Staring into the abyss

Some of you may already be aware that I was made redundant a couple of weeks ago - I'm not going to talk about that here (comment or email if you want to know more), but it does mean I've had a bit of "spare" time on my hands.

If you can see my Reader Shared Items (also over there on the right), you might have seen me share a post on Twisted Sifter about bellmouth spillways.

I've always found the idea of these things terrifying and fascinating, because they can produce something that looks like this:



. . . which, I'm sure you'll agree, is even scarier than Bethan post-sugar.

The beauty of TEH INTARNET means that my father was able to point out that one of these CIRCULAR CHASMS OF HOPELESSNESS exists in (where else?) Auckland. Well, not far out of Auckland, at least.

It is up in the Waitakeres, which is something like my spiritual homeland, if I went in for that kind of thing. There are a few reservoirs up there providing some of the drinking (and presumably showering, and bog-flushing) water for Auckland. One of them has one of these.

Since I had something to pick up from Auckland, I decided I'd make a bit more of a day of it, and go and look at this thing. As luck would have it, my good friend Eion is currently in Auckland, so I picked him up on the way.

It's the Lower Huia Reservoir we were after, but I didn't know that until later. Here it is on a map:


View Larger Map

We stopped at the Lower Nihotupu Reservoir, but soon realised it wasn't what we were looking for, and continued.

If anyone wants to go there (and I suggest you do, it's well worth it), you go through the little town of Huia, then turn right immediately after the one-lane bridge, and park up the end by the closed gate.

We did this the first time, but were discouraged by the closed gate, and turned back around. Good thing I had Eion with me, as he is man enough to ask for directions at a shop, unlike me. We were duly pointed back to where we'd come from.

The 'five minute walk' is a little more than that - maybe fifteen minutes - but completely worth it. You walk up the road, which goes steeply up the face of the dam.

Once you're on top of the dam, you can see the beautiful (although quite empty) reservoir amongst the bush-clad hills, and even out to sea in the other direction.



At the other end of the dam is what appears to be a jetty, sticking out into the reservoir - just walk across the road on top of the dam to it.



See, it's just a nice, harmless OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT DON'T LOOK DOWN



The nice little jetty goes directly over the entrance to hell centre of the bell-mouth spillway.

It's difficult to give a proper idea of the real size (and more importantly, the depth) of this thing. I'd guess it's about ten metres across, and between 4000 and 5000km deep.

Eion and I wavered between leaning as far as we could over the fence, fascinated by it, then suddenly realising the possibility of falling, and crouching down, clinging to the railing and gibbering with fear.

We took some photos:


Note the safety stance.




Note the white face of terror.



This thing has massive fins on it, which I found horrifying, partly because they're a little too much like teeth, and partly because they remind me of another terrifying concrete structure, the Ryugyong.



It wasn't until we were about to leave the we realised the small circular hole in the bridge couldn't possibly be a drain. No, it was a direct portal into the evil depths viewing hole exactly over the centre of the spillway:



Please go and look at it, the photos really do not do it justice. Just make sure you take some Valium or something.





Here's that bit of sea I was talking about:



It really is quite picturesque up there (assuming you ignore the vortex to another world):



So, if you're in Auckland, go and have a look. It's about a fifteen to twenty minute drive past Titirangi, not far, and totally worth it.

Next time I will take Bethan and some rope.

Snow! [1400km final]

At last, I'm going to finish writing about our trip, and it hasn't even been a year since it happened!

Last time, we were just about to leave Wellington, on a freezing, windy Tuesday morning. We could have just driven straight home along State Highway One (i.e. the way we came), which would have got us back home easily within the day.

However, we're more adventurous stupid than that, so we decided to drive through Upper and Lower The Hutt, over the Rimutakas and through the Wairarapa instead.

Mostly we did this because I've never really been over there before, and I wanted to give it a look.

I should also point out that large parts of the central North Island (which we'd need to drive through to get home), including the Desert Road, had been closed due to unprecedented and slightly unseasonal snowfalls. So, there was even the possibility of getting stranded somewhere. Exciting!

The Rimutakas surprised me with their unexpected size (seemed a lot bigger than the Kaimais) and unrelenting expanses of gorse (or was it broom? Yellow flowers anyway).

Featherston's the first town once you get over the hill. It's nice enough, but seems a bit like Wellington's version of Tirau - I wanted to see the real Wairarapa.

Greytown and Carterton were getting closer to what I wanted to see, but it wasn't until we got to Masterton that I found what I was looking for. It was great, reminded me of the good bits of Tokoroa, although it's a hell of a lot bigger. It's the sort of place I reckon I could live in, for a while anyway.

After some local delicacies McDonalds, we continued on. Somewhere along the road, we suddenly noticed the looming Tararuas in the distance - and they had SNOW on them! We had to take a photo, there was no way we'd see that much snow again on the way home:


(if you click on the photo to make it big, you might just be able to make out the mountains, sandwiched between the hills and the clouds)

Next stop, Eketahuna, where we continued the "photos with oversized roadside objects" theme:





This last one was immediately prior to a major meltdown about something I can't remember, probably the only tantrum of the whole trip, and it was all over in about three minutes:



Eketahuna's another one of those little places I love - a town that seems truly represenative of its region, unpretentious in the extreme.

Pahiatua's another one of those, but it has the benefit of a massive and incredible playground:



Betty is sideways as usual; hopefully this is some indication of how she will drive a car:



They even have what appears to be a real plane:



Plane nerds, please let me know what it is - this emblem on the side may assist with identification:



I'm not sure that any of those photos convey just how bitterly cold it was. Ah, here's one that does:



We travelled on.

These pictures are from a place called Stormy Point Lookout. You've no idea how hard it was to figure out where the hell I took them - GPS may be a requirement on the next camera.



It lived up to its name, anyway, by being unfeasibly windy, but also providing a fairly spectacular view:





Again, I'll let Rach demonstrate just how cold and windy it was:



We joined up with State Highway One again at the humorously-named Vinegar Hill. (if you follow that link, you'll find out why it's called that, as well as why camp really means Camp there)

We got very very excited when we started to see snow at the side of the road, so took lots and lots of pictures, assuming it would be all we'd see. After all, we'd just traveled south on the same road a few days earlier, and there wasn't really anything then.

Here's a few of the sort of pictures I'm talking about:







However, when we rounded this corner:



BOOOOOOM, Winter Wonderland:





Probably not so impressive if you're used to living somewhere that gets snow all the time. And yes, this area does generally have a snowfall or two every year BUT not in October, and not this amount.

I kinda wish I'd stopped, climbed up a hill with my skis (THEY WERE IN THE CAR) and had an impromptu ski. Something like this would've been brilliant:



Still, we made up for not doing this by stopping in Waiouru and going mental in the fresh snow, as only non-snow-dwellers can:









It was hard to get back in the car and keep going, but we thought we'd better. The Desert Road through to Turangi was still closed, so we detoured through Ohakune. By this time we were getting hungry again, so rather than going the quick, sensible way, we went back across to Taupo to get food.

Luckily, this meant we were able to get one last roadside statue photo in; the Turangi Trout:



Despite going the long way round more than once, we had a really really good trip, and it hasn't even put me off driving long distances with small children. As a side benefit, I now know the High School Musical 3 soundtrack off by heart.

Since we had a whole day to spare before going back to drudgery, the girls did this:



Comments please about what they are making (and anything else you want to say).

1400km III

The third part of our trip, at last I write about it! Click for big on the photos.

You won't remember, because the last post about it was so long ago, but at the end of that, we'd just left Palmerston North (or New Plymouth, as a surprising number of people call it).

The drive to Wellington was pretty uneventful, despite the continuous High School Musical 3 soundtrack.

My cousin (once removed) Toby, his wife Hilary, and their three children Tom, Emily and Leandra were kind enough to let us stay at their place, despite being away in the South Island when we arrived.

Like the time we stayed there earlier in the year, we were made to feel incredibly welcome by very nice people. Of course, we barely took any photos, but here are some of the few we did take:

Two girls in a shower:



The same two girls in their bed, specially located in a magical under-stair area:



Here's the only picture of (two of) our hosts - Emily reclining, Hilary obscured by Ella Big Head:



MUST TRY HARDER

. . . and here's Wellington through their dining-room window:





The next day, we went to Te Papa for the Formula One exhibition. We forgot to take the camera, but here are some photos off the iphone:

Betty does her (great-) Grandad impression in front of a 60s McLaren:



Ella is a bit more impressed with a more modern McLaren:



The F1 exhibit wasn't bad, but not as good as I'd hoped. Formula One cars are not really the sort of thing that should be shown in static form - they need to be moving.

The rest of Te Papa was fantastic as usual though, and kept us all occupied for hours.

That afternoon we went to the City Gallery to see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition. No cameras allowed in this one, so no photos by us.

It was absolutely incredible though, to get a tiny idea of what it was like, click on this link.

We had a late lunch of $5 all-day breakfast at a cafe hidden up the back of a mall that off the side of Cuba Street somewhere. I highly recommend this place - if only I could remember what it's called . . .

The next day was hometime, but before that we went and parked at the Rose Gardens, then walked through the Bolton Cemetery to town.

We didn't have a lot of time, and it was freezing, but this is another highly recommended place to visit in Wellington.

We were on our way to what turned out to be another hidden gem - the Reserve Bank Museum. It's free, doesn't take too long to look around, it's interesting, but most importantly, the kids got bags of shredded money! What more could one ask for?

We had a quick coffee with Toby before embarking on our trip home, which I'll write about if I ever get around to it.

The moon's a balloon

Hamilton has a Balloon Festival every year, which is pretty frickin' sweet if you ask me (or anyone else in my immediate family).

Here are some photos (remember to click for big):



It seems that Ella is dressed in her Brethren outfit more often than not these days:



No, wait - sometimes she wears a "normal" hat:



There were at least 16 balloons on the Saturday morning, undeniably spectacular:





We all become experts on balloons at this time of year. This one can fit 22 dudes in the basket. That's a lot of dudes:



See, look, it's like a minibus hanging there under the envelope (sorry, another bit of balloonist jargon there):



Say hello to Jack In The Box - Ella's not scared of him, but I am. That's why I'm standing further away, taking the photo:



I'm never too sure about panoramas, but this new camera sure makes them easier to line up:



Mushroom!



I could totally sell this if people wanted iconic Hamilton photos:



Underneath:



That thing was stalking us, I swear:



It tried to go for a swim:



Ella got to go in a balloon (that one behind her):





That's her on the right:



Here's another panorama of the early part of the Nightglow:



This is what Ella looks like, all lit up:



. . . aaaaand this is what a whole lot of balloons look like, all lit up:



The girls all went to see a few balloons land in the poncy high school near us on the Sunday morning: