Rosie and The Operator are back home and are so excited to be travelling and spending Christmas in our own country of New Zealand, Up North, at The Faraway.
Its the beginning of summer in New Zealand. School is out till February. The skies are blue, the sun is warm and daylight saving is in full force drawing out the days till 9.00pm before it starts to darken. Everything around Rosie feels typical of a Kiwi summer and, coupled with the celebratory feeling for the time of the year, it just feels like home and is so en point.
Bye Bye Taranaki
Its Christmas Eve and we left our home province of Taranaki via New Plymouth airport, and, after a two flight, five hour relaxed journey via Auckland we arrived on the ground at Whangarei airport . Bj & Gee are our travel companions and there waiting for us, to ferry us on the one hour journey to The Faraway was Whipper who had arrived a couple of days earlier with his family to help set up the camp.
Gee & BJ all ready for an adventure!
The Faraway is a one hour drive from Whangarei Airport and a twenty minute drive from Dargaville, the nearest town. The Faraway sits on the edge of the famed Kaipara Kumara flats and Rosie’s whole Famz have gathered for the first time in a decade and will be celebrating Christmas together at this remote location….so dubbed, because….it is….well, Faraway. Poppy and Pansy have generously opened their doors to us and welcomed us into their beautiful holiday home built on a portion of what once was the family farm settled by Poppies parents after WW2.
The country roads Whipper drove snaked and curved through the green countryside and we stopped on the side of the road just before the asphalt gave way to more rustic, dusty, white limestone roads to stretch our legs and calm Rosie’s queasy, slightly car sick stomach.
This is a typical sight throughout the whole of New Zealand, roadside war memorials, mostly in the middle of nowhere, standing solitary or combined with rundown community halls and closed rural schools.
These memorials commemorate our rural lads who traveled to the other side of the world and gave their lives in the Great Wars long past. Many of the inscriptions heartbreakingly bear the names of multiple sons from the same families who have made the ultimate sacrifice so far from home and the local farms they came from.
The family names on the mossy stones in the cemetery are the same as the names on the memorial. The road signs in these parts also carry the same names, as these families originally settled here, cleared the land and their descendants still farm here.
Near the cemetery gate is another commemoration of rural New Zealand at its finest…a dispatched, decomposing, partially skeletal, pesky, possum hanging from the barbed wire fence. Rosie will never unsmell that particular smell….but, it did strangely enough magically settle her queasy stomach.
Here we are! After driving along the twisty, dusty limestone road for what seemed like forever we are here! The Faraway! From our high vantage point at the top of the driveway we look out over the beautiful green rolling farm land with fields full of bobbing grass flowers and there it is, we can see the house and camp site, on the rise in the distance.
Cruising slowly down the limestone drive with the window down, feeling the breeze on her face, smelling the fresh air whilst listening to the deep roar of the bulls and the birds chirp, Rosie knew she was somewhere very special…and the days to follow backed that feeling up no end.
Being the last to arrive at The Faraway we found everything set up, the chores all done and routines already running like clockwork. The rest of The Famz, some who had a couple of days head start on us, yet was their first visit too, all appeared to have slotted in as if they had lived here forever. The atmosphere was relaxed which befitted the setting and everyone was pulling together. The plates and glasses came out, food was passed through the kitchen window and laid out buffet style on the porch and with chairs aplenty we all filled our bellies, charged our glasses to the season and occasion and had a good old fashioned communal catch up.
There were no arguments like the ‘good ole days’ over doing the dishes, preparing meals and clearing up. It was just done and, like the saying goes, many hands make light work.
The Faraway is an amazing place. Designed very carefully and thoughtfully by Pansy with so many artistic flourishes and touches. It is the perfect place to host large family gatherings during the many times of the year that Poppy and Pansies large family gather there. Yet it is cosy enough to not feel huge for just the two of them when they choose to escape here and spend time on their own. .
The next few days were a chilled blur of lazy days coming and going from the main hub of the shady porch where we ate, drank, laughed, read, knitted, bird watched, rabbit spotted and absorbed the silence of nature. There were no time tables, no clocks to watch and no rules other than kindness and common courtesy to observe. Games were played on the front lawn which were fun and often controversial….this was Rosie’s family after all and even the kids were chips off the old blocks when it came to a little sneaky cheating.
Everyone pitched in and meal times were fun! Poppy was the egg fryer extraordinaire and Whipper had well, whipped up a Charcoal BBQ big enough to be able to feed the masses from a re purposed old twenty gallon drum. All evening meals were cooked on this and they were feasts to behold! Even the pizzas, after a few topping adjustments were made by Gus the Dog.
The Nieces were in charge of fashioning the jelly deserts on Christmas Day and Pansy had a collection of op shop appropriated wine glasses that the jellies just looked amazing in. Pansy’s New Year resolution was ‘to eat more jelly’ and Rosie surely hopes she is living up to this pledge!
The Faraways grounds are extensive undulating, bush and grazing land which was traversed by a convoy of quad and motorbikes along the smooth limestone tracks. We all piled on whichever mode of transport was available, driven by whomever, for rides to The Dam which is a stunning feature of The Faraway grounds.
The Dam Lake (pictured above) has an amazing swimming jetty and features a new addition this summer…Pansy’s Picnic Palace…an awesome changing room and lounging hut built right on the dams edge for those that do not want to swim but wish to sit, take the shade and be apart of everything going on in the water right there in front of you from its porch. It was glorious! All it needs now Pansy is a wee solar panel to keep the fridge running so GNTs on the porch will be nice and cold!
The kids and the boys loved the water…as did Gus, the loyal gun dog. He was never far from the action and seemed to have an abundance of energy in the water chasing his tossed toys and doggy paddling with the kids. Showing off his keen gun dog upbringing to the gathered crowd, Gus ran to the far side of The Dam in the area where the maimais are camouflaged in the scrub all set for duck shooting season and actually snatched a live duck! Gently, with the duck clasped in his teeth, Gus swam it back to us alive and indignant. To Gus’s bewilderment and confusion Poppy promptly paddled ‘the gift’ back over the the other side of The Dam and released the surprised bird unharmed and never the worse for wear.
The Pontoon was anchored to the lake bottom in front of the Picnic Palace just a short swim from The Jetty and more fun than ever was had by all the water nymphs with screams, squeals and ‘king of the castle’ challenges. An SUP Uber service was established to paddle participants from the Pontoon to the Picnic Palace and the sun shone down on us and the birds sang. A plump native Kereru (wood pigeon) came and sat in a tree and thoughtfully observed the mayhem. Once again Rosie’s phone was not up to the capabilities needed to successfully photograph the wildlife but here is my best shot.
In the thickening evening dusk, after dinner, The Boys and The Nieces would disappear out into the farmland to go hunting. RAM shot his first hare, opossum and ferret…and BBQ’d various bits of them all to try the game meat…all except the ferret that is, we are semi civilized.
Christmas Day dawned and Santa found us all at The Faraway even though we were so far away from home. He managed to deliver us presents but left them all up at the barn near the top of the road. Rosie guesses them are the breaks when you have a long driveway and a limited overnight delivery time. Not to be deterred, The Nieces and Poppy secured the gifts and fashioning there own Santas Sleigh delivered them in style to the front porch of The Faraway.
Our Christmas theme this year was ‘Made in New Zealand’ and each adult had to bring a gift that represented the theme. We then numbered the pressies and did a random draw to see who got what anonymous present. Its always fun to see how the theme was interpreted and who got what.
Our Christmas Meal was perfectly BBQd Lamb courtesy of the watchful eye and skillful cooking of Whipper. Beautifully glazed ham a la Poppy. Deliciously roasted veges in the woodfired oven by Pansy and Pinkyfluff. Delectable, colourful jellies fashioned by The Nieces and The Famz traditional Yule Log expertly and drool worthingly crafted by Stitch. It was a feast to behold and Rosie was too busy greedily tucking in to actually get a pic of the outdoor buffet bounty. You know how Christmas evolves…we ate and snoozed, awoke, played a few games, snoozed, awoke and repeated it all over again….it was the perfect day and we were all so blessed to spend it with family and friends in this magic location.
The Faraway has a secret. Hence, its true geographical location cannot be revealed and all names have been changed to protect the innocent. Within the heart of the ‘compound’ that is The Faraway, secured from prying eyes and screened by native bush is a grove. This grove allegedly has its own micro climate and primordial weather patterns. Inside this grove is an ancient forest of virgin Kahikatea (Native New Zealand White Pine) which survived the axes of the settlers that first cleared this land and then lay forgotten for millennia (Okay, Rosie is being a bit dramatic) until its resent rediscovery by Poppy.
The legend of the grove has been whispered about under cover of darkness and Poppy has agreed to take us there under sworn secrecy we will never reveal the true location of it. He leads our small intrepid party to the grove via an indirect and confusing path we beat through the long grasses, protective thistles and underbrush. As we get closer to the grove one of the hurdles we must overcome is a live electric fence wire, perfectly placed to discourage any marauders.
The said hotwire is too high to step over and low enough that we must be fully committed to our journey to roll under it. Well, those more nimble amongst us seemed to be able to limbo under it quite easily…BJ and Rosie just stared at each other in horror. There was no other way for it, Rosies knees do not bend that far and her butt is too big to semi crawl under, so, putting all dignity aside she is lowered onto the trampled grass by The Operator and she unceremoniously rolls under the wire closely followed by BJ and then the duo are levered up again on the other side….only for BJ to turn around, promptly trip, and in slow motion, pirouettes gracefully, whilst falling with arms outspread and gently lands fully on her back in what looked like a perfect bed of long grass splayed out beneath her.
Rosies mouth twitched with laughter at the look of astonishment on BJs face and her finger itched to snap a quick pic of this perfect accidental fail whilst arms and legs were still pointing skyward. But Rosie and BJ are companions in decrepitude, combating this hostile environment together and it would not have been sportsmanly…funny mind you…and for once, Rosie was fair. Levered up again, BJ soldiered on with only her pride dented thank goodness.
Ten minutes or so after we started the trek there we were, heading out from under the blistering hot rays of the bright sun and into the cool, damp and dim grove itself. It was totally ethereal, the quality of the light was softer, the sounds were different and seemed to belong on another frequency altogether. The trees themselves were so uniformly girthed, perfect and so tall and straight as they reached up into the sky. They whispered all around us in an ancient language of creaks and groans as they swayed in the breeze. The canopy itself soared above us and was so majestic. We just stood there craning our necks up to the blue sky above and just let the experience wrap around us.
The Niece kindly posed for Rosie in the best Instagram style ever to get an idea of how tall the trees were as Sparky, Stitch and Poppy went deeper into the grove. Any noise they made disappeared completely as the trees swallowed them up from view. We all kind of lost track of time in this altered universe and on the return we all seemed to be buoyed with energy and the hardships we endured getting there seemed to be trivial and so much easier to deal with on the return.
We finished our amazing Christmas get together with sparks and a bang of fire works as we sat watching in the dark from The Orchard. What a fab time we all had. A huge thanks to Poppy, Pansy, PinkyFluff and Whipper for making this a Christmas we will never forget…now to see some of the sights of Northland and in particular, The Bay of Islands on the next part of our journey. Join us tomorrow.
