remind me why our lovely pool is named after her.
Te Runanga tea pavilion - where tourists and invalids could relax, read, drink or mineral waters on the  veranda or just look over to the Blue Baths and the steam of Rachel Pool.  For a while it had a life as a bowling pavilion but then was restored in 1993 and opened exactly 90 years after its original opening. Unfortunately closed for tea on the day we visited.
The Gardeners Cottage - which was built in 1899 for the head gardener. Lovingly restored to its
original colour it overlooks the bowls and croquet greens - what a place to have lived.
The Croquet pavilion - built in 1907, with a pagoda type roof it was originally a ‘tennis’ pavilion.  It was moved to this site in the 1920's, had a terracotta roof added about 30 years later.
Government House - a wonderful building which now houses the Rotorua Museum.  In the early part of 1900's it was Rotorua's Bath House and became our government's first investment as the tourism industry began to grow.

Finally we left Rotorua and drove along State Highway 36 to Tauranga.  Up hill and down dale where we saw a wonderful array of summer wild flowers and shorn alpacas that looked like scrawny sheep with long necks and legs.  Who says NZ doesn't have history.  This little road has it all.  Besides being the only road for many years between the two cities - first horses and then cars travelled this windy road.  Then came WWII and it was thought that the Japanese just might invade.  They certainly came close to it.  The home guard built lots of road blocks (over 1200) so that any tanks that might invade couldn't get far.  On this road two tank traps were built - and the remnants are lying around beside the road (huge concrete slabs).

Mount Maunganui was a picture of blue sky and seas, pohutukawa in bloom - just the right place for fish and chips on the beach (though a bit over priced - I guess the extras such as a plastic fork, serviette and lemon slice added up!!).  After a gentle walk around some of the Mount for photos, a peer into the horizon for the stricken Rena, and some thinking about the impact of the oil slick on bird life and the coast (it has been cleaned up amazingly well).  We enjoyed Wayne's party - Harry caught up with people he hadn't seen for decades and I met some new people.

Admission Day

Friday was another proud moment day for me as a Mum. Sharon was admitted into the Bar at the High Court in Wellington. It was a day steeped in tradition with the moving counsels and law clerks dressed in black gowns, white ties, and wigs. The judge gave a speech, the 20 or so clerks said a thank you, agreed to follow the law and signed the register. So, a bit of history before writing more about the day. Call to the Bar is a legal term - the bar refers to the wooden barrier which separates the public area at the rear from the space near the judges reserved for those having business with the Court. Barristers sit behind it and can use it as a table for their briefs. The call refers to the way the judge summons the lawyers to address them at a hearing. After the ceremony we went to lunch with David (first cousin once removed) and family.  David was also admitted and Jeremy (David's grandad and Sharon's great uncle) was Sharon's moving counsel.  The Wellesley club put on quite a nice lunch (I had mushroom rissoto balls). It is now a boutique hotel but once was a very famous club for 'prominent' men (hence one girls loo on the ground floor and another on the 3rd - both fairly new additions I think). It is named after Arthur Wellesley ie the Duke of Wellington, of Waterloo fame.  In 1891 when a group of Wellington businessmen decided to establish a gentlemen’s club, they chose the name Wellesley - I guess after the Duke.  A short time to Christmas shop and then we headed off to Sharon's law firm for drinks and celebratory speeches - more nice things said about our girl.  Michael arrived from Aussie after a short delay in Customers (red 'S' on immigration card means Search apparently).  We then headed off for dinner at a Japanese restaurant where eggs and rice were thrown and I wore a plastic bag on my lap just incase I didn't catch them.  Sharon had invited lots of her friends I hadn't seen for ages and so I enjoyed catching up with them and with Mike during his flying visit - the night went very quickly.

All that excitement and I almost forgot to mention - the glorious week weather wise we've had.  The southerly and northerly winds blew themselves out and its been calm, sunny and oh so warm.  One night during the week I met Harry at the Botanical Gardens and we spent a couple of hours, smelling the roses, listening to the pine cones crackling in the hot sunshine and waiting with tourists at the skyline view point to get that postcard photo of the cable car. The Lady Norwood Rose Garden is sheltered from the winds and the roses showed no ill effects from the blustery conditions of the few days before.  The garden has been around since 1872. Lady Norwood was the wife of Charles Norwood who was originally an Australian, but became an agent for the Morris car and later was elected as mayor of Wellington. He founded the Wellington Free Ambulance as a result of witnessing car accident on Lambton Quay where he had problems finding an ambulance for the victim. Presumably Lady Norwood was a very special lady but like so many good woman of that era nothing about her features in history.  On our walk around the gardens we saw a wonderful Mexican Hand Tree - deep red, five fingered and loved by the tuis and also some sculptures by Regan Gentry of the wharariki (flax), ti kouka (cabbage tree), pohutukawa and toetoe before continuing our walk.

We also went to Homewood - The British High Commission house in Karori was open to raise money for Save the Children.  Around the mid 1800's the first judge of the Supreme Court Henry Chapman bought a few acres of land in Karori - Homewood was built on a couple of them.  It was originally built and lived in by the Johnston family who were into business and also public affairs. It was sold to a few families over the years until it was sold to the British government for its high commission in 1958.  Since it is a pretty old  place, as buildings in New Zealand go, it is now looked after by NZ Historical Places Trust.  So, we wandered the gardens, looked through some of the rooms in the house and then spent a while sitting in the sun watching Morris Dancers, Barbershop Quartets and Pipers.  I also found a chocolate book which might come in handy for the birthday boy next week.

St Andrews Day

It was a very windy week in Wellington - well the whole of NZ really. While walking to meet Jo and Noel for lunch I saw some tourists in their campervan waiting to cross the Strait on the ferry. They were smiling and I wondered how long it would be before they stopped. Some Aussies asked me if it was always windy? I said "Nooooo". Gina arrived on Monday night and we've spent the week catching up which has been great. Harry went to Nelson and Dunedin and I stayed in town (I really get quite envious with his travelling around the countryside). The weekend was busy catching up with Jill and Graham and planning our outfits for the Art Deco weekend, having dinner with Sharon and Aaron and then going to the panto with them. As per normal the Christmas show was written with a bit of poetic licence and lots of local innuendos. It was election night so lots of references to the characters of the 'political' show we'd been seeing over the past few weeks. Aladdin was written by a famous NZ playwright Roger Hall and after seeing it will have to read the real story to see how close it was to the truth (all I can remember is the magic lantern, the flying carpet and the genie).   We came back to a recorded version of the election, which was great as a 4 hour show could be reduced to about 1.5 hours. On Sunday we went to the celebrations for St Andrews day. Lots of pipers and Celtic music - the stage was battered about by the wind but the crowd sat sheltered by the food and gift caravans and so we had a great time listening to Robbie Burns music and watching people attempt to dance. We didn't know much about St Andrew and so when we got back I did a bit of googling. He is the patron saint of Scotland and also Romania, Russia, Ukraine, bits of Italy, Malta, Greece and Portugal. The day is also celebrated in Austria and Poland.  Its a holiday in Scotland - but the banks don't have to close (like other bank holidays) and employees don't necessarily get the day off but students at the uni of St Andrews do have a day of leisure.  The day has some superstitions surrounding it and I was intrigued to find that most had a marital theme - it was a day of magic where a young woman could find out some info about her future husband eg:

• In Poland they pour hot lead into water or hot wax through a key hole into cold water - the shape that comes out at the end says what the future husband's profession will be.
• In some areas in Austria, young women have a glass or two of wine perform a spell and kick a straw bed - all this while they are naked - I guess this could magically attract a husband or two if the bed kicking was a public affair! 
• Others throw a clog over the shoulder: if it lands pointing to the door, the woman will get married soon.
• In some parts of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the names of potential husbands are written on little pieces of paper and are stuck to a piece of dough.  They are cooked and then put into water and the first one to float to the surface of the water would reveal who the lucky man was.
• In Poland, some women put pieces of paper (on which they have written potential husbands) under the pillow and first thing in the morning they take one out and that's the lucky man.
• In Romania, it is customary for young women to put 41 grains of wheat beneath their pillow before they go to sleep, and if they dream that someone is coming to steal their grains that means that they are going to get married next year. 

What do you think of the kiwi version of a deck chair in the photos?