Kauri Forest and Kauri Museum

On the way home to Auckland, we took the western coast and paid a visit to Tane Mahuta in the Waipoua Forest- a 2000 year old Kauri Tree which is about 50 metres tall . Its huge, really majestic.

It was difficult to photograph the whole tree and still be in the picture so if you look really really hard, you can see a pin-size Ren at the bottom of the next picture.

Our final stop was the Kauri Museum in Matakohe where we saw some fascinating kauri exhibits.

A cross section of a kauri tree......

Bath tubs were once made of kauri......

Inside a kauri tree trunk...

Boarding house of the 1900s...

Kauri art pieces.....

Kauri home deco and furniture......

and Kauri gum...

oops, Erica almost lost her finger to kauri fish!

Pictures from the Moana Lodge, Paihia

Thought we should do the posy thing before we left this lovely place. Excellent accommodation! Clean, neat, good location, and great outlook!

Russell/ Pompallier Mission - Part 3 of Tan's visit

On the 2nd day of our visit to the Bay of Islands, we dropped by the quaint little seaside village of Russell. We lunched there then went a little tour of the island. Pompallier Mission, NZ's oldest surviving Roman Catholic building was one of the stops. It was originally used as the headquarters of the Catholic mission to Western Oceania. The building is built of rammed earth within a kauri framework. The part of the building we visited was the printery, tannery and storehouse for the Marist mission of Bishop Pompallier. The visit was most interesting for Tim since Bishop Pompallier is often mentioned in school, and the ship on which Bishop Pompallier sailed on appears on his school badge.

There was a school visit on so the guide kept us well entertained with her commentaries and demonstrations. She showed us how cow hide was made into leather in the tannery, a tedious process of soaking the skin in urine and drying and repeating that process many many times.

On the 2nd level was the printery - we saw how a plate was made to print a single page of a book- each alphabet had to hand picked to form a word, sentence and page, run the black ink on the plate and let to dry for a day before you get one printed page. No wonder books were so expensive at that time. Apparently the Marist helped the Maorists print their books for free.

We then lent the lovely lady a hand to print a picture of the Mission.