Castlepoint - Day 2

We went out for a walk around Castlepoint, to the lighthouse and the surrounding rocks, to see what we could see. Castlepoint was named by Captain Cook in 1770 because of the castle-shaped rock. In 1913 the lighthouse was built, and remained manned until 1988 when it was fully automated. Along the way we saw the ubiquitous red-billed gulls, and also some variable oystercatchers, which stood still long enough for us to photograph them:

Variable oystercatchers - taken by me this time

The weather in the morning was warm and sunny, but after lunch it started to cloud over. We decided to drive into Masterton to see what it had to offer. On the mountain road between Castlepoint and Masterton we spotted a couple of eagles. Well, I say eagles, but a subsequent check found them to be, in all probability, Australasian Harriers. They look like this:

An Australasian Harrier in flight

In Masterton, we walked around the Queen Elizabeth Park, but failed to go on the mini railway as it was closed for its annual engineering inspection. The aviary contained some random birds, for which there were misleading information panels about the contents of the cages. There was also a deer park, but we didn’t locate that until much later, and decided that we’d done enough walking around, and, anyway, we knew what deer looked like.

We returned home over the mountains, then nipped into the pub for a couple of Tuis. It was a full moon that night, so I took some photos of the full moonrise over the Pacific:

Moonrise

Dinner was a Thai green curry, which I had cooked back in Wellington and brought with us. There was a very good reason for this – the accommodation is not particularly modern, and in common with holiday rental properties throughout the world, is not particularly blessed with good cooking equipment. Fortunately it did have a microwave, so all we had to do was cook the rice. Among other features of the bach is the lack of mains water – we brought our own drinking water, and used rainwater caught in the two 3,000l tanks for everything else. It is incumbent upon users of the bach to be frugal with water to prevent it running out. This seems to be the case for many of the properties that we saw around town – I’m not sure if it applies to all of them or whether there is actually no mains water available at all in Castlepoint.

They Do Things Differently Here

Yesterday, I went out and explored Wellington more - in particular, the Cuba and Courtenay Place districts of central Wellington. This is where most of the bars and restaurants are, as well as the more bohemian boutiques and music venues. Really, we need to go there at night to get the full flavour of the area. I also found more mundane places, such as where to buy household items and hardware, which will come in handy.

In the evening we stayed in, so instead of telling you all about that in detail, here's the first in an occasional series called:

They Do Things Differently Here

Well, yes. Every country you go to does some things in a different way – not necessarily better or worse, just different. Things I’ve noticed so far:

The moon is upside down. OK, that’s logical when you think about it, but, to be honest, who does think of it?

Similarly, the sun goes from right to left.

The colours on the lids of milk are different. Instead of red=full milk, green=semi-skimmed, and blue=skimmed, we have dark blue=full milk, light blue=slim milk, green=99.9% fat-free. Does every country have a different colour coding system? My international followers can tell me in the comments.

The adverts on tv include agricultural products.

And, yiss, they do talk funny.