Busy Busy Busy! And then to Hospital...

Hello, sorry I haven’t written any blog entries in a while, life’s been rather busy over the last few months.  However I now have some time to dictate a new entry for the blog.  Yes dictate.  Due to an injury to my right hand I now have a cast over it and am under strict instructions not to use the hand.  Hence my writing looks like that of a child, with me having to my left hand, and typing is becoming slow and laborious.  Therefore I have chosen to go back to something I did over a year ago, getting my computer to take down what I say.  The technology’s better than what it was last year, with only a few corrections needed, and I’m having to inform it as to when I want punctuation –so please excuse any mistakes I’ve missed out.  Conveniently it is also significantly faster than typing with a little practice.

I should probably update you on the last few months and what has been going on.

In July, as many of you will know, I return to the UK for my sister’s wedding and The Great Yorkshire Show.  I’ll give you a full round up of my trip in a later entry, as there is quite a lot to tell and it deserves its own post.  Not to mention that some of it might want running past my sister first!

August was a month of calvings!  Over 22 by the end I believe.  My recording system wasn’t perfect, either in my notebook or on Facebook.  Those of you who have been following me via facebook will, I’m sure, know that I was noting down each of the calvings giving each a number and describing them in the metaphor of pizzas.  I hope this didn’t put too many of you off pizza, it was either that or put you off all food with descriptions of what are the worst calvings can be like.  Instead I decided to save them all for another blog post!

And finally September.  The events of September really started on the last day of August.  However what happened that day has affected every day since and will continue to affect me until at least the 31^st of October.  As of this seems the most pressing topic, but also one of some interest, I will address it in this post.

Once upon a time (11:30 AM 31^st of August 2015) in a land far far away (or not, kind of depends on where you are) I was enjoying my typical lovely morning routine, once more trying to wrestle a small cow out of a big cow, while standing in mud, wind blowing in my face, and swearing like a Scotsman.  By this point we had been there for some time and were making slow but good progress.  As this was all going on I noticed one of my knives was out of its sheath and on the grass.  Thinking of my safety and of the safety of those around me I picked it up by the handle to move it out of the way.  However, my hands at this point were covered in a mixture of calving lube, pregnancy juices, cow dung, and mud, causing the knife to slip slightly in my hand.  As it was, with this being a knife I had a recently sharpened, this was enough to cause a small cut in my little finger, and an even smaller one in my ring finger.  I instantly dunked my hand in the large bucket of antiseptic solution we had several times before going to look for a plaster.  It was at this point that I realized that I could not bend the first joint of my little finger.  I had severed a tendon.

Having been bandaged another vet who was conveniently close by came to finish the job for me whilst I ran myself down to the local doctors.  Here the nurses cleaned and dressed my wound.  I was then refer to one of the local hospitals.  Technically we are closer to the Palmerston North hospital, but I live to the west of the Rangitikei river which puts me under the jurisdiction of the Whanganui hospital.  The difference is roughly 10 minutes and all the nurses reassured me that the waiting times would be shorter.  Thus, with my hand neatly wrapped up I was driven by a staff member from work to the hospital.

To some extent it is good that I am used to having a wait at a medical facilities.  With this in mind, before leaving, I grabbed my bag containing things to keep me occupied.  They were very useful.  I was seen to by a very nice English doctor who had arrived in New Zealand a week before.  She was originally from Southern England but had trained in Leeds.  She irrigated the wound, giving it a second cleaning, applied a new dressing, organized for radiographs to be taken, and went to try find her superior.  It turned out as I watched from my little room in the emergency department that it was turning out to be a very busy day for the hospital.  Multiple trolleys were being pulled through with what looked to be very severe cases as well as all the other spaces within the department being filled with patients.  Thus I was left there waiting.  And waiting.

Thankfully I was prepared for this with a book and access to free wifi.  So I quietly waited in the corner of the hospital, as the hospital manager swept the corridor floors and exclaimed that she had never seen it this busy before.  Thus I waited, a patient patient, knowing that there were cases far more in need of help than me.  My doctor was part of the orthopaedics team and her superior was in surgery all afternoon.  When she finally managed to get hold of him he informed her that they were limited in what they could do for my injury.  I would have to go 2 hours south to Hutt Hospital where there was a specialist department.  By this point it was turning toward evening, my injury was not life threatening, and I would not be accepted at the referral hospital until the morning.

I was rebandaged and sent off home for the night, with a few drugs to keep me going.

Saturday 1 September 6:00 AM, I left home to be driven to my next hospital by the practice manager.  The hospital opened at 8:00 AM and we hoped that by arriving early in the morning we will be there before any sports injuries and hoped to be seen to before the afternoon.  I was still going to bring the boredom busting bag though.

I slept most of the way there and arrived to find a waiting room occupied by only two other patients.  That the desk I began to try and fill out more paperwork.

New Zealand has a system called ACC whereby any taxpayer who sustains an injury that work will have the majority, though not all, of that costs of treatment paid for.  They will also cover certain costs such as travel expenses and a certain amount of wages depending upon level of injury and type of work.  Therefore from my point of view it effectively worked like the NHS, but probably better.

New Zealand also has an agreement with the British government.  Any Kiwi who sustains an injury or succumbs to illness within the UK will be cared for and looked after by the NHS.  The reciprocal agreement means that any British citizen who similarly requires medical help in New Zealand will get it, for the most part, free of charge.

Both of these a very simple summaries of the situation but you get the idea.  And I was in the middle.  This caused some momentary confusion for the staff.  However I had already been seen by two other medical facilities and had been given up an ACC number.  This happened at work, I’m a taxpayer, and I was going to get significantly more benefit from ACC than I was from being British –it would later be very useful when they’re prepared to cover part of my wages whilst I am under doctor’s orders not too rectal cows for eight weeks.

After I sat down to wait some more a middle aged man came in with bandaged and blood soaked hands.  We would later be taken off together to both be examined by a doctor.  As it turned out he had also severed a tendon, this one for his middle finger on the right hand, but his cut was on the back of his hand such that he couldn’t straighten the finger.  He had also sustained a number of other injuries to his hands.  He was a site manager for building company and had gone in on Saturday morning to do some quick jobs that hadn’t been done during the working week.  One of those jobs involved cutting through a water pipe which he thought had been shut off.  As it was as he cut through water poured from the metal pipe.  This caught his hand forcing it upwards and into the sharp edge of the pipe above at high speed.

We were both seen by a young Irish doctor who took a history and examines our wounds in the large empty emergency department ward.  As it turned out the doctor used to work at Leeds hospital, and my fellow patient used to live nearby.  It’s a small world.

We were sent up to the plastic surgery department from which the hand specialists worked.  We were put in different wards though I would later see him that evening and he would be leaving surgery as I was about to go in.  In the ward I was given a bed which initially seemed unnecessary.  Out of the window sprawled the city with the hills in the background.  Across from me was an agitated Kiwi who had already been in the hospital since Friday afternoon.  During a last minute job at the lumberyard where he worked here caught his hands on a large circular saw and made a tear that didn’t quite make it down to the bone.  In the bed next to him was a very “interesting” American.  We never asked him a question but he chose to tell the entire hospital how the past month have gone to him.

He was a loud brash bald chap in early middle age.  Visiting him at this time was his elderly father.  Projecting with as much a volume as he could find he told his dad about all of the injustices that had befallen him during that month.  He had been traveling in South East Asia and whilst there had been assaulted and had had a his wallet stolen.  Somehow he ended up being incarcerated by the local police who then preceded to beat him in his cell.  He was then left their enough time such that the bruises healed leaving him with a no evidence of the event when he went to the American embassy.  After this he had come to New Zealand.  For some reason he had been walking through the streets of Lower Hutt.  This is not a tourist destination – Lower Hutt is not a prosperous area and is known for being a place where New Zealand’s criminal gang culture is abundant, as well as having a competitive crime rate.  It is not a place to be loud or brash, nor a place to show off your fancy new phone.  This unlucky American, whilst minding his own business, was once more assaulted, this time having his phone stolen.  He was beaten unconscious and left in the street later to be found and brought to the hospital.

Initially I had been sympathetic for this poor American tourist.  As time went by he continued to shout about his woes and made strongly abusive comments to his meek father, who was trying to help him to pack for the journey home.  Eventually he left and the Kiwi opposite me breathed a great sigh of relief.  Apparently this American had been similarly loud abusive and rude since he had been brought in the day before and then had loudly snored his way through the night.  We were both equally dumbfounded about the events he gone through.  The question was raised of what sort of person, having been assaulted twice in Southeast Asia, then travels to Lower Hutt?  And had he followed the advice many people give for not getting mugged in strange places –primarily keeping your stuff hidden and maintaining a low profile.  Probably not.  We decided that whilst he was very unlucky, there was a good chance he had also been very stupid.  At least we wouldn’t have to listen to him snoring all night.

By 6:00 PM I was guessing incredibly hungry but more importantly immensely dehydrated.  I had been fasting since 6:00 AM in the morning and was hoping the surgery would be done that day.  A nurse had come around earlier to put a catheter into my hand – perhaps they can attach me to a bag of fluids?

I managed to find a passing nurse who went off to go find out what was happening.  As it turned out for some reason the hospital only had one acute surgical suite open for the weekend.  The man opposite me as well as the man who I had come in with were both more serious cases than I and so would be going in before me.  But there also other patients, not to mention other departments, who also wanted the surgical facilities.  This meant that any car accident, caesarean section, or other life threatening problem would come long before us in the list who could wait for a long period of time.

And so it was that the nurse returned with not only news but also sandwiches and water.  Even without being told I knew this was not good news –I needed to be starved for surgery, if I was being given food my surgery would not be happening until the following day.  So I ate my sandwiches, drank and refilled my large litre jug of water a number of times, before finally being served a “spare” meal with ice cream and lots of tea.

Finally my doctor arrived to inform me that they should be able to get to me by the following morning and that I was to be starved from 2:00 AM.  This would mean that I would be able to go home Sunday evening.

Later on that evening the patient opposite me was taken down surgery, had the paperwork done, was prepped for surgery, and then sent back to the ward.  A caesarean section had come in and he would be pushed back to the next day.

The following morning he was taken away early and returned 5 hours later.  Some time later a friend came to pick him up from the hospital and to jubilantly left, finally free after nearly 48 hours in the ward.  That got me to wondering how long it would take offense to repair the site manager.

Eventually they came to collect me at two o’clock in the afternoon.  Despite the fact that I could still walk very well the staff insisted that I be pushed on my bed through the hospital and down to surgery.  Here the paperwork was done, as I watched the site manager brought out of surgery.  I was up next only for a patient I never saw with an injury more serious than my own to be taken into surgery before me.  Only time would tell if I was to be sent back to the ward or actually manage to get surgery this afternoon.

The estimation was good the surgeons believing that they would be able to get to me soon enough.  I curled up on my bed.  The nurse who is looking after me took out a blanket from a heated cabinet by the anesthesia department’s central console and place to over the top me.  Under a nice warm blanket and surrounded by pillows I quickly drifted off to sleep.

When I eventually work nothing appeared to have changed.  The site manager was still opposite me recovering and I could see no nurses thereby.  However I did feel that now was a good time to go for a wee.  So I got off my bed and wandered out, dressed only in a hospital gown, to find a toilet.  Opposite the anesthesia department with two toilets marked “staff only”.  I didn’t know how far I would have to go to find other toilets and it seemed like a waste of time to go find them.  What the heck, there was no one around anyway.  Such a rebel.

It was as I dutifully attempted to wash the one hand that was not covered in bandages that I heard a commotion outside.  I waited a moment by the door of the toilets that hospital management said I shouldn’t use before noticing that someone was saying my name.  I cautiously opened the door to find to agitated nurses who were looking for me.  The surgical table was free!  It was my turn!

I walked into the surgical suite and jumped up onto the surgical table where I would be having the operation.  I was hooked up to a bag of hartman’s solution, electrodes were attached, connecting me to the machine that goes “BING!”, and talked to my anaesthetist.  They were going to use local anesthetic on my arm, excellent idea, and I’m sure he said I’d be put on Halothane, which made me wonder about my recovery.  I had a vague memory of being told something about Halothane being used for humans, but couldn’t remember if it has a good or bad thing.  Either way, I treat animals not people, and a lot of other people had been through this hospital over the course of the weekend and they all seemed fine.  They placed a mask over my face, I took slow deep breaths, and then groggily woke up back on the ward with a new set of bandages.

And that was that.  It would not be until the following Thursday at physiotherapy that I would see the surgical site.  I sat up in my bed with a sore throat and a second catheter in my arm.  The fluids must have worked as I no longer felt so dehydrated, but I was thirsty and hungry.  It wasn’t a long before I was brought a double helping of dinner and 2 litres of water.  I was still groggy and took a couple of naps as I worked my way through the food.  At the end I was offered a cup of tea, and managed to get hold of more ice cream, and began to feel a lot better.

Still recovering from an anesthesia I stayed on the ward overnight.  The next day at 8:00 AM the department handed over to the weekday staff.  They did Morning Rounds, visiting all the wards so the weekday staff knew what was left.  I was all set and ready for home, given the all clear by my Irish junior surgeon.  This only left mean with 3 hours to wait whilst paperwork was completed, just enough time to practice manager to drive back down and pick me up.

Following on from all this I was put on antibiotics, three forms of pain relief (mostly just to keep the swelling down), and am visiting a specialist hand physiotherapist.  I will be back in Hutt hospital on Monday for an appointment with the head surgeon, and going to a hand clinic at Palmerston North hospital in a month’s time.

So, that’s my experience of the New Zealand Health Care System.  It effectively the same as the British one, although they will ask for a bit of money up front to help keep out the riffraff and the time wasters. 

Oh, and its better if you say you did it to work.  Provided you can be back at work within 48 hours after the injury.  Otherwise OSH, which is the New Zealand equivalent of the HSE of the UK start asking questions.  Although that 48 hours doesn’t include the weekend.  I’ll stop now, it’s amazing what you learn off people hospital when you get talking.

Palmerston North - my local town

Giant Wetas on the side of the Art Gallery!

Like virtually anyone who ever lives anywhere I've utterly failed to visit my local area as a tourist. I know where the local supermarket is, the bowling alley, the paintball arena. In my first few weeks I did make something of an effort to visit the local Manawatu Gorge, the mountain ranges, and see the Tasman sea. This weekend, however, I finally made it to the cultural quarter of Palmerston North!

Palmerston North AKA "Palmy" sits between the flat, windy, cow-infested plains of the south-west, and the long chain of mountains forming the backbone of New Zealand's north island. Out beyond these plains is the luke warm Tasman sea, with long flat beaches and enough drift wood for semi-regular evenings of fire and swimming with mates. Within the forest-bound mountains are a labyrinth of tracks old and new, with huts one can cheaply stay in to make for a long weekend amongst the trees. Dividing this mountain chain in two is the great Manawatu river, eroding the rock as fast as the earth can force it up- resulting in this being the only river to flow through a mountain range in the world! Along this Manawatu Gorge are the rail line and a road, which occasionally succumb to rock slides from the surrounding, growing, mountains. At the edges of the gorge, often high above it, run the gorge walk, 10km of forests and look outs, as well as the vast wind turbine farm, turning the regions meteorological flatulence into green energy.

Between this great river, the Rangitikei river, and the Whanganui river lay the flat plains, where the original colonists decided to fell trees, and thus created a space for agriculture to thrive. This took far longer and far more time than one would think. The land was wet, in parts boggy, and the soil quality could be poor. There were originally no worm in New Zealand- yet with their introduction they quickly spread, turning over and composting the forest waste, allowing a more rich, consistent, soil to be created. Colonists where lured by land companies to the far side of the world, looking for cheap farms and space. Rivers flooded, farms were washed away, people came and went. Eventually, however, the rivers were tamed, forests removed, and the farms sprang up.

In the east Palmy grew with this development of the colony. There were roads, factories, and an air field built. But what really puts Palmy on the map from this age is one Mr Charles John Munro. CJ Munro was from Nelson and, after attending school in England, brought rugby to the Kiwis in Nelson and Wellington. "The Sport that shaped a Nation" as the museum puts it. The New Zealand Rugby Museum is in Palmerston North because that is where CJ Munro eventually lived and died. He now stands outside the museum, ironclad and carrying a ball in the most gentlemanly fashion.

The museum remembers many things, and is mostly filled with old shirts, caps, and magazines. However, this is a very basic over view of New Zealand Rugby History.

Like most Polynesians, Maori are big guys. Built like a brick s**thouse, in old english. They are also capable of being very hard workers- a number joined the Royal Navy during initial contact and the officers had only good reports. Sometime later Maori volunteered to create a battalion for the first world war. The Europeans didn't ask for this- they discouraged it viewing the war as caused by Europeans, and thus to be fought and resolved by Europeans. Despite this the Maori eventually made it to Gallipoli and proceeded to scare the crap out of the poor little Turks.

Anyway... with both the native and colonial populations being filled with strong, hard working, men, prepared to duke it out at the end of the day, New Zealand found itself a crucible of egg-tossing genius. And right from the beginning the Kiwis took the world by storm. I won't go through every game & tour, but there was Australia, South Africa and England- and they won nearly every game. They introduced a new, faster, form of the game to the old, slow, European circuit. At one time they were using a different formation of scrum to other nations, which was more effective- to the point that it was declared cheating, and made illegal.

Significant efforts were made during the wars as well, with large games being organised during the First World War between the various British Armed Forces and our allies. It was after the wars, however, that relations with a previous ally was strained, and is viewed by many New Zealand historians as one of the founding movements of the independent nation. During the years of apartheid in South Africa New Zealand was asked to select its teams on a racial base. This effected both tours by the Springboks to NZ, and by the All Blacks to SA. This resulted in two major events for New Zealand. Firstly, after dominating the sport for so long, they suddenly started to struggle, bringing home defeats. Secondly, and more importantly, in 1969 HART was set up- Halt all racist tours. "No Maori, No Tour". The Springbok tour of NZ in 1981 was the time of greatest protest. After decades of petitions and protests the people spoke with force and in numbers. Threats were made, games cancelled, and the All Blacks, as well as provincial teams struggled to perform. Only in 2/3 of the National games, and against the NZ Maori team, were the South African's held to account. Whilst some Kiwis wanted to keep politics out of sport, and simply have a nice game of rugby, the protesters carried on.

South Africa had been part of the British Empire. Originally it was seen as a necessary part of the brotherhood of colonies to be on good terms, politically and socially. It was therefore New Zealand's duty, as part of the Commonwealth to play Rugby against South Africa. It is therefore deemed the for most event of New Zealand's independence that as a people they declared that they would no longer play their national sport against South Africa. When, four years later, the New Zealand Rugby Union proposed a tour of South Africa, they were sued by two layers who declared that such a tour would break the society's constitution, and the tour was prevented by a High Court Injunction.

These events are viewed as helping establish the modern, independent, moral, state of New Zealand.

It is also argued that this break in tradition gave NZ the confidence to turn further from its traditional old allies, resulting in the work done between 1984-1987 which resulted in NZ becoming a Nuclear Free Zone. This broke certain treaties that NZ had with the USA and prevented any Nuclear-powered vessel or nuclear waste from being brought near the islands.

With Maori back permanently in the All Blacks they continued to beat the snot out of much of the world, winning the 1987 World Cup, and many after that.

"Except when the English turn up." "Yeh, whatever." "Well, we'll see what happens at the World Cup this year."


So, that's a short history of New Zealand's Rugby History.
A sport where big men & women throw around an egg.

You know what else was big and involved eggs?

DINOSAURS
(a seamless link!)

Until relatively recently it was thought NZ didn't have any dinosaurs. The majority of the present landmass is less than 65 million years old, and prior to that had spent many millions of years drifting out in the deep blue. Recent work by amateur paleontologists, however, has shown that NZ was awash with these proto-birds, long before the island was conquered by modern birds.

This has lead to me being fortunate enough to bump into the touring dinosaur exhibits, just as Jurassic World is about to come out.

As well as the dinosaurs, though much later, NZ was ruled by the birds. The Museum has a skeleton of the ancient Moa- the largest non-dino bird to ever exist, some species reaching 3.6m(12feet) in height. A bird which had completely lost its wings (not even a scrap of bone to suggest it ever had more than 2 limbs) and lived on a diet of NZ flora, right up until the time humans came to live upon a diet of NZ fauna.

Model of a Moa in the museum reception area- the little one is about 4ft, the big one was about 10ft

Prior to human immigration the only predator of the moa was the Haast's Eagle, the world's largest ever eagle, with a wing span of up to 3m. Both disappeared as hungry humans hunted their way through the giant Moa and foraged for the vulnerable moa eggs. Within an estimated 160 years of man's arrival the Moa was extinct (other than a few reports of the smaller species reported in the most remote locations up until the late 19th century). The Haast's Eagle died out soon after the Moa.

Moa Skeleton, with a size comparison for this species

After that white people arrived and proceeded to further demolish the native abundance of avian-dominated wildlife, aided by their cats, dogs, guns, axes, saws, chainsaws, explosives, deer, cows, sheep, horses, goats, possums, stoats, weasels, worms...etc. (Mixed sources saw the Maori brought the rats, mice & some of the pigs) Thankfully this was minimised by the formation of a number of large national parks around unfarmable mountain land and sacred Maori sites, now mostly managed by the Department of Conservation. The rest of the country was bought from local Maori by large companies (at a "fair" price- so starts 150+ years of arguments), divided up, then sold to a mixture of willing and desperate immigrants.

Part of a governmental agreement with these land companies was for only families to be  sold these land plots. The concept was that a family would stay and work the land, whereas single men could be simply buying up land to sell later at a better price. When the inspectors did finally make it to my local region of the Manawatu they found much of the land had been sold to single men. The companies informed the inspectors that there were no families to take the land, and the men informed the inspectors that "we are perfectly willing to get married, if but the ladies were available". At some stage immigration laws changed to a proto-type "points system", such that women were favoured to men- men only allowed in if married, or if they had unmarried sisters who would be coming with them.

And thus we have the Dairy Plains of the South-West of Today (also see my Taranaki entry)

Finally, some extra pictures

I think this is "Manaia, a spiritual guardian and carrier of supernatural powers. Traditional depictions include the head of a bird, body of a man, and tail of a fish. Provider and protector over the sky, earth, and sea. Likened to a bird sitting on your shoulder, looking after one's spirit, and guiding the spirit where it is supposed to go when the time comes."

Found by a farmer in a local wetland, this carving once lived in a Maori Whare ("Fare"- large house/hall)

We've got one of these at home! A Fordson Major

Lots of mini-Dino skeleton sculptures that were randomly on display

A Sea-lizard skull

My new pet!

Taranaki: Part 1, the Mountain

THIS IS UNFINISHED, BUT VIDEOS WILL BE ADDED LATER

Sorry its been so long since I last posted- Been busy with other things and some how the blog got left out for a wee while.
Autumn calving has started here, and the weather's finally turned. Personally I'm loving that the sun is no longer quite as strong (but, being near the hole in the O-zone layer its always very strong) and that we've finally started getting a bit of rain. Still not quite enough to get everything growing fully, but we're getting there. This all, of course, with the back drop of you in the northern hemisphere finally making it out of winter, the days getting lighter and warmer, lambs and calves being born and things starting to grow again.

Some of you may know that I've hit 2 bits of bother in the last few weeks. One was a stomach bug after too much running around being busy. Everyone was very helpful and it just took me a little while to get back to normal. At first I thought it was sun stroke, then my flat mates got it, in a lesser form. Woops. Practice manager was glad it wasn't from the barbecue he cooked us the day before.
I also managed to cut my leg open! :) With my new hoof knife, no less. Some idiot decided he'd check out a slow lame cow's feet in the middle of a field, fell over, and cut through overalls, skin, and into the adipose of my thigh. The old ones wouldn't have made it through the overalls. Anyway, I bandaged myself up and got to experience the NZ NHS AKA ACC- basically its like the NHS, but just covers for accidents & the like, though one still has to pay a small amount. Seems like a pretty good system to me. Yes, I could have sutured myself, but I wanted a Tetanus jab and antibiotics too, so thought I'd do it properly. If you want to see the pictures they're on my Facebook page- won't stick them up here, I know some people don't like blood etc. But all good now.

Anyway, a few weekends ago I had a 3 day weekend, so decided, having gone North and South, to venture West.

To the West of Bulls one travels through the town of Wanganui- which has a reputation similar to Castleford. But this is NZ, so its got no areas as bad a Cas' bad bits, and it has a massive outdoor pursuits tourist attraction! The Whanganui River (Wh is an F in Maori, but some people say this one is pronounced as a W.) ends here, and up stream people go kayaking, canoeing, fishing, boating, etc. I'll hopefully go up here some other time though.

The real attraction of going West is the region of Taranaki, dominated by Mount Egmont- a lonely volcano. The forests here are stunted compared to the rest of NZ, perhaps due to the altitude, perhaps due to the rocky terrain. It is, however, very pleasant, not for size but in myriad quaint settings. There's a(nother) Middle-Earth/ Hobbit set round every corner.

The Volcano, on the other hand, is huge. The peak is sacred, so despite all the mountaineers who climb it, one is not supposed to stand on the summit. Europeans called the Mountain Mount Egmont, but originally the Maori named him Taranaki- the lonely volcano man who's head was the summit. Hence by standing on the summit one is standing on the top of the region's protector, which is disrespectful.

The Mountain is generally wreathed in clouds, and has its own weather systems. When Captain James Cook came to Taranaki he stayed in the region for a month and never saw the top of the mountain. There's a story that the first surveyor of New Plymouth, Taranaki's main settlement, never even mentioned the Mountain in his notes. It's a challenging mountain to climb due to the variability of the weather and is not something I would advise people to do. Though that doesn't stop me from wanting to do it one day.

It's a cool place with a bit of the forest, water & volcanic features of NZ, but I'd say there are better places to see each separately. This doesn't stop the drive up to the Dawson Falls car park worth doing There's a great walking circuit through the various types of forest and rock formations- it does, however, contain a lot of "bridges"...

[LINK TO YOUTUBE BRIDGE VIDEOS]

There will be more of these... http://youtu.be/eLywXfLWvqM

I also found some interesting new wild life whilst I was there- including a weird spider!

[LINK TO YOUTUBE SPIDER VIDEOS]

After all of this, plus a quite cold night camping in the car park, I eventually went down to Dawson Falls:

[LINK TO YOUTUBE DAWSON FALLS VIDEOS]

I mustn't forget the human stuff up on the mountain side too!

NZ has a rich history of tourism (how? Its SO far away and people had to get a ship here. Yeh, but its got lots of amazing stuff, so people came to see it.) One part of this tourism is Dawson Falls, which people have been visiting for over a centuary. This was also one of the base camps for attempting the summit- there's a hut part way up as a way station/ 2nd base camp/ safety point. Its not the preeminent route, but it remains significant. Hence the Department of Conservation has an office here, with a small shop and museum, and there's a small B&B plus a few huts. Makes a nice place to stop at.

In the past this place was also powered by a hydroelectric generator, that's still working! As someone who went to a lot of steam rallies as a kid this is fascinating to me.