Tarras, Cromwell, Wanaka and in for the knife!

The little school in Tarras contacted me and asked if I’m passing to call in and perform for the 10 pupils at the school. This was a great visit, these kids were right into having a go, so they were soon juggling, and throwing my hat around and being creative straight away. Rachelle the teacher, an English woman was very cool too...we all marched around in clown walk and doing clown hands.
To get a team photo we went down to the School sign at the road. Then Angus, the boy to my left, challenged me to a race from the school to the road. I jumped the gun a little bit and it was a draw at the finish!

Tarras is famous as the home of Shrek, the Merino ram that kept avoiding the muster, but finally got rounded up. Shearing his fleece was recorded on national TV.  He became quite a star and even made it down to Antarctica promoting NZ wool on the world stage.

Next stop on our journey was Cromwell, a town that was flooded (permanently) due to the building of the Clyde Dam in the 1990’s. Cromwell is well known for the growing of fruit namely cherries,  apricots and plums, not to mention wine, which we did sample. This large sculpture dominated the top of the (new) town. That's our bus under the large green leaf.

The original town founded in 1862 was flooded and they saved a little bit of the town which is now the Cromwell Historic Precinct.

This was the second school building on this site.

This photo below invited in an idea, which you will see further below.

Back at the real live exhibits......it was hard labour in those days.

Sundays is Farmers Market day, and a great way to chill out admiring the view.

Sheez that Schist is round the wrong way!

Next we headed towards Wanaka, but first we headed out to Albert Town to check if we could park where we did last year. The answer to that was no, however I did notice a flag advertising a knife making course/workshop.....so this was the next day's activity.

I biked out from Wanaka to go to Rob Crem's knife making day. I was the only pupil so was able to put some extra input into making my first knife. Here is the mild high carbon steel marked out ready to start.

After some...quite a lot of shaping/grinding

 Using linishers

Heating and hardening the blade to a light cherry red... 

cooled in Canola cooking oil.

After gluing and fitting and shaping the Oak handle

 some serious elbow grease was applied to the job.

He also has a little 12 volt etcher which does the job in only a few minutes by painting a solution of salty water onto the stencil (which is plastic) with a cotton bud .

Rob says his students are 40% women...I said..... I'm at least 51% man.

Meanwhile back at the Wanaka Club where we parked for 3 days it was just a short walk down the hill to the Wanaka waterfront.

I managed to get a Chinese lady to video this for me....

while the early morning light was superb!

 Just over the back of the Wanaka Club was an amazing jumps mountain bike track.

I managed to see a school boy doing his thing ..... this is Riley.

Crickey Riley!

I think you need to be young to launch into and off these type of jumps so I'd better leave this to Riley, so I can continue to live my version of "The Life of Riley".

That's all for this blog folks.

The next blog is how I fell from 15,000 feet and survived.

Tell then.... have fun, stay safe and be creative!

Jimu & Christine.

Bridge Point and onwards to Lauder, Poolburn and Clyde.

I left the last blog without telling you about and showing you the new signage on the new (for us) bus...  well here it is.....yeah the new bus is still called "CLOWNING AROUND"

We were well pleased with the results, we left Oamaru and motored down the east coast through Kakanui to stop at Bridge Point where we stopped to have a late lunch, but quickly realised it was a honey of a spot to park up for the night.

I used a mate's borrowed ladder to put the new NZMCA wings above the front windscreen, and also added smaller ones on the rear panel.

This is probably why it's called "Bridge Point"

Somebody had been drawing lines in the rocks...

woo whoo!

Same person had been dyeing seaweed.

At low tide these local snorklers dive for Kina, Paua, ... and other such delicacies

 there are many shells washed up on the beach.

 Breakfast view looking south........

Onwards we headed towards Lauder in Central Otago.

It's on the Central Otago Rail Trail.

First we stopped at the Waipiata Domain, below is the first attempt at a barbecue pizza.

Definitely will be making more of these!

A storm came though that night and man did those trees make some roaring noises!

At Lauder (which is a very small place) we parked in a local farmer's lucerne paddock.

As the Otago Central Rail Trail runs right through Lauder, I went on a couple of short jaunts. 

Here are a few photos.

Below is some trophy wild pig skins drapped on the fence, some 45 of them,

This section of the Rail Trail goes through a gorge and that means there are bridges and tunnels

Apparently this was the first bridge in the area to use concrete for the bridge pillars (circa 1912), before that they used schist.

Meanwhile back at the Lauder Ukulele Festival the heat was really on!

Paul Jonson from North of Auckland gives us the low down on the Blues.

While these two young ladies from Alexandra performed original songs

 and showed no nerves whatever..... ones to watch for the future! 

I went to a workshop run by the the band "The Secret Lives of Ukulele". We learned a little number, then performed an impromptu wander in front of the stage between bands.

A very appreciative and happy crowd under the shade.

Visiting  Australian performers from Townsville..... Anu & Laurie, whose house (as I understand) was under water in the recent floods in Queensland as they performed.

Alexandra is just a short hop and a step down the road. We like to park at Molyneux Park near the swimming pool and right beside the Alexandra Menz Shed, so handy to everything.

I managed to get Sam at the Menz Shed to introduce me to the Community Centre, who took me to the Alexandra Primary school. They arranged for a clown show and shadow puppet performance to years 5-10 year olds. Below is how it went!

I rode the Unicycle into the School...they have a nice outside stage, and I also set up the shadows in a classroom which had good curtains. One of the little girls came up afterwards and thanked me for performing, she had been afraid of clowns, but not now!

Three shadows shows to different classrooms. They had been studying native birds, so my performance was really appropriate.

Our next stay was at the Poolburn Dam. We stayed there last year and intended to return.

It's worth the rough dirt road to get to this fabulous place as the photos below show, and was the site of the Plains of Rohan Rohirim Village in the Lord of the Rings. 

On the way out, we encountered a mob of sheep being driven back to the homestead.

Christine drove the bus from Alexandra to Clyde..... 

while I took the cycle trail along the river. 

 A very hot day and the shade was most welcome.

 The Miniature Clutha Cricket club had a game on as I passed.

Shopping in Clyde I discovered there was a gallery opening 

that very night where a photographer (Neville Porter) 

was displaying his landscape photos of Central Otago, 

done on Japanese Washi Paper.

His gallery opening was called "East meets West" so I just had to go back.

A very interesting opening, his photos were stunning.

 There is a fabulous free park on the other side of the Clyde Dam on Fruitgrowers Road. We awoke to another stunning sunrise.

In my walk back to the Dam, having viewed the photographers photos the night before,  my eye had somewhat changed and these shots were a bit different.

The breakfast view out of the bus window....

How lucky are we!

That's all for this blog folks.

Plenty more to report about on our journey around the South.

Next is Cromwell, then Wanaka in all its glory.

Till then.....be creative....have fun and stay safe!

Jimu & Christine