The weather gods shone on us really well on this Saturday trip. In fact so well we were pleased to cool off in a stream and the shady bush... but I get ahead of myself...

We headed off in our respective vehicles to meet up at Dawn’s place in Te Kuiti, offload all our goodies for our evening meal and then continue down SH3 towards Piopio.   Terry Peterson is a local farmer who was to be our ‘tour’ guide for the day.  Others in the party were from the Te Awamutu tramping club.

First part of our ramble was an up and down walk over Terrys’ farm.  None of us have ever seen sooooo many paradise ducks in one place – well on 2 ponds actually. Terry eventually led us to some limestone rocks with very distinct fossils in them, one of which I reckon was a pair of bananas.   Terry pointed out some burial sites of local identities, as well  as sites of former homesteads, and we then headed down and across Maire Rd.  Farmer Mike was recovering extremely well from a very recent stroke by driving his tractor and tedding the hay.  His friend the short-legged Jack Russell was helping him but ‘Jack’ decided that coming with us was a much better option so tagged along as we circled around a rocky outcrop and negotiated access to a cave.

 We left our packs and entered the first cave.  Terry pointed out a large dinosaur fossil (or was it a water-beaten piece of limestone that had eroded to leave something resembling a large head?)  Then he spotted a huge cave weta, the feelers were at least 10cm long.  Mark was very brave holding it long enough for us to stand back but get close enough for pictures!

We followed the stream for about 60m and climbed up through a hole to head back to our packs for lunch.  Some of us had managed to survive this cave with dry socks.

After lunch in the most beautiful of places – small stream, dry punga leaves to sit on, overhead shade and dappled sunshine peeking through in odd places – it was back for another jump across that stream and uphill a bit more into another cave.  Still got dry socks.

Then came the third cave - no more dry socks.  This was quite a wide cave and very easy to negotiate with Terry leading from behind saying “keep going until you can go no further, Nope, keep going, nope, around the corner…”   Eventually we reached ‘no further’ beside a small hole we had to climb up a greasy slope to.  With lots of encouragement from each other we made it and began a steep uphill scramble behind Terry who was following his own track markings.  We may have been moving through the shady bush but it was still rather warm.  Everyone was puffing and losing moisture by the bucket-load by the time we reached the highest point with lots of verbal assistance having travelled from the rear of group to the front, and vice versa.  Thereafter it was a gentle wander along the ridge top and down through a broad gap in the limestone past a beautiful white-flowered rata onto the farmland.  The last part was down the farm track behind the cattle and onto the road back to the Waitanguru hall where we had left our cars.

Dawn cordially invited us to Farmer Mike and his wife Raewyn’s place for a very welcome cold drink and a reunion with ‘Jack’.  He took a particular liking to Margaret who had space for him to sit beside her and be spoilt.  Can’t you just see him ‘purring’?

Then it was time to head back to Te Kuiti, with a short visit to the Waitanguru Falls, for dinner and sleep at Dawn’s.  All were a tad muddy and required a wee bit of effort to remove themud from our legs but refreshments and food revived us long enough to have a very sociable evening together and retire for the night in comfortable beds.

Grateful thanks must go to Terry Peterson for his informative leadership, (he kept a very watchful eye out for all his ducklings), and to Dawn for being our host for the day and night. We travelled home on Sunday morning feeling quite chuffed with our days in the rocks – not having visited Briers’ cave at all because Terry felt it was not safe enough to go into. May be another day trip.