Tuesday 6 December 2011

We’re in charge.

We certainly had a busy week-end at Jenny and Robin’s home. Friday and Saturday were both 10 hour days taking advantage of the long days and good weather due to the long range forecast for Sunday being unfavourable for painting. As it turned out, it rained in Wellington but stayed away from Upper Hutt giving Robin and I another opportunity  for further painting. By the time we knocked off at about 4pm 3 walls had been completed and the back of the house only needed 2 top coats. Quite an achievement in any bodies books. Robin just has to finish off any last minute touch ups.

Monday we returned to Geoff and Eileen’s in Otaki after visiting my Mother at Porirua. At 95 she can still run rings around others 10 years her junior although she does have memory lapses at times. Back at Otaki I gave the grounds a quick once over with the ride on mower and then found that Geoff had picked up another trailer load of bark chip over the week-end. This was quickly unloaded along the driveway garden. Robin had found some old  packets of Pea and Bean seeds and donated these to Eileen as he no longer has a vegetable garden. These were sown in the hope that they might grow despite the date on the packets.

Tuesday morning it was time for us to leave Otaki and head North to Takapau where we have a booking as Camp Wardens at the NZ Motor Caravan Association camp until the 19th. When we left Otaki the weather was fine but we could see the imminent bad weather rolling in around us. Everything went well until we started to climb across the Tararua Ranges via the Pahiatua Track. Despite the name this is a 2 way sealed highway which is undergoing major improvements. At the highest point we were virtually up in the clouds with visibility reduced to about 200 yards. Luckily this didn’t last long as we descended down into Hawkes Bay. At Pahiatua we turned left onto SH2 heading towards Hastings and our final destination.

At the camp we met Les the warden we were relieving and went through a hand over procedure and he was soon on his way home to Wanganui. We hadn’t even got ourselves set up on site before our first client arrived with another arriving a couple of hours later. We have finally got ourselves organised and hopefully worked our way through our duties list, so lets see what the next 2 weeks brings forth.

Very poor internet, so no pictures I’m sorry.  Took me nearly an hour to upload this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

At some point in the next two weeks can you explain what a Warden is/does?

The translation from Queens english to Yank english doesn't quite fit. In the US a Warden is the head of a prison and I can't for the life of me think of another place where it's used.

Derek and Dot said...

Hi Anonymous
Trying to think but another name would be a caretaker, hope this makes sense.