The Kapiti island cruise didn't come off, sigh. If it had, we would have been ferried in a rather small (30-foot?) boat across to the island reserve, and had a guided walk looking for unusual birds, plus lunch. But the ferry doesn't run when the winds are wrong, and they've been wrong every time for us. We were scheduled to do it before reaching Wellington; then we rescheduled to the weekend we were in Wellington; and then re-rescheduled for our return from the South Island. And every time the winds have been wrong and it's been called off.
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So we started north and east, but did so by going south and east first. Marian said that on the map, the Akatarawa road was the shortest way from the coast at Paraparaumu toward our goal of Masterton. (Google maps thinks so, too, and boy are they both wrong!) Shortly after we started this road, it narrowed to no more than a 12-foot width and became extremely steep and twisty, with many blind corners. We met several oncoming cars on the way, but managed to avoid scraping anything, although it was close a couple of times. How close was it? Well, Marian took no road pictures through the windshield. She was too busy clutching her seat.
Back on the main highway #2 (with a center line and sometimes shoulders, what luxury!) we crossed the very steep Rimutaka pass.
Looking back at the ascent.
Descending.
From the bottom
The Rimutaka range was a major barrier in the early days, until it was crossed by a railroad. This line had a 1:15 gradient on the north, very steep for railroads, and used special track and locos. This technology is documented at the Fell Locomotive museum, where a very nicely-done video, based on 1940s-era films, shows how the system worked.
There was a fleet of special Fell locomotives on standby at the foot of the grade. An arriving train was broken up and one Fell loco spliced in for every 4-5 cars to climb the grade. The Fell loco had two sets of driving wheels, one normal set driving on the regular track, and another set that got a friction grip on a raised center rail. For a descent, the locos and several brake cars were added. Locos and brake cars both gripped the center rail with soft-iron shoes which became white-hot and were so worn they were replaced after every run.
A brakeman adjusted those wheels to clamp the center rail.
A whole village of railroad workers manned this hill for fifty years, maintaining the locos and brake cars and taking trains up and down the Rimutaka grade every day.
Further up the road we found Stonehenge Aotearoa. A project of a group of astronomy buffs, it is not a recreation of the British stone-age observatory, but a modern version adapted to New Zealand's skies. The alignments of the rising and setting sun at the solstice and equinoxes are marked by stones, as in the old British version.
But the shadow of the central obelisk, at local noon, traces out the analemma of the sun's progress through the year.
And other stellar and solar alignments are shown. One thing we learned there: the reason for building the circle of lintel stones. Single standing stones are enough to mark rising and setting points; why a whole elevated circle? The answer is that it supplies a known, level horizon against which the rise and set of stars can be marked. Without the circle, you as a naked-eye astronomer would be marking the time of a rising or setting star against an uneven local hillside with trees and sheep in the way.
For the final stop of the day we went to the Mount Bruce Wildlife Center, where endangered birds are bred for release. There wasn't actually much to see except a bunch of Kaka. We had spotted and identified wild Kakas at the Wellington Arboretum but here we got close to the noisy parrot-like critters.
Also we got a close look at a wild Tui who came and sat just above our heads. The Tui is a common bird, we see and hear them everywhere. AKA the Parson Bird for his neat little white bow-tie.
And so into camp. Tomorrow a long run to Napier.
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