Apologies to all of you blog-followers wondering about the whereabouts of your NZ blogpost of the week. We had a computer meltdown and lost all of our files and are just now back up and running.
That did not stop us from pursuing our travels last weekend though, and an amazing weekend it was. We traveled first to Whanganui, where we stayed at the Quaker settlement and then to the Taranaki Garden Festival in New Plymouth, a couple more hours away.
Whanganui (the "wh" sound pronounced as an "f" by the Maori) or Wanganui (just like it looks) is a lovely river town on the west coast, and is also the name of the river which runs through it. It was a site of violent clashes between the Maori and pakeha in earlier times. Now it has a charming downtown bordering the river, with art deco touches and an art-y feel. There are riverboat cruises, an extremely interesting and evocative small museum and the Sarjeant Art Gallery. We visited the museum and admired its collection of Maori wakas (large elaborately carved canoes), beautiful greenstone and bone ornaments, musical instruments and artifacts of Maori life from earlier times. Also, an impressive array of taxidermy birds, animals and mounted insects (including many colorful butterflies) and lovingly displayed items from life in earlier times. Downtown, we sampled Thai and Indian food, watched glassblowers at work, and considered (but resisted) buying beautiful glass items we might break in transit.
We experienced warm and wonderful hospitality at the Quaker settlement. Originally the site of a Quaker boarding school, the 20-acre settlement is now a community owned by NZ Yearly Meeting. Settlers lease their homes and participate in the community in various ways. The settlers have a weekly business meeting where they deal with the logistics of living together Quaker-style and have a weekly shared meal, which they re-scheduled so that we could join in. They raise gardens, sheep, chickens, bunnies and ducks. There is a beautiful free-standing quiet room in the round with a central skylight where the light pours in where there is meeting for worship every morning. They also host groups and seminars, most related to Quaker social concerns. We felt very fortunate to spend time with Michael and Merilyn Payne. Michael is the architect who designed the settlement in its current incarnation. They showed us around, gave us tea, lent us books, encouraged us to harvest lemons and grapefruit from their trees, and offered stimulating conversation. They are dedicated to eco-sound living and have been lifelong activists in the Quaker world. Current projects include encouraging purchase of solar cells Michael has made as carbon offsets for travel and the harvesting of a grove of mature pine trees he is making into extremely beautiful simple coffins which can double as standing bookshelves till they are needed :-).
On Saturday after meeting for worship, we headed to the Taranaki region around New Plymouth for the rhododendron festival and garden tour. There were 60 or so gardens, and we only had time to visit a few. This is a picture of Tupare, an English style garden with an arts and crafts style house, where I could have easily spent the day exploring. Next we went to Pukehara Park, which had many lovely spaces, including waterfalls, numerous ferns and other native plants, and red bridges spanning waterways. Our next garden was a tiny Japanese one at a little house in the suburbs, where an older Japanese man explained the tea ceremony and showed us a picture of Mt. Fuji, comparing it to the view out the window of the majestic NZ volcano, Mt. Taranaki (or Mt. Egmont among the pakeha). Next we had tea and cake under the trees at the simple and lovely Hirst Cottage, home of one of NZ's prime ministers in the early 1800's. The guide there encouraged us to visit Putekei, partway up the mountain in the rainforest. There the rhododendrons were on full display, gigantic, colorful, and fragrant. I finally had to take the camera away from John. Rushing back to make it in time for the shared meal at the settlement, we stopped for just a few moments at Chriesi Wald, a very quirky home garden in Patea. Created by its tiny, elderly resident, Rudi Milesi, it was a series of 12 garden rooms filled with sculpture, strange artifacts, and live birds.
Computer traumas aside, it was a great weekend.
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