The Republic of Whangamomona

The Republic of Whangamomona is a small township located along Highway 43, also known as the Forgotten Highway. The town of Whangamomona was officially established in 1897, 2 years after settlers arrived in the area. In 1989 it became a Republic, in protest of a change in boundary lines for the regional councils. Until 1989, Whangamomona was in the Taranaki district, but the new boundaries would change that so the township became part of the Manawatu-Wanganui district.

The township wanted to remain part of Taranaki, and since new boundary lines did not allow this, they declared themselves a Republic. Since then, there have been 27 Republic of Whangamomona Independence Day celebrations. They are now held once every two years, and have become a festival which attracts visitors from far and wide. An important part of the celebration is electing the next president. The first president was Ian Kjestrup, and was in office for 10 years. The first elected animal president was Billy Gumboot the Goat, who won the 1999 election by eating the other candidates’ ballots.

The 2015 Independence Day celebration was held on 24 January. It was a lovely sunny summer day, the hottest so far this summer. It would be hard to say how many people attended, but the number of people in the space available made it look like a good crowd. When you reached the edge of the Republic you were greeted by border control, who presented you with a Republic of Whangamomona passport, in exchange for $5. Once you cleared the border, you were sent to immigration to get your official entry stamp on the passport.

I got there just in time to watch the Gutbuster. Each year contestants join in a race up to the top of an incredibly steep hill (which also doubles as a sheep field) and back down. I was quite impressed with how quickly some of the runners made it to the top. The oldest contestant was 67 (he apparently runs the race every time they hold it), and the youngest looked to be somewhere between 6 and 9. All I could think was kudos to them, both because of the temperature (the race was held at 1230, so not the coolest part of the day), and because of the course for the race.

While we browsed stalls selling all manner of local arts, crafts, and trinkets (and yummy things like meat pies, homemade baking and ice cream), we had the pleasure of enjoying a bagpipe band populated by local players of all ages. After a nice picnic lunch in the shade (the sun was ridiculously hot, 27 degrees Celcius), we enjoyed the next round of competitions.

Teams of 5 people were put together for this event. One person hammered a nail into a stump, the next had to shear a sheep, up third was a wood-chopper, followed by a pie-eater and lastly a pint-drinker. The competition was open to anyone willing to take the challenge. Some of the wood-choppers were as young as 8 or 10, and eager to show off their skills.

Blade shearing

Team Sports

Shearing competition t-shirt

 The last event I saw before deciding it was time to head towards home was a demonstration of how to shear a sheep with blades instead of an electric shearer, (blade-shearing is the traditional way). I’d say it definitely takes a bit of skill to wield said shears, as the handle alone was bigger than my hand. Following the sheep shearing was a demonstration on how to skin possums. New Zealand possums look quite different from the US variety, but they are still not cute. Apparently the tail is the most valuable fur off the possum. The fur can be sold and it goes for making Possum/Merino scarves, hats, etc.

NZ possum

Although I did not stay all day, other events planned for the remainder of the day was a sheep race, electing the new president of the Republic, and gumboot throwing.

The Forgotten World Highway

The Forgotten World Highway is a 150-kilometer long road that runs from Stratford to Taumaranui, mainly in the Manawatu-Wanganui district. The only real town (or settlement) once you leave the Stratford area is the Republic of Whangamomona, which is about halfway. The Highway is a winding up and down adventure through mostly unsettled, New Zealand countryside. The road was built along Maori trading routes and pioneering farm tracks.

As you leave Stratford, you see a sign indicating the Forgotten World Highway has begun. A few feet further down the road, you see another sign, this one telling you there are no gas stations for the next 150 kilometers. It takes 2-3 hours to drive the entire Highway. This might seem like rather a long time for only 150k, but the road is far from straight. It winds over 4 mountain saddles as you make your way to Whangamomona. This gives you the opportunity to enjoy farmland, mountains (you can see Mt. Taranaki in the rearview mirror, and Mt. Ruapehu in the distance), and forests.

Once you get to Whangamomona, your tummy is generally ready for a break from the car, if you are anything like me at least. My stomach is not cast-iron, but I do not normally experience car sickness much. This road however is just up and down and windy enough that after a while, I am grateful to not be a big breakfast eater (as both times I have driven the highway were in the morning). Thankfully there is a nice little pub in the middle of town (such as it is with a pub, a gift shop, a mechanic, town hall, and a few houses). They sell “I survived the Forgotten Highway” t-shirts, and all manner of standard pub food and drink.

As you leave Whangamomona, you follow the Whanganui river through the next hour of wilderness. You can expect to find a rock tunnel, a one-lane concrete bridge built in 1937, and 8 kilometers of unpaved road. There are multiple points of interest along the way including a tour of the countryside on rail cars, look-out points of scenic valleys, hiking/biking trails, Mt. Damper falls (which involves a brief detour off the highway, but well worth it), Pa sites (historic Maori settlement locations), and an incredible range of geographical changes and native delights.

See below for photos and check back soon for more information about the Republic of Whangamomona. Please note these photos are only from as far as Whangamomona on the highway, as the first time, when I drove the entire highway, I did not have my camera handy (well, to be exact, I had it handy, and was taking photos, but failed to notice that I had no memory card in the camera, oops!). 

Lake Taupo

When I got back from my visit home, I was lucky to still have a few days off before returning to work, so I took a weekend trip to Lake Taupo.

Taupo is close to the middle of the North Island. It used to be a volcano, but roundabout 26,000 years there was a supervolcanic eruption which resulted in it becoming a lake. It is the largest known eruption in the world for the last 70,000 years. The lake is the largest body of freshwater in New Zealand with a surface area of 238 square miles (616 kilometers).

I didn't have nearly the time I wanted to spend there, once I arrived and realized all I could spend my time doing, but I did manage to pick out some highlights and have a wonderful couple of days.

One of the big stops was taking a sailboat out to a spot in the lake that has Maori carvings in a rock-face (we did not have to sail it, got to sit back and relax). The carvings were completed in the 1970s by local artists as a gift to the city.  In true Kiwi fashion, once we were out there we got to sit for awhile and enjoy the scenery while having a cup of tea.

Our sailing vessel

The other major sight seeing endeavor was out to see some waterfalls. Upon consulting the map, it seemed like a long-ish walk, or a nice leisurely bike ride. It was a delightful summery day so renting a bike from the hostel seemed like an excellent idea. And it was, it just turned out to be a bit more than originally bargained for. What the map does NOT tell you is that bicyclists must take the longer, more rugged mountain bike trail to get there, instead of the well-kept flat-ish sidewalk. So off we headed, telling ourselves we were tougher than the track. Which we were, it only took us over an hour of the predicted 26 minutes :) I have no mountain biking experience, so for a seasoned rider it would probably be a piece of cake. But I found many of the uphill climbs to be quite tiring, and the rather narrow path along the side of the mountain to be a bit disconcerting. I must admit there were times I walked so I could get up the hill. I will be so much more mentally prepared next time!

The destination was Huka Falls, which is part of the Waikato River which heads north from the Lake (NZs longest river). Just before the waterfall, the river enters a narrow ravine, which results in 220,000 liters of water per second crashing through a very small space. It was quite spectacular to watch.

Scenery along the way, Waikato River

Mouth of the ravine

Heading towards the fall

Huka Falls--not a tall one, but just as impressive

Time Travel

Those of you who are a bit more punctual than I would probably frown at me waiting so long to actually get this post up (since I actually should have put it up a month ago for it to be current), but I just have not been able to muster up the right amount of creativity for the words in my brain to get on to paper. Anyway :)

I went home for Christmas, which was fabulous. Having experienced a summer Christmas in 2013, I decided I just really do prefer cold weather and hot food to hot weather and a BBQ. Of course that is not to discount the quality of Kiwi BBQs, I just found find a summer Christmas a bit out of the ordinary.

Right now, with NZ on Daylight Savings Time, and the Midwestern US not on Daylight Savings Time, the time difference is 19 hours. So, for those of you who are stateside, I am officially living in the future, muwahaha. So getting all those hours backwards in time takes a bit. My journey began at 6am on a Tuesday morning. I was up just in time to see the first sunrise that day, although it was pretty boring so I failed to get a picture. Later that day, as I was flying away from Sydney, I saw that days first sunset.

Sunset Tuesday evening

After far too many hours of trying to sleep, failing to stay interested in movies, and reading three books, I was nearing Los Angeles and alas, I got to see the same sunrise on the other side of the world!

Sunrise Tuesday morning, 11 hours later

So, not only did I get to see the same sunrise twice, but I got to see sunset before sunrise all on the same day. If you have not yet had the opportunity for much international travel, let me just forewarn you that it does wonders for screwing up your logical perception of time. There is a slight chance that I am more fascinated by re-living the same day than most of the rest of society, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway, if for no other reason because then I can show off cool pictures.


Happy New Year!

Marathon Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving a few days late! I spent Thanksgiving at work *sadface* and had pasta for supper. I did manage to bump into a couple of fellow Americans that day though and we enjoyed reminiscing about how nice it would be to have turkey instead of work :)

I meant to post this a month ago when said weekend occurred, but my schedule in general has been rather marathon-ish since then so I am just now getting to it.

Back in September I agreed to be the horizontal harp player for the Orchestras final concert this year (horizontal harp because I was playing the harp part on a keyboard instead of a harp as there are unfortunately no harps to be found in New Plymouth). Then in October I decided to join the Powerco team for the Round the Mountain Relay. This was all well and good until I realized that both events were the same weekend. But I had committed to both already and chose to keep the commitment, so I was left with figuring out how to fit it all into one weekend.

Each spring, there is a relay around Mount Taranaki organized. Teams from businesses or just groups of people who want to form a team can enter. There are walking teams, running teams, and composite teams. This year there was also the option to do a solo run, which meant you were running all by your lonesome for a very long time.
The walking teams started Friday evening. The composite teams started at 11pm Friday night, and each member of those teams would run one leg and walk another. The run teams started at 230am Saturday morning. There were 21 legs to complete, for the running teams you could have up to 16 people, so a few had to kindly offer to more than one leg. The total distance was 150 kilometers. Our team completed it in 14:22, 13th out of 15 for the business class. We were just glad to not be last!

Saturday evening was the Last Night of the Proms orchestra concert. It was a combination New Plymouth Orchestra and New Plymouth Ars Nova Choir combined concert which also featured four local vocal soloists. It was an England/New Zealand patriotic concert which featured well known tunes from both sides of the pond such as "God Save the Queen" (same tune as My Country 'Tis of Thee, but notably different words!), Sea Shanties with Rule Britania, and Pomp and Circumstance also known as Land of Hope and Glory. The program also included classic works such as Wagners Bridal Chorus and Flying Dutchman overture and opera excerpts.

So how did all this fit into a terribly busy weekend?

Well, I had just enough time to grab dinner and a cup of tea before heading off to orchestra for the evening. Rehearsal was scheduled 7-10 pm as we needed to coordinate everything with the choir in terms of tuning, balance, sharing the stage, etc. We also had to sort out lighting and sound issues and run the program from start to finish. We managed to finish by 11pm, yippee.
I had a powernap and then met up with some of my fellow runners at 2am. The team had been split into groups for organization and transportation purposes as we were sharing company vehicles for getting to and from starting points. Our first runner got himself to the start of the relay as it was in town, so the plan was for us to head to where Leg 2 started, which was the bit I was running, for the first handoff. After the first 4 legs had been completed, we would all head back to town so the next group in our vehicle could take over (we were scheduled to be back just past sunrise, around 6am).

My leg of the relay was 9.5k long. I started at 315, finished at 405, which I thought was quite good since that was the fastest I'd run that distance in several weeks of training. I am quite certain that half the reason I ran so fast is because I was so cold, when I got to my finish point it was 40 degrees! Considering what it was though, I can say I did have fun. This was my first official "race" so it was a new experience for sure. There were people all along the route to offer encouragement and ensure it was well-lit. We were also equipped with plenty of lighting as well as reflective gear. Knowing there was a whole group of people running with you provided both a bit of competitiveness to keep going, and motivation in knowing you weren't the only one wondering why you were up at such a crazy hour to run. I had three hills, but it was dark enough I did not know for sure how big they were, so I kept assuming it was going to get worse than it did, which also seemed to make it a bit easier. When I got to my finish point, there was coffee (which I declined, but did have a snack), water, and plenty of encouraging congratulations.

I got back to town in time to warm up with a cup of tea, have a shower and breakfast, then I was off to orchestra again, armed with a coffee and some snacks to keep me awake. The rehearsal was  planned from 9am - 1pm, but lucky for me we finished at 11am due to the hard work from the night before. So I was off to home for a nap. I found it surprisingly hard to go to sleep, but managed a couple hours and a good bit of relaxing before it was time to get ready for the concert.

I had to be at the theater by 7pm, as we started at 730. By the time I got home, it was nearly 1030 so it felt like a long night, but it was a good, tired accompanied by a feeling of accomplishment, and great plans to sleep in the next morning. The orchestra played well, the house was full, and the audience was enthusiastic. There was red, white, and blue decorating the theater, but it was in the wrong pattern :) Once we got past the classical selections on the program, I was not familiar with many of the tunes, but enjoyed observing the obvious pleasure from both listeners and performers with each new selection. I'd only heard Pomp and Circumstance as a graduation walk piece, so it was interesting to hear it performed with a choir. The New Zealand national anthem was performed in Te Reo (Maori) by a high school girls choir. Both the New Zealand anthem and God Save the Queen were arranged by an Australian (one of the conductors for the evening), which we found a bit amusing :)

I do not have plans to repeat such a schedule anytime soon, but looking back, I wouldn't have given up either experience simply to have a bit more sleep on Friday night :)

Happy Holiday season, and see some of you very soon!

A Sudden Storm

When I first got to New Plymouth and was finding my way around town and meeting lots of new people, I would often get asked if it snows where I grew up. Then I would hear about the one time a few years ago when it snowed in town (the mountain is frequently covered in snow, but it is too warm in town, it hardly gets below freezing), just enough to have a light dusting on the ground, but that was enough to halt all driving, and send people home from work and school halfway through the day.

Having been here for nearly 18 months now, I have grown accustomed to the warmer temperatures (especially now that it is Spring, yay!), so I was just as surprised as the local when the weather took an unexpected turn one day last week.

I always leave work right at 4pm on Wednesdays so that I am home in time to teach a piano lesson. Right about 3:30 last Wednesday, the sunny day suddenly went to dreary dark cloudy. By 3:50 it had gotten quite windy and was starting to rain. By 4:07 when I was nearly halfway home, it was pouring buckets of rain and then it started to hail. By the time I reached downtown, traffic was nearly at a standstill and there was increasing amount of standing water everywhere (it was still raining) because the pea-sized hail was clogging the drains.
It took me half an hour to get home that day (it normally takes 10-12 depending whether the lights are red or green). I must say I was impressed with how drivers handled the weather. Everyone slowed down and was extra cautious and mindful of everyone else, which was quite relieving.

According to the newspaper in the next couple days, there were no major accidents, but downtown did experience a significant amount of flooding. Since the drains started clogging, water just ran up on the sidewalks and then into stores restaurants, anywhere. The storm was over in about an hours time, but even now you can see places just starting to dry out or get cleaned up from all the water.

Just past where the hail started, it was only downtown that got more than a bit of rain

My driveway

Hail-drifts downtown

A local adventure

Labor day in the US is the unofficial end of summer. In NZ, it is the unofficial start of summer. The last Monday of October is New Zealand’s labor day so we had a three day weekend to enjoy. The weather being temperamental as usual for this time of year, only one of the 3 days was predicted to be sunny. So I decided to make the most of it and planned a day trip to some local spots which I had not yet had the opportunity to explore (the joy of having my own car is I can up and go when and where I want, yay!). I did not plan a terribly long day as I had wanted a bit of a sleep-in, and had to be back in time for the long-awaited Mexican night with my Japanese friends, but I was armed with a picnic, camera, and enthusiasm and off I went down SHWY 3.

First stop was the Mt. Damper Falls. Several times I’ve seen the sign as I passed the turn-off and since it said it was only 27k down the road, I figured it would be a fun little detour off the highway. I forgot however, that 27k (about 17 miles) on a New Zealand is not the breezy drive that you would find on say a straight and flat Kansas highway. It took over half an hour to drive all the way to the falls (you can go 100k in an hour on a non-windy flat-ish road). The lovely scenic drive started out a nice paved two lane highway alongside a river that had lots of whitebait fishers on it. After a while it got narrow, then turned to gravel with a gorge on one side and a massive rocky cliff face on the other. It turned back to blacktop just in time to go up the windy road to the top of Mt. Damper. Once you reached the top, you parked and walked through a pasture full of sheep, then through a woodland trail until you suddenly popped out into the sunshine and saw the waterfall (only a 10-15 minute walk). The view was definitely worth the drive, I’d happily return at some stage. It was definitely one of those trips where the journey was as exciting as the destination, as you never knew what the next corner would bring.

Once my car had found its way back to the highway, we headed for Mokau. Mokau is a lovely little seaside town just past the Taranaki-Waikato line. There is not a lot to do there, but there is a nice beach where I wanted to enjoy the picnic. It was a bit windy, but it was sunny and warm and I nearly fell asleep, which was just lovely J

 After packing up the leftovers from lunch, it was time to mosey towards home (as lunch did not really happen until around 2pm), but had one more stop planned along the way. There is a rock formation called “The Three Sisters” that I had not been able to see yet, as you can only reach the site when the tide is out. It is just around the corner from Mokau, at Tongaporutu. After parking at the beach, you walk down the coast a bit past some caves until you emerge in a lovely spot where you can see Elephant and the Sisters. Right now there are only 2 as one has broken off, but in time, another will emerge from the cliffs due to erosion of wind and sea. Due to the changing tides, there was not a lot of time to spend exploring, but had a chance to enjoy walking among the rock formations and taking lots of pictures J