Day 28 Mungaturoto days and Kauri museum

Day 28 Mungaturoto days and Kauri museum

The day started off cloudy and cold. I was not sure at all if I should take my brolly or rain coat with me at all. I did notice that my phone had plenty of charge for the day of I did not use it, but I think it was sitting on 70% since I had charged it the night before. I should have put it on charge before leaving the house during breakfast. I did learn pretty early in my trip that I could charge my phone either when my computer was turned on or when it was turned off and charging through the power. This is something that is good to know especially when power points are in short supplies. Not every hostel has plenty of power points in each room. We did leave just after 8am with granny in the car with us. We were going to head towards Paparoa, where we were going to see the final resting place of her young brother, George who died when he was 10. Then off to the Kauri museum that I had never been to before.

The drive was longer than I had expected especially when the GPS said we were going to Paparoa city. I was half expecting a large township that would have a decent sized shop. The country road was really nice to drive out there. The cemetery that George was buried in St Mark’s Anglican cemetery. There is another church across the road and holds another cemetery just down the road. I was told that one time the cemetery did have blackberries growing through it and had been removed afterwards. The grave was in a bad state of repair and might have to be repaired sometime in the future. Granny had given me a flower to put on the grave, which I did. One of the interesting facts I had heard about this cemetery were that unbaptised babies couldn’t be buried on the church grounds. This did include the priest, when his own twins couldn’t be buried. I think they were buried outside the cemetery grounds. While Granny was slowly walking to the car I did have a walk around the cemetery. It was not very big, but interesting all the same.

Once we were on our way into the centre of Paparoa town, where we stopped to have a coffee. A book caught my attention called photos of Albertland. Turns out the area that we are in is called Albertland and I had heard of that before from a Northland New Zealand DVD. I had heard that the area was very tough to live in during the early days. At the park where the toilet was, a sign was standing showing us a walk to a mysterious Pa. The information told us that no one knew who belonged to it and even the Maori had no idea through their genealogy. The next location we were going to visit for the rest of the day was the Kauri museum, which tells the early lives of the gum diggers and the logging within the area. Something as we drove into the town caught my attention. The words Coates caught my attention and I knew this was an ex prime minister who had died on the job during WWII. Once entering the museum entry to wait for Granny and Claude to enter I paid for their entry especially when I found how much it would be. They had thought it would be around $8, but that was the last time they visited which would have been a while. I left them at the door and started my tour at my own pace.

I knew several family members worked in the timber industry in the early 1900’s and I found it would be interesting to learn more about the logging industry of the area especially when it seemed to mostly be Kauri in the bush. They started off with the Dalmatian gum diggers who either got the kauri gum from digging up the swamp land or bleeding the trees and hacking it all off months later. I had seen some examples the day before in another museum and there were more examples of the carvings including ships and lighthouses. There were many products that had been made out of the kauri tree. The trees grew large, tall and was excellent for use for ships including the spars and masts. The displays were excellent especially when they showed how the trees were transported including through the dams that were built exactly for washing the trees downstream towards the ships that would transport them to the mill. During this time I kept an eye on the photos of the workers to see if any of the captions mentioned a family member. None of them did except for a group shot later in the day that was on a Whangarei timber mill and said who was missing. One of the missing people was a family member who had not been present. The changing technology from bullocks to bulldozers and trucks, saws to chainsaws etc. One wall had rows upon rows of photos from different points in time through several different towns. Luckily many had captions with names of who the people were.

After lunch, Claude and I went back into the museum to finish off what we had not seen, while granny was in the car reading. This was mainly the working machinery part showing how some of the milling machinery worked and a little about the location of some mills in the area including one in The Hokianga. There was a map showing us where the logs ended up going after being chopped down. On exiting with Claude, I told them I was going to visit the cemetery to find Mr Coates the ex prime minister. He had actually been born in the area and was I think the first New Zealand born PM. He did die during WWII while in office if memory serves me right. A memorial church had been built in his honour. I quickly went through the cemetery and did find a few family members of the Coates and a family member of the Coates also appears on the war memorial. Being on the sly I re entered the museum with the intent on buying several books including two on the local school that Granny, George and Nola had attended. They were the Jubilee editions and a book about the museum including recipes. I knew they would be surprised once we got home.

On the way home we did stop at granny’s old place, where she lived when a young girl and stayed outside of the house reminiscing of what it was like and the changes that had occurred. Then we were off to Mungaturoto, where I visited the post office and then we went past the school, where granny had attended. Under one of the bridges on the way home 1021 I think the number was, she nearly fell out of the taxi on the way home from school. I was getting very good information on the way back to Whangarei especially on the hills when we passed a little waterfall that was used to top up the cars.  Did do some more backseat Oral History recordings, more of a memory thing and something for other family to listen to. These I will type out eventually once I get home, they do seem to work. There was a bloody idiot in a car in front of us that thought he was a hero on the metal road as it was being resealed I think. He was doing handbrake slides, spinning his wheels with traffic coming towards him. I think the fool would not have thought of the consequences and I did contemplate recording him, but didn’t. If only we had stopped near him, he might have been told he was stupid. We did get stuck in traffic on the way home as it was already late. Another full day being out and about, which was good and getting to see places I have never seen before.

Tip

There is a company called Tip Top in New Zealand and they do not make bread, but ice cream. Just something to screw with your mind when you walk into a dairy store with a sign saying Tip top.