Wellington is clear the morning we leave. It’s the day of the global climate strikes and we are getting the ferry to the South Island. Thankfully, it is a very straight forward process. The views from the ferry are excellent, the South Island proudly showing why it is thought of as the more rugged of the two.
Upon landing, we board the bus to Nelson. Checking in and going out for a short stroll before watching another couple of episodes of Stranger Things and sleeping. Up early again the next morning for our bus journey to Kohatu.
Kohatu isn’t where we’re staying, its the nearest place to the Workaway. As a place, it appears to be a roadside cafe and a lay-by. The closer the time gets to when we know we’re arriving there, the more Tilly and I notice that there, in terms of human settlement, isn’t a lot to arrive too.
Getting off the bus, we stand in the lay-by and, slightly nervously, start to make jokes about being in the middle of nowhere. As if intentionally to calm these nerves, one of our hosts, Josie, arrives in her car and we hop in. Josie very matter of factly informs us that we’re going over to her friends house to clip their goats toe-nails. Clipping and clearing the feet stop the goats from getting a kind of foot rot disease. Marvelous. You want cultural experience of South Island farming life? Go clip some goats toe nails.
Which would be a fair shout from me if this is actually what I did. However on the car journey there I mention that I play cricket. Jeremy, Josie’s partner and the other host, happens to be playing cricket this day and the team needs players. So we arrive at the friends farm, I hold one goat while it has its nails trimmed and then I’m off to play cricket, leaving Tilly behind – with her permission it was very important to add.
I turn up at the cricket, score 34 not out in a twenty20 match and am supping my second beer when Tilly arrives with Josie and the other workaway, Petra. Smug grin all over my face. In the afternoon, we sit with Josie and Jeremy’s friends on their farm and talk about the gun laws in New Zealand.
Is it difficult to think of things that haven’t been covered in the videos of our time in Tapawera. Plainly because we didn’t do a lot. We walked, taking in the incredible countryside in the area. We worked. We relaxed. It was such a peaceful time.
Something briefly touched upon in the video is our baking exploits. Over our time at the house, we baked two lots of brownies, a carrot cake, and a chocolate cake. The only major mishap of this was I, misunderstanding the instructions, put a tablespoon of baking soda into the chocolate cake instead of a teaspoon. Creating one very malty cake. Other than that though, we were successful and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
One of my favourite things about our trip were these moments where we’ve found something that we want to bring back to our every day lives. We’re nearly really set on the idea of baking regularly. I want to do more gardening at home – honestly 15 year old me is so disgusted by the adult I’ve become, the hours I spent talking smack about gardening in my heady younger days. These points of trying, learning new things that we like, about yourselves, about the way we want to practice our methods of living, are exciting. Moments of real growth, real newness.
Denny and Debbie's Little Big Adventure 