A holiday in Thames

After spending Wednesday morning filling up our car with gear and kids we set off for Thames.

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DD? Check.

DS? Check.

Kitchen sink? Check.










There was a bit of traffic on the road. We are used to having holidays outside of the school holiday period so there was some muttering about traffic from the driver. ;-)

Still, we made good time and audio-books are an excellent invention for keeping kids (and drivers) amused.










The appearance of clouds as we turned off Highway 2 delighted the Mad Photographer but didn't exactly fill me with joy.















The new tent got set up without getting rained on though. The kids were very excited about it. DS got into his bed as soon as I made it up! We found a leak in our airbed (just what you need to discover) - I'd foolishly lent it to some folks and they'd tried to mend it but not very successfully. So we had to head back into Thames to try and find a replacement. Fortunately the friendly Hammer Hardware folks found me one and even checked to see it had a bung in it ... no. So they opened another one and purloined the bung out of that one.










After the bed acquisition we set off for the Kauaeranga Valley. The autumn colour was lovely in the afternoon light.














We did a couple of short walks around the visitor centre and up further into the valley.

This one included a model dam. The valley was extensively logged for kauri to fuel the booming Thames goldrush in the late 1800's.















We crossed a swing bridge over the Kauaeranga River. DS was very brave - he did stop halfway over and say he didn't want to go any further but after a bit of encouragement he did go on. I hate these bridges. If I hadn't been carrying DD I'd have gone over it with my eye's shut! On the way back we decided to boulder hop over the river instead ;-) Wet feet seemed preferable!














The Billy Goat Falls.
Not the greatest of photos - difficult with the light. The falls are at the top of the picture, in the distance.















When kauri loggers tried to transport kauri over these 180 metre high falls they shattered. Doh. Eventually they built a tramway to transport them.

Another walk we did was to the Wentworth Falls over near Whangamata. You would think with all the stuff we'd brought that I would have put in the back pack for DD, but guess what? I didn't!

So she started off with lots of energy....














but quickly degenerated into lots of "Mummy up" requests...









The falls were nice though.














While Daddy went down to the bottom of the falls to take photos, we stayed at the lookout and amused ourselves with the self-timer and video function on my camera.









We also visited the Broken Hills area which was a thriving goldfield from 1893. By this time DD was over walking.










So the holiday was nice in parts.

On the bad side:

• DS managed to work himself up into puking after a coughing fit one night... all over the bedding.
• DD is scared of moreporks and anything that makes a sound in the night. Everytime they called she said, "No like dat sound" and came running into our bed. Most inconvenient. Especially when Mummy and Daddy had ..uh.. other plans.
• My ankles are a mass of sand fly bites.

On the plus side:

• I got to see my friend S who has moved to Thames.
• We did enjoy some family time and walks together.
• I didn't think of work at all. (Not looking forward to going back tomorrow).
• We had a swim at Miranda.
• I had the best sleep back in my own bed when we came home. ;-) For months I've been waking at 3am-4am and staying awake for awhile so it was nice to have a full night's sleep.