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.