Big Trip

Visited the Driving Creek Pottery, Brickworks & Railway this morning. The railway was ostensibly built to furnish the potteries & brickworks with clay & wood from the hills, but that's really just the kind of excuse a railway enthusiast would try and employ to build his own line. It winds up the hillside, having to reverse in a number of places to get up the gradient, and includes some impressive engineering in the form of tunnels, cuttings, embankments and even a double-decked viaduct. There's one reversing point where the entire train is on a platform built out from the hillside. All of this madness leads you to the Eyeful Tower at the top, where there are wonderful views out over the harbour and beyond, and all round the hillsides. The pottery and brickworks themselves are a fantastically shambolic assortment of sheds and left over bits of machinery, which I'm sure will come in handy one day. Perhaps they already do. I'm sure they make some great stuff there, but most people go for the railway.
Having had our fill of trains once more we went to the Waiau Waterworks, a whimsical assortment of water-powered inventions in some nice gardens. There are all sorts of things that go round, or swing, powered by water, as well as toys to play with such as interactive fountains, water cannons, boat races, that kind of thing. Best of all, there's a swimming hole in the river, with a springboard a few metres above it. Splash. Erin didn't have time to psych herself up for this one, though, so pottered about in the river instead. The Waterworks is up for sale for $1.5m. What's that in Sterling? Hmmm...
Finally went to see a local giant Kauri tree, reckoned to be 600 years old. Coo. It's very big, y'know, and the first branches are 50ft off the ground, making it look even more impressive. The chap at Driving Creek's planted 25000 of these things over the last 25 years, in an attempt to reinstate the native bush. Should be quite impressive by 2606.