Saturday, December 24, 2016

Seals, and Denniston Mine

Today I'm based in Westport. This morning I saw the seal colony near Tauranga Bay. Weather was a bit gloomy, but seals had a sort-of sheltered spot on the rocks. And there were pups! Squeeeeee!

 
 

Also came across a guy re-baiting a stoat/rat trap. Was surprised to find this involved rubbing a kind of oil attractant over the workings. He said he mostly caught rats with just the occasional stoat, and the rats increased in numbers in late summer as their food sources lessened...

In the carpark was a beautiful van. Spoke to the driver- he painted it himself. 
 

Next I headed to Denniston. I didn't think I would see much as the hills were swathed in cloud, and the fog was quite thick when I arrived at the car park. There are various walkways up here where you can see where the incline was.
 

But I decided I'd quite like to see the old mine workings. It was expensive, but so so worth it. We had a wonderfully informative guide. If I have time tomorrow you might get a more informative blog post, but for now you get some photos! But suffice it to say, I had no idea how many people lived up here, and nor did I know how hard the conditions were for the miners. 

 

 

 

 


One last thing, I got to 'blow something up'! 
 

(Not really)!
 

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