Thankful Thursday

The rain stopped today and the sun came out and it has, in fact, been a very warm day.  It presented an opportunity to get some washing done.  

It also meant that the ground could start drying out and the orchardists could get back to work picking the apples.

Meanwhile the Tutaekuri River not far away from here where the children used to swim has peaked and started subsiding.  People often wonder how it is that these huge wide river beds which are all over New Zealand and of which there are a fair number locally are so wide when they usually have a tiny river wending its way somewhere along the bed.  So the Tutaekuri at the bridge in Pukatapu usually looks like this:

Whereas the last few days it has looked like this:

The people of Northland in particular are used to flooding as you can see from a recent post by Pauline at The Paddock.

It looks from the forecast as though we might have good weather for the Croquet Tournament which starts on Saturday at our Club.   That will be good.

So today I am just very thankful for some nice weather.  Pleasures don't come much more simple than that.

An Afternoon At The River

This afternoon I took the children to the nearby Tutaekuri River where there are plenty of opportunities for messing about in the water.  I took a book and fully expected to sit on the bank in the heat and let them play whilst I read.  It wasn't quite as simple as that.  It rained.  So I sat under the bridge whilst they spent a couple of hours messing about on the river.  After all rain doesn't really matter when you're that wet.  It was good fun though and I got quite a few photos.  The above are of David doing a bomb (in which he actually managed to hit his bum on the bottom).  The ones below are of Fraser, being Fraser.

What's in a Name: Tutaekuri River

One of the rivers near here is the Tutaekuri River. When I first went over it in 2005 the children were very excited to be able to tell me that the name meant "dog shit river" and know that they could not be told off because that's what the name, taken literally, does mean. Tutae is Maori for excrement and kuri is dog.

The river flows down from the Kaweka Ranges out to sea near Napier and is a fairly long and substantial river. So how did the river come apparantly to be called dog poo river?

Well about 400 years ago the people of Ngati Kahungunu from Wairoa heard that there was heaps of food to be had near Porangahau. They set off on the trek to the coast but when they got there they found that there wasn't much food to be had at all so they had to turn round and go back again. They were starving by the time they Hikawera's pa which lies between Waiohiki and Omahu. Hikawera decided to have a feast and make sure that his visitors didn't leave for home hungry. He ordered his people to kill 70 dogs in order to feed the travellers.

There's a spot on the river that's now called Te Umukuri whic denotes the ovens where the dogs were cooked. Once they had been eaten the Ngati Kahungunu set off for home and the offal from the dogs was thrown into the river. Hence the name Tutaekuri - the offal of the dogs.

Hmmm.

I acknowledge the fact that the information for this posting was obtained from the book Whykickamoocow by Nicola McCloy