Being There

NZ is all about experiencing stuff.  Look in any brochure: you can white water raft across rapids, climb into the caldera of an active volcano, swim with dolphins, paddle a Maori canoe, attach rubber bands to your ankles and jump off bridges.  I'm told the current younger generation is all about doing things; the previous younger generation which wanted to own things have been retired.  Now it's, "Been there, done that, but don't want the teeshirt".

Eleanor and I are more of the looking at, talking about, thinking about but not needing to risk (or pretend to) life and limb. You can paddle a tiny boat into and underwater cavern to see glow worms, or like us you can stroll below an a bridge, move aside the ferns and also see glow worms.  How boring we're becoming.  So we decided to experience something. Which in our case usually starts with a meal.

Driving Creek Cafe would fit very easily into St Werburghs, vegan/veggie organic everything, with a quote by the Dalai Lama on one wall and a poem by Janet Frame on another.  It's facebook page shows it better than I can; it's Trip Advisor's top eating spot in Coromandel but that's a bit unfair - it just totally different.

Here's a house sparrow helping us out with the chocolate cake - no longer so common in the UK but everywhere in NZ.

Fifty yards down the road is Driving Creek Railway.  Forget train spotters muttering about gauges, 2-4-2 engines, left flanging widgets and all that stuff.  This is an art work that took a life time to create. Barry Brickell was a potter and potters need clay so he bought a small bush covered hill of the stuff (about 60 acres for NZ$ 8000).  To fire pots you need fuel and bush provides wood for that as well.  If, in addition, you want to conserve NZ's unique flora you can have the extra satisfaction of cutting down invaders (e.g American pine),  firing your pots with them and then replanting with indigenous trees.

To make this possible, Barry built a railway, laying all the track himself.  Here is a film of the very early days.  His and other pots and artworks decorate it.  The decorative bricks are made of local clay, fired in kilns made of bricks fired from the same clay and fueled by wood from the site.  I can't compete with a few photos but look on youtube to see what it's like now.

Barry died a couple of years ago and is buried beside the track.

And I made a small friend:

I'm not sure where it came from but I think it wanted protection  As soon as I saw it, so did others and they started snapping.  I encouraged it onto my hand so lots of pople got good pictures ... except me who couldn't take a photo because I was too close.  Afterwards I put it down safely away from all the feet!