Day 12 - Sunday 18th June - Dargaville to Wenderholm - Ruawai - Matakohe Kauri Museum

 

Day 12 – Sunday 18th June

Dargaville to Wenderholm - Ruawai - Matakohe Kauri Museum

After breakfast we headed out for Wenderholm

Ruawai

Our first stop along the way was at Ruawai in the rain. I took a photo of the seagulls and black headed Terns sitting on the wharf piles.

We carried on over the very long straight roads over the soggy flat farmland that went for miles.

The Matakohe Kauri Museum.

Not too far away was the Matakohe Kauri Museum out in the country all by itself. 

We had a very good coffee and lovely scone for morning tea when we got there.

The museum itself was a very impressive museum all about the Dalmatians that came out to dig for Kauri gum, fell Kauri trees and later farm. It is a huge very well organised building with well set up displays of pioneering life, heavy machinery for processing the huge Kauri logs and gum, as well as very good displays of family and working life of the people.

Here is a displaying how old Kauri trees can grow to - 2,000 years of age:

A Kauri log dam:-

A Kauri log whim or winch that, using horse power, could haul ogs from a mile away:-

A whim in action:

The sad thing was the amount of Kauri that was taken out of the forests - a lot for export - look at this from Coromandel:-

One od the great displays was of coopers at work:-

They let me charge my laptop at the desk, on the way in. I bought Kristy a present for her birthday there.

On the way to Wenderholm we passed right under and beside a huge double rainbow. It was so close that we felt that we could reach out and touch it.

We got to Wenderholm at just on 5:00pm just as it was beginning to get dark.