Hawera

We ended up staying two nights at the NZMCA park in Hawera, and this was mainly weather driven. Views of Mt Taranaki continue to elude us as persistent rain and wind obscure the mountain but also makes life less pleasant than it could be for sight see’ers like us. Another contributing factor was that Bruce’s knee was getting more painful so we felt a day of rest would help.

He also came away without any warm pants and our first day in Hawera was bitterly cold, so our first trip out was to the Warehouse to buy him a pair of trackpants. We also topped up on a few groceries and then went off to visit the Whalers and Traders Museum.

This exhibition featured the life of Dickie Barrett, one of the founding fathers of Hawera.

Dickie traded with the local Maori tribes – guns for flax rope. The guns the Maori achieved from this trading enabled them to defeat the Waikato tribes who were invading their territory trying to take their land.  Because of these invasions, Dickie and his trading partners resorted to living in caves in an off shore island. Dickie and his men, who had married into the local tribes, fought alongside the Maori. Once the battles were over Dickie continued living and working in the area in such fields as whaling and farming and hunting.

The exhibition was very well done with lifelike models and a boat ride through various scenes from Dickie’s life. No photography was permitted during the boat ride.

After this exhibition we went through the power farming exhibition which was next door. There were tractors for Africa in this building, but interestingly enough, only 3 David Brown tractors. Bruce was in his happy place in here.

Part of this exhibition also featured a selection of World War 2 trucks and armoured vehicles, and they had an amazing collection of workshop manuals for all sorts of tractors for just about every year as far as we could tell.

The buildings around the complex were all made to look old and in keeping with the Whalers and Traders era. The difference between here and places like Eltham is that there was no rot to be seen.

The next day we explored a bit more of the town. We tried to have a walk down town but again got drowned in the persistent rain. We did, however, find a place called the Gelato Cafe. Their scones had been pre-frozen and Bruce’s was still not thawed when he got it which wasn’t great, but they had an impressive range of authentic looking gelato. Problem was, with the cold rainy weather, we did not really feel like icecream!

We tried to go and see the Elvis museum, but that was located in someone’s garage and only open by arrangement so we gave that a miss. We had a quick look at the King Edward Park but again the rain wasn’t really conducive to much exploration so we headed back to the motorhome park and had a quiet time.

The NZMCA Park is all on the hard and right next to the Hawera Hospital that has lovely grounds that we were able to walk the dogs in. The dogs also made friends with the local postie who was doing her rounds on her electric scooter. She was able to name all the dogs she had met that day, but not the humans!

Tomorrow is also supposed to be very wet but we will see what the morning brings before we decide whether we will travel on or not.