Kahutura School and Tuatara Ted

Leaving the grapevines behind at Opaki we hit the road again and travelled 53kms to Kahutura School, Featherston,  for the weekend.  Most of us were parked up on the school playground by the end of the day, with a couple of others due to arrive the next morning.  We spent a lazy day catching up with everyone, having 4zees, and a BBQ meal before meeting in the school hall in the evening.

Camping at  Kahutura School grounds

In the evening there was a picture quiz handed out by Barry out to test if our brains had turned to mush over the holiday period.  He had produced pictures of famous buildings from around the world and our task was to identify which city they were located in.  Some were easy, such as the Gherkin building in London, and the world famous in New Zealand Dunedin Railway Station.  It certainly helped having seen these buildings in person, but some were unknown to us, such as the Tokyo Tower.  Then Peter posed an interesting question.  What, he wanted to know, would we place in our spouse’s coffin, to help them in the afterlife, as the Egyptians used to do.  The answers varied considerably, from a lip stick, a computer hard-drive, a toy train, and a TV remote.  I decided that Robin would like to take his beer handle with him, while he decided that I couldn’t possibly face the afterlife without my sewing machine.  It was certainly very interesting to see how each of us viewed our spouses!

From a lovely hot and still day yesterday, the wind increased dramatically today.  The sunshades were rolled back into their fittings, and down came Barry’s gazebo - nobody wanted to take risks with such high winds.  We celebrated Honey’s first birthday with chocolate biscuits at morning tea.  Honey is a seal point Birman just like our Muffy, and is enjoying trips away in Dot and Derek’s motor-home safety secured with her harness and lead.

Happy 1st Birthday Honey

In the afternoon we visited Tuatara Ted (John McCosh) and his Kahutura Taxidermy Museum, just up the road a little way.  There is an interesting collection of exotic and native animals and birds, antlers and jaw-bones, skins, insects and a large rock collection.  Most of the collection has been stuffed by John, a professional taxidermist, although he is now retired from this work.  He answered questions about the process and showed us examples of the materials used for the interior construction.

There was such a lot to see that we all needed to take several walks around the interior of the log cabin museum building to see what we had missed earlier.   Such as this Moko Shark with a very impressive set of teeth.

Mako Shark jaw

Plenty of birds

And a poster of the man himself, Tuatara Ted, with a lion he had completed working on.  Over the poster is head of a cheetah cub.  It was a most enjoyable visit.