Around the mount

Up early for the morning milking shift, which has a completely different feel to afternoon milk. With the morning being colder you could really feel the heat from the cows as they filed neatly into the parlour. Also the pipework carrying the milk to the storage tank was toasty warm! Parlour cleaned and cows back out grazing we popped to a nearby possum shop. Now in Oz the cute little furry possum is protected but here its seen as a pest of the highest order so you can shoot the buggers, no problem. The shop sold all sorts of possum fur items from booties to nipple warmers (I kid you not!) I'll leave you to guess which one of these we bought?

Mount Taranaki stands proud bang slap in the middle of Taranaki, at 2518 metres she sits in the heart of the Egmont National Park and has over 300km of walking trails.  You can drive around the area in about 3 hours without the mount going out of sight. Snow covered in the winter on the east side it provides a serviced ski area into the Manganui skifields.  Andrew and Julie have a great view of it from their farm, even from the milking pit.  Given it's location you could climb it in the morning for a quick ski and be at the beach by the afternoon.

Prior to us heading out to explore these parts Mr M recommended that we went straight to Hawera and 'Andersons' to pick up a couple of their legendary local pies and an Afghan biscuit or two. Good move!

We were staring at a bit of a stinker of a day. There was low cloud and it was threatening to hose it down. It was time to head for cover. Tawhiti museum has been hand built by a local artist, John Ogle. John has gone to some incredible lengths to preserve and present a journey through this region's strong farming history. It seemed like never before had such a eclectic mix of  tractors, chainsaws, mowers and vintage hand tools  been put together in any one place. This place went on forever, the main venue being a old dairy factory. With many items dating back to the late 1800s early 1900s. The whole place gave you a real insight of early farming practices and early pioneer innovations on how originally these lands way out west were worked. It also included a raft of info on the intense inter tribal land wars that were fought in this region back in the 1830s and then into the period of 1860s when the Europeans rocked up.

We finally made it up to New Plymouth where we were greeted with the almost horizontal Len Lye 45m wind wand!  Holey moley it was windy. The 4km coastal walkway was on our radar but I think we managed about a quarter of it as the wind belted in off the Tasman Sea.

Highway 45 is also known as 'Surf Highway'. Taranaki is the home of kiwi west coast surf. The Surf Highway leads you down the west coast and to over 10 classic surf breaks. Did I paddle out? In a word no, cyclone Wilma had stirred things up a little too much.

We pulled in to grab some supper at Cape Egmont Lighthouse. On closer inspection it was built in Pimlico, London and was then shipped over in segments in 1865 to be originally installed near Wellington prior to being re-erected here. Crazy hey!