Papakura Radio Club inc.

& NZART Branch 65, Papakura.

1 Great South Road, Papakura.

�Working towards NZART Guiding Light award�

ZL2SEA Lighthouse Activities.

Labour Day weekend 2009. Tiritiri Matangi was on Sunday 25th October
The car has just been unpacked and it�s raining heavily in New Plymouth, but it is good to be home again. Nigel and I have had a wonderful weekend away together and the visit to TiriTiri Matangi Island is the highlight of the trip.

Nigel made the arrangements for the long weekend a couple weeks ago and was getting more and more excited about going back out to Tiritiri Matangi. I hadn�t been there before, so I was more excited at going to another lighthouse� our tenth!

We have been working towards the NZART Guiding Light Award since Dec 08 / Jan 09 when we went to Cape Brett. So far it has been a real blast with every adventure revealing something new and no two lighthouse adventures the same.

This adventure started Friday afternoon with packing the car and loading the trailer with the yacht upholstery I�d finished. We were ready to leave for Auckland when we had to spend the next three quarters of an hour trying to get Sooty the yearling Angus/Jersey steer back into his paddock. He shared a fence line with a miniature horse, but the horse had been taken away by her owner, out through Sooty�s paddock. She was Sooty�s only company and Sooty was somewhat distressed at the horse leaving and jumped the gate.

I had heard a thud and was surprised to see the yearling near our vehicles. He�d never jumped the gate before. I tried opening the paddock gate, to return him to his paddock, only to have the gate fall off its hinges as it opened. It was left leaning against the fence. Sooty by then, had gone searching for the horse down the drive, so I raided the fridge for a few carrots and started calling for Sooty. He usually comes when called as we have struck up a friendship over fruit and vegetable scraps and I have been handling Sooty regularly, getting him used to the grooming brush. He came back up the drive, only to look around and run back down the drive. I followed him this time and found him at the end of the gravel looking as forlorn as a steer can. His friend was not in sight. I was concerned he�d run out the main gate onto the road so I went ahead of him, stamped my foot on the bitumen and shooed him back up to the cottage. He wasn�t interested in going through the gate. He went into the garden and Nigel tried to get him out, only to have him go into the bunny shed, the orchard and around our land lord�s house, munching on flowers as he went. I ran to the main gate and closed it while Sooty had the grand tour of the garden beds. Running back I found Sooty under the Rhododendrons and Nigel still trying to get him out of the garden.

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With Nigel�s assistance, I eventually managed to coax Sooty back into his paddock with the carrots and Nigel had to help me put the gate back on its hinges. Fun! We locked the main gate on the way out, just to be sure.

We were running late by now, only to hit traffic crawling through New Plymouth. We stopped for more ties for the trailer and continued on our way, finding the traffic getting lighter as we went. We stopped for dinner at Pio Pio before continuing on our way, arriving at the caravan at 9:45 pm. Saturday we spent with friends, which was really lovely.

Sunday morning the alarm clock went off at 0600. Nigel cooked millet cereal for breakfast as I made our lunch. Bags packed, we were off to catch the ferry that would take us to TiriTiri Island. Nigel had decided to catch the ferry at Gulf Harbour not far from our destination. That meant driving through the city and we wanted to avoid getting onto the toll road. Thankfully we had packed our travel atlas this time and it directed us off to Silverdale and out to Gulf Harbour. We arrived in plenty of time and had a bit of a look around while waiting for the ferry.

I discovered the Canon wasn�t working like it should have on movie, but didn�t know why. The zoom wouldn�t work and the pictures taken looked somewhat blurred. It didn�t focus like it had previously and didn�t have the fine quality either, which was a bit of a worry. I didn�t use the Olympus for taking movie as it wouldn�t zoom on video setting and was harder to use in general. I still took what I could as we went. The camera worked perfectly on still photos which was a relief!

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The ferry arrived on time and was soon loaded and making its way towards the island. I was getting excited and Nigel had been excited all morning. I got chatting to a passenger as he was wearing a hat with Australia embroidered on it. No, he was a Kiwi� just back from holidays to Australia. We got talking about the differences of bush between Australia and New Zealand. I find the NZ bush so silent and empty� the NZers find the Aussie bush scary with all its creepy crawlies and the birds so loud! I mainly find the traps and bait stations but not the critters in NZ bush. I miss hearing the scurrying in the undergrowth and the anticipation of finding some small creature not far from the track. Snakes? I�d only ever seen one or two in the wild in over 30 years in Aus; only ever stopped for one to get off the walking track. Others were only the tip of the tail disappearing into the scrub and could have been lizards; there were always plenty of them about.

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There was a bio-security talk while on the ferry shortly after take off and more instructions before it docked at the TiriTiri wharf and let everyone off: We had to wait at the end of the wharf. DOC Ranger James gave everyone a short talk about what places were of interest and some safety instructions; restricted smoking areas; to stay on the tracks and mowed grass areas and to watch out for �Greg�� a wiley old Takahe that lived near the lighthouse. He was not to be fed and children in particular, were to be watched closely, as he was known to peck and scratch. Nigel and I headed off up to the lighthouse when the first group of visitors were dismissed. Other visitors had to meet guides etc. We passed a duck pond that looked rather vacant, but someone was entrenched with tripod and a massive telephoto lens camera, waiting for the rare Brown Teal duck to emerge. Massive cameras seemed to be the flavour of the day!

Nigel led the way into the scrub on the perfectly formed track. The bush was full of bird sounds! It was beautiful. The further we went, the louder the bird songs became. I heard bird songs I didn�t recognise, so I asked Nigel �What is it?� His answer was �Ssshhh!�. So I whispered the question again, only to be answered with �Shhhh!� I still don�t know what bird it was that was calling.

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Rounding another corner, there was a flurry of wings and birds all through the bushes. Wow! They were pretty ones at that too; black, white and yellow markings with beaks like a honey eaters. I soon saw they were diving in and out of a cage full of bottles and dishes. Nearby was a sign saying Stitchbird Feeding Station. Stitchbirds! They are a rare NZ native bird that is battling back from the brink of extinction and doing well on TiriTiri. Wonderful!

Further along the track I heard a scurry in the undergrowth and my heart leapt in anticipation of what it would be. A quick look around and� a cute pair of tiny Quail came into view, leaping over grass shocks taller than they were. Amusing! In a sunny section of the track we came across another cute pair of Quail having a dust bath in the track. We managed to quietly get within 3 metres of them before they scurried off.

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Tuis were loud and plentiful and seemed to be doing courtship displays and the air was ringing with their calls. I couldn�t get close enough to them even with zoom to catch them on camera... I just got the bushes! I did catch their calls, though the camera work was pretty wild looking at� bushes. The section of track just before we saw the lighthouse was the loudest; with Tuis everywhere. They were in nearby bushes and doing �flybys� past my camera faster than I could catch them. It was fantastic hearing the bush so alive. The lighthouse came into view at the top of the rise and it looked quite pretty in the distance. The sun was hanging right near the lighthouse, so taking pictures of the lighthouse was a bit difficult with white tower against glary cloud.

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We soon reached the visitor�s centre and the lighthouse. At a distance the lighthouse was pretty; up close it is quite beautiful in its white coat with red trim, looking fresh, trim and proper. The neat white picket fences around the nearby houses only added to the pretty picture the lighthouse created. I took several pictures of Nigel and the lighthouse before taking more photos of the lighthouse and signal station watch house, hoping to get at least one good shot of white against bright cloud.

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We had a look around the lighthouse grounds and picked a suitable spot near the hedge to set up the radio antenna before settling down for lunch. We had been going through some Ham radio video clips and several NZ Lighthouse weekend web pages and noticed that a pan of sizzling sausages seemed to be a popular field trip item. Our lunch was searched for sausages, but we came up empty! Sigh!

The telescopic radio mast went up easily and Nigel was soon on air calling VK4VCH to Catherine in QLD. She was the lucky first contact. Nigel didn�t stay long on that band. The antenna pole was dropped and the connections changed to a different band. ZL stations came in a steady stream and I tried catching each contact on video, before wandering off to take a few more photos of the lighthouse.

The longer Nigel was on the air the more puzzled I was about my camera. I should have used up the first card by now. The word �compact� came up for the second time and by accident I hit the left- right arrows and found that it swapped from �compact� to �standard�. I didn�t know what the difference was, but discovered the zoom worked on �standard�! Problem solved! I had been on the wrong movie setting� drats! Video quality improved markedly when set to �standard�� so much for forgetting I had the instruction manual with me, and for not reading the manual through! The necessary makings of a good hamster I understand� hi hi.

DOC Ranger James came around the corner on his patrol quad bike and did a double take at the new stick in the hedge. I was at the corner of the fence railing filming the antenna when Ranger James started in our direction. I thought �Uh Oh� we is in trouble�� remembering Paul�s caution. DOC Ranger James was more interested in finding out what we were doing than telling us to move on anywhere. A friend of his is a hamster, so he understood a bit of what we were up to. We explained that we were working on the NZART Guiding Light Award and showed him the lighthouse information which he found interesting. He was happy for us to continue on, but suggested we look into what DOC approvals were needed when going onto DOC controlled lands, just to save any future hassles.

While Nigel was busy taking more contacts, I couldn�t help myself� I had to go Takahe hunting. There was a Takahe on the other side of the hedge patrolling back and forth that just had to be shot� The camera work got a fraction wild while I attempted to get as close as I could to the rare bird without disturbing it. Nigel continued talking on the radio in the background, so the wild camera work has been included in the video we have edited together. The Takahe totally ignored the fact that he was a star feature and continued digging up the roots he was eating. I eventually got a lovely clear shot of the bird and love its colours. Unfortunately, I didn�t take a still photo of it. I was thinking DVD rather than web page. Oops!

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Two thirty PM arrived too quickly and we had to pack up and head back to the wharf for the 3:15PM ferry muster. The island had a full house, so anyone missing the ferry would have to leave the island by water taxi, an expensive oversight.

Before we left, we made a special point of thanking DOC Ranger James for helping make our day such a great experience on the island. We had made a friend�

Monday evening we arrived back in New Plymouth in pouring rain and pulled up at the main gate, only to discover neither of us had the gate keys! Mine had been left so Kelly cat could be fed and Nigel�s were in his work vehicle. That left jumping the fence! We looked at each other asking �who is going?� Nigel decided I was to have the excitement of scaling the 8 foot gate and retrieving the keys to open the gate� all good fun and adds to the adventure!

Editing the movie footage together into a DVD has been a heap more fun, but I am disappointed that I got the camera setting wrong. I will know better next time! In all, we had 29 radio contacts which is great for the short time Nigel was on air. We are busy with getting the QSL cards, DVD and web page story sorted out before heading off on our next lighthouse adventure.

Nigel tells me we are off to Mokohinau Island, Sunday 27th December 2009. Wow! I get to have all the fun!! Another boat trip and Lighthouse number 11 coming up! Mokohinau lighthouse is worth five points! We have already collected 19 points towards the Guiding Light Award. Fantastic!!

Hope to hear you all on air from Mokohinau.

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