Sister Suzie sells sea shell on the sea shore.....

One of my favorite things to do is to pick up sea shells on the sea shore. When we were in Waihi the weather was not very friendly. It had not been nice for a couple of days which always brings up a wide variety of shells on the sand.  I had so much fun picking them up. Here is a sampling.

I have looked for this type of shell the entire time that I have been walking the sands.

This is the biggest one that I found. I know that you can find this kind in all sizes as the motel had a display of them but this was the only one like this that I found. 

I really like these.  They remind me a chocolates. Each one is very unique.

The big one here is about 3.5 inches long and the other about three-quarters of an inch long. 

This is an assortment of the kind that I found. I have never seen the brown ones or the blue ones or the almost black ones. I was really excited when I found all of these.  I have decided that I am going to get a big glass jar and display all of my shells that way. What memories!

Cast in Bronze

When we went to Waihi over the weekend we took a stroll around the town. What a quaint little place it is. We saw several statues cast in Bronze. I was fascinated by them and could not help but take photos of them which means I get to share them.

This was out front of the library.  I loved the detail in the clothing and faces.  

Saturday night bath in the big galvanized tub!  

Look at the face on this little boy?

What would be more fitting for a mining town than for there to be a miner?

Certainly my favorite (I think...that little boy in the tub is pretty cute) is this one.  I especially loved the inscription at the base of the statue.

A Fish To Fry

Certainly Kiwi's love the water and one of the main reasons they love it is for the joy of fishing. Owning a boat or having a good mate that owns one is almost a requirement for being a native here. Some love the thrill of the troll while others just love all the new innovative ways to go about the sport. We saw three examples of how to pursue the hobby.

The first, and certainly the simplest fishing right off the dock or rocks. Nothing too interesting that it would warrant a photo.

The second is fishing from a boat. This man drove his truck and boat right down to the water's edge to launch his boat and now he is trying to get the boat out of the water and back on the trailer. We saw this action repeated several times.

This is a rather humble boat but they all seemed to enjoy the activity. We saw much fancier outfits but they were all happy with the results.

The third way was fishing from the beach.  And we saw two examples of it.  The first is for an individual who likes to say he caught the fish and eat the fish but maybe does not have the time or means to be on the water.  This is like a very large reel. I have not figured out how it is cast but he connected about 20 hooks to this reel and cast it into the ocean.  He let it run out for about 20 minutes and then stopped it.  It sat there until he was ready to reel it in and the hope was all of those hooks would have something attached to them. I saw him setting this up and then fifteen minutes later I saw him come back but never saw him bring it in.

The next photo is a more sophisticated version of the above one. 

It is kind of like a big shotgun. The white cylinder on the front has a propeller with a battery and a timer. They get the reel all set with all the 20 hooks and then they would shoot it, like a gun. The battery was on a timer so you could set it to just keep going on this battery power for up to 45 minutes. So you shoot it in the ocean and it runs out for 20 minutes and then it turns off. They you reel it in, just like the other one and hope for a good catch.  

We came across this man and his two sons. They are reeling it in. You can see the reel and the man is holding on to it with a cloth so it does not get tangled. It takes as long to reel it in as to the time the battery was running.  They usually do it at low tide.  This time they only caught three fish. One was a snapper which is my favorite to eat as fish and chips. This is the other one that they caught. It is called a grunard. They have wings on both sides of their body. The young boy wanted to be sure I saw how pretty and unique they were.  They don't fly but I think they use it to stir up the bottom of the sea since that is where they usually reside. 

Miss Bossy

I grew up with advertisements for milk and milk products that featured Bossy.  This weekend we really saw the Bossys of New Zealand. Unlike other places that we have visited that have been sheep country this part of New Zealand has to be a favorite of the dairyman.  Cows, cows everywhere!  We saw them of every kind and color. We passed one big field. On the right side of the road was a field that was full of cows and calves. Across the road on the left hand side was a big bull.  He was standing at the fence, staring, maybe too intently, at all those cows on the other side.

A bit further down the road we saw a long, long line of cows, three and four deep, following one another to a distant milking barn. They walked towards the right, on the left hand side of the road, under the road and then continued on to the barn. There had to have been 300-400 cows, all ready to be milked. Later we were told that there are no humans involved in bringing these cows to the milk barn. They just know when they were full and it was time to head for the barn.

It was kind of a cool, rainy day when we were driving from Hamilton to Waihi Beach. Maybe you remember in a different blog I mentioned how they keep blankets on their horses? I speculated as to the reason why one of which was to keep them warm.  Well, in one field, a bit in the distance, I saw a herd of cows, each with its own blanket. Or so I thought.  This is what I saw:

It took me a few moments before I realized that it was not a blanket at all but the actual cow. It is called a belted galloway cow.  They originate in Scotland and it is some sort of cross breding. We saw many herds with all sorts of different cows. There were brown ones and other black and white cows, like the Chick-fil-a cow but never was this belted galloway cow mixed in with the other breeds. 

Waihi--Heart of Gold of New Zealand

Waihi is a little town about two hours south of Auckland. It is in the Bay of Plenty region. Waihi was settled early in the 1850 and became a place of interest in 1886 when gold was discovered. Soon after it was found there were lots of miners who had staked a claim and had started to dig tunnels deep into the earth. Many miners did alright with their claims while others decided not to continue to mine but they became what were called tunnelmakers. They gave up their claims to gold and silver and began working for the railroad digging tunnels for the trains. There is a tunnel that is more than a kg long that they dug about 1910.

Side note here: These tunnerlmakers were the first Kiwis drafted into WWI. They were so good at what they did that they were sent to Germany and they dug tunnels to help defeat the Germans since they had tunnels all over the land.

Anyway, some of these mines joined forces and created the Martha Gold Company. They were a big business and had lots of men working for them. They used horses to help bring the gold and silver out of the mine. The horses would be taken down into the mine and they would life there, usually only coming out on Christmas and Easter. They had to blindfold them when they came out to protect their eyes.  They slowly became more modern in their production but they were still pretty primitive when these mines closed in the mid 1950s.

The mine opened again in the mid 1980s as Martha's Mine and it was then an open-pit mine. As they worked it they found many of the old tunnels that had been worked for years.  This is what it looks like now.

I could not even get a photo of the bottom of it since it is now so deep.

It is an active, working mine even today. And it has a huge economical impact of this part of New Zealand.

This is one of the dump trucks that works the mine. Tires are 7 feet tall and cost $9000 each.

When the mine has been worked out and there is no more gold and silver that they are bringing out then they will close down operations and it will be made into a man-made lake. If you look at the local maps it is labeled:  Martha's Mine/Lake.

Papua New Guinea

We had the chance to speak at the MTC on Tuesday so we were able to visit with President and Sister Tarawhiti who is the president there. They have been in full-time service to the church for a long time. He served as mission president in PNG and then they served a mission there as well. He had some great stories that I thought I would share.  

President T said that when they would baptize they would baptize entire villages. There is nothing to do in a village so when the missionaries would came everyone would stop and listen to what they were teaching. And so when they would have a baptism they would baptize almost the entire village.  It was not unusual to have 40-50 people baptized at the same day. I think I told you about baptisms  among the crocodiles not too long after we got here. I will check and if it is not posted here I will post it. It would have been early in our mission.  Anyway, because almost everyone in a village were members they would all rejoice and celebrate when they had a visitor from the church.

Elder Collister who is a member of the presidency of the Seventy  and who was Andrew's mission president was the area president here and went on a mission tour in PNG.  They were visiting several of the small villages. In one village the entire population turned out to welcome him and to honor him as best they could. They all dressed in their best costumes to show their respect. When the ceremony to welcome began, all the women, from young girls to the very oldest grandmas greeted him...all topless.  President T said:  Elder Collister did not even blink an eye but leaned over to me and said "We have some teaching to do here."

He said that another time they were in some training meetings and a member of the area presidency was there as well as an area seventy. The man who said the opening prayer said: we are grateful for our visitors and pray that thou will bless the Seventies, and the Eighties and the Nineties.

Elder and Sister Anderson did a tour there for the area presidency. They said the hardest think to get used to was the body odor of the people. They seem to never shower. Sister A said that when the girl came in to turn down the bed they had to leave the room because it was so awful.  I know when President Bleake was at the MTC he made the missionaries from PNG shower twice a day for the first week they were there.  

President T said that there would still maybe be some cannibalism in the most remote villages but it did not happen much any more.  Comforting thought huh? He did say that all the missionaries do have what they call a cane knife in their flats. We wouid call them machetes. They use them for service when they help clear land.  Or maybe it is to kill the rats!

A Bounty on a Butterfly

Dr Nick Smith, chairman of the department of Conservation has announced that there is a $10 bounty on great white butterflies!

Do not be taken in by the beauty of this beast!  They eat and eat and eat their way through the short life that they have and cause so much damage to the crops. They have one back spot on the bottom of each wing which helps to identify them from other white butterflies.

They have only been found in one location in New Zealand which eliminates us from being bounty hunters.  We are A on the map and the butterflies are in Nelson on the south island on the Tasman Sea at B. 

The life-cycle of the butterfly coincides perfectly with spring break at school. So this is the deal. For every dead butterfly that is brought into the office in Nelson they will pay $10. There is no limit since one female can lay 750 eggs in her lifetime. They can bring them in between 30 September and 11 October.  

There is some concern that these great whites look a lot like the small white butterfly that are around all the time. If they bring those in dead they will not be paid the $10 but they will have their names in a draw to win spot prizes.  

Not only has New Zealand figured out an economical way to rid the land of invaders but to help everyone to be gainfully employed for at least two weeks in the year!  Can we learn from them?