A Wet Weekend in Waihi

The moved pumphouse - I suppose it is quite iconic

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By an extremely circuitous route, I managed to receive an invitation to attend a Midwinter Festival down at Waihi, in the Waikato. Intrigued as to what it would be like to celebrate Midwinter without being surrounded by Christmas, I accepted. So, one Friday afternoon, I found myself picking up a hire car and heading out of the city to drive south, hang a left just past the Bombay Hills and keep going, nearly to the sea. I arrived at the Festival site in the pouring rain, had to put on about five layers of clothes because it was so cold and then comforted myself with quite a lot of mulled wine. The next day dawned… grey and cloudy. By mid afternoon I needed to escape the hordes of ageing hippies, plus I’d spent at least half the night wide awake in what felt like subzero temperatures. The search for a blanket was on. About a ten minute drive down the road I found the town of Waihi, whose Woolworths duly furnished me with not one, but two blankets, and at a knock down price to boot. Whilst I was there I thought I might as well have a look around.

Waihi Beach

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I found the tourist information office and decided to shelter in there from a particularly nasty rain squall. Waihi is a gold mining town, so I spent a while wandering through the exhibit on gold mining and trying to lift a bar of gold bullion. (They’re heavy.) Then, as it was still raining, the lady in the tourist office offered to show me a video of the moving of the Cornish pumphouse (big ruined, well, pumphouse). It’s the icon of the town, having loomed large above it for over 100 years so when it was threatened by subsidence they decided to move it instead of pull it down. Apparently the move was an engineering marvel. I duly watched said video and was surprised to find that it was actually mildly interesting. Given that I used to work with civil engineers I blame them for this strange and sad episode. Then, when the sun finally came out, I drove a further 20 minutes down the road to Waihi Beach (not to be confused with Waihi) and spent an hour or so on the almost deserted beach listening to the waves before the rain came again so it was time to head home for more mulled wine and a bit of drumming around the virtual campfire (virtual since we were indoors since it was... still raining). Fortunately the new blankets (or possibly the wine) meant that I got slightly more sleep than the previous night.

The rather familiar Karangahake Gorge

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Sunday saw me heading back to the city, having spent surprisingly little time doing anything ro do with MidWinter.  I made a couple of stops on the way. Firstly at the Karangahake Gorge (try saying that after fifteen cups of mulled wine), which looked naggingly familiar for some reason. I had a bit of an explore, and was heading back to the car when a big green bus pulled up. That would explain why it looked familiar - I visited here two years ago on my Kiwi Experience trip. The memories came flooding back.  Then it was on to Paeroa, of Lemon & Paeroa (L&P) fame. This town really does fly the flag for L&P - World Famous in New Zealand since ages ago, as the flags and shop signs and statues of giant size bottles proudly proclaim. But, that sort of fun can’t last forever so eventually I had to head back to the city, return the car and settle down for another week at work.