Marshall goes to school and we hike in another great park

Good day and welcome to another edition of our blog. This posting covers our week from Tuesday, February 7th to Friday, February 10th in Hamilton, and our weekend of February 11 and 12th camping and hiking in the Whirinaki Forest Park.


Our week in Hamilton

What was exciting about this week is that Marshall started school on Tuesday the 7th. He is attending Knighton Normal School which is only a ten minute walk from our house. He is in Room 27 and his teacher is Mrs. Karen Walshe. There are around 26 students in his class, which is more than in his class back in New Brunswick. The session he is in goes to April 5th. Public schools in NZ have 4 sessions. This is session 1, or the start of the school year, like students would start in September in Canada.

Marshall was not keen on going to school. Karen and I don't blame him for being nervous. However, he and I were really starting to drive each other crazy and we want him to meet and make friends with kids his own age. Going to school is the best way for him to do this.

We are impressed with his school and teacher. The school has been very accommodating and open to having Marshall attend, even if it is only for 2 months. Being close to the University, Knighton has a fair number of international students. I think Marshall is the only Canadian presently attending.

The school is not one big building, but rather is made up of a number of smaller buildings that house the classrooms. Marshall's class shares a small building with Room 28. His classroom is great with one wall of floor to ceiling windows and sliding doors. Their is a large overhang over the front of the building and the students leave their bags and shoes outside the classroom under the overhang. Try doing that in a Canadian winter.

The school even has its own swimming pool and in sessions 1 and 4, swimming is part of Phys Ed and Marshall's class is supposed to swim two times a week. Unfortunately, the pool liner has a leak, so no swimming so far - probably starting the week of February 27th. We hope so. Marshall loves to swim and this was one (only) of the things he was most excited about his new school.

One different thing about Marshall's new school is that all the students are required to wear hats during recess and lunch in sessions 1 and 4. All of the students wear an official Knighton Normal School hat--blue with a brim all around (think Norman from On Golden Pond). I think they could have found a cooler, less daggy, design (not cool = daggy in NZ lingo). However, everyone wears the same hat, so everyone is cool or daggy at the same time, depending on your view of the hat. If a student doesn't have his or her hat, they have to sit under a big awning during recess or lunch.

As many of you know, Marshall is not the most outgoing guy and making new friends does not come easily to him--he needs time to 'sess out new people and places. As you can probably guess, this transition to a new school, however temporary, has not been without its challenges for Marshall, and in turn, Karen and I. As they say though, challenges create opportunities and Marshall has been working hard at making the most of his time at his new school. Week 2 went better than week 1, and week 3 has gone better than week 2. We have spoken with his teacher several times and from her reports, Marshall as a student, both socially and academically, is excelling in her class. She has told us several times she would like Marshall to stay for the year. More importantly, Marshall is branching out and making friends.


Whirinaki Forest Park - best forest walk yet

After school and work on Friday, February 10, we drove to Whirinaki Forest Park to camp and hike for the weekend. Whirinaki is about 1.5 hours southeast of Rotorua, which is about an hour from Hamilton. Rotorua is a major geothermal area and has lots of hot springs, geysers, etc. It is NZ's  most popular tourist destination. We took a pass on Rotorua for this trip, but being so close to Hamilton, we will spend some time there eventually.

At Whirinaki we met up with our friends Will and Diana. Will is a professor at Colorado State University and he and Diana live in Fort Collins, Colorado. Will is on sabbatical and they are spending some of it in NZ. They are good friends with Chris and Sharon, our NZ hosts, and have been in NZ several times for extended periods. Will and Diana are both a lot of fun and we had a great time spending the weekend with them. Marshall was particularly glad to have someone else to talk to. He talked their ears off all weekend, although they did get to see a bit of the impatient Marshall on Sunday morning (details to follow).

We camped at the Mangamate Waterfall Campground run by the Dept. of Conservation. It was a great deal - $12/two nights. On Marshall's campground rating: scenery - 3.5 (right along the Whirinaki River with a waterfall); campground quality - 3 (outhouse toilets, no showers, nice covered cooking/picnic hut, cold but fun swimming in the river, fishing (if you had a rod), firepits, and easy blackberry picking (yum)); noisiness - 5 (there was only one other group in the campground and they were drowned out by the waterfall). I really enjoyed this campground. The setting was great and I felt like we were actually camping. We were able to enjoy campfires Friday and Saturday night, our first campfires of the trip. Camping = s'mores to Marshall and Karen.

On Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast supplemented with fresh-picked, sweet blackberries. I have developed a new system for rating blackberry picking. I call it "scratch per unit of effort", which is a modification of the population biology term, "catch per unit of effort". A low scratch per unit of effort is good. This means you picked lots of blackberries but did not get many scratches. (This is the opposite of catch per unit of effort, where generally a higher number of catches is considered to be better than a lower number of catches). Anyway, the picking at our campground was excellent, with a very low scratch rate. Marshall was very keen to pick blackberries throughout the weekend.

Later in the morning we went with Will and Diana and walked/hiked the Waterfall Loop Track. This is a long walk - 3.5 to 4 hours. We did it in around 5 hours, but we stopped for a long lunch and later in the afternoon to explore some of the river. It is a fabulous trail that takes you up one side of the Whirinaki River, stops at a good sized waterfall, and then brings you back down the other side of the river. The trail runs through the Whirinaki Ecological Management Zone (Whirinaki EMZ) which is part of the larger Whirinaki Forest.

 

Walking through the tree ferns, H-tree Track, Whirinaki, NZ



What is great about the Whirinaki EMZ is that it protects a large area of podocarp forest. If you recall an earlier posting about our time in a kauri forest, podocarp trees are a type of "older" coniferous tree (there are other types of podocarps) that are restricted to tropical and sub-tropical lands like New Zealand. What makes them different than Canadian conifers (e.g., white pine, balsam fir) is podocarps spread their seeds through berries vs. cones. Podocarp trees are also usually slow-growing and long-lived. A lot of the trees where we were walking were estimated to be 500-700 years old.

In addition to the cool trees, you will usually find tree ferns in podocarp forests. Because of this, when you walk in a podocarp forest you feel like you are walking in the age of dinosaurs, tree ferns towering above your head. As I wrote earlier though, walking through these forests does not feel gloomy. Being conifers vs. broad-leafed trees, a fair amount of light filters down to the forest floor. Because of the large numbers of berries the trees produce, podocarp forests can/did support a lot of birds.

The five major podocarp trees in NZ are: totara (my favourite), kahikatea (the tallest native NZ tree), matai, miro, and rimu (awesome grain for furniture). All of these trees were used by the Maori for different purposes.

Podocarp forests used to dominate the NZ landscape. Most of them have been cut or burned for timber and to open up the land for agriculture. According to the DOC, the remaining podocarp forests are threatened by invasive plants and possums (possums seem to like eating the choicest parts of plants/trees). Grazing from sheep, deer, and feral pigs also makes it hard for podocarp forests to regenerate. Logging of native trees in Whirinaki Forest did not end until 1985 after a great deal of public controversy (trees vs. jobs/forestry community).

After dinner and a swim, Marshall, Diana and I went out and hiked the Forest Sanctuary Loop (8:30 p.m.). Kiwi birds live along this trail and we were hoping to see one. (Marshall and I are becoming obsessed with the thought of seeing another kiwi in the wild.) This is a shorter trail and we only walked (i.e., stumbled through the dark) for about an hour. We didn't see any kiwi but we heard scuffling along the trail at one point, so we think we were close to a kiwi--that's our story and we are sticking to it. Actually, we had a hard time hearing anything over the strong winds that night. All around us the trees were creaking and popping. It felt kind of spooky even though you know there is nothing dangerous in NZ forests. We did see lots of glowworms, which was fun. Karen and Will seemed happy with their decision not to come along and instead sit around the fire talking science.

On Sunday morning packed up, picked more blackberries, and some of us went for another swim, which seemed much colder at 9:30 a.m. vs. 6 p.m. the day before. After that we walked two shorter trails in Whirinaki, each about an hour long.

The first trail we wanted to hike is called the H-tree Track. However, we couldn't find the trail head, so we hiked the Waiatiu Falls Track instead. Marshall was not impressed. The H-tree Track is supposed to have a lot of birds along it, in particular the kaka, a large parrot native to the north island of NZ. Because he wanted to see birds, not another waterfall, he wanted to do the H-tree Track first. On the Waiatiu Falls Track, Marshall became the leader of our group and showed his displeasure about our trail choice by setting a mean pace. Will and Diana were nice and kept up with Marshall. Karen and I were not so nice and lagged behind enjoying the forest. We knew Marshall wouldn't wander too far off.

Not to worry though, Will has Marshall's number, and during this walk told Marshall he was going to get him a book called New Zealand's 50 Greatest Waterfall Walks so we could walk them all as a family. Then when we did walk the H-tree Track he said at one point, "I think the waterfall is just around the next bend." (There is no waterfall on the H-tree Track.) I am not sure how funny Marshall found these comments, but both Karen and I laughed. Anyway, the Waiatiu Falls Track is nice but the Waterfall Loop Track we did the day before is better, so if you have the time, do it vs. the shorter Falls Track.

After getting some directions we found the H-tree Track, which really wasn't that hard to do. This is a great trail and Karen's and my favourite forest walk to date. It is signed, has a lot of big podocarp trees along it and large areas of tree ferns. On top of that, it is the forest in which we have heard the most bird life so far. We did see some kaka parrots flying but they were far away. Marshall and I would like to walk it again but earlier in the morning when more birds are out.

The H-tree Track gets it name from the shape of two rimu trees that have grown together

After the H-tree Track it was time to head home to Hamilton. On the way we stopped at Kerosene Creek, just a little south of Rotorua. Kerosene Creek is a hot-water (geothermal) creek that has several large pools you can wade and sit in--they are not deep enough for swimming. Very relaxing. I am not sure why it is called Kerosene Creek. Being geothermal, it does smell somewhat sulphury, but not as bad as other hot springs Karen and I have visited. One note of caution for those with young families who want to visit Kerosene Creek. Being free and unregulated, it seems to attract a certain amount of the "free-spirit" crowd and I am not sure how age appropriate it would be in the evening. Car break-ins are also a problem.

New Zealand Maori phrase of the week: Toitu te whenua - Leave the land undisturbed.

Next posting: We spend a weekend near Hamilton.