My youngest daughter has gained fame at a young age. She was in the local paper this week along with her best mates from next door. Our local playgroup had a Wearable Arts day where we were invited to construct some sort of wearable art work together with the toddlers. We decided to make robots but some of the ideas that people came up with were quite innovative. We were surrounded by mermaids, princesses, aliens and warriors.
The World of Wearable Arts (WOW) show is held every September in Wellington and attracts and audience of 35000. Designers from all over the world submit designs to the Judges and 150 are selected to compete for a prize of over $100'000. I thought our Robot designs were fairly good and maybe next year we will enter the show! First the local paper - then the world....
We awoke earlier in the week to Tsunami warnings on our local radio station following the earthquake in Samoa. It was quite a wake up call in a way as the threat of Tsunamis is not something we have really thought about before. We can see the sea from our house but we are fairly high up and probably not at risk. However P works in Wellington and travels on the train that passes directly by the low lying coastline.
In the end all we saw of the Tsunami was a 40cm wave by the time it hit Wellington, not really that impressive. In parts of NZ people were actually prevented from going near low lying and exposed beaches. There were numerous articles online about scores of people heading down to beaches to see if they could see the Tsunami approaching. Even though I recognise that this is rather a dangerous activity, I have to admit that I would probably be one of those people if the opportunity arose!
This Saturday, as the weather is still frustratingly not good enough to go camping, we went to Staglands. This is a wildlife reserve in the Akatarawa valley to the north of Wellington. Its is a fantastic day out even though you have to drive along another twisting, winding, sheer drop on one side, road. They seem to specialise in these type of roads over here. If you suffer from a fear of heights, New Zealand is not a good place to drive.
The valleys in this area was apparently logged extensively in the past and it still appears to be going on in places. Thankfully it has also been heavily reforested in recent years.
J and A sitting in a replica logging station.
This Ram refused to move or let us pass until he was fed, he then followed us around until we ran out of food.
An amazingly hungry pig.
Spring is clearly a good time to visit as all the baby animals are available for cuddles.
Great to see you're still getting out and about despite the weather. Staglands is just down the road (well 10km) and we've not been. Must go I keep telling myself. Whilst we were in the UK a number of petting zoos closed down because of e-coli outbreak from there.
ReplyDeleteAs for the tsunami - people have a goulish interest in such things regardless of the danger. It's like seeing people swept away by high waves in a storm because they were there for sight seeing. Nuts. I'd steer clear and run for the hills.
We love Staglands!
ReplyDeleteLooks like a cool place for kids! I thought it was funny that so want people went down to the beach to wait for the tsunami! Thank goodness it petered out by the time it got here ... those poor people in Samoa.
ReplyDeleteI love Staglands. Charli just won us a family pass to go there at Sophie's Kindi fair. It's been ages since we last went and now you've thoroughly motivated me (just want to wait for this rain to ease up a little!).
ReplyDeleteBy the way - love the WOW creations!