Friday 2nd March we took the car and went to explore Onehunga. There is an interesting art gallery there, the TSB Wallace Arts Centre in the lovely old Pah Homestead. The setting is great and the art is very interesting. With some art these days you might think you could have a crack at doing it yourself. Then there’s some that you are in awe of, wondering how someone could even imagine the whole thing. One of the latter sorts at the Wallace Arts Centre was an extraordinary assortment of exquisite little drawings on scraps of paper all stitched/tied into a wall hanging. On a big wall! Extraordinary!
Wyn at Wallace Arts Centre aka Pah Homestead
Pah Homestead
Trim Flat Whites on the Verandah, Pah Homestead
Pah Homestead aka Wallace Arts Centre
After this we headed to Onehunga Mall – which is the name of a street and not a shopping plaza – for some lunch and we had a drive around trying to see if Wyn could recognise where she once lived. Then we went to visit DressMart down the street where neither of us bought anything. As much as anything, we don’t have room for anything more, although there’s also the problem of not really needing anything more. It was rush-hour so the short drive back to Mangere Bridge and Ambury Park was mostly taken up waiting our turn and traffic lights and on-ramps.
The weather forecast was for strong winds, and we worked out that we were relatively sheltered from the south-west so we hunkered down beside our row of trees.We were supposed to be making our way back to Te Puke but there were gale warnings out and Suzi is a high-sided vehicle so we stayed put for Saturday. I ventured out in the morning to the dairy for my treat-for-the-week, the Weekend Herald. Later in the morning we went and helped a man take down his tent and relocate it to a more sheltered place. He said he’d liked the view on the brow of the hill but he was about to get blown away. It took the three of us to hang onto the tent long enough to get it down. It was amazing how sheltered it was only a few meters away beside a bunch of bushes. This was the storm that wreaked havoc in South Taranaki and caused problems over much of the North Island. A good day to be going nowhere. But also a nice sunset in the evening.
Sunset Manukau Harbour
Sunset over the Waitakeres – Manukau Harbour
Sunset Manukau Harbour – towards the Heads
Wyn was due at the kiwifruit packhouse in Te Puke on the Monday for some training so we finally escaped from Auckland on the Sunday and headed south and east. We were aghast to find in Waihi that the BananaPepper Café was closed on Sundays. It’s our No. 1 pick for best NZ café and it lost a couple of points for not being open when we were passing through. We set up at the packhouse camp ground and Wyn went off to work Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. I managed to fill the days in mucking around, including working on getting my genealogy database migrated to new software. I’d last saved it in 2002! And then lost it for about 7 years! The software I’d used is no longer supported! All that kept me quiet for quite a while.