God must be angry

Well this may be my last transmission.... It seems that I may have inadvertantely angered god as he seems to be sending his wrath down on us here:

First tornados.

Then, swine flu - two teachers from my school where on the same flight as these kids

They are currently taking the week of school and taking anti viral medications.  If I don't escape this emerging pandemic, please, have a parma in my honor.

Autumn and Burgers

Another quick update. After returning from tramping last weekend I headed down to Queenstown and Arrowtown for some autumn colours, and to live the dream of eating Fergburger at every meal (though I later had to concede on breakfast and only managed lunches and dinner). Fergburger is by far the best burger I've ever had. The classic Fergburger with cheese is a good starting point, but for the truly brave the Big Al (pictured below) with 2 patties, 2 eggs, lashing of bacon, beetroot, lettuce, tomoto, cheese, red onion, relish and garlic aioli is a winner.

Arrowtown, a historic gold mining settlement about 20 minutes from Queenstown lived up to it's reputation for spectacular Autumn scenery.

More Tramping

Easter Weekend

Plan was to attempt Mt Bowen (1955m). Failure. We decided to take a more round about route than the standard route up Mikonui spur. Reports were that the Mikonui spur route was overgrown and difficult to follow on to the tops. So we decided to try via Explorer Hut and then along Miserable Ridge.


Exlporer Hut took 7 hours to reach (instead of the suggested 4). River travel and boulder hopping is really slow going. On the second day we were defeated in the thick scrub belt below the alpine zone, on a track that had not been cut since 1980. Armed with a machete and a pruning saw we managed to recut about 100 metres of track in 2 hours. Running out of daylight and water we ended up retreating to Explorer Hut and abandoning the attempt to get up Mt Bowen. We walked out a day early (probably lucky cause on Monday there was quite a bit of rain and we may have become stuck with rising river levels).

Mt Bowen from Mikonui Flats

Explorer Hut

Where's the track?



Ahh... Mud



River travel



Mikonui Flats Hut



Old Farmstead

Last Weekend: Kirwans Reward Track

A nice, although at times a slog up hill, track through a historic goldmining area on a well formed pack track. Starts at about 200m and 12 or so kms (and 6 hours later) emerges at around 1300m. Nice Hut, and really good views from the tops. Gave me a few blisters this one though. It seems a well form track has it drawbacks - you're only using your feet and legs. On the really steep stuff like Mt Bowen and Mt Alexander most of the time you're hauling yourself up with your arms by grabbing scrub, tree roots etc - more of a whole body thing.

The Legend Grows...

(From a week or so ago):

Fresh from my appearance on the front page I have now graced the sport section. Luckily they didn't take a picture of what I was wearing. Unfortunately they did spell my name wrong.

As a side note, Julie has just started working afternoons in the school library so we now share the same work place. Bizarrely enough, since she has started working there I have quite regularly been called Mr Swallow. It seems that the kids are now unable to differentiate Mr Toby Swallow and Linda Swallow (who are of a similar age and are also a married couple at the school) from myself and Julie. This has obviously been too much information for the students to take in as I am now quite regularly called Mr Swallow by students who have called me Mr Shawcross before. I suppose we both have beards... though Toby and Linda are English with associated accents (which I would've thought was a give away).

Who wears the pants?

The local twilight netball season came to an end last night (of which I have been participating in a team made up of teachers from the school.)  Traditionally the last round is a dress up round... Perhaps trying to indulge in the ultimate cliche our team decided we would cross dress.  Now it may suprise, being the life of the party that I am, that I actually was persuaded to wear a dress to this final netball outing.  Luckily the schools drama department had a nice number in my size.  No photos unfortunately - it was some relief that I opened todays local paper and found the event wasn't rated as news worthy.  To add insult to injury, after the final game their was a somewhat informal league award ceremony where I took out the coveted 'most improved' award (AKA the you are a retard at this sport award).

Mt Alexander Tramp

Last weekend I did a tramp up to the Mt Alexander tops. Walked 3 hours into a hut on Friday night, day trip up to the tops on Saturday and then from the hut to the car on Sunday. Have to say the slog up to the tops was hard work - the valley floor at the car was around 200 metres, on Saturday we got up to around 1400-1500 metres. Both my tramping companions were at least 15 years older than me (perhaps 20, but it seemed a bit impolite to ask). Worryingly they were both more sprightly and fit than me.


View Larger Map

The ridge we took to get up to the tops on Saturday was really steep, and a lot of the time it was more climbing up ladders of tree roots and using shrubs to haul ourselves up rather than actually walking. I found the whole thing rather unnerving at times - some sections were rather exposed with steep drop offs. To make things worse, Saturday was cloudy. We hoped to climb above the clouds but unfortunately we never managed to get above it. This had the annoying side effect that navigation on the tops was difficult (so much so that we abandoned our original goal of climbing to the low summit). We explored a little and waited for an hour or so for the clouds to clear, but to no avail.

The trip back down to the hut wasn't as bad as I'd feared (going up the ridge in the morning I was thinking from time to time that going down would be even more dangerous). I did make it back to the hut in one piece and found the descent not too bad. On a side note the hut was really nice - used to be a field research station but has just been opened up to the public in the last year.

Wildfoods Festival Report

So the town has swelled to around 20000 (up from the normal 5000) for the Wildfoods Festival. First off I'll dispense with the boring formalities - I played in the Greymouth Big Band and conducted the Westland District Brass Band (as a last minute ring in) at the festival.

Well, what to make of the Wildfoods Festival? It probably best reminds me of a cross between the Melbourne Cup, one day Cricket Internationals, The Melbourne Show and perhaps with a bit of the Seymour Alternative Farming Expo thrown in. Suffice to say few people come for the food. The steady flood of bogans into town started yesterday. I'd gone out for a ride and saw several run down houses that inexplicably now had old couches on their front lawns. On said couches were large groups of 15-25 year olds drinking. This was just a preview of what was to come:

Bogan of the day award went to this guy: (Julie swears she feared for her life capturing this image). Incidentally I found out the following information today - NZer's do use the word bogan, however it is mainly a West Coast term. Apparently everywhere else in NZ the term used instead of bogan is 'West Coasters'... so yeah, draw your own conclusions from that one.

So what about the food? Here's a list of some of the notable food stands from the program:

"Everything but the Squeal" - Pig parts done in different ways
"Tasty Titties" - Cow's udder BBQ and seasoned to your delight
"Cow Meat Lovers" - Cow Tripe, Cow Intestines, Cow Tongue and Cow Feet
"Hoki Hocki Huhu Grubs" - Huhu grubs, live and BBQed
"The Startled Worm Cafe" - Worm Sushi, Chocolate Worm Truffles, Worm Dukah
"Crouching Grasshopper" - Deep fried locusts, crickets, jelly grasshoppers, wasp larvae ice cream

There were also many stands doing the obligatory Wild Pork, Venison (Deer), Thar, Bison (I was not aware there was wild Bison in NZ but anyway). There was even an Aussie stand selling Kangaroo and Crocodile.

I'm afraid to say that I ate much less than I desired, both in variety and quantity. I was rather conservative with a Venison Burger, some crepes and finally some strawberries and ice cream. Unfortunately from 10.30 -4 I was more or less tied up with the Greymouth Big Band 'Just Jazz' and conducting the Westland District Brass Band.

Julie on the other hand had a rather rollicking time, after meeting several of my work colleagues she disappeared for some hours and returned rather drunk (along with the also drunk teachers I work with).

After her return I was given a lesson in both the joys of living in a small town and in bad timing during a break in the brass band conducting frivolity. Agreeing to hold her beer, along with the one I had been dutifully handed by afore mentioned work colleagues I was spotted by several of my students who decided that because I was holding two beers that I must be having a particularly good time. Questions of 'are you old enough to drink' and 'can I have one of those' were asked. Being the good teacher I am, and wanting to fulfill their thirst for knowledge I dutifully educated with the answers 'yes' and 'no'. I hope I gave them in that order. The students then stole/borrowed my camera and took this photo:

I got particularly sunburn today too, which in itself is a mystery given that it was only 20 degrees and I was only not in undercover areas for about. Some more pictures to round out this update: