Ruakaka

 

Before we left Bayly's Beach, we went to Pouto about 60ks away at the end of the peninsular, to go fishing with Adele and Russell. We could see the waves coming in over the bar to the Kaipara Harbour. Eddie caught a good size Kahawai which fed us all. Russell was very disappointed not to get anything. He was very disappointed with west coast fishing.

Eddie caught a nice kahawai from this point

getting set up with the fishing tackle

Adele and I did a bit of a beach walk and cleaned up a lot rubbish as we went; such as plastics, fishing line, cans and other assorted stuff. It's hard to believe people are so lazy and leave their rubbish behind them. 

We are now at Ruakaka. We came here on the 21st May. We had to come back across here as the COF was due on the caravan and there is no where to get that done in Dargaville. Ridiculous but true.

We were booked into a garage to have our COF done on last Monday morning. When we got there they didn't have us booked in. It turned out they had another branch in Warkworth about 60 ks from where we are and over the Brynderwyn hills. We went to the VTNZ and waited in a queue about 4 hours. A test of patience. Thank goodness I had thought to take my book. Eddie chatted to other people in the queue.

We went to the garage yesterday,  to get something in the suspension done. Eddie has bought the parts a while ago ready to get it done, but we hadn't quite got there. Then back to VTNZ to get the re check done. The line wasn't so long this time, but I still read my book.  Now we have a brand new COF on our window. 

There are lots of birds here in the estuary. There are oyster catchers, godwits, dotterels as well as the usual seagulls. There is also a quite friendly duck with 5 ducklings. Quite late to have babies we thought. She isn't very frightened of us and we can get quite close.

Eddie is actually worked for a few days last week. A friend of his has a few trucks, based in Tirau, near Matamata and they are unloading a container ship this week at the port in Whangarei, so Eddie did a few days for him. On Monday, Eddie went and delivered the container he had on board to the logistics place in Manukau in Auckland. No one had told Simon the ship was finished, so Eddie went on down from Auckland to Tirau and Simon flew him home from Rotorua. I had to walk down to pick up the truck. I am very glad it wasn't raining, as it's a bit of a walk.

 He is also going to work for Simon in June, driving a bobby calf truck. We will be based in Tirau for 6-8 weeks.

We have had a couple of stormy days here. We have had very strong south east winds. It's still quite windy today, but it is supposed to calm down later today.

We took the awning in on Friday night, as one of the anchor straps had pulled out of the ground and it was easier to take the other one in, with the wind a blowing than try to reattach the disconnected one. We figured they might come out again during the night.

This is our view at the moment from our site at Ruakaka. With the full moon happening tonight, the tides have been very high, with no where for the birds to settle on the mud. Usually there is a high point they can sit on with the water all around them. It is coming right up into the mangroves you can see in the photos.

Our next port of call is going to be Tinopai, which  is back over on the Kaipara Harbour, so we can finish exploring there. We are going on Saturday.